There was something different in the air that morning.

At first, Betty had thought it was the inevitable buzzing excitement that came with every summer. She'd recently completed her first year of elementary school, and she and all her friends were thankful for the break.

Already the small cul-de-sac was filled with the sounds of children squealing and playing. Chalk-stained hands reached eagerly out to the passing ice cream truck. Quickly-melting popsicles shed cherry-flavored droplets that seared into the burning sidewalks. It wasn't too hot yet, but the sun was out and shining and raining joy on the freckled, beaming faces of the neighborhood children.

Betty, however, was not allowed in on the fun.

Her mother feared the fluorescent chalk would tarnish her white sundress. The sugar and artificial dyes in the frozen treats would make her fat and sick. And of course, even the dreaded sunshine brought with it the risk of burns, and according to Alice Cooper, skin cancer.

So she sat in the shade of the porch, doodling on a stray sheet of The Riverdale Register and eating a wholesome snack of low-fat yogurt.

She watched the rows of old oak trees filter in sunlight from above, spangling the street with flecks of golden light. Smoke wafted from someone's backyard, signalling the beginning of grilling season. Moms chattered contentedly on their lawns, sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice and cradling their babies as the older kids played.

It was suburban perfection.

Then, a moving truck trundled in from the south side of town.

The sounds of children's happy shrieks and the lilting music of the ice cream truck were silenced- replaced by the incessant whispering of gossipping mothers and the low rumble of the truck's engine.

The car that had been trailing behind it came to a stop.

F.P. Jones was the first to exit. He glanced around the neighborhood with narrowed, shifty eyes before promptly going inside his newly purchased home and slamming the door. This left a very pregnant Gladys Jones to open the car door for herself, grumbling.

Last to leave was Jughead Jones the third.

He scrambled out of the car, and upon seeing that his parents had already gone inside, decided to explore.

He was short, even for a first grader. His pants must have been rolled up three times, exposing beat-up chuck taylors in a terrible state of filth and disrepair. A beanie hung glumly over his grown-out black curls that bent and swayed in the summer breeze.

The kid seemed to note the way the other children stared disapprovingly at him. So naturally, he found the only other outcast.

He sauntered across Betty's neatly trimmed lawn, past prim roses and dainty lilacs and carefully preened hydrangeas. He came to a stop below Betty's perch in the shade.

"Hi," he said, a little nervously.

She looked down at him curiously.

"You're on my mom's lavender," she said, and went back to coloring.

"Oh- uh, sorry," he said, side-stepping.

She sighed.

"Now you're on the peonies."

He looked down at the snapped stem beneath him and cringed. Thinking fast, he picked it up and scaled the railing, sitting on it so that he was across from the girl. Then he reached out, offering her the (now dirty) pink blossom.

She accepted it with a smile. Her eyes scrunched up, obscured a little by the baby fat in her flushed cheeks.

Success, he thought, gloating inwardly.

"Why aren't you out playing?" He asked, kicking his feet against the wood of the porch.

"My mom's evil," she said, nose wrinkling in anger.

While most kids their age would've only laughed, he nodded solemnly.

"I know what you mean," he said.

He slumped off the railing and walked over to where Betty sat.

"What're you drawing?" He asked.

"You ask a lot of questions," Betty said, and her nose did that thing again.

"I gotta. I want to be a detective when I grow up," he said proudly.

Betty's eyes widened, like he'd told her he was a gold-medal olympic athlete.

"No way! Me too," she exclaimed excitedly. She smiled, showing off a gap in between two of her front teeth.

"We could work together!" he said, grinning. "What's your name?"

"Elizabeth Cooper," she said in a very formal tone. "But everyone calls me Betty."

"Jughead and Betty's Detective Agency," he said wistfully.

His daydreams of fighting crime with the pretty blonde were broken by a loud laugh from beside him.

"There's no way your name is Jughead!" she cried between fits of giggles.

"It's actually Forsythe Pendleton," he said, scowling. "But that sounds lame."

"It doesn't sound lame," she said quickly. "I like it."

"And I like your name, Betty Cooper," he said.

"It's absolutely lovely to meet you, Forsythe," she said, extending a hand for him to shake.

To her surprise, he took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles.

Then the moment burst and shattered into pieces.

Alice Cooper came storming out of the house, the heels of her shoes clacking violently against the porch. She was already yelling, screaming at Betty to get inside, scolding her for letting a boy trash the garden.

When she saw the boy, she was practically ablaze.

"A Jones, Elizabeth?! A Jones, on our property?!"

Neither knew exactly what that meant.

In all the commotion, F.P. heard the yelling and emerged from next door.

Then he was yelling back, and it was like watching gunfire across enemy lines.

Jughead held tight to Betty's hand while she cried. She'd never seen her mother get that upset. Ever.

Betty wasn't allowed outside for the rest of the summer.

They didn't see each other until the first day of second grade.

Alice let Betty walk to school on the condition that Polly would watch her very closely.

Of course, Alice was unaware that Jughead was also planning on walking to school.

When he saw a girl with a shiny blonde ponytail and a pristine pink backpack a block ahead of him, he sprinted to catch up until his lungs burned.

Betty had never defied her parents' wishes before him, but she couldn't help it. They talked constantly at school, spending recess solving mysteries and coming up with inventive stories together. When the final bell rang, they'd walk home together.

When they completed the day's homework, they'd open their adjacent windows and talk for hours.

They were inseparable.

"Will you marry me?" he asked her one day during the summer between third and fourth grade.

It was on a complete whim, really. They were playing in Betty's backyard while her mother was out and ended up on their backs in a yellow, dandelion-speckled patch of grass.

She was wearing a white dress, looking ever-so heavenly with her skirt fanned out like angel wings and a halo of yellowy blonde atop her head.

After letting the question hang in the air for a bit, she giggled. Her face lit up. She was glowing and bubbling with laughter.

"Marry you?" she repeated.

He nodded, expression serious.

Betty frowned.

"I've never really thought about marrying anybody before," she said, brows furrowed as she stared up at the sky. "What would it even be like?"

It was Jughead's turn to think.

In the lapse of conversation, the silent space was filled by the wind rustling through the trees and the neighbor's radio. Heavy hung the canopy of blue, shade my eyes and I can see you. White was the light that shines through the dress that you wore…

"We'd live in a house together," he said, fidgeting with the fold of his beanie.

"We practically already do," Betty said, smiling.

"Well yeah, but we would also have kids together," he said.

"We take care of Jellybean together all the time. I really don't see the point," she said.

"Exactly! The only thing that would be different would be that we would have a huge party and you'd get to wear a fancy dress," he explained. "Let's do it, Betts."

Betty sat upright, prompting him to do the same.

"You make a good argument, Mr. Jones," she said, plucking a daisy out of the earth.

"Thank you, Mrs. Jones," he said.

"Ugh, I'm keeping my last name," Betty said. "You can take mine, Jughead Cooper." She added teasingly.

"That sounds wrong," he whined.

"You're right, Forsythe Pendleton Cooper has a much nicer ring to it," she said, grinning devilishly.

He only rolled his eyes. Leaning over the flowers, he gently kissed her cheek. She didn't even have time to blush before he was dashing back over the fence and vanishing into his yard.

(Eventually they would decide to hyphenate their names, but that was far off in the future).

Elementary school came and went. Things were peaceful.

As eighth grade began, they both thought it would be the best year of their lives.

Alice and Hal were swamped with work at the Register, and F.P. was kept busy due to a new construction project. Betty and Jughead thought they'd be free.

And they were, for a little while.

They found a rhythm together. On weekdays, they'd alternate going to Betty or Jughead's house to study. Weekends were for bike rides and forest adventures.

If you asked Betty when they started falling for each other, she'd tell you a story like this.

It was a quiet moment when it really set in. A moment so blissfully silent it drowned out all the white noise.

They'd found a clearing in the woods by Sweetwater River.

He was staring up at the rosy, lilac-shaded sky. The evening clouds swirled and swooped like angels falling from grace. Somewhere hidden beneath the blacked-out treetops the sun sunk beneath the horizon. It cast off a few final rays of light, leaving shadows dancing between the evergreens.

She said something about being cold.

He eyed her for a moment- halfway between adoration and exhaustion. Then, with his golden eyes rolled back he draped his arm behind her shoulders and pulled her to his chest.

She was not prepared for this. The heat of him against her was undeniably pleasant; she'd admit that much. And now that he was taller, her head fit perfectly tucked into his shoulder.

"I was hinting that I wanted your jacket," she'd said in mock annoyance.

He huffed in that prissy tone she simultaneously hated and adored, then shrugged off the oversized denim garment and fashioned a makeshift blanket out of it.

She burrowed deep into the soft material, humming contentedly when the scent reminded her of home. It was something like rich woodsmoke and coffee and dingy comic stores and new vinyl records, and she was inexplicably drawn to it.

Wildflowers dotted the sparse spaces where they weren't completely intertwined. Bursts of mustard yellow, pops of carnation pink. He almost looked out of place in the field. Black boots, black jeans, black sweater, black mess of hair.

With her head rested just below his neck, she felt his every heartbeat like an earthquake against her skull.

Upon seeing the pure happiness in his face, her heart ached like it craved a knife through her chest.

She was so, so gone.

And when she thought he couldn't pull her any deeper, he tangled his fingers in her hair, stroking softly. Pulling it free of its elastic.

He kept playing with her hair gently, and as the sun made its very last dip beneath the horizon he kissed her forehead.

This was nothing new. They'd kissed before. He had a habit of pressing his lips to her knuckles when she was upset (which was often). He even kissed her on the lips in third grade (out of a mutual curiosity) and in sixth (for a class production of Romeo and Juliet).

But this meant something different, and they both knew it. This was a promise.

The moment was beautiful and brief.

When they returned home, everything dissociated into chaos.

Gladys and Jellybean were waiting on the stoop, bags packed. An ice pack was pressed to Gladys's blackened eye and Jellybean was curled in a fetal-like position on her mother's lap.

She was trembling, terrified, begging Jughead to come with them to safety.

And as he watched Betty being shepherded angrily into the house next door, Alice's hand wrapped around the back of her throat as she yelled "I told you to stay away" over and over, he decided he couldn't leave.

That night he slept with his window open and a baseball bat at the foot of his bed.

Betty didn't come to the window to say goodnight, but he could see the fingerprint bruises on the back of her neck as she got ready for bed. They stayed seared into his vision when she turned out the light.

Eighth grade passed in a blur of secret rendezvous at Pop's and awkward encounters from opposite sides of a white picket fence.

Anything resembling a romance was put on hold, but their friendship flourished in secret.

When ninth grade began, things got normal again.

Betty was running the Blue and Gold almost single handedly, and Jughead just so happened to sign up as an investigative journalist. Nearly instantaneously, Jughead and Betty's Detective Agency was open for business once again.

They looked into small mysteries together. The headlines piled up under their collaborative efforts. Lunch Money Launderer Locked Up. Homecoming Royalty Voter Fraud Foiled. They were unstoppable, once more.

As with every high they shared, there was an inescapable low.

One night, when Betty glanced over at the window next to hers she didn't see Jughead at all. She saw F.P. And then Jughead, who was pacing in circles, in and out of view.

Petrified, she cracked her window and knelt down.

"I know you're with that Cooper tramp again," F.P. slurred. He was drunk. "I can smell her whore perfume on you."

"Dad, she's in my class. We work together sometimes, that's it," he explained pleadingly.

F.P. took another swig of something hidden in a silver flask.

"The Coopers are bad news. I dated her slut mother, did I ever tell you that?" He grunted, taking another drink. "Easiest bitch I've ever met. Left me as soon as she found someone better."

"Betty's not like that. And it doesn't matter anyways, it's not like that-" he started.

He was cut off by a drunken laugh.

"I see the way you look at her. C'mon. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't love her," F.P. growled.

Jughead stared his father down, jaw clenched.

"I don't love her," he gritted out.

F.P's fist connected with Jughead's cheek.

The blood spread over the side of his face almost immediately- blooming across it in rivers.

Betty cried out, quickly clamping a hand over her mouth so they wouldn't hear.

"You're in love with Alice Cooper, fucking admit it!" F.P. yelled, probably waking the whole street.

"Her name is Betty," Jughead said. His voice was raw and disgusted.

He turned and walked down the stairs. F.P. made no effort to lunge at him again.

Betty got a text seconds later.

Jughead: Meet me at the drive in. Please.

Betty nearly broke an ankle trying to climb out of her window.

By the time she arrived, Jughead was curled up in the concession stand, swaddled in blankets. He was hardly visible in the sliver of light streaming in from outside.

It was clear that he'd been planning this. There were stacks of clothes and books strewn about, and even a few dollar bills that he had to have stolen from somewhere. He even had provisions of boxed and canned meals.

"You heard what he said, didn't you?" Jughead said, eyes misting.

"Most of it," Betty said with a shrug.

"I'm sorry," he said, grimacing.

Betty only sat, tugging a blanket over to cover her legs. She leaned her head on his shoulder out of habit.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You've been in an abusive household for years, and I've done nothing."

"There's nothing you could've done," he said.

Then, his tone turned soft and quiet.

"You've done more than you could ever imagine."

He turned to see the space between them reduced to a paper-thin margin. Every time she exhaled, he breathed her in.

His gaze flickered down, where her glossed lips sat untouched. Unkissed, unloved by anyone but him. Something possessive in him told him to do it. To claim her mouth with his.

Then he pulled back. He could only handle so much disappointment in one night. He'd lost his father hardly an hour ago. If he lost Betty too…

He tried to clear his head, and resigned instead to tracing patterns on her jean-clad thigh.

I love you, I love you, I love you… he wrote.

When Polly leaves, Betty is irreconcilably broken.

She only speaks to Jughead, and when she does, it's more terror than comfort.

"I'm next," she said, once. "The second I step out of line, they'll do something- they'll send me away, Juggie, they will-"

She pours all of her anxiety and worry out into him, and he does his best to absorb it without sending himself spiraling, too.

"I won't let it happen, Betts. They'll pry you from my cold, dead arms," he said, holding her tight to him and smoothing down the hair trying to escape from her ponytail.

Then she sobbed harder, muttering something about her problems not being as big or as real as his.

"There are different kinds of abuse, Betty," he said once. "It's not just getting drunk and throwing punches. It's keeping you locked away. Keeping you in fear."

She watched him speak, shiny-eyed and red-faced.

"They don't love you the way they should, and they should be ashamed. If you ever feel alone, if you ever need that unconditional love, you come to me, okay? I know I'm not your family-"

But you are, she thinks. You are.

"-but I'll take care of you enough for all of them. Okay, Betts? Please, tell me that's okay."

Then she smiled the saddest, most bittersweet smile of her life, and replied.

"It's more than okay."

She saw hope blooming in his eyes- enough to last her all those nights until Polly came home.

I love you, I love you, I love you, she thought.

Then it's June.

It's the summer before sophomore year. Jughead is still living at the drive in, he's still safe, but he can't shake the nagging feeling that something terrible is about to happen.

Terrible, yes. But also life-changing, and inspiring, and brimming with purpose and potential.

Before the murder, before the fear, before the conspiracy; it's him and Betty again.

It's days spent at Sweetwater River ending in nights at the drive-in, which Jughead has turned into more and more of a home.

Betty could watch his walls for hours. They dripped with flags and band posters, boasting obscure and strange names. The spaces that were reasonably bare revealed yellowing once-white paint, thick with cracks and dents.

One fateful evening she sat on his bed, turned slightly away from him because she was sure if she got any closer their combined body heat would cause one or both of them to implode. The warmth was only accentuated by the sticky summer air pouring in through the window.

Betty's cardigan hung off her arms- the wool slick with sweat.

"You look hot," Jughead said.

She turned to stare at him doubtfully, raising a makeup-free brow a fraction of an inch too high. She'd penciled them on that morning, but they melted off when they went swimming down in the forest that afternoon.

"I-I mean you look warm. Don't want you to get heat stroke," He covered and stuttered.

She smiled too wide, revelling in his dorkiness.

"Not that you're not hot, because-"

She slipped off the sweater and let it pool at her hips, leaving her in a too-clingy tank top that was still damp from swimming.

"You definitely, most certainly are."

He fidgeted, and she grinned.

"Hey, you got any Pink Floyd?" she asked, gesturing haphazardly towards his record table.

It was one of the few parts of his old life that he kept. He always told Betty the concession stand was too cramped for a proper dresser, but that was only to justify him leaving clothes all over. It was, however, perfectly sized for his record collection and turntable.

He shot up like he'd been waiting for her to ask. He made it across the room in two strides.

"Yeah. I have The Wall, Dark Side of The Moon, More…" He rattled off, head stuck in a record crate.

"More. That one is my favorite," Betty said, holding in her excitement.

"I always forget you're into the folksy stuff," Jughead said, chuckling.

Within an instant he was back, and the record was spinning. The black vinyl reflected peachy yellow rays in the sunset that was turning the both of them gold. Dust particles floated in the evening light and settled on the needle.

Betty could smell someone's barbeque and someone else's fresh-cut grass and someone's lilacs. It was so suburban, so innocent. She couldn't get over the perfection in the scene. Two kids sitting in the heat of a sticky-sweet summer, letting their favorite band speak the words they never could.

She shuffled closer, legs chafing against the quilt on the bed.

She rested her head in his khaki-clad lap and he immediately recoiled in shock. Halfway through the next song, he relaxed and started fiddling with her hair, uprooting it from where it was stuck to her neck with sweat.

The opening chords to Green is The Colour started up, the record groaning and cracking with each strum of the guitar.

"This song reminds me of you-" they said in unison.

His hand stilled in her hair, and she sat up.

The hiss of a sprinkler and the faded white noise the music had been reduced to were buzzing in the back of their minds. The sound of kids squealing somewhere down the road could be heard, as well as the gravel of a driveway crunching as someone's mom lumbered home with the week's groceries.

She could feel her jeans, rolled up and baggy, and the material of his flannel shirt where her hands had landed as she regained her balance.

In all the thrumming life around them, though, they could only see each other.

She was so, so blind to anything but his gold-dipped emerald eyes and wind-tousled ebony hair and pale skin turning brilliant marigold in the sun. She wanted to photograph the curls matted to his forehead and those shy dimples etching his cheeks and keep them still for her, forever.

He couldn't focus on anything other than the rosy flush of her lips and the wisps of blond falling delicately across her back and her ever-pink cheeks, sun-kissed from the heat. He thought of how he could try to write poetry about her, but he'd run out of synonyms for "beautiful".

One of those heavy summer winds blew all around them, carrying the scent of tangerines and gasoline and the baseball field at the corner, and whatever else suburbia smelled like.

She rocked forward on her knees, intending to kiss him and bumping their noses clumsily together instead. He laughed.

He crossed his arms over her chest and dragged her down onto him, kissing the top of her head in a way that could only be described as reverent.

"I used to believe love didn't exist," Betty blurted out.

He went stiff in shock.

"It's all just… chemicals, you know? Just sciency things we put labels on to make it easier for people to understand."

"What are you trying to say?" He asked warily.

"I don't know. I guess I mean that people who believe in soulmates are stupid. They're fools, they don't know what they're thinking, they're ignorant-" she cut herself off with a choking hiccup noise that was not at all attractive.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is…" She trailed her fingers over his shoulder. "I want to be stupid with you."

He smiled in a painful kind of way.

"If love is chemicals, I can't believe I haven't overdosed on dopamine yet," he said. His voice was close to breaking. It was splintering; splitting at the seams.

"Not dopamine," Betty said, shaking her head. "Oxytocin, actually. Dopamine is momentary happiness. Oxytocin is a physical bond that manifests in a more long-lasting-"

"I oxytocin you," he said, grinning wolfishly, messed-up hair falling all over.

Betty's breath caught in her throat like it was made of flypaper.

Then his expression sobered.

"Fuck that," He whispered so low it was more like he mouthed each syllable.

"I love you."

The words fell from his mouth, she could see them. She watched them tumble to the dingy linoleum below and saw them blur with the speed he pushed them out.

She kissed him fiercely, then. Like she could force the declaration back between his teeth and seal his lips shut like an envelope with her tongue.

He made a weak, vacant noise. But he kissed back. Again, again, again. He matched her harshness with calm and care. Reverence, again. He treated her like she was holy.

Gentle fingers pried her hair free of its elastics, threading into the damp strands. A thumb brushed her jaw; a firm but loving hand rested at the back of her neck.

She wanted him all over her. She wanted it smothering; suffocating. She wanted him to fog up her lungs like nicotine until he was the only thing she breathed.

Pressing himself further into her, he twined their fingers together low on her back. He arched forward, kissing her with urgency. She untangled her hands, setting them atop his and gliding them ever-so-slowly down, down, down.

Betty could feel his gasp against her lips and his hands shook beneath hers. Breathing shallow and slow against her chin, he inched his fingertips up under her top.

"I love you too," she said, gasping.

In that moment, there was most definitely something different in the air.

It was more than the inevitable buzzing excitement that came with every summer.

They had only a few short months left of childish summer fun, and less than a month left of innocence and freedom from guilt. They needed to cherish this break.

The sounds of children playing ran rampant, looping like the music of a carousel or a passing ice cream truck.

It was time for chalk-streaked hands and popsicle-stained mouths.

And this summer, the constellations aligned for two kids who'd been star-crossed for far too long.