JUGHEAD
Riverdale is a small town, dripping with “quaint.” It’s easy for the casual observer to assume that life here is nothing but homespun charm and down-home values, whatever that even means. But if you know this place, you know how utterly deceiving looks can be. Think less American, heavy on the Gothic, and you’re on the right track. And what we now know with unwavering certainty? In this town, there is no rest, nor a modicum of relief, for the weary.
One other adage that we all know well? “Nothing gold can stay.”
Though I hadn’t read The Outsiders since middle school, I’d never been more aware of that poignant quote than I was the fall we kicked off our senior year at Riverdale High. Truly, though, nothing gold could stay; it never does. And nowhere was that fact truer than in our deceptive little town, where the only constant was change, and the only reliable fact was the presence of uncertainty, of chaos.
Some philosophers extol the virtues of change, loudly proclaiming how instability forces us, as a species, to evolve. But in our not-so-sleepy hamlet, those who were the primary agents of change were less about virtue and more about …
Well, the seven deadly sins come to mind.
This eternal flux of change extended itself to every banal facet of Riverdale life. Our first case in point: Technically, I wasn’t even at Riverdale High. Not anymore.
For senior year, I had left Riverdale High in a thick roar of my motorcycle’s engine, a cloud of smoke curling from the exhaust pipe as I cruised out of town to tiny Stonewall Prep boarding school. In a word, it was unexpected.
The last time I’d left Riverdale, it was begrudgingly, under duress; I was shuttled to Southside High after first being cycled into foster care. To be fair, it wasn’t a terrible experience—at Southside, I had found a place with my people, the Serpents. And for the first time in my life, I allowed myself to embrace my legacy with them. (Lately, we’d even grown our numbers with an informal alliance with Toni Topaz’s Pretty Poisons.)
This time, I was leaving Riverdale High by choice. Even if it was a difficult one—with consequences, both anticipated and unforeseen. The opportunity to enroll at Stonewall Prep had presented itself to me, practically unbidden. It was a shiny brass ring on a carnival carousel, and I’d grabbed it with both hands, tight.
Because admission to Stonewall meant that I might have a shot at leaving behind a legacy, too: by following my dream of becoming a writer. Stonewall gave me a chance to go somewhere that nurtured my work and encouraged me to take it seriously. It physically pained me to leave my friends behind—to say nothing of what it felt like to be separated from Betty—but this was a step toward a larger plan, a path to becoming the first in my family to go to college.
Nothing gold could stay—but greener pastures? They were out there, once in the rarest of whiles, if you were willing to go out on a limb.
That’s why they’re called hard choices, right? Because they’re hard. And they have repercussions. I tried to stay positive, to expect the best, even if I wasn’t a shiny-happy enough guy to flat-out hope for it. If I believed in anything in this bizarre, unpredictable world, I had to allow myself—however naïvely, I’ll admit—to believe that Betty and I were unbreakable.
But only time would tell; we both knew that. And even though we weren’t admitting it out loud or in so many words, I knew we were both at least a little bit worried, too. (Maybe more than a little bit—though if you asked me straight-up I’d deny it with everything I’ve got.)
Of course, Betty was fully supportive of my decision to enroll at Stonewall. She understood the unbelievable opportunity it was for me. But the idea of being physically separated for days or weeks at a time? How could we not have nagging doubts?
It wasn’t only us, after all. Transition—with everything fraught and complicated that it implicitly carried—was a virus burning through our town’s bloodstream. Call it something in the air. Some uniquely Riverdale quality that insists on consuming and annihilating anything good, pure, reliable, or stable in its path.
Varchie, for instance, was dealing with their own unbearable strain right now, too. Archie had been through a veritable wringer last year, but he had managed to come out the other side through sheer force of will. This, in addition to his friends’ support, of course. And Veronica was the first one in his corner every time, no question.
Now, the less straightforward question—for any of us who loved Archie as much as we did—was how to help our boy get through the devastating loss of his father. Fred Andrews’s absence was one we all felt acutely. There was nothing to say or to do to lessen our friend’s pain. But Veronica was determined to try. We all were.
In typical Archie fashion, he was putting on a brave face: converting the El Royale boxing gym into a community center in his father’s honor, looking out for neighborhood kids who might be in need of a Good Samaritan, just the way his father would have. The way his father always did.
I think all three of us worried that, to some extent, he was trying to keep busy, to distract himself. There was nothing wrong with that, especially not if it was what he needed to cope. I know, though, that we all wanted him to feel like he could open up to us. We wanted to be there for him, to comfort him. But the rest was up to Archie—no matter how hard it was for us to just stand by and watch while he struggled. Especially given that we were dealing with our own struggles, too.
For me, specifically, that meant the Stonewall Four.
Four students, presumed “missing.” Regardless of how insignificant, how deeply insufficient, that term was. Had I honestly thought I would transfer schools and escape my hometown scot-free? Chaos, loss, and confusion, they clung to me, nipping at my heels. You could take the boy out of Riverdale, but there was no taking the Riverdale out of the boy.
Which meant that any hopes my friends and I had of quietly becoming “normal high school students” just in time for senior year were long gone, well buried. That pipe dream of “being seventeen” in its most innocent incarnation had been relegated to a drawer, dashed by the very same forces that failed to keep the shadows at bay even from events as mainstream, as benign, as a school play.
We were, quite possibly, doomed.
And yet, some part of us must have still had fleeting hope in a secret corner of our hearts. Hope that there was still a chance, that things could be different. Better. I had left, after all. I was at Stonewall Prep now, taking a step toward rewriting the script of the film noir I’d unwittingly been born into.
I’d left for Stonewall, and Betty and I were doing our damnedest to err toward distance making the heart grow fonder. And Veronica was watching, ever optimistic, as Archie tried to rebuild the cornerstones of his world.
We were doing our best.
Admittedly, to middling results. No matter how ardently we threw ourselves into these so-called normal pursuits—a guys poker night, a cheerleading retreat, the stuff of teen TV dramas—the insidious, essential Riverdaleness of it all kept creeping back in.
How did that saying go?
Oh, right: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.”
Still, here we were, senior year, trying yet again to be better, to be different, to dream bigger. To dare to imagine a world beyond the horror and destruction, the callow dysfunction of Riverdale. Of fate.