When Jason Blossom is presumed dead, Riverdale shifts on its axis. Letting in the horror, and darkness that had been held at bay.
Archie, Veronica, Clary, Jughead, and Betty grapple with desires, love, drama, and murderers all while coping with the...
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Clarissa Cooper
"GOOD AND EVIL. LIGHT AND DARK. BETTY AND VERONICA. Two sides of the same Janus coin. Given my article, Weatherbee needed a sacrificial lamb, needed to make an example of someone for what they did to Chuck: handcuffing him to a hot tub, pouring syrup on him, drugging him. Their drive for justice went too far. So, after Hermione Lodge negotiated a lesser sentence for our two avenging angels... Coach Clayton, to save his job, to save the school's reputation, was forced to cut his own beloved son and his goon squad from the team. An action that, though none of us knew it at the time, would have terrible consequences in the weeks to come. But one thing was certain: Betty and Veronica, now B&V, and maybe forever, had been forged. They walked through the fire and survived. We crave absolutes. They comfort us, but life is infinitely more complex than that.
"If you publish a story saying I fired that gun, my life will be ruined. I'll be banished from the Adventure Scouts and charged with a misdemeanor," Dilton pleaded with Jug and me as we took his statement. I nodded for him to continue.
"So, what if I have a better story? If I tell you what I know, promise me the gunshot stays between us," he said, as I walked around the desk and put a hand on Jug's shoulder. "You have our word. As journalists," I promised Dilton.
"I saw something at Sweetwater River. Something nobody else saw," Dilton confessed.
The sentence that followed wasn't a shock to either me or Jughead.
"Ms. Grundy's car. By the river's edge. She was there."
Despite all of our recent troubles, I would've done anything to protect Archie. But Dilton Doiley had just opened Pandora's box, and now, there was nothing I, or anyone, could do to save him.
It'd been a week since the discovery of Jason Blossom's body. But his death is not the first, nor would it be the last casualty that the town of Riverdale would suffer as Jughead would say, The Twilight Drive-In where Jug worked, his home away from home, a piece of town history, is closing for good, just when we needed a place to escape to the most.
With Sheriff Keller knocking on every door and neighbor suspecting neighbor, Riverdale, every day that passes, is becoming more like Salem during the witch trials.
And meanwhile, the girl next door, my sister, Betty Cooper, was wrestling with the knowledge that her best friend, Archie Andrews, was caught up in a forbidden romance.
We all gathered at Pops: Jug, Kevin, Veronica, and myself. Betty had stayed home to write in her diary.
"The Drive-In closing is just one more nail in the coffin that is Riverdale... No, forget Riverdale, in the coffin of the American dream," Jughead ranted, his frustration evident. "As the godfather of indie cinema, Quentin Tarantino, likes to say..."
