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“So, is it like a date date, or…”
“We’re just friends, Kev,” Betty says, though there’s a blush on her face as she turns back to the vanity where her phone is propped up. Kevin narrows his eyes at her on the screen, his broad dark green flannel clad chest taking up most of the frame. Apparently they had all changed since middle school.
“Please. Everyone knows you two have been sweet on each other since the second grade.” His voice is slightly tinny, but Betty can still hear the thinly veiled exasperation in Kevin’s tone.
She pauses. “That was different then. I’m different.”
“And he didn’t care back then, so why would he now?”
Betty smiles a bit wistfully. Of course Archie wouldn’t care, he was good, pure, kind hearted. The rest of the town however… Her smile fades.
“I swear,” Kevin scoffs, cutting into her thoughts. “The two of you would be nowhere without me. Am I gonna have to walk you down the aisle myself?”
Betty flinches. She feels the familiar sense of waves starting to lap at her feet.
Kevin’s pixelated eyes widen. “Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”
“It’s fine,” Betty cuts him off. She tries not to think about her dad much, about how she’s the reason why he left, (or really, why Alice kicked him out). She tries not to miss him, but the thought of him missing out on important parts of her life still stings. “Maybe he’ll come around, eventually…”
“Yeah, maybe…” Kevin trails off uncomfortably as Betty blinks to clear away nonexistent tears. “So are you gonna wear it?” He swiftly changes the subject. “The dress?”
“Yeah.” Her smile returns. The storm clouds looming over her head are replaced with sunshine, and tiny flowers begin to bloom at her feet.
“Ugh I’m so mad I’m gonna miss its big debut! Come on, let me see it!” Kevin demands from his smartphone prison.
Betty prances to her closet, pulls out the pale yellow sundress dotted with tiny white daisies and lays it out on her bed, carefully smoothing out any wrinkles. It’s the only dress she has, the first dress her mom ever bought her. She was fine with letting Betty grow out her hair, change her name, wear makeup, but for some reason it was seeing her daughter in a dress that Alice Cooper disapproved of. After months of begging and pleading, Alice relented, so much as the dress was modest and demure . That was fine with Betty though. Modest and demure were infinitely better than handsome.
“Well don’t leave me hanging. Put it on!”
Betty can’t hold back the huge grin growing on her face as she steps out of Kevin’s field of view and peels off her t-shirt and sweatpants. Her hands practically shake with excitement as she pulls the dress of her head. Finally. She’s going to look so pretty.
The soft fabric swishes against her thighs so wonderfully she’s certain a rainbow forms over her head.
Across the room Betty can hear Kevin’s calls of impatience, but Betty tunes it out for a moment to appreciate the calm waters, instead of the violent waves she’s used to. Butterflies flutter in her chest. It feels so right, and doesn't she deserve a moment of peace?
After a few more seconds, Betty slowly turns to face her full-length mirror, feeling giddy.
She looks in the mirror and her face falls.
It looks… wrong. Her shoulders are too broad, her hips too narrow, her legs too long and gangly. Suddenly the natural makeup she applied to her face (again, all that Alice allowed) looks like that of a clown. The butterflies in her chest turn to angry, stinging bees. She looks, she feels like an impostor.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing. An anathema in a yellow dress.
Tears spring to her eyes.
“Is it on yet?” Kevin questions from her desk. “Let me see!”
“It’s not right, Kev.” Betty's throat feels tight. “I need to wear something else.”
“Why, what’s wrong with it?” Kevin’s question is innocent enough, but his words strike deeper.
What’s wrong with you ?
“It’s just wrong, okay?” she chokes out, making a beeline for her closet. “Hold on, let me see if I have something else.”
Betty riffles through her closet searching for something else, something better. She skips Polly’s hand-me-downs, going immediately to what she dubs ‘the Josie section’.
Last year, Josie McCoy gave Betty what she said was a bunch of her “old” clothes, but Betty knows for a fact that Josie is at least two sizes smaller than her. Not to mention Betty has never seen Josie wearing any of them before and they all look brand new. Betty never said anything about it, but she’s been fixing Josie’s car for free ever since.
(There was a skirt in there that Betty swore she saw Cheryl wear at least twice, but neither of them have acknowledged that either.)
“Betty, you showed it to me when you picked out the dress and we agreed you looked amazing, what’s wrong?” Kevin’s concerned voice swims to her through the waters but Betty is lost in the waves.
Why can’t you just be normal ?
She makes quick work of taking off the dress like it burns her. The once soft yellow has turned to sharp, biting nuclear waste. She throws it onto the ground carelessly and smoke trails start to rise as it singes her carpet.
The next outfit doesn’t work either. The blouse is too tight at the shoulders, the skirt is unflattering, and she doesn’t have any shoes to match. So she tries another. And another. And another. The bees are swarming and Betty finds it hard to raise her head above the water.
“Betty-”
I didn’t raise a daughter.
“I don’t look like a girl!” Betty cries, and it feels like a dam explodes in her chest as soon as she says it out loud. The water rushes over her, filling up her bones and dragging her down to the depths.
All of the names the boys at school called her are swirling around her. The disgusted looks her father gave her batters her against the sharp rocks. The harsh whispers in the girl’s locker room dig into her back like claws.
“Hey,” Kevin's voice is considerably softer now, thrown like a lifeline. “You do look like a girl, because you are a girl. You know it, I know it, Archie knows it, and everyone at school knows it.”
Betty latches onto the line, thinking of her supportive classmates, but her hands slip when she remembers the ones who were less so. Water floods her mouth. “Reggie-”
“Is an asshole,” Kevin interjects, causing Betty to chuckle slightly. “Everyone knows that too. Now why don't you try the dress on again and show me? I promise you'll look amazing.”
Betty breathes, finding her footing on the rocky shore. The water licks hungrily at her shoulders, still threatening to pull her head back under.
“Okay,” Betty nods and sniffles, wiping away a stray tear like that will fend off the ocean surrounding her. “Okay.”
She steps away from the phone and further up on the shore. The dress beckons her, inviting like a pool of honey. The bees still as she grabs it, placated by its sweetness.
Betty discards her current outfit, throwing it onto her steadily growing reject pile. She regards the dress in her hands like it’s a wild animal ready to strike, then carefully slips it on.
Betty decides to forgo the mirror entirely, instead choosing to face Kevin, a much gentler critic. “How do I look?” she asks shyly.
“Incredib-”
“Wow, Betty, you look amazing.”
The sound of Archie’s voice carries over the waves and Betty whips around to gawk at the ginger boy standing in her doorway.
(He’s wearing the blue shirt Betty always said she likes, and his normally wild hair looks deliberately styled.)
“Archie!” she exclaims, her pitch increasing by several octaves. Blood rushes to her face and she feels the urge to cover herself. “What are you doing here?!”
Archie’s eyes widen comically. “Oh, um, your mom said I could come up, is that okay?” he stammers awkwardly, averting his eyes as his own face reddens.
Betty shoots a worried glance at her phone and Kevin seems to get the message and hangs up.
“I-it’s fine.”
A few seconds of silence fill the room.
Betty surveys the state of her room embarrassedly. Archie had been in her room countless times before, but things were different now. There was a tension between them that wasn’t there before, something so palpable and real that neither one of them could ignore it any longer. Gone was the innocence of their childhood, replaced with the murky waters of adolescence and the riptides of feelings.
“Sorry about the mess,” Betty chuckles awkwardly, gesturing at the pile of discarded clothes on the floor. “I um- I couldn’t decide what to wear.”
“You’re going to wear that dress, right?” Archie asks eagerly. He catches himself a moment later, his blush almost matching the redness of his hair. “I’m sorry, you can wear whatever you want, it’s just- that dress is really pretty…”
Suddenly the weight dragging Betty down eases, and she’s able to take a breath. He thinks I’m pretty.
“R-really?” Betty shyly tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, looking at Archie through her lashes. “You think I’m pretty?”
“Of course, Betts.” Archie doesn’t stammer this time. He just looks at Betty with the most sincere eyes. “I think you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
The water flooding Betty’s chest recedes, replaced by a curl of warmth that blooms upward, coloring her face an even deeper shade of scarlet. Tears spring to her eyes again, but this time instead of wanting to curl up and die, she wants to walk across the room and kiss Archie right on his stupid grin.
Archie must notice the tears, because he starts to panic. “Oh no, I’m sorry!” He steps into the room, looking unsure of what to do. “Did I say something wrong?”
Betty laughs lightly and wipes her eyes. “No. I actually… I really needed to hear that. You’re amazing, Archie Andrews.” I don’t deserve you, hovers on the tip of her tongue but she swallows it, thick like syrup.
Emboldened, Archie takes another step forward, right into the water with her. He takes both her hands in his, looking deeply into her stormy eyes with his oak colored ones and smiling that crooked smile of his that makes forests grow. “I think you’re amazing. And you, Betty Cooper, continue to amaze me every day.”
His thumb swipes over her knuckles and Betty feels herself falling, but this time forward instead of downward. Archie must be caught in orbit too, as he moves towards her, his eyes dropping a little lower.
A loud, deliberate sounding crash rings out from downstairs and the two of them jump apart. Betty would roll her eyes and curse her mom’s psychic ability if she hadn’t felt so flustered. Instead she busies herself by dusting off imaginary dirt from her dress while Archie stares at the ground.
“Um,” Archie clears his throat awkwardly.
“We, uh, we should get going, right?” Betty suggests, smiling despite herself. The butterflies are back, at full swarm.
“Yeah, we should go so we can get a good spot at Pop’s,” Archie smiles back, his freckled cheeks still flushed. There’s always plenty of booths at Pop’s, but neither of them decide to comment on it as Betty grabs her purse and slips on her flats and the two of them head downstairs.
“Wait,” Archie says as they make their way down Betty’s front steps. “Hold on.”
He turns on his heel and sprints back towards his house, going towards his backyard. He disappears between the two houses, and Betty is left standing on her steps, confused. Did Archie forget something? Need to tell his dad where he was going? Need to change? Get cold feet??
The water starts to rise again as Betty shuffles in place, clutching the strap of her purse. I scared him off. That moment we had must’ve been too much. He doesn’t really like me. Oh god I’ve completely misinterpreted this he was just being a good friend and I scared him off-
Archie reappears, jogging back towards Betty and her chest deflates in relief. She notices he has something small and white clutched between his index finger and thumb.
“Here,” Archie pants as he finally stops in front of Betty, holding the object in his hand out to her.
It’s a tiny white daisy.
“It matches your dress,” Archie says, so sweet and innocent and everything that is good in the world.
For a moment Betty is frozen in awe, eyes clear and blue as the summer sky.
Then she reaches out and takes the flower from his fingertips. “Thank you.” She places her free hand on his cheek as she kisses the other. “I love it.”
Archie’s jaw drops slightly and fresh blush spreads across his face. Pink like the sunset, Betty thinks she will admire the hue for the rest of her life.
“Y-you’re welcome,” he stammers and Betty giggles softly. Boys.
“Come on,” Betty offers him her hand as she tucks the daisy behind her ear. “Let’s not keep Pop waiting.”
Archie’s face breaks out in a goofy grin as he rushes forward to take Betty’s hand. “I mean, Pop’s isn’t going anywhere…” he says cheekily as the two of them descend the steps.
Betty laughs, but instead of a sound she hates, the sound of a stranger, she hears herself, free and light. Feminine. Pretty.
“You scoundrel.” She smiles up at Archie, his head haloed by the golden light of the setting sun behind them. It’s fitting, she thinks, for an angel of a boy.
Swinging their intertwined hands, Archie smiles back.
The water still laps at Betty’s ankles, but with Archie’s hand in hers she knows she’ll never drown.