Gallows Humor 💀 Jughead Jones [DISCONTUINED]

THREE

CHAPTER THREE

SMOKE

Jughead knew that Dilton Doiley was lying to him when he said he hadn't heard a gunshot. He knew this because of the guilty looking scout that had been in the background while the two of them spoke. 

But what he didn't know was how he was going to get the young boy to tell him what he knew. Not while the young scoutmaster had a hold on the boy; and certainly not while he was so un-intimidating.

Jughead was walking home, away from the residential part of Riverdale and towards the more seedy looking southside of town when he saw Sylvia Gale leaning against the wall of a rundown bodega. 

She looked drastically different from the small, childlike freshmen he'd seen hours before. Her loose brown hair had been put into two identical looking braids, her worn out sneakers had been replaced with equally looking worn out boots, the leather wearing out around the steel toes, and a too-big leather jacket that reached her knucles seemingly swallowing her whole, all the while smoking a cigarette. 

"Sylvia?" He asked, coming closer, the grip on his bag tightening. Her doey brown eyes snapped from the cracked concrete and to Jugheads approaching figure. She took her cigarette from between her lips and kept it between her middle and index fingers.

Jughead stopped at the curb, nearly a foot or so away from her.

"Jughead?" He nodded, "Hi, uh, what are you doing over here?" 

"I..." Jughead bit his lip, "Walking, I was taking a walk." Sylvia's eyes narrowed at him, not believing a word he was saying, but nodded anyway.

"You?" 

"Me what?" Sylvia asked, eyebrows knitting together.

"Why are you over here?" Her jaw tightened. 

"Waiting for my mom," she said cryptically, "She forgot something at home." Jughead didn't ask why her mother couldn't get whatever Sylvia had herself, instead he looked to the darkening sky and then to the open space to the left of the smoking freshmen.

"Want me to stay with you?" Jughead offered.

"You don't need to, I'm sure you need to get home." He didn't. 

"I don't," he blurtted out, "My dad's, uh, he's never there," Jughead shrugged, "Besides, I'd be a suspect if something happened to you, you know? Last person to see you."

Sylvia laughed at his reasoning, "Alright then." 

With her free hand she patted the wall to her left, and then with the other brought her cigarette up to her lips for another drag.

"Those can kill you," Jughead said after a moment of silence, his eye trained on the burning Newport.

"So can a lot of other things," she scoffed. It got quiet again.