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“This is, by far the dumbest thing you’ve ever done!” Betty mutters to herself as she struggles with the zipper of her mermaid costume.
It’s Riverdale’s Summer Festival, and she had made the mistake of agreeing too quickly when her mother had suggested that she joined the annual summer costume contest during one of their family dinners a couple of weeks prior. It’s almost a given, really, for Betty has been joining the costume contest since she was seven, and it’s only right that she caps her tradition by winning five years in a row. (For reasons unknown to Betty, the mayor only allows children up to twelve years of age to join the costume contest, and that doesn’t really make sense to Betty. What if Polly—who’s fourteen by now—wants to join the contest too? Thankfully, Polly had seemed less excited about the costume contest than she had been a few years back.)
Betty has been looking forward to the contest, and she even employed the help of her mother in acquiring the best material for the mermaid costume that will allow her to swim in Sweetwater River after the contest. After many nights of working on the costume, she had managed to create what she had thought was the best costume that she (with the help of her entire household) had ever made. She had no doubt about bagging this year’s trophy and cash prize—which had always been donated to the town’s animal shelter.
Now half an hour after said contest, and after the endorphins about winning had waned, Betty is keen on getting out of the hot and heavy material. She can feel her thighs sweltering from prolonged entrapment in the costume, and she wants nothing but to liberate her legs and walk on land again.
She’s been wrestling with the zipper for too long, and Betty still can’t get the zipper to budge. She looks around the bank of Sweetwater River where most of the town’s people have gathered, but everyone’s either busy taking down the remnants of the event or swimming in the river. Polly, who’s supposed to be by her side is nowhere in sight, and her mother is probably busy covering the festival for tomorrow’s issue of The Register.
A couple of failed attempts later, she lets out an exasperated groan, and she attempts to crawl toward the edge of the river. The distance between her current position and her target location is about ten yards give or take. If she can’t free her legs from her costume, she might as well dip them in the water so she could at least alleviate the heat that has gathered inside the thick material.
Halfway through her journey, she catches a glimpse of a familiar gray wool beanie poking out of a canoe that’s currently gliding across the river. The owner has his back to her, so he probably hasn’t seen her in her current situation.
“Jug!” Betty calls out as the canoe passes in front of her. “Juggie! Over here!” she bellows even louder, and she frantically waves both arms in the air, hoping that the hot and humid air carries her voice to the boy paddling with great difficulty over the steady stream of the river.
Jughead straightens his back at her voice, his head darting in every direction before his eyes landed on her, his expression a mix of curiosity and surprise. He starts rowing towards her.
“Betty? What are you doing wriggling on the bank? Aren’t you supposed to be swimming in the water?” he muses when he reached her position. His eyes glistening with amusement probably from the absurdity of her predicament.
“Ugh, please don’t start. This is the million dollar costume that gave me the title of Riverdale’s Summer Princess. Only it chose to entrap me long after it’s served its purpose,” she replies as she gestures to her zipper. “The zipper’s stuck, and I’m stuck, and I can’t find my mom or my sister.” She heaves out a sigh.
Jughead’s brows knit together—something that happens when he is in deep concentration. He glances around them, and his lips pucker a little as he mulls over the situation. He’s clearly debating something with himself, Betty notes.
“I am on my way to the other side to bring fish bait to my dad. If you could wait a little, I can get back to you, and probably help you get home, or—”
“I can come with you!” Betty exclaims before Jughead can finish his sentence. She has always wanted to try fishing, and she has brought the subject up to her own father more than once, but unfortunately, Hal Cooper has very little interest in spending idle mornings (or afternoons) throwing fish baits in the river. He would rather spend his free times oiling old cars and smearing grease all over his jumpsuit—not that Betty complains, but she also likes to try something new this summer.
Jughead appears to be a little taken aback by her gleeful suggestion, and he doesn’t seem to be quite convinced, so he clarifies, “You want to go fishing with me and my dad?”
“Yes, why not?” Betty tries to sound as convincing as possible. Jughead has always been very skeptical about a lot of things, and she wants to let him know that she’s as excited about fishing as he is. (He usually lightens up at the mention of fishing, because as far as Betty knows, it’s one of the things that his father does regularly with him since the time that he taught him in the summer before the start of their third grade.)
“I don’t know, Betty. You may not find it very exciting,” he says tentatively as he crouches down on the ground beside her, and then he taps one of his shoulders, offering his body to support her weight.
Betty slings one arm over his shoulder, and he places one hand carefully on her hip, and before Betty can prepare herself, he’s dragging her upright.
She doesn’t quite understand the sudden quickening of her heartbeat or the shallow depth at which her breathing is currently capable of. She glances at Jughead and she thinks that the color of his face has turned a couple of shades redder—surely an effect of the smothering heat that’s also making blood rush to her face.
Jughead removes his hand from her hip as quickly as he had put it there, and Betty swallows down the hint of disappointment at the loss of contact.
“What do you mean? It’s exciting! I’ve always thought fishing’s exciting, Jug! It always made you relaxed. I wanna be able to try it too!” She declares as she shuffles awkwardly on her feet, trying to balance herself while her thighs are unbelievably squashed together. She lets her arm stay a little longer on Jughead’s shoulder, not wanting to fall over the moment she lets go.
Jughead must have sensed her struggle for balance because she feels an arm snake around her waist, supporting her weight. Betty thinks that it’s the first time she’s been in that kind of position with anyone, much less with someone from the opposite gender, and the thought conjures a couple of sensations that are completely new to her. For example, she thinks that a thousand little butterflies must have been unleashed inside her stomach, and she’s trying very hard to compose herself.
“… don’t think I can paddle us both to the other bank,” she hears him say through the haze in her mind.
She blinks twice and looks to her side and mumbles, “What?”
A few seconds pass, her heartbeat loud in her ears. The Sweetwater River disappears, and all Betty notices are Jughead’s hand on her waist, and the way he’s standing so close to her. Has he always been this tall? He kind of smells… good?
“Um, there’s only one life jacket in the boat—” Jughead says, and there’s a slight hitch in his voice. He clears his throat once, twice, and then, “—and I may not be able paddle us both to the other side, I don’t think.”
“Oh, okay,” she says, only mildly disappointed, but also kind of relieved because she hasn’t really accounted the hazard of two middle schoolers canoeing through the river, no matter how short the distance is.
“But I can sit with you here until Polly or your parents arrive,” Jughead offers.
“You would do that?” Betty asks, excitement seeping through her voice.
“Sure, why not? I don’t think my dad would mind.”
“That’s wonderful, Juggie. You can pretend to be my date while you’re at it then,” she blurts out before she could think otherwise. There must be something in the heat today. She glances back at Jughead in time to see how his ears turn impossibly red.
He scratches the back of his neck before saying, “Well, yeah. I could do that… If you want.”
She doesn’t know why his answer makes her infinitely happy, maybe she’ll think about it later, but for now, she marvels at the beauty of early summer and the sound of the river as it steadily moves, and the company of this boy she’s known since she can remember, and she thinks that getting stuck in a mermaid costume may not be too bad afterall.
“Maybe tomorrow we can go fishing on this bank when there aren’t too many people,” Jughead says after a while, and she only hums her agreement, the thought already making her feel lighter than she already does.