(Meanwhile, my own windbreaker was stuck to my torso like a soggy second skin.)
“It’s gonna be a great weekend, girls,” she said, giving me a warm smile that felt almost specifically directed as I passed by. I tried to match her grin, even though my socks were squelching in my sneakers with every step and I wasn’t exactly feeling my smiley-est. I mean, she’d just started this new job and, right away, to dive headfirst into a road trip slash cheer camp retreat with a bunch of girls she barely knew? By choice? That was brave. She deserved at least a grin for that effort.
“Thanks, Coach,” I said. “V—how about here?” I indicated two seats up at the front of the bus, knowing Veronica tended to get carsick toward the back.
“Perfect, B—” she started, passing me her small duffel to put on her designated seat. But she was quickly cut off by Her Highness herself—HBIC Cheryl.
“Out of our way, underlings!” Cheryl shouted, imperious. Somehow, she, too, managed to look less like the hot mess that the rest of us were and more like a tragic heroine of a gothic novel. Her signature scarlet lipstick was still impeccable, and even wet, her red waves tumbled down her shoulders with the drama of a silent-film femme fatale. It figures, I thought, curling my toes in my sneakers and feeling the water surge between them.
“What’s your damage, Heather?” Veronica quipped, joking, but only partly. She rolled her eyes at Cheryl’s typical histrionics.
“Shoo, little flies,” she said to us, waving her hand to underscore her point. “Everyone knows that the front-most seats on a Vixens road trip are reserved for moi … and a plus-one of my own designation. In this case, clearly mon petit trésor, Antoinette.”
Over Cheryl’s shoulder, Toni flashed us a sympathetic look, mouthing, Sorry. She put a hand on Cheryl’s back. “Babe, I mean, thanks—I love that you’ve got my back and all. But, maybe bring it down to an eight? I think they get the point. No one needs to come to blows over a seat on a school bus.”
“Indeed. We get it.” Veronica gave a tight smile. “Loud and clear, Cheryl,” she said. She gestured for me to pass her duffel back to her and for us to shift down a few rows, out of range of Cheryl’s warpath but still in the safety zone for Veronica’s delicate constitution.
It was only a few more minutes—and, seemingly unavoidably, a few more ruffled feathers here and there (but just a few, thank goodness)—and then, at last, we were officially on our way. With a cough of exhaust that punctuated a momentary break in the roiling thunder outside, we pulled out of the parking lot and onto Main Street, barreling toward the turnpike as fast as the ominous weather would permit.
“So you really think your father was trying to mess with your head, sending you that letter?”
We’d been driving down the highway for maybe an hour or so, but the storm showed no signs of letting up. Lightning forked the horizon in the distance, and the bus was inching along slowly, less of a cruise and more of a crawl. We’d passed Greendale a ways back, prompting a shudder of déjà vu to slide down my spine as the road sign registered in my peripheral vision. Weird things always seemed to happen in and around the place—weird even by Riverdale standards, which was saying something.
But I couldn’t be distracted by that just now. Shaking off that lurking sense of dread that had draped itself over my shoulders as best I could, I turned back to V and forced myself to focus. “What did it say?”
She shrugged. “Honestly, the content was benign enough. How are you? I miss you, et cetera … the usual, pretending to be a loving patriarch.” Her voice dripped with scorn. “You know my father. He’s a master at keeping up appearances and subtle innuendo … Nothing to see here.”
“But … he misses you. I’m sure that on some level he means that,” I tried to reassure her.
She pursed her lips. “Right, I mean, he’s basically the devil incarnate … but deep down, he does love me, is that it?” She shrugged. “I guess that’s some cold comfort, anyway.”
“You know he does. He has to.” It was what I told myself, after all. What I had to tell myself, given everything I’d gone through with my own father.
Still. I had my doubts. So I didn’t blame Veronica for having her own.
Case in point. She turned to me, her eyes intent. “I’d love to think so, B. But I’m not sure it’s true. It’s just … how many unforgivable acts does he have to commit against my mother and me before we actually—oh, I don’t know—stop forgiving him? It feels like there should be a specific, quantifiable limit. But I don’t know—what’s the precise number? There’s no handbook or list of rules when dealing with a career-criminal father, is there?” Her voice was wry, but there was real pleading in her tone. “Seriously—is there? Inquiring minds are begging.”
Now it was my turn to make a face. “Definitely don’t ask me.”
Though I tried not to talk about it, tried to shut it out, the nightmares still haunted me: The Black Hood, aka my father, resurrected from the dead for the nth time, looming over the four of us in the woods behind Thistlehouse. An unexpected guest at the world’s most macabre dinner party.
Locking eyes with him one last time.
Watching Penelope raise her hand and pull the trigger on her revolver.
The sky, our bones, my skin rattling with an explosion that tore the atmosphere apart.
My father’s death was a long time coming, and I could have predicted it would have been a violent one. In the end, it wasn’t even all that shocking that I’d been there to witness it myself. Somehow, that aspect of it felt, in the moment, almost fated.
Was I sorry that he was dead? Of course not—if Hiram Lodge was the devil incarnate, my father was evil personified. His darkness was insidious, infectious. As Jughead would say, there was never going to be any redemption arc for him. Death was the only answer.
Was I sorry that he was dead? Of course—he was my father. He always would be. Even now, even gone. Even without a chance for that redemption arc that, in my gut, I knew would never have come to bear.
I blinked, pushed away the photo-negative images of Penelope’s gun, of my father’s body crumpling to the ground. I was getting better at doing that.
It didn’t matter, though. No matter how hard I tried to deny the churn of emotions twisting in my gut, V could see them all over my face. She could always see me. That was our friendship, and I was eternally grateful for it.
But I was especially grateful in that moment, when she watched my body language and carefully, without saying anything about my father’s death (because really, what was there to say at this point, anyway?), she put an arm around my shoulder and tilted her head against mine. I could smell the rosewater she spritzed on her face when she traveled (“Hydration is key,” she liked to say, and she wasn’t wrong; her skin was perpetually flawless, and her beauty tips, infallible). The familiar scent of it was almost as soothing as the warmth of our shoulders side by side.
Moments like these—with my friends, with Jughead—were literally the only reason I was starting to keep the gruesome nightmares of my father (his life and his death) at bay. What would I do without them?