Archive of Our Own

Of all the velvet sofas in all the luxury condo buildings in all the world, Jughead still isn’t sure how he ended up on this one, sandwiched between Betty and Reggie at 8 p.m. on the final Friday night of summer.

Though if he’s honest with himself – something he’s been attempting more and more these days, with the end of high school in sight and a blank slate of a future hot on its heels – he does know why he’s here in this room:

Because at some point in the two years since she’d moved to town, Veronica Lodge had decided they were friends, and she’d invited him.

Because when he’d rolled his eyes and declined anyway, Archie had wheedled and bribed him, offering to pay for Jughead’s burgers for the entire rest of the summer (and while that was only a week’s worth of burgers at this point – that had the potential to be a lot of burgers.)

Because when he’d still refused to participate in something as silly and pointless as an all-night scavenger hunt around a town as boring as Riverdale, Betty had touched his forearm with her pink-tipped fingernails and looked at him with her wide green eyes and said, “C’mon, Juggie, it’ll be fun.”

Because when it’s Betty who’s asking…well.

And so he’s here, arms crossed over his chest, sinking deep into the plush burgundy cushions of what is probably a ten-thousand-dollar piece of furniture, pretending not to be curious about what’s inside the stack of manila envelopes clutched in Veronica’s well-manicured hands.

“Welcome, welcome,” Veronica begins, raising her arms as though to embrace the twenty or so teenagers gathered in her living room.

“She sounds like Effie Trinket,” Betty whispers in Jughead’s ear. Before he can whisper back Who?, Veronica clears her throat loudly, raising an eyebrow in their general direction.

“I am so delighted that you all could make it to the First Annual Riverdale High Senior Scavenger Hunt.”

“Annual?” Jughead mutters, quiet so that only Betty can hear him. She replies with an elbow in his side.

“The rules are as follows,” Veronica continues. “One, you must complete the challenges in order. Two, you can only open the next challenge once the previous challenge has been completed. Three, you and your partner have to complete the challenges together. Four, no cheating.”

Reggie’s hand shoots into the air, nearly smacking Jughead in the face in the process. “What counts as cheating?”

Veronica fixes him with a glare so sharp it might bring a lesser man to his knees, but Reggie seems unmoved. “You’ll know it when you’re tempted to do it, Reggie.”

Betty leans forward so she can see Reggie, resting a hand lightly on Jughead’s knee for balance. He forces himself to keep perfectly still, his eyes focused straight ahead, and definitely not drifting down to watch the pretty curve of her mouth as she speaks.

“Sabotage, or getting another team to help you, or stealing,” she explains.

Reggie shoots her finger guns. “Thanks, Coop.” Jughead can’t stop himself from rolling his eyes.

“Thank you, B,” Veronica says sweetly. “Now. Every team will have five unique challenges to complete, and you must text a photo of yourselves completing the challenges to Smithers in order to move on—”

“Wait, who’s Smithers?” Moose interrupts.

Veronica lifts a hand to her heart. “Who’s Smithers?” she repeats, in a tone so stricken one might think Moose had accused her of carrying a knockoff Birkin bag.

“That’s Smithers,” Archie says helpfully, pointing to an older man that Jughead had somehow overlooked until now, standing beside the fireplace in what appears to be a bellhop’s uniform. Smithers waves at them politely, and Jughead wonders for the thousandth time how Veronica Lodge is actually a person and not a character on a Disney Channel sitcom.

“Thank you, Archiekins,” Veronica says, pressing a chaste kiss to his cheek. “As I was saying. Text a photo of yourselves completing your challenges to Smithers, and when you complete the fifth challenge, he’ll text you back with the code you need to take the elevator back up here, where the party will begin at midnight.”

“Woohoo!” Reggie pumps a fist into the air, almost smacking Jughead again – but this time, Reggie’s fist in his face is the least of his concerns.

“Hang on,” Jughead says. “The point of all this is a party?” He’d just assumed there would be some kind of prize at the end, a free pizza or a gift certificate or…something. (Which he now realizes was a ridiculous assumption, given who was hosting the scavenger hunt.)

Archie and Veronica exchange a look. “We thought if we told you, you might not come,” Archie says.

“Well – yeah,” Jughead says. “Because I wouldn’t have.”

“But you are here, and oh! Look at that,” Veronica says quickly, pulling a slip of paper from a bowl sitting on the coffee table. “You’re the first member of Team One! And your totally-randomly-assigned teammate is…” She plucks another slip from the bowl. “Betty!”

“Aw man,” Kevin complains loudly from the other end of the couch. “I wanted Betty.”

Jughead is almost positive that Veronica didn’t even look at either paper slip before announcing their names, but the truth is that of all the people in this room right now, the only ones he could stand to spend a whole evening with are Betty and Archie, and maybe Ethel. (And he’d bet money that Veronica’s own totally-randomly-assigned teammate will turn out to be Archiekins, anyway.)

Before he can say something snarky that he’ll probably later regret, he feels a light grip on his arm. “Hey partner,” Betty says, her face lit up with a grin.

Beleaguered though he may be, Jughead can’t stop himself from smiling back.

Maybe this won’t be so terrible, after all.

There have been many times, in the nearly thirteen years that he’s known her, that Jughead Jones has watched Betty Cooper approach him, and his heart hasn’t felt like it was collapsing into his stomach.

Now is not one of those times.

In fact, ever since he’d accompanied her to the junior prom as a “favor” back in May, those times had become few and far between, much to Jughead’s surprise. And confusion. And distress.

Nothing had happened that night, exactly. They’d eaten dinner at Archie’s and chatted in the backseat of his car while Veronica and Archie flirted in the front; they’d hovered around the refreshments table as Jughead stuffed his face with cookies and Betty sipped delicately at a cup of spiked punch; they’d even danced a few times, his hands resting lightly on her waist, her arms looped around his neck.

But by the end of the night, something between them had…shifted. It was something he couldn’t put a name to – not then, anyway. Something to do with her wide, bright eyes and her full mouth and the shape it made when she said his name. With her laugh. With the way her fingers brushed against the nape of his neck while they danced, sending a little thrill down his spine that he’d never felt before.

He’d figured it out eventually: it was a crush. And rather than fade away over the summer as he had hoped, the past four months had only intensified it.

In retrospect, how could it not? Betty was intelligent and witty and affectionate and kind. She gave him free scoops of ice cream during her shifts at the ice cream parlor, and listened to him ramble about his dreams of writing a long-form investigative series for the Blue and Gold about the mysterious vandal who had spray-painted twenty-seven cars in the faculty parking lot the day before graduation. She spent long evenings with him at Pop’s when Archie and Veronica were otherwise occupied, a book in her lap as he glared at his laptop screen, willing the words of his fledgling novel to form beneath his fingertips. She was the kind of beautiful that wasn’t supposed to exist outside of cartoons made for children.

And all the while Betty remained oblivious, and Jughead remained determined to get over it, already, she’s obviously not interested, weirdo.

Now, he leans against the driver’s side of her car – a poppy-red ’66 Chevelle she’d restored with her dad over the summer – and watches as she skips towards him, one of the large manila envelopes in hand. Her sleeveless white top is tucked into the waist of her seersucker shorts, her hair is tied back in a ponytail, and her light pink Keds looks so pristine it could be the first time she’s wearing them. She looks perky and pretty and sweet, and the mere fact that Jughead – whose own style could best be described as “bargain bin grunge” – finds all of this attractive is confirmation enough that he’s a complete goner.

“Ready?” she asks, skidding to a stop in front of him.

Jughead does his best to maintain an air of detachment, but the genuine excitement radiating from Betty’s smile is making it tough. “As I’ll ever be.”

Cars peel out of the parking lot around them, but Betty takes her time with the first clue, sliding a small green envelope marked #1 out of the bigger one, which she hands to him.

“Let’s see,” she murmurs, tearing open the flap, pulling out an index card with words written in blue marker on one side. “Challenge one. Sample every milkshake on the menu at Pop’s.”

Jughead scoffs. “There’s only three flavors. Does Veronica actually know what a scavenger hunt is?”

Betty tilts the card in his direction so he can read the rest. “It says here we can’t order anything.” 

That, he must admit, puts a wrinkle in things.

It’s a Friday night in Riverdale, so Pop’s is hopping: not a single booth is left unfilled, and dozens of half-melted milkshakes dot the tabletops, cherry stems thrown to the wayside.

“Milkshakes, milkshakes everywhere, and not a drop to drink,” Jughead muses.

Betty stands beside him with her hands on her hips, businesslike, surveying the scene before them. “How do you want to handle this?” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we could wait around for people to leave and take whatever’s left of their shakes before the table gets bussed. But that’s kind of gross,” she points out. “We could also just ask.”

Jughead’s already shaking his head. “No way. I’m not asking a stranger if I can taste their milkshake. The last thing I need is a sexual harassment complaint attached to my college applications.”

Betty giggles, and he smiles slightly at the sound. “We know half the people in here, Jug. Look, there’s Polly.”

Sure enough, Betty’s older sister is seated in a booth with two other girls whom Jughead vaguely recognizes as having graduated in the class above them. He follows Betty dutifully over to their table.

“Hey Pol,” Betty says, sliding into the booth next to her sister. They both scoot over further than necessary, and Betty pats the space beside her, looking at Jughead expectantly. He sits, and tries not to dwell on the fact that her bare thigh is pressed up against his leg.

“What are you doing here?” Polly asks, dipping a fry into ketchup. “With Jughead?”

“Can I have a sip of your milkshake?” Betty ignores Polly’s question, and doesn’t wait for an answer to her own, grabbing the frosted glass. This one’s chocolate. She puckers her lips around the straw and looks at Jughead expectantly.

He sighs and pulls his phone out of his pocket, snapping a photo. “We’re on a scavenger hunt,” he explains.

“Juggie,” Betty nearly chokes on the milkshake. “You’re not supposed to tell.”

“What, is that one of the rules?”

“No, it just ruins the fun.”

“Whatever,” he sighs, and then poses with the chocolate milkshake himself so Betty can take his picture.

When she’s done, he holds the glass out for Polly to take back again, but she wrinkles her nose. “You can finish it.”

As luck would have it, Polly and her friends have the full spectrum of Pop’s milkshake flavors covered, and they complete their first challenge in one fell swoop. Jughead texts all six photos to the number now saved in his phone as Riverdale Jeeves, and receives a thumbs up emoji in return.

“That felt…too easy,” he says once they’re back in Betty’s car, the envelope marked #2 on the dash before them. “Didn’t it feel too easy?”

“First you complain about doing the scavenger hunt at all. Then you complain that it’s too easy.” Betty shakes her head, though she sounds more amused than annoyed.

Jughead feels a flash of guilt. “No, you’re right. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says, and shrugs. “I think we just got lucky. I mean, my sister just happened to be there. And I think they’re supposed to get harder as we go along.” She plucks the envelope off of the dash and dangles it before him. “You want the honors?”

“Sure.” Jughead tears open the envelope and reads the card in silence, his eyes narrowing as he takes it in. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?”

His sigh is heavy. “We have to steal a film reel from the Twilight.”

“Steal” is Jughead’s word; “borrow” is Veronica’s. But as an employee of the drive-in movie theater himself, he feels his take on the challenge is more accurate.

It’s about a ten-minute drive from Pop’s to the Twilight. Jughead rolls his window down, and rests his arm along the door, lifting his hand now and then to feel the rush of air against his fingers. For a moment he thinks about taking his hat off, letting the wind blow through his hair, but decides against it.

The radio is on, the volume down low, and when Betty starts to sing along (takes to the sky like a bird in flight, and who will be her lover?) he looks at her, one eyebrow raised.

She sees him looking, and bites her lower lip. Jughead wonders what she’d say if he asked her to forget the challenges and just keep driving like this all night.

“Sorry,” she says.

Jughead shrugs. “You have a nice voice.”

Betty snorts a little. “Thanks.” They’re stopped at a red light, and she drums her fingers on the steering wheel impatiently.

“That thing you said about college,” she says, in a way that’s just casual enough that he knows she’s actually been thinking about it ever since they walked into Pop’s. “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”

From the very first day of school, junior year at Riverdale High had been all about college prep: studying for the SATs, enrolling in AP courses, arranging campus visits on the weekends. Through it all, Jughead had not been shy about the fact that college was, to put it nicely, out of his price range. Besides, he wanted to be a writer; literary agents weren’t going to care whether or not he had a B.A. to his name. Jughead Jones would live – or die – by his work.

He’d explained all of this to Ms. Burble, the guidance counselor, at the first of his four school-mandated meetings with her, and repeated it at the second. But at the third, she’d greeted him with a stack of brochures. Scholarships, financial aid, community college – he had options, she’d insisted, that didn’t hinge on the kind of student loan debt he’d end up paying off well into retirement.

At the fourth meeting, they had sat together and compiled a shortlist of colleges he would apply to in the fall – a list that he’s been carrying around folded up in his wallet ever since.

Jughead licks his lips and looks back out the window. “Uh, maybe,” he says. “I’m considering all my options.”

“Juggie,” she says, placing her hand on his wrist. He looks back at her, and her eyes are so warm it makes his ears feel hot. “That’s great.”

“What about you?” he says, eager to change the subject. “Still gunning for Ithaca?”

Betty wrinkles her nose. “I’m not gunning for it,” she says. “It’s just where my parents want me to go, since they went there.”

“I guess that’s the one upside to having parents who were dropouts,” he says. “No legacy to uphold.”

Betty frowns, but before she can respond, the Twilight Drive-in sign comes into view. She slows, parking the car about a half-block from the entrance. “Oh, American Graffiti is playing,” she says, sounding wistful. “I love that movie.”

“That’s pretty on-the-nose,” Jughead says. “Couple of teens driving around their dead-end town in an old car…”

Betty tilts her head. “But we’ve still got one more summer.”

He knows she doesn’t mean anything by it – other than the obvious fact that they’re about to start their senior year of high school, not end it – but her words hit him like a soft kick to the ribs anyway. One more summer. Somehow it feels like all the time in the world, and the last few grains of sand slipping through an hourglass, all at the same time. And the talk about college applications doesn’t help.

Jughead forces himself to focus. “So,” he says. “I think Trev Brown is on the schedule for tonight.”

An odd look passes over Betty’s face. “Oh. Okay.”

He frowns. “What?”

“Nothing. Just…” Betty looks lost in thought. “Trev and I went out a couple times. We might be able to use that.”

His frown deepens into a scowl. “You did? When?”

“I guess it was, like, January? We went to Winter Ball together.”

The Winter Ball, which Jughead had firmly, and proudly, eschewed in favor of a double feature at the Bijou (a Marlon Brandon one-two punch, On the Waterfront followed by The Wild One). In the weeks leading up to it, he’d suffered through countless lunchtime conversations between Betty and Veronica about dresses and shoes and nail polish and where to eat before the dance and where to party after it. But somehow, he’d completely missed the fact that Betty had gone with a date.

Not that it should matter – Betty could go to dances with whomever she pleased – and she’d gone to the junior prom with Jughead himself a few months later, albeit as friends.

(Still.)

He tries to keep his expression neutral. “What do you mean we can ‘use it’?”

Betty shrugs slightly. “I mean…Trev likes me. Or he did, anyway. I don’t know.”

Jughead looks out the window, squinting at the glare that bounces off the glass from the streetlamps. “So…what, you want to seduce him into giving you a film reel?”

He regrets it before he even reaches the end of the sentence.

There’s silence for a beat, then Betty says, “Jughead, are you mad at me?”

“No,” he sighs, turning back to face her. “I’m just hungry. I’m sorry. We can go get the thing now.”

She studies his face, and seems to conclude that he’s telling the truth. “You should’ve said something earlier. We could’ve got a burger at Pop’s—”

“Betty, seriously, it’s fine,” he says, and touches the back of her hand before he can think better of it, pulling away to adjust his beanie. “I’ll just grab a hot dog or something.”

They buy the hot dog first, as Veronica’s card specifies they have to smuggle the film reel off of the Twilight’s grounds, and they can’t exactly stroll around the drive-in with one hidden in Betty’s little brown crossbody purse. After offering Betty a bite, Jughead inhales the rest in about four seconds flat, so they don’t lose any time.

Jughead stops just outside the booth. “Wait, so – what are we gonna do in there?”

Betty tilts her head, one side of her mouth curving up into a sly smile. “Just follow my lead.” And then she grabs his hand, and pulls him through the door.

Trev nearly falls out of his fold-up chair when they burst into the room. “Betty! Jughead? What are you guys doing here?”

Jughead’s too busy processing the fact that Betty is still holding his hand to answer, but he doesn’t need to, because Betty jumps in with the excuse she’s clearly been formulating since they were still in the car. “Hey Trev! I’m so sorry – Juggie wanted to show me where he works. We didn’t think anyone would be in here,” she adds, flashing Jughead a meaningful look, biting the corner of her mouth in a way that makes him squirm.

Her excuse doesn’t actually make much sense – Jughead would obviously know someone would be managing the booth while a movie is screening – but he scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, playing along. “Yeah, sorry, man.”

“Oh. Hey, no problem. I’ll just—” Trev stands up, gesturing towards the door. “I’ll give you guys a minute.”

“Thanks,” Betty says, her smile sweeter than ever.

“Yeah, no problem,” Trev says again. He pauses in the doorway. “I um—I didn’t know you two were like. Together.”

Betty drops Jughead’s hand, but moves in closer to his side, sliding her hand halfway up his back. He hopes desperately that she can’t feel him shiver at the touch. “It kinda just…happened,” she says.

“Gotcha.” Trev nods. “Well, you know what to do, man.”

Jughead stares at him blankly, until Trev clarifies, “Like, with the projector? If it catches on fire?”

“Oh. Yeah,” Jughead says. “I got it.”

“Okay, thanks Trev,” Betty says loudly, waving her hand goodbye. With a slight shake of his head, Trev finally leaves, the door shutting softly behind him.

Jughead and Betty stand in silence for a long moment, her arm still around his waist, until his brain finally starts functioning enough to remember why they’re there in the first place. He takes one big step away, tugging the edges of his beanie down over his ears, and turns to study the film reels stacked along the shelves that line the back walls, praying that Betty can’t see how red his face has flushed in the last thirty seconds.

Neither of them speaks as he runs his fingers over the rungs of cool metal, making his way down the shelf, seeking out one reel in particular. He smiles when he finds it.

“Here,” he says. He pulls it off of the shelf and turns to hand it to Betty, who’s been watching him from the center of the room, oddly still for how animated she’d been just moments ago.

She takes it, turning it in her hands to read the label. “Singin’ in the Rain?”

Jughead nods. “Your favorite, right?”

Betty doesn’t answer right away, running her fingers over the shiny black film. “Right,” she says softly.

Betty insists they take a selfie with the film reel next to a street lamp – it’s thematically appropriate, Jug – but he talks her out of incorporating the umbrella she always keeps in the back seat. The photo is undeniably cute, the two of them crowded into the frame with the reel held under their chins, and Jughead can’t help but smile a little as he sends it off to Smithers. (This time, the reply is a 100 symbol.)

Neither of them acknowledges the fact that Trev Brown now believes they’re a couple – a couple who likes to make out in the dusty, dark projector booth of the drive-in movie theater.

Jughead pulls the next card, #3, from its envelope, and reads through it twice, his eyebrows raising higher and higher as he does. “The hell?” he mutters, checking the other side of the card in case there’s more.

“What?” Betty plucks it from his fingers, and reads aloud, “’Try on one of Clifford Blossom’s finest wigs.’” She taps a finger against her chin thoughtfully. “That’s going to be tricky. We’ll have to get into the wig room.”

Jughead stares at her, utterly baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“The wig room at Thornhill Manor,” Betty says patiently.

“The wig room at – what?”

“Mr. Blossom wears a wig. He’s got, like, thirty of them. Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone does not know that, Betty.”

“Well, maybe you’re not as observant as you think, Sherlock,” Betty says, and the teasing lilt to her voice makes his stomach feel funny. “Come on, let’s go.”

As they pull away from the curb, Jughead says, “Okay, let’s say everyone does know Clifford Blossom wears a wig. How do you know he keeps it in his ‘wig room’?”

“Cheryl used to have sleepovers all the time, for the River Vixens,” Betty says. “If you were on her good side, you got to sleep in her bedroom. If you weren’t, you slept in the library. But Veronica and I realized it was actually way better to be on her bad side, because we could…y’know.” She glances at him. “Go exploring.”

The mental image of Betty and Veronica snooping around the creepy, creaky hallways of the Blossom mansion in their pajamas is almost too much to bear. Jughead grins, shaking his head slightly. “Betty Cooper, you are…”

She looks away from the road again to meet his eyes, just for a second, the side of her mouth curved up in a smirk. “I’m what?”

“You’re something,” he says.

In a night that’s not lacking in surprises for Jughead, perhaps the biggest one of all is learning that the wealthiest family in town keeps a spare key hidden inside the false bottom of a ceramic planter by their back door.

The moment they step foot onto Blossom property his heart starts beating so fast he thinks it might actually explode, but Betty proceeds with a preternatural calm bordering on complete nonchalance.

“It’s only ten o’clock,” he points out, following her up the left side of the driveway, where Betty has assured him they won’t set off the motion-activated lights. “They’ll probably all sitting in the living room, glowering at each other.”

She shakes her head. “Cheryl’s parents go to bed at like, eight thirty. They keep maple syrup hours, or something.”

Jughead’s innate fear of being caught, murdered and secretly buried in the Blossom family graveyard just barely outweighs his desire to know precisely what “maple syrup hours” are. “Okay, but isn’t their alarm probably set?”

“Veronica and I have snuck in and out of this house like ten times, Jug,” Betty says, keeping her voice low as she eases open the back door, which appears to lead into an actual conservatory, Clue-style, lush with potted plants and ivy that clings to the glass walls. “Calm down.”

“Are you seriously telling me the Blossoms don’t have armed guards manning their doors?” he hisses. “Attack dogs? Trap doors? Laser beams? Nothing?”

She turns to him and presses her index finger to his lips.

He shuts up immediately.

Their path through Thornhill’s hallowed halls is so long and winding and dark that Jughead begins to regret not dropping breadcrumbs behind them. But Betty seems to know the way by heart; and even more than that, she knows which specific floorboards to avoid because they’re creaky. Betty Cooper, he thinks, would make an excellent spy.

After a few minutes she stops, so abruptly that Jughead bumps into her, and when she gasps and stumbles forward he throws his arms around her middle without even thinking.

She’s so small and warm against him, and the top of her head is close enough to his that he can just make out the scent of her shampoo. (It’s lavender.) He feels her take in a shaky breath, and then Betty twists to face him, keeping close even as he pulls his arms away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Thanks,” she whispers.

“You’re welcome,” he whispers back.

She jerks her chin towards the door behind her. “That’s the wig room.”

“I gathered.” A half-hearted punch lands on his upper arm, and he holds back a snicker.

Betty tries the doorknob first, and then, finding it locked, pulls a bronze bobby pin from the underside of her ponytail with a flourish. Thirty seconds later, she has the door unlocked. Jughead’s pretty sure it’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen in his life.

Betty slips into the room and Jughead follows, closing the door carefully behind him. And it’s a good thing he does, because the moment he turns around, he blurts out, “Holy shit.”

At least two dozen identical white mannequin heads topped with shiny red hair line the wall to his right, each one illuminated from above by soft track lighting. To his left, three floor-length mirrors stand together in a semi-circle, resembling a department store fitting room. Plush, burgundy carpeting cushions his feet, and a brown leather chair sits in the center of the room.

There’s no other word for it: It’s a wig room.

“Shush,” Betty warns him, a barely-suppressed laugh in her voice. “You should see your face right now.”

“I can, because there are mirrors everywhere.”

Using both hands, Betty lifts one of the wigs off of its mannequin head and places it on her own, her nose wrinkling in some combination of delight and disgust. She holds the next one out to Jughead. “Over or under the beanie?”

“Over. Definitely over.” He adjusts the wig to sit on top of his hat at an angle, like a beret, and she laughs. They take their photo in the mirror, three pairs of Betty and Jughead reflected back at them, matching goofy grins on their faces.

The picture earns them a cat-with-heart-eyes emoji.

Jughead leaves the wig room feeling oddly giddy, and Betty must feel the same, because as they step back into the darkened hallway, she takes his hand.

“Don’t get lost,” she says lightly, and tugs him after her, leading the way back to the conservatory.

They almost make it undetected.

Jughead nearly jumps out of his own skin when he hears the voice behind him, seemingly coming from nowhere out of the darkness: “Polly, dear, what are you doing up at this hour?”

Betty skids to a stop, and Jughead almost trips over her again; clutching at each other’s arms, they turn around in tandem to find an elderly woman in a wheelchair inching towards them from what appears to be the dining room. Her hair and skin alike are bone-white, except for a shock of red running through the curl that hangs over her papery, wrinkled forehead.

“Is…is that a ghost?” Jughead says faintly.

“Polly?” Betty says, ignoring him as she takes a step forward. “Did you call me Polly?”

“Well that’s your name, isn’t it,” the woman says, sounding affronted. “It’s much too late for you to be wandering the halls alone. Where is my grandson?” She pauses and tilts her head to one side, her rheumy eyes coming to rest on Jughead. “And who is this street urchin you’ve let into our home?”

Before Jughead can summon the presence of mind to be offended, another voice reaches them: “Nana Rose? Is that you?” The click-clack of high heels on hardwood echoes from another room. “Are you talking to Grandpa Blossom’s spirit again?”

It’s Cheryl – and it’s their only chance to escape. Betty’s fingers clamp around Jughead’s wrist, and they run.

They don’t speak until they’re safely ensconced back in Betty’s car and peeling away down the street, at which point Jughead says, “That old lady called me a street urchin.”

He’s more amused by the encounter than anything else, but Betty seems quite the opposite. “I can’t believe she’d lie to me,” she says, her voice low. It’s only then that Jughead notices her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

“Wait – who? Grandma Rose?”

Betty glances at him. “Polly. And it’s Nana Rose,” she mutters.

“What?”

“She’s dating Jason Blossom,” Betty says, flicking on her turn signal with more aggression than is strictly necessary.

“I’m so confused,” Jughead says.

“Polly and Jason went out a few times last year, and my parents freaked out,” she explains. “They basically forbid her from ever seeing him again. And she told me she wasn’t. But…”

“But the Blossoms’ creepy grandmother knows who she is,” Jughead fills in the rest. “Wow. Why do you think she’d keep it a secret?”

“I don’t know!” Betty exclaims. “I would never tell our parents. She knows that.”

“Maybe it’s the thrill of a secret relationship,” he suggests. “Sneaking around. That’s a thing. That I’ve heard about, I mean, I’ve never been in a secret relationship.”

“It’s not funny, Jughead,” she says, but there’s a laugh buried beneath her irritation. She sighs. “Things have just been weird this summer. Like she’s pulling away before she goes to college.” Betty slows to a stop at the corner, putting the car into park. “It doesn’t matter. What’s the next envelope say?”

Jughead thumbs open the #4 envelope, and can’t help but smile as he reads the instructions. The buoyant feeling that had flowed through him as Betty held his hand still hasn’t worn off yet. “Okay, I actually like this one.”

“Tell me.”

“Go swimming in Sweetwater River,” he says. “I know just the place. Take a left up here.”

The clearing by the river is just as he remembers it.

He hears Betty’s breath catch as the water comes into view. “Oh, Jug,” she breathes. “This is beautiful.”

And it is. Laid out before them is a grassy patch just big enough for a picnic blanket, dotted with wildflowers, giving way to a little dirt path that leads down to the water’s edge through a gap in the trees. Moonlight glints off of the water, and fireflies blink lazily in the air around them.

His father used to bring him here when he was a little kid, and Jellybean too once she was old enough. It had been their secret spot, where they could swim and eat and play away from the crowds that gathered in the park about a mile upstream.

Jughead hasn’t thought about this place in years, but standing here now, the memories hit hard. It was the place he loved before he even knew the people and places and things that he loves now; before his father fell off the wagon, before his mother left, before his sister disappeared with her.

He takes a few steps towards the water, but when he turns to look back, Betty hasn’t moved, still standing at the edge of the clearing with the towels she’d had in her trunk clutched against her stomach. “Aren’t you coming?”

Betty shifts on her feet, her eyes flicking between him and the shoreline. “Is it safe?”

Jughead looks at the river – the current is so mild the water barely appears to be moving – and then looks back at Betty, incredulous. “Uh…yes.”

“I mean...isn’t it kind of dirty?” She steps forward hesitantly. “It’s just…I’ve never actually gone swimming in the river before.”

“Seriously?” Jughead asks. “Never?”

Betty shakes her head. “We always went to the pool, because my mom said the river water was toxic.”

Of course. Of course Alice Cooper would forbid her children from swimming in the river – after all, it was free, so there was no barrier to entry to keep out the riff raff.

“Well, it’s not chlorinated,” he says, unable to soften the edge in his voice as he crouches down to untie his sneakers. “But it is where I learned to swim, and I haven’t grown a third nipple yet, so.”

When he looks up from his shoes a moment later he’s surprised to see that she’s beside him, the towels abandoned on a rock by the edge of the grassy patch. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she says softly as he stands back up. “It’s just – when you grow up hearing you’ll get cancer if you dip a toe in the river, it’s…hard to get that out of your head.”

“It’s okay.” Jughead frowns, kicking half-heartedly at a stone by his foot. “I’ve believed a lot of stupid shit my parents said, too.”

Betty takes a deep breath, and exhales. “So. I guess we should just, um…go on in in our underwear?”

Somehow, it had not occurred to Jughead until this moment that it would be entirely inadvisable to jump into the river in his jeans and t-shirt. Or for Betty to do so in her white tank top and shorts.

“It’s basically the same as a swimsuit,” she adds when he doesn’t say anything.

“Oh. Um, yeah. I’ll just…go over here.” He gestures to the left side of the clearing, and turns his back to her as he shucks off his clothes and his beanie, thanking whatever higher power might be out there that he had worn boxers today, and they happened to be a pair without any holes in them.

When he turns around Betty is already at the edge of the river, testing the water cautiously with one foot. Her bra and her underwear match, and though it’s difficult to tell their exact color in the dark, they’re light enough against her pale skin that for a few seconds his prehistoric-lizard-brain interprets her slim form as nude, and his teenage-boy-body reacts accordingly.

Jughead sucks in a breath. There’s only one option in a situation like this.

He runs past Betty at full speed, and leaps into the water.

The river isn’t terribly cold this time of year, but it’s still a shock to his system, and it has the intended effect on his physiology. He reaches the surface quickly, pushing wet locks of hair out of his eyes. Betty is still standing on the shore, her face split wide in a grin.

“Juggie!” she says, punctuating his name with a giggle.

“It’s not bad.” His feet land on the pebbly river bed, and he stands. The water comes up to about his chest. “You just have to do it.”

Betty looks skeptical, but she takes a step back on one foot, and then launches herself into the water a few feet away from him.

She surfaces with a gasp, eyes shut, wet ponytail plastered to the back of her neck. She wipes at her eyes, smearing trails of black mascara beneath them, and looks around wildly before meeting Jughead’s gaze.

“You’re right,” she says, swimming towards him, her limbs only becoming visible in the dark water as she comes closer. “It’s warmer than I thought. It’s nice.” She pauses, her eyes scanning his face. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you with your hat off.”

He runs a hand through his hair self-consciously. “Then tonight you’ve joined a very exclusive club, Betty Cooper.”

Betty smiles. Her foot kicks his knee, and he realizes that she’s treading water, the spot they’re in too deep for her to stand. Without really thinking about it, he moves forward and grips her waist with both hands, holding her up in the water.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognizes it’s a bold move. Much bolder than anything he’d do on land, or in the daytime, or anywhere outside of his imagination, really. But somehow – here in the river, with moonlight shining down on their faces, and fireflies winking at them from the shore – it feels like the right move.

“Thanks,” Betty says, a breathy quality to her voice that wasn’t there before.

“Sure.” Moving backwards, Jughead pulls her in to where it’s shallow enough that she can stand upright, the water coming just below her shoulders. He lets his hands fall away from her waist, but just as she had in the Blossoms’ maybe-haunted-mansion, she stays close. Close enough that he can see the droplets of water clinging to her eyelashes, her cheeks, her lips.

Betty turns to the side, looking out across the water to the other riverbank. “You learned to swim here?”

Jughead nods, watching a bead of water slide down from her jaw to her neck. Tiny goosebumps pebble her skin, and he wonders what she’d do if he touched her again. “My dad taught me.”

She tips her head back, and he follows her gaze, looking up into the sky. It’s breathtaking, littered with hundreds, thousands of pinpricks of light.

“I had to take lessons at the Y,” Betty says, her eyes trained on the stars overhead. “I hated it. I wish I could’ve come here.”

“It was pretty great,” Jughead admits, and as he says it, he realizes it’s true. His dad never drank when they came to the river, never yelled; in its waters he somehow managed to play the role of the attentive, protective father that always eluded him on land.

So many of Jughead’s childhood memories were the kind that only seemed sweet on the surface. The kind that turned sour if you thought about them too hard, dug into the details too far. But those swimming lessons at Sweetwater River were an exception.

Betty sinks under the water then, and Jughead watches as bubbles drift up from the spot where she disappeared. She emerges in a few seconds, facing him again, and wipes away the water from her eyes. They look at each other for a long, quiet moment, only the sounds of crickets in the grass and the current moving gently downstream around them.

Without warning, her hand comes up and cups his face. She swipes her thumb over his cheek. “You have – dirt, or something,” she says.

His mouth curls up in a lopsided grin. “So do you,” he says, and runs a finger gently along the skin beneath her eye. He shows her the tip, turned black by the remains of her mascara.

“We’re going to look amazing for Veronica’s party,” Betty says with a soft laugh.

“You always look amazing,” Jughead says, again without thinking.

Her cheeks flush darker. “Jug.”

Jughead swallows and looks down at his hands, floating pale and insubstantial beneath the surface of the water. Suddenly it feels as though there’s something lodged in his throat. “Betty, um…”

He trails off, and her fingers brush against his wrist. “What?” she says.

He clasps her hand in his, and forces himself to meet her questioning gaze. He opens his mouth to speak, and –

And out of nowhere, she gasps, her eyes practically doubling in size. “Shit!”

Jughead whips his head around, expecting a crocodile or bear or other threatening beast to appear from the darkness around them. “What!?”

“I forgot my phone in my shorts,” she says apologetically, “for the photo.”

His shoulders slump in relief. “What?” he repeats, gentler this time. “That’s what you were thinking about…?” He can’t quite bring himself to say it: in the middle of our moment?

When I was trying – okay, thinking about trying – to kiss you?

“We’ve still got one more challenge, Jug,” she says, backing away slowly towards the path up to the clearing where their clothes and towels are waiting. “We’re running out of time.”

They take the photo at the edge of the river, wrapped in towels and shivering slightly, angling the phone so the water is visible in the background. Their location and overall drenched appearance should be enough to prove they went swimming in the river, Betty insists, especially since neither of them has a waterproof phone.

She’s right: Smithers texts back almost instantly. This time it’s a little smiley face with two hands up.

Without sunshine there’s no hope of their underwear drying in a reasonable amount of time, so they towel off as best they can and pull their clothes back on over the damp garments. Jughead leads the way out of the clearing, but just as he’s starting up the rocky incline that leads to the gravel road they’d parked on, he feels a tug at the back of his t-shirt.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Betty says, looking up at him through her lashes.

Jughead shrugs it off. “Don’t thank me, thank Master of the Hunt Veronica.”

Before he can continue climbing up the path, she takes his hand, squeezing it gently. “I know that it means something to you,” she says. “So just let me say thanks.”

He clears his throat, and squeezes back. “You’re welcome.”

Their final challenge, #5, is also the most difficult. Graffiti your names inside your favorite room at Riverdale High.

Or at least it would be, if Jughead didn’t know precisely which door to the gymnasium had a bum lock that you could jimmy open if you leaned your weight against the handle in just the right away.

“Me and Veronica aren’t the only ones who’ve been breaking and entering,” Betty says approvingly.

Jughead tries to change the subject as quickly as he can. “So where do you want to do it?” he says, his voice echoing off the walls of the empty gym. In a matter of days, he’ll be back in here, running laps around the room with a couple dozen other sweaty teens until it’s time to play a game of shirts-vs-skins basketball, at which point he’ll loiter around the edges of the court, positioning himself wherever he’s least likely to have a ball thrown his way. The thought is too depressing to voice aloud.

Betty scoffs. “Do you even have to ask?”

And that’s how they end up all the way on the other side of the school, standing in front of the door to the Blue and Gold office as Betty jiggles the handle helplessly.

“I can’t pick this kind of lock with my bobby pin,” she says.

Jughead holds in a groan. He’d hoped the door would be unlocked, as it was so often on nights that fell during the school year. But it made sense that after an entire summer of non-use, that wasn’t the case now.

“I know a way in,” he says. “Just…hang on a second.”

“What? No,” Betty says, following as he sets off down the hallway. “We’re doing this together. Where are you going?”

Jughead frowns, scratching at his beanie. “I just…know where Mr. Svenson keeps some spare keys.”

He stops at an unmarked locker next to the entrance to the cafeteria and spins the combination lock around a few times, smiling when it opens with a satisfying click. Sure enough, a giant keyring hangs from a hook on the inside of the locker door. He dangles it in front of Betty, whose mouth has fallen slightly open in shock.

(It’s not the right time, he decides, to tell her that he knows how to access every room inside this school after hours because for a while, he’d had to know. Because for a few weeks during the winter of their sophomore year, sleeping here had been a more bearable option than shivering through the night in the Twilight’s projection booth, or enduring Fred Andrews’ look of pity when Jughead asked him for help, or leaving his bedroom in the morning to find his dad passed out on the couch again, shoes still on again, an empty bottle of something cheap and potent tipped over on the dull brown carpet again.)

(As if there could ever be such a thing as a right time to tell her that.)

It takes a few attempts to get the right key, but finally they’re inside the office, and it almost feels like a homecoming of sorts. Jughead had spent hours upon hours working on the Blue and Gold – mornings, study halls, late nights – ever since Betty had cajoled him into joining the staff at the start of tenth grade. (His presence had officially doubled its size.) It’s where he’ll spend more mornings, more study periods, more evenings with Betty.

Until one day, about ten months from now, when they’ll graduate. And they’ll never sit in this room together, sharing a bag of chips, doing homework, typing in comfortable silence, ever again.

The realization hits Jughead like a punch to the gut.

“Are you okay?” Betty’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts.

“I’m fine,” he says lightly, dropping the keys onto an empty desk as he collapses into its seat. It’s the biggest one in the room – a teacher’s desk, with drawers on the sides and enough space to set up a monitor behind your laptop – and it’s Betty’s, because she’s the editor and she deserves it. (Jughead’s words, not Betty’s; and it doesn’t stop her from attempting to insist they share it every now and then, an offer he always declines.)

“What do you think?” he asks, gesturing around the room. “Where’s a good spot for our names?”

Hands on her hips, Betty surveys the room with the same critical eye she’d used at Pop’s when they’d walked through the front door earlier in the evening. “How about the blackboard?”

Jughead raises an eyebrow. “I thought you’d go for something less obtrusive.”

“We’ve kept this paper alive almost single-handedly for the last two years,” Betty says airily. “I say we deserve to make our mark.”

“Alright then,” he says. “And speaking of mark…have you got any markers in here?”

Betty says something he doesn’t catch, and Jughead opens the top drawer to his right. There are no markers inside – no objects at all, in fact – but there is something that makes his breath catch in his chest.

Two letters, joined by one symbol: B ❤ J.

And in the seconds that follow, everything clicks.

The reason she’d felt so awkward telling Trev Brown, who was on the football team, that she and Jughead were together.

The reason she’d been so upset to learn that her sister had been spending more time at Thornhill Manor than she’d let on.

The reason she’d pulled away from him in the Sweetwater River at the very moment when he was considering leaning in for a kiss.

There is only one logical explanation tying it all together:

Betty Cooper is in love with Jason Blossom.

Jughead feels ill.

He drags his eyes away from the doodle on the bottom of the drawer to look at Betty; she looks sick, too.

“I can explain,” she says.

Jughead slides the drawer shut, determined to play it cool. Sure, maybe he’d spent the better part of his summer silently pining for the girl across the room. And sure, maybe he’d started to wonder tonight if perhaps a tiny part of her didn’t reciprocate his feelings, after all. And sure, maybe the initials he’d just seen in that drawer had felt like a knife slipping between his ribs, twisting up into his chest.

Betty doesn’t need to know any of that.

“What’s to explain?” he says.

Betty’s lips move wordlessly for a moment. “I don’t know, I mean, I guess – I guess I thought you’d have questions?”

“No questions,” Jughead tells her. “Other than the eternal question of why girls are always going for lunkhead football players.”

He feels an immediate stab of guilt – so much for not sounding bitter – but Betty appears more perplexed than hurt, her nose scrunching up. “Football players?”

Jughead stands up, ready to get this night over with. They’d made it all the way inside the belly of the school, but can’t finish the challenge unless they find a goddamn marker, a thousand of which are probably piled up in every classroom in the building except this one.

“Okay, and water polo player, and baseball player, and lacrosse player, or whatever else it is he does,” he says, peeking into the other desk drawers, to no avail. “Jocks,” he adds with a sigh, coming around from behind the desk to check the dusty brown filing cabinet next to the window. “That’s the word I’m looking for.”

“Jughead, what are you talking about?”

Her words stop him in his tracks, and he turns to face her, slumping slightly against the filing cabinet. One of the drawer handles digs into his back uncomfortably, and he presses against it a little harder, welcoming the distraction. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone,” he says finally, looking down at his hands as he picks at a stray hangnail.

Betty takes a step closer, and when he looks up to meet her eyes, she’s looking back with an odd expression. “Tell anyone what?”

“That you like Jason Blossom,” he says.

At least a dozen emotions play over Betty’s face in the moment that follows, but the last one – the only one he’ll remember, later on when he thinks back to what happened next – can only be described as warm.

“Oh my god,” she says. “Oh, Juggie.”

And then the warmth in her eyes is all but forgotten as the warmth of her mouth finds his.

The J is not for Jason, she explains. It’s for Jughead.

(Duh.)

In that case, he says – many kisses later, his beanie knocked down to the floor, her fingers tangled in his hair – they don’t need a marker, after all.

Because Betty completed their final challenge months ago, without even knowing it.

Smithers sends a row of hearts and champagne bottles in response to their final picture. Jughead shows Betty, and she giggles, ducking her head against his shoulder.

“Wait,” she says, pulling back to look at him. “Aren’t we supposed to get a code now? So we can go to the party?”

He presses his nose into her hair, his fingers tracing lightly over the waistband of her shorts. “We don’t have to go to the party,” he says. “We could just stay here.” (Though he’s pretty sure she’s right, and Smithers should have responded with a five-digit entry code, not a string of celebratory emojis.)

Betty bites her lip, but ultimately shakes her head, taking his phone from him. “No, we have to go. I promised Veronica.” Party code?? she texts.

It comes back almost instantly: 1 2 3 4 5.

Jughead groans. “Seriously?”

Betty just smiles. “Veronica would never risk a low turnout.”

They make it back to the Pembrooke at a quarter to one, after a quick pit stop at the Cooper house so Betty can fix her makeup, and Jughead can back her up against her bedroom door and kiss her until she’s sighing into his mouth. But even though its official start time was only midnight, the party appears to be in full swing by the time they arrive.

Veronica opens the door before they can knock, and her eyes gravitate immediately to their hands, which are clasped between them. She claps her hands in glee, and does a little shimmy as she says, “It worked!”

Jughead exchanges a glance with Betty. “What worked?”

Veronica ushers them inside. Somehow, they’re the last ones to return. Kevin is perched on the edge of the sofa in the living room, one arm slung around Moose’s shoulders as the other gestures dramatically in the air. Ethel, Reggie, Melody and Midge sit in a circle around the coffee table, playing Kings. In the corner of the room, Josie is deep into a conversation with Val.

Archie waves at them from the kitchen, where he appears to be attempting to slice open a champagne bottle with a chef’s knife. Jughead makes a mental note to stop him as soon as humanly possible.

“What worked, Veronica?” Betty repeats.

“My brilliant plan,” Veronica says, the look on her face a perfect visual representation of the word smug.

This time, when Jughead puts it all together, he’s pretty sure he’s right, and not jumping to a wildly incorrect conclusion.

“You set us up,” he says. “None of this was random.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” Veronica scoffs. “I sent you on a first date! Dinner at Pop’s, then a movie—”

“Then shopping for wigs?” Jughead interrupts.

Veronica shrugs. “Okay, maybe the metaphor doesn’t quite hold up. I did have to come up with five whole rounds. But I thought: get their adrenaline pumping with a crazy caper, then send them to a romantic spot where they also have to get naked…and finish things up where it all began.” She looks between the two of them, a manic grin on her face. “So it worked, right? Did you make out after the wig room? I figured you’d probably make out after the wig room.”

“We did not make out after the wig room,” Betty says. She looks up at Jughead, swinging their hands together gently. “But yes. Your brilliant plan worked.”

Jughead flashes her a smile, but he’s too distracted to pay attention as Veronica demands more details of their “epically romantic” evening. Normally his level of interest in the social dynamics of Riverdale High’s incoming senior class was next to nothing. But the people in this room together now…they hadn’t started that way.

Kevin had been through a rough breakup with Moose just a few days after the prom. Everyone – even Jughead – knew that Val and Josie hadn’t spoken since Josie went solo at the beginning of junior year. And he wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told him that Reggie Mantle had literally never spoken to Ethel Muggs over the entire course of their school careers.

“Wait,” he says, dropping Betty’s hand. “Veronica…did you engineer all of this?”

Veronica’s mouth freezes mid-sentence, but in true Lodge fashion, it only takes her a moment to recover. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She shrugs. “I had a lot of free time this summer. My parents wouldn’t let me get a job like the rest of you. And this way, we all get to start senior year with our best foot forward!”

Betty’s still giggling at Jughead’s incredulous reaction nearly an hour later, when he pulls her out onto the balcony for some air. “Are you really that shocked? It’s Veronica,” she says.

“I’m mostly shocked that Archie was able to keep it all a secret,” he admits. “But honestly, I never thought anyone would care about my love life that much.” He rests his hand on her shoulder, toying gently with the collar of her shirt. He’s almost certain that he’s touched Betty more over the course of this evening than in the last thirteen years combined, and it’s every bit as thrilling as he might have imagined. “Especially not Veronica.”

“I cared,” Betty admits, shifting closer. “But I didn’t think you did.”

“Good thing she was crazy enough to prove us both wrong, then,” he says softly, and cups her face in his hands as he leans in for a kiss.