heartbeats ; bughead

07

jughead;

"Hey? I got what you wanted!" I knocked on the cobwebbed door. She had told me to meet her there, in an abandoned warehouse owned by Blossom Maple Farms. 

Trust me, you never want to go there. Echoes without a source bounced off the walls, which had graffiti on them, with terrible things said. One person even took the liberty of drawing Clifford Blossom's head on a stake. 

God. 

I repeated myself. "Hello! I got what you wanted! Can you let me in? I feel like a dead body out here!" After I said that, I immediately regretted it. It's probably too early to make that joke, Jughead. Don't be an idiot. 

Finally, the door opened. A girl with red, red hair opened the heavy door, paint peeling off the edges. She was holding a rusty candelabra, the light slowly dimming. She had a striking red dress, which was probably not the best idea for clothing, especially since she told me to come to an abandoned warehouse. 

She smiled like a cat. "Well, hello there! You must be Forsythe. Pleasure." She said this like I was being welcomed at a social. 

 I rolled my eyes. "Jughead. And you're Cheryl. Blossom." Her cat smile grew even bigger.

"Come in. Mi casa est su casa, after all!" She said with a flip of her long, curly hair. 

"When Jay-Jay di--left, I used to come here all the time. For all the wrong reasons, of course, but still. This was my...place."

Her grin was replaced by a wistful gaze for a second or two, but was quickly replaced by a frown. "Where is it?"

With a shaking hand, I took the heavy, black object out of my pocket. I noticed a spot of blood on it, and quickly wiped it off with my ripped sleeve, but Cheryl was quick. 

She sighed. "Oh, Jugface. I know when something's wrong with someone, even I just met you. It's something that Blossoms do naturally. Call it...a Blossom sense, if you will."

I clenched my jaw. Jugface. If I wasn't in such a serious situation right now, I might have burst out laughing. 

I cleared my throat. "What do you mean?"

She looked at me long and hard, and then, with a second flip of her hair, came closer, until our noses were almost touching. Then her cat grin came back. 

Before I knew what was happening, I felt a throbbing pain in my jaw. I could taste blood on my lip, and Cheryl was a few feet behind me, and she was seething. 

I dug my nails into my fists, and held my ground. I wanted to cry out, but my words were caught in my throat. 

Then, she turned away, flipping her hair for the third time, and stopped. She said, loud enough so that the words she said lingered in the air like smoke, 

"You did a bad thing, Forsythe."