Chapter Text
The harsh crack of the wooden mallet hitting the solid croquet ball rang out in the quiet night air, a sharp, violent sound that almost made Veronica’s teeth hurt.
She stood on the dew-dampened grass of her front lawn, shivering beneath an oversized sweater she’d thrown on the second she dragged herself through her front door. It was well past two in the morning. Her body was exhausted, her throat still burned from the acid of the party, and her mind was a chaotic, toxic whirlwind that refused to settle. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Heath Chandler’s bloodshot glare—hearing the venomous, desperate confession he had hissed into her face on that Remington porch. She swung again. Crack.
The blue ball shot across the lawn, careening wildly off course, missing the iron wicket by a good three feet, and bouncing out into the shadow of the back fence.
Veronica leaned her forehead against the slick handle of the mallet, closing her eyes tightly. Her skin felt raw, scraped clean by the wind and the sheer, exhausting weight of Heath Chandler’s confession.
I wish I hated her for that. She makes me weak.
The words kept repeating in her head on an endless, maddening loop, synchronized to the dull, thumping headache behind her eyes.
Heath Chandler wasn't just a run of the mill sadistic bully. He was sick. He was terrified. And he was willing to burn down the entire school just to keep anyone from realizing that you, a girl who smelled like bleach and wore floor-length hand-me-downs had lodged herself under his skin like a splinter.
Digging her nails into her hair, she pulled sharply at the roots. “GOD. How could I be so stupid? How didn’t I see it… it’s so…”
Her voice drifted off in a sigh as she pulled her hands away from her hair and instead hugged herself tightly.
Obvious. That’s what his whole charade was. And the worst part was that he had pulled everyone else into his weird ritualistic attempt to purge himself of you.
To pretend like he didn’t have such a weird fixation on you.
You who had only ever tried to fade into the wallpaper and to become a shadow since you first started attending Westerburg. You didn’t deserve to be outcasted, ostracized, and treated like you were some kind of disease.
She could faintly recall when you first started to attend Westerburg. You had always been someone who feared notice, but there had been a certain hesitant kindness and shyness that was now dead.
Dead from cruelness, pranks, whispers, taunts, and scrawled writing on your locker, notebooks, and desk.
Dead not just because of Chandler, Duke, and McNamara, but because of her.
She had been stupid. So fucking stupid to just have sat there on her moral high ground and thought that one, some day, things would get better. But change was an active thing, and she needed to jumpstart it somehow or else…
Veronica drew in a sharp, shuddering breath, lifted her head, and pulled the mallet back for another blind, frustrated swing—
A soft, wooden clack echoed from the far edge of the lawn.
The blue ball rolled back across the dew-stained grass, back towards her. It hit the side of her foot and she froze, her knuckles whitening on the mallet's grip.
“Apologies for the intrusion, dreadful etiquette.” JD’s voice appeared before the outline of him coming out of the dense shadows that surrounded the yard.
A disbelieving and involuntary laugh escaped as the mallet dropped loosely in her grip to rest on the grass, against her side. “It’s okay. What—what are you doing here? How did you find my house?”
He didn’t answer, instead he crouched down and picked up one of the surrounding balls. Standing up to inspect it closely in thought. “Party not go well?”
“What gave that away?”
“Call it a hunch. Though usually when someone’s out in the dark at two in the morning beating wooden balls into the dirt, it’s not because they’re having the time of their life.” JD turned the red ball over in his palm, his dark eyes catching the dim, silver glow of the moon above. He tossed it up once—a short, precise flip—and caught it smoothly before setting it back on the grass right next to the toe of his boot.
He took a slow step closer, the heavy hem of his dark trench coat brushing against the wet blades of lawn. “You left early. Or rather, you ran out looking like you’d just seen a ghost, and Chandler came back inside looking like he wanted to kill you.”
Veronica’s heart took a sudden, violent drop against her ribs. She tightened her grip on the wooden mallet, using it as a cane to keep her knees from buckling. “You were following us?”
“I was watching,” JD corrected softly, his voice carrying that familiar, unbothered tone that felt entirely detached from the rest of Westerburg.
“Watching is passive. Watching granted me the ability to understand how this place runs and on who’s blood. Following implies I give a damn about where Heath Chandler goes on a Friday night.” He paused, tilting his head as he studied her face, taking in her swollen eyes and the faint, lingering pallor of her skin. “Though I did care about where you went.”
“Why?” Veronica let out a bitter, breathy sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. “Why do you care about any of this, JD? About me or her? You’ve been in this town for less than a week.”
“Because you’re the only person in this whole goddamn town who isn’t completely blind.” He spoke smoothly, taking another step forward until he was standing just at the base of the stairs. The cool night air settled between them, thick with the smell of wet earth and distant rain. “Everyone else in this town is playing their part to a T. But you? You look at them, and you can still see her, and you actually feel the weight of it. You understand it, don’t you?”
The breath caught in Veronica’s throat. Her hand trembled on the handle of the mallet. Her. He didn't even have to say the name.
“He’s sick,” Veronica whispered, the words spilling out before she could stop them, raw and unfiltered into the quiet yard. She looked down at the dew-soaked grass, her voice cracking. “Heath. It’s not just... he doesn't just hate her, JD. It’s fucking insane. He’s obsessed with her. And yet he treats her like a disease because he’s terrified of how she makes him feel, and he’s using the rest of us to tear her apart just so he can feel like a god again.”
JD didn't look surprised. He didn't blink. A faint, unreadable shadow crossed his features—not shock, but a quiet, sharp confirmation of something he had already deduced the moment he saw you in the office.
“A god built on a pile of straw,” JD said quietly, his voice dropping into a low, resonant register. He stepped right up to the line of the croquet setup, looking down at the yellow ball resting against her boot. “He’s small, Veronica. Men like Chandler are always small. They find the purest, most honest thing in the room, and because they can’t control it, because they can’t make it bend to them, they try to crush it.”
He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a sudden, suffocating intensity that made her breath hitch.
“She was bleeding in that pool, Veronica,” JD whispered, his gaze burning with an unwavering heat. “And while everyone else was laughing or pretending not to notice. Chandler was staring at her like he wanted to eat her alive. And you... you stood there and watched her burn. A modern witch trial that you stood by and let happen.”
The words hit Veronica like a physical slap. She flinched back, biting down hard on the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper. “I didn’t mean to... I didn't want—"
“I know you didn't,” JD interrupted, his tone softening just enough to pull her back from the edge of panic. He reached out, his long fingers gently tapping the top of her wooden mallet, bringing her focus back to him. “That’s why I’m here. Because you know she doesn't deserve this. And because you know that if someone doesn't step in and destroy the foundation he’s built everything on, they are going to drive that girl into the ground until there’s nothing left of her. Until she’s just another name attached to a suicide note.”
Veronica stared at him, her chest heaving under her oversized sweater. The manic, terrifying energy of the night seemed to shrink, condensing down to the two of them standing on her dew-soaked lawn.
“What are you saying?” She asked, her voice barely audible above the rustle of the wind through the trees.
JD smiled—a slow, quiet smile that didn't reach his eyes.
“I’m saying.” His voice came out as a murmur, and he leaned in just close enough for her to hear the steady, calm rhythm of his breath. “That it’s time we have some strength. Changed the script. What do you say?”
“Yes. I—what were you thinking?”
JD didn’t answer right away. He dug his hands back deep into the dark canvas pocket of his trench coat, taking a slow, deliberate circuit around her lawn. His boots made a wet, rhythmic swish against the grass. He looked like an investigator surveying a crime scene that hadn't even happened yet—or a director measuring the proportions of a stage.
He stopped near the wooden boundary marker at the edge of her garden bed, nudging the green croquet ball with the toe of his boot till it sunk into the garden bed.
“Prom,” JD said simply, turning back to face her. The single word hung air between them, absurd and fragile.
Veronica stared at him, her brows drawing together in immediate, disbelieving friction. “Prom?” She repeated, her voice cracking slightly on the second syllable.
“Are you out of your mind, JD? Prom is three weeks away. It’s the literal centerpiece of Heath Chandler’s kingdom. It’s where he, Duke, and McNamara are going to hold court, wear their ridiculous boutonnieres, and pretend they own the damn county.”
“Exactly,” JD replied, his tone smooth and filled with a light giddiness that made it almost conversational, as if he were discussing the weather. “It’s his altar. It’s where he expects everyone to bow, where he expects to reign supreme without a single scratch on his stupid, gold-plated facade. Which makes it the only place where breaking him actually matters.”
He walked back towards her till he was almost touching her, only a hair’s length away.
“Think about it, Veronica.” He urged, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial register that felt dangerously intimate. “What is the one thing Chandler fears more than anything else? What is the nightmare that keeps him awake at night, grinding his teeth until his jaw aches?”
Veronica swallowed dryly—the way Chandler’s hand had trembled against her collarbone, the smell of stale bourbon and absolute, frantic terror on his breath. She makes me weak. I wish I hated her.
“Her,” Veronica whispered, the realization pulling at her lungs like heavy water. “Seeing her… uncontrolled. Seeing her exist free from him.”
“Seeing her happy,” JD corrected sharply, a sudden, manic glee igniting in his eyes. “Seeing her walk into his cathedral, not as the bloodied punchline he turned her into in the gym. Not as the shivering, broken thing hiding in the principal’s office. But as a person. Clean. Dressed up. Human. Standing on the same floor as him, breathing the same air without bowing her head.”
He took a half-step closer, his shadow falling completely over her.
“If she walks into that gymnasium on Prom night, smiling, holding someone’s arm, totally untouched by his spite... Chandler’s entire reality shatters.” JD said, voice rising as well as the sweeping gestures outwards with his hands. “Every lie he told himself to feel big, every cruel joke he used to keep Duke and McNamara in line, every ounce of power he thinks he holds over this town—it all turns crumbles before he can even breathe a word otherwise. He won't be able to handle it. He’ll lose his mind trying to figure out how the girl he tried to bury suddenly came up breathing.”
Veronica looked down at her own trembling hands, still clutching the smooth, cold wooden handle of her croquet mallet. The sheer, dizzying scale of the idea made her heart race. It was insane. It was terrifying. It was a direct declaration of war against Heath Chandler, against McNamara and Duke, against the entire rotten, cruel social architecture of Westerburg High.
And yet... a dark, desperate spark of hope flared alive deep in her chest, warming the cold, sick feeling that had lingered since the party.
“She’ll never agree to it, JD.” Veronica said, her voice shaking as she raised her eyes to meet his. “You don’t understand how terrified she is. After what happened in the pool today... after the way they humiliated her... she’s probably huddled in her bedroom right now, praying she never has to see another person her own age again. She won’t go to Prom. She won’t even look at a dress.”
“She will.” JD said with absolute, unyielding certainty. He reached out, his long, slender fingers lightly brushing against the sleeve of her oversized sweater, a gesture that was surprisingly gentle despite the lethal edge in his voice. “Because she isn’t going to be dragged there as a statement. She’s going to be asked. Properly. Like a human being who deserves a good night.”
Veronica blinked, the breath freezing in her throat, almost afraid. “Asked? By who?”
JD smiled—a slow, quiet, terrible curve of his lips that contained no warmth, only a cold, consuming ambition that made her skin prickle.
“By me,” he said softly.
The silence of the yard returned, absolute and suffocating. The wind rustled through the leaves from the overhanging tree branches, shaking loose a shower of heavy, wet drops that pattered against the grass and the vinyl siding of her house.
“You?” Veronica breathed, staring at him as if he had just offered to jump off the county bridge. “JD, no offense, but you don’t even know her. She doesn’t know you! If you walk up to her on Monday morning and ask her to Prom, she’s going to think it’s another prank. She’s going to think Chandler sent you to pull the rug out from under her!”
“Which is why you’re going to help me.” JD replied instantly, without missing a beat. “You know her, Veronica. You bumped into her in the locker room today. You saw the look in her eyes before the blood started. She trusts you—or at least, she doesn't hate you the way she hates the rest of them. If you lay the groundwork, if you make her understand that I’m real, that I’m not part of Chandler’s little court... she’ll listen.”
He leaned in, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a hypnotic, inescapable force that caused her breath to stutter in her throat.
“Give her one night, Veronica.” He murmured, his voice a low, resonant hum in the quiet of the lawn. “Just one single night out of four years of absolute misery. Let her put on a nice dress. Let her hear music that isn't accompanied by people laughing at her. Let her see what it feels like to be wanted instead of hunted. Don't you think she deserves at least that much before we all get spat out of this hellhole?”
Veronica squeezed her eyes shut.
In the dark behind her eyelids, she saw you. Shivering and alone against the damp concrete wall of the pool, knuckles white, body curled into a ball as the crimson plume bloomed out through the clear water. She saw the raw, agonizing terror in your face as the laughter began to echo off the high rafters. And then she saw Heath Chandler’s cold, cruel smile as he promised to make her life a living hell.
Change is an active thing. If you just sit there on your moral high ground preaching about it, you’re just as bad as they are.
When she opened her eyes, JD was still standing there, waiting, patient as a predator, his hands resting easily in his coat pockets.
“One night,” Veronica whispered, her voice tightening with a sudden, fierce resolve that made her stop shaking. “We give her one good night. No pranks. No cruelty. If Chandler tries anything. If he even looks at her sideways—”
“Agreed.” JD said smoothly, extending a hand toward her, his palm open, pale against the dark fabric of his trench coat. “It’s a deal then.”
Veronica looked at his hand for a long heartbeat. The skin of his knuckles was slightly raw, as if he had been punching a bag—or a wall—earlier that night. There was something dangerous about him, something unpredictable and sharp that made her instincts scream at her to back away, to go inside, to lock her door and turn on the lights. But it was undeniable, the feeling he created, an invulnerability she’d never experienced just from being near him. If that was a feeling she could give to you, even for just one night. She would.
Veronica set the croquet mallet down in the damp grass, reached out, and took JD’s hand. His grip was firm, cold, and dry, squeezing hers with a strength that felt safe.