Chapter Text
Jughead is a mystery unto himself. Betty should have realized sooner, and she knows it.
The book isn’t the first clue he’s given her, but it’s the first he literally gives her. He puts it into her hands in a quiet moment between classes. It’s a hardcover, and the dust jacket is in pretty rough shape, held together by painstakingly applied Scotch tape. But none of the pages are dog-eared or written on. That’s what tells her this book is important. Jughead is hard on books, even when they don’t belong to him. His library fines probably rival his tab at Pop’s; the inside of Out of Darkness is pristine.
“I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now,” Jughead says. “And if you don’t have time to read this, or you don’t want to, I won’t be offended.”
“I’ll make time,” Betty says.
“It’s just helped me through some tough times,” Jughead says. His eyes slide away from her face, back down to the book. “Experience isn’t universal, but—”
“Thank you,” Betty says. She goes on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek; he still won’t look her in the eye.
She spends study hall reading the book. She starts with the text itself. It’s pretty typical trauma-recovery stuff, the kind of book that makes bestseller lists because of a combination of hope and the voyeuristic perspective on someone else’s suffering that appeals to middle-aged suburban moms who have never really suffered at all. The kind of book that lets you feel compassionate without actually having to take any action to help anyone. There’s something a little raw about it that’s appealing, though. Sidney Prescott is present in the text. Her voice and perspective haven’t been ghost-written out of existence.
The book isn’t going to give Betty the right answers unless she looks in the right place, though. She flips back to look at the publication information and finds something else, something she can’t believe she missed when she skipped ahead to the preface: it’s a signed copy. First edition, 2011. Jughead might have gotten it on eBay, but that doesn’t fit with the condition of the book. No self-respecting used book dealer would sell a signed copy with such a tattered dust jacket, since that could be easily replaced, and the book itself is still in fairly good condition. This is something Jughead has been holding onto for a long time. Maybe since he was nine or ten. There’s a true crime angle in Out of Darkness that could even have planted the seeds of his current interest in the subject.
She’s still missing something, and she knows it. But that will have to wait until things with her sister are more under control.
“I don’t want to be a scapegoat,” Jughead says to her at the sheriff’s office. “And that’s what’s going to happen. With a juvie record, and who I’m related to—” There’s something wild in his eyes. As far as Betty knows, FP’s criminal history is strictly small-time and definitely not murderous. He’s talking about something else.
She doesn’t think about it too much until after Polly is settled in with Veronica and her mom. She goes back home, tells her parents she was out at Pop’s for a milkshake (technically not a lie), and does what she does most nights. She looks out her window. There’s a light on in Archie’s room. Not the overhead light, but the lamp. She can see Jughead with Archie’s guitar. Him and the shadows and not much else.
Betty almost texts him. She wants to ask how he’s doing, if he needs anything, but the best way to help him wouldn’t be to ask. He’d only say he’s fine. He’s been saying that for weeks, and he hasn’t been. She knows that now. She could text Archie, who must be nearby (maybe just outside of where the lamp’s light reaches), but that feels like it would be crossing a line. Jughead will just pull back further if he feels like they’re conspiring against him, even if it’s a benevolent conspiracy, and that would leave the three of them almost where they were at the end of summer. Three people who are friends more in name than in deed, worrying about each other and longing for each other but not feeling entitled to reach out.
So she draws the curtains instead. Discretion is sometimes the better part of valor. She gets out her laptop and Googles ‘sidney prescott out of darkness.’
Out of Darkness leads her to The Woodsboro Murders by Gale Weathers, which leads her to Wes Craven’s Stab franchise. She spends a few minutes reading movie trivia before deciding to backtrack. Maybe Stab was where it started—who hasn’t seen the original movie in this day and age, or at least one of the crappy sequels that show up all the time on basic cable? But Stab isn’t what matters to Jughead, even though he’s an avowed cinephile. It’s something about Sidney Prescott.
Betty reads a few more chapters of the book. It’s less about the multiple attempts on the author’s life and more about learning to live with how they changed her. There’s stuff about denial, repression, isolation—how it’s easier to cut people off, but that maintaining or establishing good relationships is crucial.
Isn’t this what, you know, what people like us… who’ve gone through what we’ve gone through... do? Jughead’s fingers had been laced through hers, but they flexed uneasily when he said that.
Investigative reporting isn’t all about research. Sometimes it’s about knowing the right question to ask. Sometimes it’s knowing how to imply you know more than you do.
She takes him aside at school in the morning. She holds his hand and his gaze, putting some extra firmness in her grip and earnestness in her expression.
“Juggie, we need to talk.” He looks tired, resigned, like he was expecting this.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I know I shouldn’t have started this in the first place. Investigating stuff like this—stuff that’s personal—is emotionally intense, and I guess I got caught up in that. I was trying to be supportive, but if I’m just giving you something else to worry about, I’ll back off.”
“That’s not it,” Betty says.
“You see it all the time in fiction, right?” Jughead barrels ahead. “All those crime procedurals with male-female partnerships banking on the will-they-won’t-they for ratings. Even True Detective gets weirdly intimate, even if it doesn’t get sexual, maybe because it’s two men really entrenched in toxic masculinity.” He’s steering the conversation away from them, back toward things he knows how to talk about.
“I don’t want to break up,” Betty says. That does stop him.
“Are we together enough that it would count as breaking up?” he says, more curious than accusatory.
“ Yes ,” Betty says. She squeezes his hand. He doesn’t relax, but he almost smiles. “Let’s just figure it out as we go, okay?”
“I don’t want to get your expectations up,” he says. “About what I can offer you, or. Anything like that.” He’s talking about something different than she is, or rather, talking around something he’s not ready to say outright. Layers upon layers of mystery.
“I’m not worried about it,” Betty assures him. “I wanted to talk to you about Woodsboro.” She’s glad they’re holding hands, because she thinks he might have bolted otherwise. He suddenly has the look of a cornered animal.
“Maybe I was hoping you’d figure it out,” he says. “Subconsciously, or something.”
“I don’t know if I have figured it out,” she admits, which isn’t a good interview tactic but he looks scared and she doesn’t ever want him to be scared of her, or because of her.
“The school library has a copy of The Woodsboro Murders,” he says. His hand slips out of hers and she lets it go. “You’ll get it within the first twenty pages. And if it makes you reconsider this—us—” He gestures to the space between them. “I won’t blame you.” He turns his back on her and has ducked around a corner before she can call after him.
Veronica helps her connect the dots before she gets to page fifteen, though they take a little detour to get there.
“Oh my god, kickin’ it old-school with Gale Weathers!” she exclaims, when she sees the book Betty’s holding. She drops into the chair across from Betty in the student lounge. It’s study hall for Betty; Veronica might be cutting her honors psychology class. “I used to love that book. I mean, it’s an inferior Ann Rule knockoff, and it’s a product of its time, but it’s so juicy.”
“Jughead recommended it,” Betty says. She tries to sound cheerfully neutral. Veronica takes it the wrong way.
“Don’t change yourself for your man,” she says. “This is the twenty-first century. He should be pursuing your interests.”
“It’s more of a mutual interest,” Betty says. Again, technically not a lie. “You know. Investigative journalism.”
“Right, right.” Veronica takes a sip of her latte, which definitely came from off-campus. “Sorry to get judgy. I just want the best for my best girl, you know? Anyway, if you get into it, I have a ton of true crime recs. Literary, informal, whatever. Do you listen to podcasts?”
“Like Serial?” Betty says. Veronica smiles, almost smirks, and shakes her head.
“You’re so mainstream. You’ve got to try My Favorite Murder. It’s just these two ladies—enthusiasts, not experts—talking about crimes. Mostly murder, duh, but they talk about a real variety of stuff. I think they covered the Woodsboro killings, actually. I can look up the episode.” She has her phone out already, latte forgotten. “Yep, here it is. I’ll text you the link. Or, better yet, we can start listening to it at lunch.” Veronica’s smile has turned distinctly conspiratorial.
“Sure,” Betty says, forcing herself to smile back. Under other circumstances, she wouldn’t have to make an effort, but she’s uneasy. “That would be great.”
And it is great, actually. Better than Betty expected, given how much she has on her mind. They sit side-by-side on one of the couches in the lounge. It’s pretty crowded, since it’s a lunch period, which is an excuse to sit closer: touching at the knees, hips. Veronica has an arm over the back of the couch. Practically (though not literally) around her shoulders. She’s one of the only girls Betty knows who wears perfume. Cheryl does, of course: something floral and weirdly mature. Probably her mom’s perfume. Betty knows the smell because it fills the locker room after cheerleading practice. But Veronica’s perfume is sharper, brighter—citrus, if Betty had to guess, though she doesn’t know a lot about perfume. It’s nice.
“We’ve both had so much going on that we haven’t really had time to hang out,” Veronica says. She passes Betty an earbud. The whole thing is weirdly intimate, but not uncomfortable. It should be uncomfortable, Betty thinks. Not because Veronica’s a girl, but because Betty’s sort-of-dating Jughead, and she likes it. She likes him.
This isn’t the time to get distracted. She tries to tune out the sound of the people around them and focus on the podcast. Some of it is a little silly, but the conversational tone is easy to listen to.
“...like a layer cake of fucked-up shit.”
“Or maybe, like… a mille-feuille.”
“A what?”
“It’s a little thing made with pastry cream and puff pastry. I just said that because it has even more layers.”
“Oh, right, you know all that dessert stuff from your secret double life as a food show personality.”
They don’t shy away from the facts, though. In 1996, high school students William Edward Loomis and Stuart Brendan Macher brutally killed six people and tried to kill several more. They also talk specifically about The Woodsboro Murders by Gale Weathers. The hosts are both from California and remember watching the author as a reporter on Top Story before the murders, and when the murders happened, and when the book came out. It was a media frenzy, apparently, especially when it came to the killers.
“I remember seeing their pictures in the paper, and in her book, and thinking ‘this looks like every guy I’ve ever dated’.”
“Oh, totally. Just your average teenage dirtbags, except they killed a whole bunch of people.”
“So the moral of the story is: don’t date anyone, ever.”
“At least not until you’re twenty-five!”
“Right, right. No teenage dating.”
“You hear that, teens? Stay at home! Read a book!”
“Watch Netflix. But don’t ‘Netflix and chill:’ even I know what that means, and I’m very, very old.”
Veronica nudges Betty in the side until she looks over and then rolls her eyes. Betty shrugs, smiles. She doesn’t take it personally. Veronica pauses the podcast.
“Do you still have the book? I want to take a look at those guys. Loomis and Macher. It’s been a while since I read it, so I don’t have a solid mental image.”
Betty pulls the book out of her bag and flips through it. There, on page eighteen—just a few pages past her bookmark—are some snapshots of the killers. Something about Loomis is familiar. Veronica places it first.
“He looks so much like this guy I’ve seen around town.” Veronica taps the grainy monochrome print. “One of the Southside Serpents? I swear, do a little age progression on Loomis, and they could be brothers.”
Betty looks hard at the picture. A young man, with a deceptively carefree smile and a certain hardness around the eyes. The resemblance takes her longer to place, with Veronica’s added information, but when she does—well. It makes sense that FP would be with the Serpents, given the fact that he didn’t have any legal employment up until recently. That has to be part of the connection. Jughead said she’d get it by page twenty.
“Ronnie, I have to go,” Betty says. “I’m sorry, I can fill you in later, but right now—”
“I get it,” Veronica says, winding up the cord on her headphones to put them away. “No worries.” She says it like she’s trying not to show that she’s upset or offended (or maybe jealous). She’s trying to do right by Betty. “Just keep me posted, okay? I’ll see you at practice.”
Jughead is in the room they use for editing the Blue & Gold.
“What’s the news, girl detective?” he says. His tone isn’t light enough or ironic enough to make it sound like a joke.
“How are you related to him?” Betty asks. There’s no use skirting around the issue. She doesn’t need to be more specific than that. He knows that she knows.
“Dad’s cousin,” Jughead says. “Dad used to spend most summers out on the West Coast because that side of the family was better off financially. They’d set him up with a job out there to make money, let him stay with them until school started up again, no big deal. He saw a lot of Billy in the summer up until he graduated high school and started working full time.” Jughead pushes himself out of the chair he was sitting in. “They’d stopped seeing each other so much by the time it happened. He’s three or four years older than Billy was. I don’t remember exactly.”
Betty’s almost sure he’s lying about that. She’d bet good money that Jughead has the Woodsboro case memorized inside and out, to say nothing of his personal connections to it. She doesn’t push him on this, though. It must be hard enough already.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Why?” Jughead says. He ducks his head and looks over at her through his bangs. “It’s nobody’s fault.”
“I just know it’s hard for you,” she says. “That’s all.”
“It happened before I was born,” he says. “It shouldn’t be hard for me.”
“But it is,” Betty says. She takes a few cautious steps toward him. He has that cornered animal look again, and she doesn’t want him to feel like he has to run from her. “You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to, but I’m here if you do.” He closes his eyes and exhales hard. It’s less than a sigh, just barely. He looks tired.
“Thanks,” he says. And then: “I should go.”
She lets him. She doesn’t know what else to do.