The Festival - A Bughead Story

Part Two - The Staircase

           

Betty used to love Archie Andrews. It was obvious to anyone who spent a few moments with the both of them that she was head over heels.

Anyone, except the only person it mattered.

She would make him a batch of cookies every week in elementary school. And they were good cookies – the chocolate chip kind with lots of butter and lots of sugar. By the second month, Archie took them for granted. Betty was his adorable best friend with cooking skills.

They were close friends. But it was just that – they were friends. As Archie got older, he started looking at girls with other eyes, with boy eyes. Girls became something else, except Betty. She was still his adorable best friend with cooking skills (although by then, it wasn't cookies he got, but entire meals, once a week).

She saw him become the womanizer his reputation made him. During freshman year, he went through girls like new video games. A couple weeks of fun, maybe a month, then another one took its place. He wasn't rude or anything. He had an easy-going attitude and an adorable dimpled smile that made every female heart (and some male hearts too, but he was unfortunately damn straight) jump.

And it made Betty forgive him for all the times he canceled on their friend night for some girl he was seeing.

Finally, during the summer before junior year, she went through the entire stages of grief after she saw him clearly shagging a girl in his backyard when he thought he was alone. They were neighbors – of course she could see his backyard. And it wasn't any girl. No, it was Veronica Lodge, her number one nemesis when it came to Archie, and her best friend when it came to every other things. Veronica got him: why the heck couldn't Betty have him too?

She knew he never did anything to make her sad and he was just too damn dumb to understand what was happening with her, but that sight helped her burn the last of her unshared feelings. She could finally move on, and be real best friends with Ronnie (although it did take some time).

After the whole denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, Betty entered the new school year with a brand new view on life and boys – and got slapped right on the face.

It seemed that her own reputation of desperate girl pining after her best friend stuck to her like glue. She tried everything to make it go away, she even stopped talking to Archie for a few months, but her classmates never seemed to see her as anything else.

She finally decided it was all she could do and stopped trying to redefine herself, as it was getting in the way of her school work.

That was in March. And now there she was, in May, falling in love with another boy, who was completely different than the one she had loved for so long.

And that boy was, ironically, her old crush's best friend.

Jughead Jones.

---

Jughead Jones always was the weird kid, the antisocial, the asexual. At least, that was what he was called as he grew up. His best friend was a golden boy – football star, music prodigy, an all-around good guy, with a nice six-packs.

Jughead was the opposite. He loved food more than people, he had a weird talent for writing horrifying short stories with mystery deaths and he never had an interest in the female gender.

At least, that was what Betty thought.

He was the worst guy to have a crush on, but Betty's heart seemed to beat on its own schedule.

When Betty stopped talking to Archie during the winter, Jughead was there to study with her and eat lunch with her. They were small things, but they showed that he cared – especially that time she forgot her lunch and didn't have money, so he gave her a little bit of his sacred food.

And so she fell for him, during the time she was finally happy to be an independent woman, without pining for someone else.

But as he showed her his arm for her to take as they walked down the gorgeous staircase, she wasn't thinking about that.

'He is so damn handsome...'