The Bloodletting

+Free as a bird+

As the wind through the open window whipped my carefully curled, shiny hair, the screen of my phone illuminated with a million texts from my other friends: Maeve and Bekah.

M: WHERE ARE YOU?! IT's STARTING IN 5 MINUTES
B: JULIET, STOP SNOGGING JUGHEAD AND GET HERE NOW!
B: WE'RE ABOUT TO GO IN
M: JULIET
M: JULIET!
M: JULIET!!

I placed a piece of hair behind my ear, as I smirked at my phone, and replied to just one of their texts...

J: Ew, Bekah. You wish YOU were! 😏😝

Send?
"Hey Jug! Strike a pose!" I hollered as I snapped a picture of him off-guard.
"That one was for Bekah." I explained after attaching it to the text and sending it to the text and sending it.

He laughed knowingly.
"Ha! I'm irresistible!" Jughead waggled his eyebrows as I giggled.

At that moment, the sweet and stale stench of weed, sweat, and broken dreams entered my nostrils; and with a painful lurch of my stomach, I realized that we had arrived outside our excellent school: Riverdale High.

When I say excellent, I'm totally un-sarcastic; I happen to be one of those teens from planet Mars that loves their mom, hates cellphones (for the most part), and actually likes school.

So, this is actually a majorly scary occasion for me because... school gives me purpose. It gives me a reason to stay in Riverdale.
And it's not that I don't have good grades! I have great grades; my GPA is a 4.0. But where would I be without Riverdale?
If I go to college, I'll be different from everybody else, especially if I accept the letter from Sarah Lawrence, where everybody is from rich-kid families that live in New York penthouses and already have their tuition paid already... me?

I'll be dead before mine is paid.

Of course, there is the offer that FP made me. He told me that he would pay for my tuition at the Northside College, so long as I lived with he and Jug while I studied; which is the slightest bit weird, because he could see me whenever he wanted if I did go to college in Riverdale anyway! He's probably just hoping that mom will come around more if I live there. His eyes goggle out of their sockets whenever she's around, and I can't figure out why. Jughead and I used to laugh at the idea that maybe it's because my mom was once in the Serpents or something.

Mom is sitting next to me in the back seat of the Hot Rod, and she peers over at me as FP crawls the car through the parking lot, attempting to find a space in the multi-coloured ocean of cars.

She takes my hand in hers and softly caresses my rosy cheek.

"Hey. This is the first day of the rest of your life. You'll be great." Mom whispered in my ear as she pulled me in for a lopsided-backseat hug.
I look up at Jughead and FP, working together to find a parking space.
I smile at her.

"Love you, Mom."

*DING*
B: T MINUS 3 MINUTES, JULIET!

"Shit- Sorry Mom! But we need to go! " I yelped as I digested the contents of Bekah's text.

I flung open the shiny-coated door of the car as FP came to another slow point in the queue for a parking space, hastily taking my Mom's hand and pulling her out of the door.

She stumbled out, catching her silver heel on the kerb. Her eyes snapped sharply up to the car as she blushed harder than a tomato, but the car was already inching away; FP and Jughead's eyes straight ahead scanning for parking spaces.

"Please tell me he didn't see that!" Mom whispered to me in mortification.

I giggled at her acting like a schoolgirl with a crush- did she have a crush?! She couldn't... her and my dad are happy! Why else would they have been together for 18 years?