#i’m not getting back into nnk i just thought it would be funny to make one post and leave again

[swaine-doesnt-have-bones]

do you guys remember this blog because i don’t

[cooperjones2020]

Nobodies Nobody Knows, chp. 2

Summary: She is the lamp in Hero’s tower, the scissors in Delilah’s hand, the blood in Guinevere’s bed. She is a million and one metaphors and all of them are his undoing.

Some of the scenes from Second City but from Jughead’s perspective. More a character exercise than a story.

NNK part one

Second City parts one and two (Ao3)

(ao3-->http://archiveofourown.org/works/11434950/chapters/25623927)

When he gets the email, his first thought is that it’s spam. He is sitting against a pillar in the United terminal, one leg drawn in, dicking around on his phone to pass the time, when he gets the notification.

“Hi Jughead,

This is Betty Cooper. I don’t know if Mary’s mentioned this, but I’m writing for The Chicago Tribune now, specifically writing features on the arts scene in the city. My editor and I were discussing you, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in setting up an interview, in advance of the publication of The Final Fissure’s sequel. I’ve attached copies of a few previous interviews I’ve done with other authors, so you can see if my style is something you’d be comfortable with. I can put together a more coherent pitch if you need more details.

Thanks,

Betty Cooper

P.S.—I got your email from Mary, just in case you were worried it was floating around on the internet.”

But it can’t be spam because only Betty would attach writing samples and only Betty would feel the need to clarify that she didn’t internet stalk him. Too bad he does internet stalk her and he’s already read those pieces. Her interviews are works of art. They should be in the Paris Review. They’re moving, funny, deeply insightful. They’re exactly how he wants someone to talk about his writing. Revealing in a way that leaves the interviewee vulnerable, unmasking them in a way their own writing does not. They’re exactly what he’s afraid Betty will see if she turns her full attention on him.

His thumbs rush over the keyboard, then hover over the send button. But the plane has begun to board and if he doesn’t respond now, he’ll spend the whole flight thinking about it. He needs to sleep. Sleep is hard to come by whenever Jellybean and her record collection are in his vicinity.

He hits send and immediately puts his phone on airplane mode. It does not seem like something that would be Betty’s idea. He doesn’t think she’d voluntarily want to spend more time with him than is necessary. But she asks, and he’s powerless like a moth to a flame. Or, like a mosquito to a goddamn bug zapper.

He does not sleep on the flight.

His first-day-back-in-Riverdale ritual consists of a long walk followed by the reward of a Pop’s cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake. He visits the river, the site of the former Twilight—sadly now turned into a horrendous strip mall—Sunnyside, both high schools. He doesn’t think about Betty. And if he fills a few pages of the notebook in his pocket, so what? It’s the nostalgia that inspires him.

He ends up at Pop’s and texts Archie a photo from his lunch with Fred. It’s not a selfie. JB takes it during her shift break, which she spends sitting on the edge of his booth, eating his fries.

When they were kids and he got sent to juvie for the summer for trying to burn down the school, he wasn’t that upset. If anything, it’s a moment in his life he counts as a win because it is the moment he knew unequivocally that Archie and Betty really loved him, that they were really on his team for keeps. They’d each been so angry. Archie had kicked over a table, and Betty had screamed at the guard who caught them, at the principal, at her parents.

He hadn’t been trying to burn down the school. They wanted to camp out at the playground and he was trying to light the bonfire so they could roast hot dogs and s’mores. Betty trembled with fury, accidentally dislodging some sticks and leaves that had gotten stuck in her ponytail. Alight with justice even then, she had been outraged that he got into trouble while she and Archie didn’t. They were all equally guilty. They all had set up the tent, gathered the sticks. Jughead may have been holding the match, but she was holding the box.

But that didn’t matter. His family had moved into the trailer park the spring before, just barely remaining on the Riverdale side of the school district line. His father had been coming home drunk more and more, wearing a black leather jacket with a green snake on the back more and more.

So when Archie and Betty got so mad on his behalf, he wanted to say, “It’s okay, I knew this was coming. I knew this was who I was.” He wanted to say, “Thank you for loving me even though I don’t belong with you.”

His first-day-back-in-Riverdale ritual mostly consists of a long walk rewarded by a Pop’s cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake. But, since he bought the house two years ago, it’s also consisted of waking up far earlier than his body is accustomed to, when he’s sure FP and Jellybean won’t be up yet, and sitting at his kitchen island in a chair he’d built drinking coffee he’d bought. He gets a perverse and vindicating sort of pleasure every time he’s in this house. It reminds him, more than the college degree and the book and the bank account with a comfortable amount of zeros that he’s not that kid in the trailer park anymore. And if he lost a lot on the way to get here, he can live with that. Nothing worth having comes easy.

The Skype call goes just about how he imagines it would. He considers it a success that he only really embarrassed himself the one time. After confiscating and hiding all the lighter fluid, he returns to his perch at the edge of the patio and resumes staring at the iPad’s darkened screen.

“It’s not a surprise, Jughead,” she’d said, so softly. “I have read the book.”

“I know—I know. And I didn’t try very hard to mask the details. But you haven’t read the second one yet.”

“Well, I will soon.” He knows she’s trying to lighten the mood, but she inadvertently touches on exactly what he’s afraid of. What’s he’s dreading. What he wants.

Then he’d taken her outside, in desperate need of a smoke to soothe the nerves she’d frayed. The inquisitive look on her face had been both heartwarming and heart wrenching. As had the realization that he could still read her like a book.

“It’s—uh—a little house off Pine.  For Dad and JB. The down payment seemed like a good use of my first advance.” He needs to end this call asap.

“Look — I’ll be back on Monday night but I have some things to take care of. Would Wednesday be okay for you? Say around 8?”

“Yeah, that’ll be great.”

“Thanks. I’ll think of a good place and get in touch.” Then he’d looked up and seen the troupe of teenage girls heading toward the fire pit, sticks and lighter in hand. “Jesus Christ. Her friends have arrived. They’re heading for the fire pit.

“I’ll talk to you soon Betty.”

At some point after JB’s friends descended upon his house but before the party turns so raucous that he feels the need to hide, he walks into the kitchen and finds her alone.

“That was real subtle earlier.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Forsythe.”

“To Love Somebody?”

“I’m working my way through the discography of everyone who was at Woodstock” she says archly. Then, more gently, “So how is Betty?”

“She’s…Betty. Brilliant, blonde, beautiful. All of the positive b adjectives.”

“And how are you?”

“I’m fine, Jelly. I’m a grown up. It’s been more than ten years.”

“But you haven’t moved on.”

“Yes, I have.” At Jellybean’s look he continues, “I have. I have accepted that a part of me will always love her. But I’m not pining. I’m dating, remember? Remember that redhead you said was too hot for me?”

Jellybean rolls her eyes. “That was eight months ago.” They each prepare plates of food in silence for a few moments.

“Her mom and sister come into Pop’s sometimes, you know. With her niece and nephew.”

“That’s not surprising, everyone eats at Pop’s.”

“Polly said she’s single.”

“I don’t want to know why you and Polly were talking about that.”

“I’m serious, Jug. Look, what happened…happened. Maybe you should tell her. Maybe this is the universe giving you an opportunity to make it right.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s moved on. Telling her would only hurt her all over again. We’re just going to work together, and then I’ll go back to being on the periphery of her life. An old high school boyfriend she runs into occasionally. Now, come here.”

He wraps her up in a hug and rests his chin on the top of her head. “I love you for worrying about me, but I promise I’m okay. Go back outside and drink whatever shitty beer your friends managed to sneak in.”

“We don’t have shitty beer, we have vodka.”

“Christ. Okay, don’t let Dad see it.”

“He won’t. It wouldn’t matter though. He’s doing so good, Jug.”

“It will always matter. And I know he is, I just want to make sure he keeps doing good.”

“He will.” Then Jellybean heads back outside, balancing a paper plate of food in each hand. “And so will you.”