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Jughead was always the author amongst them; the chronicler, and the silent observer. In a world of people who were always acting, it had to be somebody’s job to think, and he’d given that role to himself sometime in fourth grade. That’s why, when he’d managed to scrape together a draft deferment from his night classes at the junior college and his recent wedding, he’d taken it, and hadn’t tried to enlist anyways. In spite of what the busybodies and the propaganda posters pinned up at every shop in town said, he wasn’t a coward, he was just sensible.
Or at least that’s what he’s been telling himself these past few months. If he had gone, poor Bets would be all on her lonesome, and his coworkers at the register would be scrambling for someone to replace him. If he had gone, he would have missed Jellybean’s 15th birthday, and she would hate him forever, or at least a month. If he had gone, he might have been with Archie when— when—
The doorbell rings, shaking Jughead violently out of that thought. He stares down at the pen and blank sheet of paper in front of him. Drifting again. He is always drifting. Reluctantly, he gets up from his seat and stretches, moving very slowly to the door of his office and opening it. It’s likely somebody selling something, and he isn’t in the mood for that. He inches down the hallway but comes to a standstill at the opening to the parlor. It isn’t somebody selling something. It’s Veronica. Again.
Veronica Andrews is sitting on the chaise lounge and staring dully at the photo-portrait of Betty and him on their wedding day that is perched on the mantle across from her. He realizes that Betty herself must have let the woman in, and a clinking noise from the kitchen makes him aware she is getting them something to drink.
“Hello.” He says politely.
“Hello.” Her voice is very flat. Veronica has never struck Jughead as a particularly strong individual before. Now he has to at least consider the idea. When they all went to school together she was prone to dramatics and often to tears, but all throughout this long strange week, he hasn’t seen her cry once.
Betty enters the room, her face pinched up. She has three cups of tea on a platter. How considerate. Jughead doesn’t know anyone alive who can make tea worse than Betty. It’s a simple task she always mangles. When she hands him the cup he downs it quickly, ignoring how it scalds his throat.
Veronica doesn’t so much as take a sip. Instead, she keeps sitting and staring at the photo-portrait. She is very beautiful, Veronica, even swollen up as she is. Her skin is gleaming in that five months pregnant way, and she still wears all her makeup. She is immaculately presentable. If I wrote this scene, Jughead thinks, I’d make her look ugly. Ugly and little and sad, like the penitent monks in sackcloth and ashes. But he hasn’t written this scene. If he had, he wouldn't have made the tea so hot.
Betty is beside Veronica now on the chaise lounge, and Jughead briefly considers sitting in the upholstered chair near the mantle. He gets as far as taking a step in that direction before he draws back again. Probably, he tells himself, Veronica doesn’t even want him there. Probably he is the one making the room so awkward, the air thick and heavy as a quilt. He goes to the kitchen and puts the teacup in the sink. On the way back to his room, rushing so he won’t have to look in Betty’s eyes, he hears Veronica talking.
“I got a letter from Reggie this morning, you know he was in the same battalion. He was telling me about how he was sorry, and all that, and then he said that when it’s all over and he comes back he’d be happy to help with–” and then Jughead has shut the door to his study, and her voice has become a dull murmur through the door.
He pulls open the window to hear the thick summer wind rushing against the side of the house. More noise, less thinking. Less Veronica and her unborn baby and her dead fucking husband. Not dead. Missing In Action.
Because there’s so much of a difference, he thinks, sitting at the table again. Here is the pen, he tells himself, here is the pen and here is the grand story of your life, so pick it up and write it down. Here is the grand story about how you missed the story. Here is the story of how you slept through the end of the world.
On the other side of the door Veronica is talking, and outside of the window the air is rushing, and here at the table he is tap-tap-tapping his pen against the wood of the desk. If he had written this story, how would it have gone? There’s nothing exciting about staying home, so he would have shipped out with the rest of the young men his age. He would have been on the boat shaking his guts out on the way to Europe. He would have been writing letters to Betty from the trenches. He would have been there for all of it.
Drifting, again.
The sunset fades into yellow and grey, and Private Jones is tired of France. The ground is still soft from the rain a few nights ago, and his feet are cold and wet. Some of the other boys are playing cards, but he is trying to grab a moment of rest, back propped against a box that used to hold rations and now holds refuse, and will likely be disassembled soon enough. He wants a cigarette. He’s brooding the way that soldiers always do in such stories, and he wants to be smoking a cigarette while he does it.
Suddenly he is no longer alone. Nothing about Archie has ever been quiet, but he’s been able to sneak up on Jughead a few times in the trenches.
“I wish I was smoking a cigarette,” Jughead says.
“You don’t smoke, Jug.”
“It’s the principle of the thing. One last puff on death row, you know.”
“You’re not on death row.” Archie leans against the crate, and it groans under their combined weights. He sighs along with it. “We’ll be going home soon, I know it.”
“The eternal optimist.” He hopes his mocking doesn’t sound cruel. He never wants to be cruel to Archie. He’s realized that now.
“I have to be. We’re going to go home, and you’re gonna write a brilliant memoir, and I’m going to see my son be born.”
“You make it seem like it’s inevitable this kid is gonna be a boy. How do you know?”
“Ronnie’s sure he’s gonna be a boy.”
“Oh, Ronnie’s sure? I’ll bet money it’s a girl now.”
Archie laughs at that, a real laugh, and whatever light the sunset forgot to have must be stuck in Jughead’s chest. He can barely see the lines of his friend’s face in the twilight. He knows that face like the back of his hand.
“If you had known,” Jughead says, leaning harder on the crate in a way that brings them half an inch closer together, “that she was… do you think you’d have still signed up?”
Archie screws up his face in thought. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t have. No one would expect me to if we knew back then.”
“I think you would have,” Jughead replies. “That’s the sort of person you are. I think you would have because you’re a hero, and because you think — because you know we’ll be going home.”
“Some hero.” Archie says, and Jughead should say something. He should say something like ‘You are a hero, you’re a hero and I’m not, and that’s why I wasn’t there with you. I should have followed you here. I should have followed you to hell. I’m sorry. I love you.’
He should say ‘Do you remember that time when we were kids and we saw the train go by and I said I wanted to just hop on it and ride till I got to the end of the earth? And you said “I’m game!” because you always were. You’d do anything for your friends, for your family. You’d do anything for the people you love, and you love almost everybody, and that’s why I think you’d always choose this path, even if you knew the ending. Because you believe that it's the right thing to do. And I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. I only know I wish I’d done it too. I don’t want to die, but I do want to be with you.’
But then the door to the study opens, and the sky outside is blue. Betty has her arms crossed and her lips pursed. If he angles his head right, he can see past her down the hallway and into the parlor. The chaise lounge is empty.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She sighs. “It’s alright. She doesn’t like you very much.”
“I know. Still.”
“Still. It would be polite.” She leans against the doorframe. She looks so tired. Poor Bets, he thinks dimly. When they were kids everybody said she and Archie would get married. Maybe things would have been better that way. Maybe not.
“Next time,” he says, because he knows in his bones there will be a next time, the way he knows that the baby is going to be a girl, the way he knows that Missing In Action might as well be dead, the way he knows that there are some things he will spend the rest of his life trying to write about and failing — “next time, honey, how about I make the tea?”