Mrs. Jones

Meeting the King

Bethany Jones hadn't always been a Southsider. No, Bethany Jones, had been raised the exact opposite of a Southsider and if her mother had had her way, she never would have stepped foot on the Southside of Riverdale. In fact, if it wasn't for a tutoring session that led to an association and friendship with the Southside Serpents, she may never have become a Southsider at all. But without the Southside, without the Serpents, she would probably be dead.

Bethany "Beth" Jones was born Elizabeth "Betty" Cooper. The Cooper's were a "perfect" family, or at least that's what her mother wanted everyone to believe. And maybe when she was little it was perfect. Perfect nearly identical blonde daughters, who did every single thing their mother told them to. But perfect isn't maintainable. It isn't real. Things became real when her father left. When he decided that his perfect family wasn't enough and ran away with the secretary at the newspaper he had run with his wife. Betty was six. Alice Cooper's perfect world went from an ideal way to raise her children to a mandatory way of living after that. But children aren't perfect. Even a child as gifted as Elizabeth Cooper.

So, she endured years of mental and emotional abuse from her mother. Who controlled every minute of their schedules and made sure that they were "enriched" in all aspects of their lives. And who even went so far as to dye hers and the girls hair dark and insisting they wear glasses, so that they would be never be viewed as "dumb blondes." It wasn't until her sister, Polly, got pregnant out of wedlock at seventeen, shattering their "perfect" world once again, that Elizabeth got even a moment to breathe. Alice was so preoccupied with Polly that she let up, just a bit, on the constant hovering and fear inducing expectations. That was when Elizabeth got the chance to become a tutor on the Southside, something her mother had expressly forbid, even with the impact it may have on her college applications.

Southside High, and even just Southside Riverdale, was different than anywhere she had been before. Mostly because she could breathe there. She could take her glasses off and pull her hair down from her restrictive ponytail and just be free. Not that the Southside wasn't scary, it was. There was violence and everyone looked at her pastel clothes like she was from another planet, but Southside was where she made her first real friends that weren't dictated by her mother. It was where she found a family.

Elizabeth Cooper was finally able to leave the Northside behind when she turned eighteen. She packed a few meagre belongings that her mother wouldn't notice were gone and left just days after her birthday. But because of who her mother was, running wasn't enough. She had to go to court and change her name, so she could erase Betty Cooper and finally truly be free.

Becoming Bethany had been an easy choice that allowed her to continue to just be "Beth," which all of her friends on the southside had called her for years. But becoming a Jones took more thought and planning. The name Jones meant something where they lived. But in the end, she was choosing her family and no one had been more of a family to her than her best friend, JellyBean Jones, the Southside Serpent Princess. So, she took the name and moved into the spare room in JellyBean's Penthouse. There was no safer place for her to be than with the Southside Serpents, even with the Serpent King, Jughead Jones, in jail. They would protect her and she would do anything to keep them out of trouble. Anything.

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Beth was behind the bar at The Whyte Worm nine months later, on the Monday in late August when Jughead Jones was released from prison. She watched from afar as he sauntered into the bar greeting the few serpents who were hanging around in the early morning hours, with Fangs and Sweet Pea not far behind.
She allowed herself a few moments to just take him in. She hadn't laid eyes on him since she was sixteen and even then, it had been a brief meeting in passing just months before he was arrested. But looking at him now, with his hair a bit longer, hanging down in his eyes slightly, tattoos littering his bare muscular arms, she could tell he was even more beautiful than she remembered.