Riverdale High Class

S.E.V.E.N.T.Y. O.N.E

The weirdest thing about pretending to be dead is that after a while, you actually start feeling like you're dead. As in, "dead as a door ail" dead. For starters I was underground, as if in a tomb. Granted I was hiding out in Dilton's doomsday bunker and not in a coffin, but still. Two weeks, no sunlight, with no sense of time or its passing? It's gotta be what limbo feels like, right? Other similarities to bring dead. Not one but two obituaries about me ran. A rather perfunctory one in the Riverdale Register. A second more irreverent one in the Blue and Gold. I liked that one I had a funeral. Well, a wake. I watched it on my laptop. Live streamed from a camera had set up in the living room.

Betty and I suspected that the Stones would show up, and, sure enough, they did. We wanted to study them to see if anything they did was suspicious. Not that there was any doubt in our minds about their guilt. The preppies had stone-cold murdered me and were trying to pin it on Betty. We just couldn't prove it. Not yet.

  Mercy said to let them feel scrambled to not provoke them because they'll snap not knowing what really happened, because a guilty person and a crazy person have two things in common; they always want to be the smartest, and they're too curious to leave.

Mean while, The hardest part about playing dead was letting everyone believe I was in the semi-sweet hereafter. Our family, our friends. The lies we had to tell. The things we had to do to sell that illusion. Like pretending my bereft girlfriend had found comfort in the strong, steely arms of my best bud. Which turned out to be the greatest misdirect of them all.

Of course we had to let some people know the truth. Except in one case.

My kid sister Jellybean? Didn't have to be told. So Betty let her in on it.

And we let my dad into it pretty quickly, more so on the pressure of Mercy and her idea of him possibly killing her for knowing, and with everything that has happened between them? I'd believe it.

Mercy POV

I walk into FP's office and he looks shaking his head.

FP:Mercy. I uh... I gave that bloody rock to Charles, he said the FBI was going to have it tested.

Me:And when they do, they will tell you that it's covered in fake blood that you can buy at a drug store.

FP:*scoffs* The hell are you talking about now?

Really old man?

Me:Forsythe.

He looks back to me and folds his arms, squinting his eyes.

FP:What did you guys do?

Me:I don't want you to let you keep stressing about this... And I'm sorry I lied to you and I'm sorry you've been worrying.

FP:Mercy what the fu-

Me:Jughead is fine- no he's okay, not the best at the moment but he's very well alive and accounted for.

He drops his arms and holds one out to tell me to shut up.

FP:Hold on, you know where Jughead is?

Me:Yes, sir.

His whole body relaxes and he sits down, tears already swarming his eyes, I sigh and push my hair out of my eyes.

Me:Want me to tell you everything?

FP:You bet your trouble making ass I do.

Me:I deserved that one, but we really need your help. Please.