Lost (in Your Emerald Eyes)

T W E N T Y - F O U R

The next days that followed, Betty mostly spent babysitting kids around town, which left Jughead a lot of time with his friends, and alone. So there he was, sitting on his old shattered couch with a few takeout boxes around him, typing away on his laptop.

His usual murder mysteries that had always included mostly only victims, police, different investigators, and murderers, of course, earned now a few new characters.

Typically, in his books, the investigators or police officers would have a few affairs, with both men and women, and victims would have family and lovers they left behind, but in the new one he was currently writing, a perky blonde woman appeared in many scenes.

Her eyes were green as emeralds, but hair cut short with seemingly a piece of sharp glass. She didn't care for her looks or hygiene much but was one hell of an investigator. The young skinny woman had earned a lot of her characteristics from Betty, but there was so much written in that didn't even go near her.

Jughead had gotten the inspiration while watching an old serial killer documentary with Betty one day in the projection booth at Twilight Drive-In. The girl's eyes had been glued to the screen the whole time, not even sipping water to distract herself, but her mouth had been opened constantly, silently giving Jughead her new theories.

In the end, the boy had only been focused on her and missed quite some amount of the interesting plot, but he had gained too many ideas for the next book. Betty's theories were wild—something you would never think of in a million years—and, of course, none of them ever became true, but the girl had a ferocious imagination.

Jughead wondered why she had never tried to write any books of her own.

(Of course, he hadn't asked, not wanting to be like Alice Cooper who only wanted her wishes and dreams to be accomplished by her daughter, and not her daughter's.)

So, now Jughead was sat on his couch, fingers furiously flying over the keyboard, his breathing shaky as he introduced the new character. She was going to be an investigator and a murderer.

Nobody would suspect an investigator that seemingly had nothing to do with the victims. She was short, blonde, and beautiful if taken care of. But the psychotic look in her eyes would sometimes refer to the fact.

She was a serial killer.

The boy was so in his world that he didn't notice when a girl opened the trailer door and closed it behind herself. She perked up her eyebrows, watching the way he typed away, silently sipping on his black coffee to get some more energy and taste into his mouth.

"Jones."

Jughead's head whipped up and was met with a confused look on Toni's face.

"What are you doing?" the brunette questioned and walked over to him, the boy quickly saving and pushing the lid shut as he faced her.

"Why are you here, Toni? I'm kinda busy."

"Busy doing what?" she scoffed, amused. "Writing the next New York Bestseller?"

Jughead gulped, rolling his eyes forcefully. "Right. I'm working for the bar since dad hasn't shown up in two days... Do you know where he's at?"

"Nope, haven't seen him in the bar the last few nights."

The boy nodded and turned toward his friend. "What's up?"

Toni narrowed her eyes a bit, smirking while doing so. "Nothing. Can't I come and hang out?"

Jughead simply stared at her for a while, not believing it. She never showed up just to "hang out". "Okay... What do you wanna do?"

"Go to Pop's?"