Picnic || jarchie

thirteen

As the rush of back to school died down, the excitement of halloween picked up around riverdale high. Jughead found himself more often than not sitting in the projection room and looking at old pictures. It had been two weeks since Cheryl's party. Since Jughead screwed everything up. He must have done something terrible, he believed, to have the world take away Archie from him.

On the wall of the room was a bulletin board, covered in pictures of people associated in Jason's death.  Jughead took off his beanie and threw it on the desk in front of him. Pulp Fiction was playing softly in the background as all his friends sat in their cars a few feet away, enjoying the movie. He laid down on his makeshift bed, staring up at the plain ceiling and sighing.

When Dad had hit him a 3rd time Jughead had decided enough was  enough. He packed a backpack full of things important to him and walked out of sunny trailer park at 3:45 am on a Tuesday night. He spent the first night walking around Riverdale. He walked into pops at 5:15 and asked for a stack of pancakes. He got through most of school until he passed out asleep at Lunch and missed 5th period.

After that, Jughead found the help wanted poster for the Twilight Drive in. Jughead pulled a blanket up over him and closed his eyes, trying to will himself to sleep. Everytime he closed his eyes he saw the look in Archie's eyes. The way his eyes darted around the trees and looked anywhere but Jughead, an emotion that Jughead couldn't place shown in his brown eyes and left a sobbing mess of the boy in front of him.

Archie had been his home. A forever point, a safety net. Archie Andrews was everything to him. He smelled like honeydew and daisies and Jughead can't stop thinking about the way he held his shoulder when he had kissed that cold march day in freshman year.  When Jughead closed his eyes he saw Archie holding his beanie because Archie Andrews was something that Jughead couldn't put into words.

Jughead often thought  a lot about Jason Blossom too. The way the boy must have felt when died. If he thought about Polly. His sweetheart. A girl who Jason was completely  infatuated with. He chased the girl around for years. Jughead wondered if he ever got to kiss the girl he loved. Jughead found himself thinking about what Jason must've been thinking. A boy, with a head of red hair and a twin sister who locked arms with him. Jughead reached over to grab the newspaper head line again.

"JASON BLOSSOM FOUND DEAD IN SWEET WATER RIVER. AUTOPSY REPORT SHOWS SIGNS OF DROWNING."

Jughead had saw it with his own two eyes. The same boy who had given Betty's older sister a live frog for valentines day with a hole in his head. Dried blood had caked Jason's face, which was  in a state of agony and rigor mortis. He remembered Kevin's faint, "oh my god." He remembered calling the police and struggling to breathe. He remembered the police turning him away from Jason's body as fast as possible. Questioning him and Kevin. He remembered the look Clifford Blossom has given him. It was pure fire burning anger twisted with calculation. Jughead couldn't breath until he was sat in a booth at pops a few hours later across from Archie.

In the time between Cheryl's party and where he stood now he had continued the mystery by himself. Sitting across from Mayor Mccoy, Jughead had crossed his arms and throw the headline on the table, telling her he wasn't leaving until she told him what they were hiding. Mayor Mccoy, like Sheriff Keller, wouldn't budge. She had sat across from him and clicked her pen, not moving. Jughead had sat in silence for  three minutes before grabbing his headline off the table and standing up. He had moved to walk out the door when an envelope in the trashcan caught his eye. He crumbled up the headline and tossed it in the trash, grabbing the envelope at the same time. Mayor Mccoy had already turned back to her paper work and Jughead was able to leave easy. It wasn't until he got back to the drive in that he took the envelope out of his pocket. He had to grab onto his desk to keep him from collapsing on.  the envelope explained it had enclosed a check, with which the money had come from Blossom Maple Syrup Company.