No one ever told me that love would hurt so much

Chapter 07

♾ Jughead ♾

I didn't have the voice to call Alice. I simply texted her, explaining what happened and where to find Betty. Even if I didn't want her to be here, Alice was her mother. I send the same directions to Archie, so that he would know where to go.

"Jughead?" He asked, knocking on the door before peeking inside. I hummed, barely able to look up to face him. Archie walked over to me, only freezing slightly at seeing Betty.

"Hey there"

"Hey" I replied, looking back down again. We stayed quiet, the silence dragging down on the room. At some point, Archie uneasily grabbed a chair and sat down in front of me.

"How are you feeling?"

"Betty had a car accident. How am I supposed to feel?"

"Right. Maybe you should sleep at mine today, you know?" Archie asked "You shouldn't be alone" I just shrugged, then shook my head.

"No, I can't leave her"

"You can't stay the night at the hospital, Jug" He said before thinking, then he added "Betty wouldn't want you to be alone either. Besides, you should get into some other clothes, and have some dinner" I nodded slowly.

Though we didn't leave for another hour. By then, I couldn't stand it anymore and just left. The room was closing in on me and I felt itchy and couldn't stay one more moment. When Archie caught up to me, I was outside, leaning on a pillar that supported the little roof over the front entrance.

"Why didn't you run so fast in p.e.?" He asked, setting down my backpack, maybe some attempt at making a joke. I just sank down the pillar.

"Now, we don't do that here, Jughead. Let's get you up" Archie said, grabbing me under the armpits and lifting me up as if I weighted nothing. He seemed surprised too but didn't eat anything. Archie helped me over to the car since everything kept on swimming together. I struggled to put one feet in front of the other and therefore stumbled a lot. Archie helped me in the car, while I struggled to breathe, and sat down on the driver's seat. He closed the door and turned on the radio on a low volume.

"There you go" Archie said and I just nodded, pulling my knees to my chest. Before I did that, I pulled off my shoes though. I've had Archie tell me off because of that often enough already. I don't think that he would ever do it while I wasn't feeling like myself but I didn't want to find out either. Most of the time I don't even know why I'm having panic attack until much later when it was already over again. I'm just not that good with reading body cues, especially my own.

"Jughead, breathe" Archie said, trying to reach for me, which only made things worse.

"Jughead" Reggie greeted, putting his hand on my shoulder. He only gave me a moment, too short to react, before he slammed me into the locker. I groaned, holding my head and putting some distance between my feet in order to have a more stable stance against him. Though it hardly made any difference as Reggie pulled me towards the locker a second time.

I jerked back, hitting the window frame with my shoulder and Archie immediately pulled away from me too.

"Sorry! Sorry, I forgot" He apologized.

"I-It's fine" I said, not being able to keep in my shaking in order to cover the stutter. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, pulling my knees tighter to my chest as I tried to calm down. Every sucked in breath, only resulted in another shake that went through my body.