Chapter Text
He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand. He was dead anyway, a ghost. I’m surprised I saw his hand at all. All this was prepared for me. All this was set in motion long ago. I live in someone else’s future. I stayed as long as I could, he said. Now look at the moon.
- "The Worm King's Lullaby" (Richard Siken)
“Jones?” An officer calls out, eyes scanning the room from where she stands in the corner.
Rather than calling attention to himself, Jughead gathers up his bag, jacket, and notebook, piling everything into his arms and making his way over to her.
“The lead investigator is ready to see you,” she says, turning on her heel. She strides down the corridor briskly, without glancing back at him, and stops abruptly in front of a light wood door. Other than the plaque reading SHERIFF, it’s identical to every other door in the hallway.
She raps twice on the door, sharp and loud.
“Come in,” a deep voice calls from inside the room.
Jughead turns around, checking to see if the officer is going to come in with him, but she’s already gone. He shrugs to himself and opens the door, muscles straining against its surprising weight.
Inside, a large man presides over the sole piece of furniture in the room, a wooden desk. The office screams bureaucracy: all beige walls and linoleum floors, with a stack of metal folding chairs against the wall. Jughead grabs one and unfolds it to sit in front of the investigator’s desk, wincing as the metal creaks with disuse.
“So, Mr. Jones. What’s got you so interested in the Andrews case?” The investigator’s voice is low but nasally, with a hint of a Maine accent.
Jughead blinks in surprise. He’d planned on being the one asking questions, not answering them.
“Well, I knew Archie. He was my best friend.”
“Was?” The investigator – his name tag reads Mulholland – repeats. Officer Mulholland? Detective Mulholland? Jughead isn’t sure. He settles for referring to him as just Mulholland in his head.
“We haven’t spoken in a few years.”
“But you came all the way back here to help with the investigation?” Mulholland shifts back in his chair and raises an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Jughead answers hesitantly. “His mom asked me to.”
“Speaking of Ms. Moore—”The officer shuffles through a stack of papers on his desk before pulling out a legal pad covered in a tiny, illegible scrawl. “She told me a little about you. Said you and Archie had some kind of falling out before you left town.”
Jughead narrows his eyes. He can’t blame Mary for trying to give the investigators as much information as possible, but did she have to bring that into it?
“Yeah. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Just high school relationship drama.”
“Big enough of a deal for you to leave town and never come back?”
Jughead doesn’t answer.
“What happened?” Mulholland’s chair creaks as he leans in.
Jughead sighs. If he avoids too many questions, he knows he’ll actually start to look guilty.
“Just – stuff that happens to everyone. My girlfriend cheated on me with him. It doesn’t even matter anymore. I haven’t talked to either of them in forever.”
“Would you say you were…angry with Mr. Andrews?” The investigator’s tone is careful, level, but Jughead doesn’t like the implications.
“I mean, I was, but it’s been three years. I’m over it.” He shrugs, trying to look nonchalant.
“Hmm.” Mulholland’s face remains blank, impassive. “You said relationship drama. Did you and Mr. Andrews—”
“No.” Jughead cuts him off. “We were just friends.”
If he never finds Archie, he’ll stick to that story for the rest of his life.
Of course, it’s not really that simple. Things rarely are. But if he lets slip even the tiniest hint that he ever had feelings for Archie – that their relationship, though unlabeled, was undoubtedly closer and more confusing than friendship, and never just anything – he’ll be Rockland County’s number one suspect before he can say ‘no comment.’
“Ri-ight.” Mulholland draws the word out, giving it two syllables.
Jughead likes him less and less with every word that comes out of his mouth.
“Sorry, but I don’t think I have any information that can help you. I came here to ask some questions about the investigation. I’m just trying to find out as much as I can – trying to help his mom.”
“Well,” Mulholland drawls. “The police are doing everything they can to find him.”
Jughead tries not to roll his eyes. How many times has he heard that same exact phrase?
“Have you talked to anyone who saw him before he disappeared – besides Pop Tate? Have they found anything indicating where he might’ve gone?”
“Look, kid.” Mulholland closes the file, the papers landing in a stack with a thunk. “Ms. Moore told me about your little crime-solving gig in high school. Sounds like you weren’t half bad at it. But, it also sounds like the sheriff back then wouldn’t have known a clue if it was sitting right in front of his face.” He sighs and crosses his arms over his chest with a what-can-ya-do look. “You got lucky. It doesn’t make you a private investigator.”
You’re not wrong, Jughead thinks, but I don’t like where this is going.
“Rockland County police are following up on all the leads we’ve gotten. And, frankly, we’re not in the business of recruiting teenagers to help with investigations.” Mulholland meets Jughead’s eyes.
It has technically only been a few weeks since Jughead was a teenager, so he ignores the remark. “How many leads do you have, then?” he asks, desperately hoping that the investigator will give him something to go on.
Mulholland’s gaze doesn’t waver. “I think the best thing you can do right now is to stay with Ms. Moore. Keep her company, make sure she’s okay. There’s nothing for you to do here.”
If this guy thinks Mary’s some kind of damsel in distress, he’s never met her.
The old Jughead – his high school self – might’ve pressed further, or tried harder to squeeze some tiny shred of information out of him, but the investigator’s questions – about his fight with Archie, their relationship, whether he was angry – have put him on edge, and he’s ready to get the hell out of the police station.
“Right,” he says, pulling his jacket back on and securing the strap of his messenger bag on his shoulder. “Well, thank you for your time.”
“My pleasure,” Mulholland replies, mouth curling up into something that he probably thinks is a smile. “I’ll show you the way out.”
They pass through the waiting room again, and this time it’s no longer empty. The sole occupant is a severe, sharply dressed woman gazing down at her phone, fingers flying over the keyboard. He glances away, not wanting to look nosy, and follows Mulholland through the glass door.
Once the two are outside, Mulholland claps Jughead on the shoulder with a little more force than necessary.
“Look, kid. I know you’re trying to help, tryin’ to find your friend and all. But trust me, there are a lot more interesting things someone your age can do than sitting around in a police station flipping through papers all day. Let the police do their jobs; you take care of Mr. Andrews’ mom. Okay?”
Jughead shrugs the investigator’s hand off with a slight dip of the shoulder and takes a miniscule step away. “Got it.” He glances through the doors again, at the woman still tapping away on her phone. “One last question?”
“Fine,” Mulholland says, with a little smile like he’s humoring a child’s story – an expression that seems to say oh, aren’t you adorable, you think you’re acting like a grown-up.
Jughead nods his head at the door. “Do you know who that woman in the waiting room is?”
“You don’t know her?” Mulholland asks, eyebrows furrowed.
“No, never seen her before in my life. I don’t think she’s from around here.”
“Hmm. Well, you got that right. Certainly not a local. Says she’s from Skaneateles. She was here yesterday, trying to help out with the investigation.”
“What does she have to do with it?”
Mulholland gives him that smile again. “Thought you said one question.”
“I did.” Jughead stares back at him, blank and impassive.
Mulholland shakes his head. “You’re determined, I’ll give you that. Well, sounds like Mr. Andrews and her son were friends in high school. Nick, I think she said his name was. Did you know him?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Jughead answers. He runs through a mental yearbook of everyone he can remember from school, trying to place the name Nick, but comes up empty. Something is missing – he knew all of Archie’s friends.
“Nick St. Clair? Doesn’t ring a bell?”
Jughead’s face goes hot and his palms break out in a cold sweat. He wipes his hands on his jeans. The surname jogged his memory, all right; he remembers that creep. But Nick and Archie were hardly friends. Unless you can call mutual beat-downs and attempting to sexually assault Archie’s girlfriend friendship.
“Nope, sorry. Don’t think I ever met him. No idea what his mom would be doing in Riverdale.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, fidgeting restlessly and hoping Mulholland will take the bait.
“Well, apparently her son and Mr. Andrews were in business together. They were supposed to meet some time back in September, had some meeting scheduled at the old Lodge place. They didn’t hear about the disappearance until Nick was in town, obviously; Riverdale news doesn’t travel far.”
Jughead wishes he were taking notes. He has his notebook, but he doesn’t think Mulholland will appreciate him whipping it out right now, after all his bullshit about minding his own business and taking care of Mary.
“Nick was supposed to stay in town for a few days and then head back home, but his mom hasn’t heard from him in almost two weeks.”
“He’s not still in town, is he?” Jughead asks.
He knows the answer is obvious, but maybe he can put himself on Mulholland’s good side if he plays the part of the innocent, narrow-minded journalist kid. He’s dealt with enough men like Mulholland to know that you can keep them talking forever, more or less, as long as they feel like they’re teaching you something.
“Nope. She thinks he’s missing, thinks maybe whatever happened to Archie involves Nick somehow, too. Here’s the thing: most of the time, when an adult disappears, it’s because they just fucked off somewhere to be left alone for a little while. Probably what happened with him. But, hey, information is information, and she said she’ll give us everything she knows if it might help us find Nick.”
Everything she knows? Jughead thought. What else is there to know?
Jughead finds himself heading to Pop’s without consciously deciding on a destination. It just makes sense to him, somehow – even if nothing in town, even Pop’s, feels normal anymore, he can always rely on the comforting shittiness of diner coffee.
He takes up residence in the back booth again, and doesn’t waste any time in pulling out his notebook and jotting down everything he remembers from the conversation.
- St. Clair at police station – provided info (?)
- Nick and Archie in business together
- Supposed to meet at the Pembrooke last month – Business related to Lodges?
- Nick missing for 2 wks
After a few minutes, the page is still mostly blank, but he finally has something to go on. He flips his notebook shut, drains the last of his coffee, and heads out.
He spends the drive back to the trailer constructing a sort of mini-investigation-board in his head, with imaginary pieces of string connecting Archie and the St. Clairs and the Lodges. He’s sure the three are connected. He just has to figure out how.
The imaginary whiteboard in his head is wiped clean when he realizes that the parking spots in front of his dad’s trailer are occupied by two white police cars. In the quickly-dimming late afternoon light, he can see two uniformed men milling around in front of the door. The Rockland police must be really short on leads if their officers are responding to petty complaints – at least, he hopes that’s all this is.
Jughead pulls in next to another trailer; it looks unoccupied, so he figures he’s not taking up anyone’s spot. The officers don’t seem to notice him as he gets out of the car, but once he approaches the trailer, both of their heads turn toward him. He clears his throat and tries to project confidence and naivete, hoping that the interaction will be over soon if he acts like a good law-abiding citizen.
“Is there a problem, officers?”
Instead of answering, one officer – tall but unassuming, with a mousy brown combover – asks: “Is this your trailer?”
“Yes. Well – no, my father owns it, but I’m staying in town for a few nights.”
“Ah.” The two officers glance at each other, nodding. “We got a tip from the landlord that there was an unregistered guest living on the property.”
“I’m only here for a few nights. But, wait, my dad owns the trailer. Doesn’t that mean he can do whatever he wants with it? He’s letting me stay as long as I want.” The last part is a lie, but the officers don’t know enough to notice. There’s an upside to dealing with non-local law enforcement, inasmuch as there can be an upside to getting harassed by the cops: unlike local small-town cops or the sheriff, they don’t know everyone’s business, so they can’t tell if you’re bullshitting.
“According to the landlord, your dad owns the trailer, but not the land it’s parked on. So he’s still gotta abide by the rules and regulations, which means guests have to register at the park office and pay a fee.”
I have to pay a fee to live in my family’s own fucking property? That’s capitalism for ya. It figures that the one useful thing his dad ever gave him would have a catch.
“Oh. Got it. I’m only here for one more night, so can I just…” He trails off as the officers exchange a few words.
The second officer – shorter, about the same age as the other, but time has been kinder to this one and left him with a silvery blond flat-top – turns towards Jughead. “One more night. Next time, gotta pay the fee.”
“That’s fine. Thanks.” He cringes internally but doesn’t let his disgust show. The officer with the combover nods at him – his hair stays glued in place – and both climb into their cars.
Jughead watches their headlights shrink as they head down Main Street, back to the Northside. Thank god it’s his last night in town. He doesn’t have cash for the fee, and the last thing he needs is the police department breathing down his neck. Back at school, he’ll be able to sort everything out on his own without feeling like he’s being watched – he just needs to figure out what to do tomorrow before the drive back.
Once the headlights disappear, Jughead finally lets out a sigh and opens the door. He realizes, as soon as he’s indoors, that he hadn’t even had to take his key out. He could’ve sworn he’d locked the trailer this morning. He never forgets to lock the door. A lifetime of paranoia (and the fact that he’d grown up in the murder capital of the world) mean that Jughead is always on high alert when it comes to locking doors and windows, basically everything short of barring the doors.
He chalks it up to exhaustion and pre-investigation jitters, and tries to put the thought out of his mind.
All the police interaction throughout the day – more than he hopes to ever have to endure again – has worn Jughead out, but he knows he won’t be able to shut his brain off and get to sleep unless he gets his thoughts down on paper. He decides to make a crude sort of investigation board, so he can have a diagram to look at instead of trying to sort through everything in his head.
He pulls his notebook out of his backpack and tears out the page with his notes from Pop’s, then grabs a roll of tape from the kitchen counter and sticks the page to a wall, at about eye-level. Next, he walks back into the kitchen to grab the couple of papers he’d left there the night before: the “missing” flyer and Archie’s letter. He won’t have much to go on, but three pieces of evidence is a start.
The flyer is right on the table where he’d left it the night before. Archie’s face still sends a small, sharp feeling through his chest when he picks up the flyer, but the feeling is quickly replaced by a much bigger, much colder sensation, as he stares down at the empty table.
The letter is gone.
Jughead tries to stay calm, sure that he just put it somewhere else and forgot about it. He glances around the room and wills his hands to stop shaking. The kitchen counters are empty, ditto the coffee table and end tables in the living room. In his bedroom, all the surfaces are bare.
He rushes back into the kitchen and falls hard to his knees in front of his backpack. Abandoning all hope of staying calm and rational, he pulls things out of the bag a fistful at a time, tossing socks and pens and pencils every which way and sending things clattering across the kitchen floor. He’s panting by the time the bag is empty, and there’s still no sign of Archie’s letter.
“Fuck,” he says aloud. His breath is starting to come in high-pitched, wheezy little inhales. He stands up quickly and fills up a glass of water at the kitchen sink, forcing himself to drink the entire thing in a desperate attempt to hold off the threat of hyperventilation. A few rivulets of water run down his neck, and he sets the glass back down hard. His breath is coming a little more regularly, and he tries to keep counting the inhales and exhales to stave off his anxiety.
Activating his parasympathetic nervous system, while great for reducing anxiety, does approximately nothing whatsoever to stop the nausea swelling inside him. He lost the letter. The last piece he had of Archie. The last real proof that he wasn’t dead.
Except – maybe he didn’t lose it at all. He yanks the trailer door open and examines the doorknob from the outside. No signs of forced entry; it definitely wasn’t crowbar-ed open, but he remembers from the few times he’d gotten locked out as a kid that the landlord – Albin, he thinks – holds a spare key for every trailer in the park.
And if the police already knew that his dad owned the trailer but not the land, there’s only one person they could’ve talked to. Albin had always seemed like a slimy little bastard, even when Jughead was a kid, and it wouldn’t be the first time a landlord had screwed over his tenants to lick the police department’s boots.
Jughead chugs another glass of water and turns around to survey the damage, forearms and lower back resting against the linoleum counter. The kitchen looks like it’s been hit by a bomb; his bag’s contents are strewn over a ten-foot radius, stretching as far as the couch on one side and nearly into the hallway on the other.
His phone is still resting on the table – at least he managed to set that down before Hulk-ing out on his backpack – and a quick glance at the screen reminds him of the photo he’d taken before leaving his dorm. Maybe intuition is real after all. Mentally crossing his fingers, Jughead scrolls through his most recent photos and exhales heavily when he finds the letter.
Even though losing the letter itself – the hard copy that Archie had actually touched and held and given him – feels like he’s had salt rubbed in a wound, at least he has proof that it existed. That he’s not living in some kind of Twilight Zone mind-fuck where he can’t trust his own reality. As long as he hangs onto his sanity, he can survive this. He needs to. He has a sneaking suspicion that, here in town, his own senses might be the last thing he can trust.
On Mary’s invitation, Jughead returns to the Andrews’ house on Sunday to poke around a little more, just in case either of them had missed anything. Mary assures him that she’s searched the house from top to bottom, which gives Jughead an excuse to explore one place he’d wanted to go ever since he’d arrived: the treehouse.
Climbing up is almost disappointingly easy now; the branches are low enough that he could almost pull himself up onto the platform without even having to jump. He climbs up the hard way anyways, grabbing hold of a tree branch and wincing at the familiar old feeling of bark biting into his palms. He braces his foot on the little knobby bark growth they’d always used as a step, and hoists himself in through the tiny doorway.
He can’t remember the last time he’d been in the treehouse. The walls are covered in scribbles, permanent marker drawings of little stick-figure Jughead-and-Archie, recognizable only by the pointy crown and the messy splotches of red marker, respectively. There are a few giant black patches where one of them had written a swear word and then covered it up as thoroughly as possible before their parents could see it.
Even sitting down, Jughead has to hunch over so his head doesn’t touch the roof. He leans over and runs his fingers over one of the drawings, like somehow it might jog his memory or tell him what he needs to do next. Nothing of the sort happens; the wall is just plywood, the marker lines impossible to feel.
Sitting back down and crossing his legs, he glances up at the roof to check if the hole is still there. The broken beam is right where he’d remembered it; it must have been there for at least ten years at this point. Fred had always said he’d get around to fixing it. Jughead shakes the thought out of his head, instead picturing the way he and Archie used to use it as a sort of sniper’s perch during water balloon fights, back when their hands were small enough to fit through the broken beam and chuck water balloons at whoever their opponents were (usually a parent doing yard work – depending on who it was, their attack would either be met with a disgruntled shout or with a rowdy cheer and a responding blast from the garden hose).
He remembers their secret compartment, then: the board in the floor they’d pried up to hide snacks and Halloween candy for refueling in the middle of brutal water-balloon warfare. Jughead feels along the floorboards, prodding at them until the end of one pops up. He pulls the board out of the way and peers into the empty space below the floor. Nothing but a fossilized bag of Cheez-Its and an old Snickers wrapper. He reaches in to pull the wrapper out, figuring he should throw it in the trash, and feels his fingertips brush the edge of something smooth. He sticks his hand further into the dusty old compartment and grabs hold of the object, a small, rounded piece of metal.
As he pulls it out, he realizes it’s a cell phone. An old one, from the looks of it – it’s thick and silver, with the kind of keypad where you have to press 7 four times to type an S. He doesn’t recognize the phone, and can’t figure out why it’d be up here of all places.
Jughead flips the screen open with his thumb. Nothing. He finds the power button on the side and holds it down. Still nothing.
Maybe Mary would know why it’s up here, or at least she might have a charger for it. Jughead briefly considers telling her about the letter while he’s at it, but he can see that from an outsider’s perspective, an unmarked letter isn’t particularly convincing evidence, and he doesn’t want to get Mary’s hopes up until he’s absolutely sure he can find Archie. Alive.
Mary is on the phone when Jughead comes back inside, using her professional Lawyer Voice, so Jughead puts the flip phone in his pocket and starts making lunch. There’s a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese in the cupboard, which will do well enough. He makes up two plates, although he has no idea if Mary even regards the stuff as edible. She usually seems like kind of a health nut – eats what his dad would’ve called “rabbit food” – and, to be honest, the mac and cheese is rather suspiciously orange. He wouldn’t blame her for turning it down.
Maybe Archie’s disappearance is freaking everyone out to the point of stress-eating potentially radioactive mac and cheese, or maybe Mary’s just more chill than he thought, because she takes a plate from him, smiling, and pours them each a mug of coffee.
When they’re both nearly done eating, Jughead pulls the flip phone out of his pocket and sets it on the table.
“What’s that?” Mary asks with her mouth full.
Jughead shrugs. “I dunno. I was up in the treehouse and found it in this little secret compartment Archie and I used to use when we were kids. It’s dead, so I can’t check it. I thought you might know whose it was, or have a charger for it.”
“No, sorry, I don’t think I’ve seen it before. I mean, I guess it could’ve been Fred’s, but—”
“But why would it be up in the treehouse?”
“Yeah. Exactly. That’s weird, I wish I knew. I doubt there’s a charger for it – or if there is, I haven’t seen it. Maybe check in the garage? Fred kept a bin of old electronics stuff out there. I don’t think he ever actually used any of the stuff he saved; it’s probably all just a rat’s nest of wires now, but you’re welcome to look.”
“I will, thanks. If I can’t find anything out there, I’ll stop by a Superior Sale or something on the way back to school tonight.”
Mary nods, and Jughead rinses off his plate and puts it in the dishwasher before grabbing the key to the garage.
As he opens the garage door, he’s greeted by a familiar smell: a dusty mix of wood and mildew and gasoline. It might’ve been a little unpleasant if he didn’t associate the scent with good memories of Archie and Fred: their impromptu garage jam sessions, Archie on electric guitar and Fred on acoustic; or hanging out while Archie worked on the car, watching him from the beat-up old armchair in the corner and trying to ignore the way the muscles in Archie’s forearms twisted and flexed.
Unlike most of the house, the garage looks exactly the way he’d remembered it, down to the car in the middle of the room. Archie’s old amp is still tucked away in the corner. Jughead finds the cardboard box labeled Tech and roots around in the tangled wires, but none of them look small enough to be a phone charger, so he gives up after a few fruitless minutes.
Even though he’s already done what he came out here for, Jughead feels pulled by the room’s energy, compelled to stay for just a little longer. For some reason, Archie’s presence – or the lack of it, maybe – is more pronounced here than it was in his bedroom. Jughead remembers Mary’s comment about how long Archie had been spending in the garage during the few weeks before he’d disappeared, and wonders if that’s why. Like Archie’s spirit is haunting the place he spent most of his time in. Jughead shudders a little. Haunting was the wrong word.
Still thinking of that conversation with Mary, he walks over to the faded red car to take a closer look. It, too, looks just the way he remembered. It’s still missing its hood, still has the goofy horn Fred had mounted onto the windshield as a joke. Jughead peers down at the exposed machinery where the car’s hood should be, noticing that the metal bears a thin coating of dust. He runs a finger absentmindedly along the engine cover and sends a few dust particles flying.
If Archie was working on the car so damn much before he left, why does it look exactly like it did three years ago?
Jughead doesn’t let himself ponder the question for very long. He has a six-hour drive looming ahead of him; that’ll give him plenty of time to think, and he wants to get the hell out of Riverdale before dark.
He says goodbye to Mary with a firm promise that he’ll come back to keep investigating once the semester is over. He has just under two months left of classes, and the few leads he’s picked up while in town will give him some viable avenues for research. At least more viable than stalking random ex-classmates on social media.
Jughead stops by Pop’s to grab one last shitty coffee for the road, and as he heads out, he turns his phone’s volume up and puts Spotify on shuffle. He doesn’t want to mess with the creepy local radio stations again.
With each Riverdale sign that passes behind him on his way out of town, he feels himself relaxing, un-clenching muscles he hadn’t even realized were tense. He’s on the highway before the sun sets, and with Rage Against the Machine blasting tinnily from his phone, he settles into his seat and lets the investigative side of his brain run wild.