Rebel Without A Cause

➶chapter twenty-eight

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

•Wednesday January 26th•

The serpents and I had been sitting at Southside High for four days now. Our protest had gone from nine teenagers with parental serpents standing guard to hundreds of Southside citizens chanting "Save our school!" at all hours and holding signs saying the same phrase. People like Pop Tate had come out to give hot chocolate to all the serpents and the Southside citizens that were sitting out in the freezing cold with us. The police were standing back making sure nothing became violent. All the teenage serpents and I that were standing there in a line peacefully were disturbed when we saw something approaching us.

It was Archie Andrews holding a pair of giant handheld pliers against his shoulder as he led the entire wrestling team over in our direction. Jughead heroically stepped out of line to stand face to face with Archie.

Before Jughead and Archie came too close to one another, FP stepped in. "Cops may let you by, Red, but you come in here acting like a big man and I will knock you down" FP whisper yelled, as Jughead pushed his father aside

"Dad, don't! They'll throw you in jail. Don't give them an excuse"

FP stepped aside and all the serpents took a step forward to be closer to Jughead signalling that we have his back. "I'm sorry, Jughead" Archie whispered

"Me too" Jughead whispered back. "I'm not going to fight you, Archie. Look around...." he said trying to lift his wrists, "it may have taken a couple of days, but now people know what Hiram's doing, what's happening here" Jughead said as he leaned closer to Archie and whispered again "This fight is not gonna go away. We're not going away. So go on, cut us down. I want them to see you do it"

Jughead lifted his wrists up as far as they would go allowing for Archie to cut his chains. Originally I wanted to step in there and tear every red hair out of his head, but everything that Jughead said made perfect sense. People were recording this entire protect and especially recording Jughead and Archie right now. All of these people were going to know about Hiram Lodge sending a teenager to do his dirty work. Jughead was playing smart; while Archie was just playing dirty. However, Archie was just the pawn in Hiram Lodge's attempts to play dirty.

We all heard the first set of chains rattle as Archie cut Jughead's hands free. Archie then stepped passed Jughead and so did the whole wrestling team. They started to cut us all free one by one. Each wrestler held onto one of us and walked us off of the Southside High property.