I collapsed onto my bed, tired after a long day. Between Archie and Jughead's trial, Penny getting arrested, and the chaos at the Lodge household... it was too much. I finger-combed my hair, feeling all the knots. I leaned over to my bookshelf and found a book to read. The Art of War. Fitting for the days events. I searched through my nightstand drawers to find my reading glasses. I put them on and started to read.

It was about 11:00 pm, and I was 50 pages into the book. All of a sudden, I heard the front door open and a curious voice came with it. I put my book down on my white comforter and listened closely. The door closed quietly. I looked through the keyhole of my door, and saw...

Um, Fred Andrews?!

What was he doing here? If... if my dad walked into the parlor and saw him, I'm scared he would actually kill him.

My mom ushered him in, a smile on her face. What. Was. Going. On? Was she crazy? Did she know the risks she was taking right now? I looked closely.

"Hermione." Fred said, looking down, awkwardly.

"Fred. Please, sit." She motioned for him to sit at the kitchen stools.

Fred sighed. "What am I doing here, Hermione?" He didn't know what he was doing here? So, it was my mom's idea? She had officially lost her mind. If she wants to have a late-night rendezvous with Fred Andrews, then take it to a restaurant.

"Look, Fred... I..." She stumbled on her words. "I know the past few months have been- tense. But I need someone to confide in and I can't talk to anyone else." Um, hello? What about your daughter?

"I- I made a mistake." Hermione said. Fred raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

My mom took out a bottle of champagne and poured two glasses. "Hiram is slowly tearing everyone apart. Veronica... she's been trying to tell me to leave him. And I think she might be right." I listened intently.

"You want to divorce him?" Fred looked genuinely interested in the conversation.

"No. I want to leave him. Get some money, get Veronica and leave." I froze in shock.

"Oh." He seemed very uncomfortable with the conversation, and honestly, I didn't blame him.

"The last straw was this." She slid something across the table. It appeared to be a note of some kind, although my view from the keyhole of a door wasn't that great. Fred took the note and read it aloud.

"Thanks for getting me arrested. Get me out of here, or I'll send someone to hurt your precious girls. -PeNnY" Fred sighed and set the note down.

"He told me nothing about this. If he's willing to put his illegal business before his family, then I'm done." She tore the note up to pieces and threw it away.

"Hermione, I'm so sorry this happened to you. If you need a place to stay, you're always welcome-"

"No. I can find a hotel. But, thank you." They looked at each other for a minute and then... kissed.

I shifted so that my back was against my bedroom door. Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god. What if dad just walked in on them? He would actually kill Fred. Had they had meetings like this before? How oblivious really was I? And the threat... were we actually leaving? I'd gotten so used to this apartment. Were we just going to leave in the middle of the night?

"I'm sorry." I heard my mom say.

"You didn't do anything wrong." Fred said.

"You should go. Veronica and I are leaving tonight." What?!

Fred got up and left. Oh god oh god oh god. I heard footsteps and ran silently to my bed, pretending to be asleep. My mother walked in and shook me.

"Veronica!" She whisper shouted.

"What?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

"We're leaving." She started packing my things into a bag.

What should I do? Should I play dumb or tell her I knew what was going on? "Mom. She didn't stop moving, so I grabbed her shoulder. "Mom! I heard you. I heard you and Mr. Andrews talking.." I trailed off.

"Oh, Veronica." She hugged me. "We need to leave. Now."

I broke away from her. "But why? Why do we have to leave now?"

She looked at me. "I thought you wanted this!"

My mouth dropped. "I didn't ask to get up at 11:30 at night and scurry off to a mystery hotel! This is insane. You are insane." I stepped away from her.

She reached for me. "It's just the way it has to be. We have to hurry. Please, Veronica, just trust me." I pulled away.

"Since when has that helped? When you said that Fp was an 'old friend' when you were actually paying him owed money? When you forged my signature? When you trusted Hiram and made me trust him too? All those were genius ideas, weren't they?"

My mom looked impatient. "Veronica, we need to leave. Right now. There's no time to argue. Just come on!" She walked out of my room and I decided to follow her because I would rather live with her than my father.

"Where are we even staying?" I asked, watching her pack things up.

"I don't know yet, Veronica. But we can't stay with that threat up in the air. Remember Papa Poutine's son? That could happen again if we don't leave." She told me to grab some bags that were already filled with stuff. I'm assuming it was money or objects of value. I did, and we left, shutting the door. Ok, ok, I know my dad is evil, but some part of me still felt bad about leaving him. The only people he cared about were me and my mom, and we were leaving him. He would be heartbroken in the morning. I felt really guilty.

"Did you... did you like, leave a note or anything?" I asked.

"No." She replied in a tone that meant she didn't want to talk about it. We went down the elevator and walked out the front door. The new doorman wasn't even there. That's great, the person supposed to be defending us wasn't even at their post. Literally anyone could have access to our apartment. I felt the cool breeze as soon as we stepped outside. We started walking in silence. My mom suddenly stopped.

"You almost made me trip! Why did you stop?" I asked, annoyed.

"We have to make a stop." She said.

"Where?" I was cold. I just wanted to be inside.

"The register." She started walking again, and I followed her.

{-]

"Why are we here again?" I crossed my arms, looking at the Register building. It was closed, obviously. "It's not even open."

My mom pulled something out of her pocket. Another note. She taped it onto the door of the building.

"Mom, the wind is going to blow it away." I pointed out, slightly irritated.

She took the message and slid it under the door. "There." She said, contempt.

"Ok, what does it even say?" I was impatient.

"It says that your father framed Archie and that the whole thing was just a scheme to get revenge." My mother explained, scarily calm.

Suddenly I was in a much better mood. "Really? So, Archie might be released?" My mother smiled slyly and shrugged her shoulders. I was practically bouncing up and down. My mom nodded, and started walking again.

"Where are we going?" I asked. "Everything's closed."

"I know that, mija. What place is open 24 hours?"

"Pops."

"Exactly."

{-}

The next morning, we walked around, trying to find a hotel to stay at. But strangely, every single one told us that we couldn't stay there. My mom got annoyed, telling them that we had the money so they had to let us stay.

"We don't have to do anything." They would reply.

Finally, we had one hotel who accepted us.

"Thank god, every other hotel has been rejecting us!" I laughed.

The doorman to the hotel took out a newspaper and handed it to us, looking down at the ground. It was the Register, and it included the note my mom slipped under the door last night. But... the headline was:

Rich Wife of Hiram Lodge Blames Husband On Teen's Arrest Because of Marital Problems?

"Oh no." I said, gripping the paper. Was this written by Mrs. Cooper? I looked to the bottom of the newspaper and saw it was published by anonymous. Did the Register have a new employee? I read the rest of the paper, which included an interview of my dad, saying that this morning, me and my mom disappeared, and this anonymous's perspective of what happened, which was apparently that me, the rich and spoiled daughter, wanted her criminal boyfriend to be free, so convinced her mother to write the note. Since my mom, the rich and spoiled wife, was having marital problems, she agreed, lashing out at her husband. This was bad. This was very very bad. My mom shoved the paper aside, grabbed our key, and walked up the stairs to the room. I followed. When we were locked in the room, I got a call from Betty.

"Hey..." She said. "Are you ok? Neither me or my mom wrote the article. We would never do that to your family."

"I know. We just checked into some hotel; the only hotel that would take us. This is insane. Who is anonymous?"

"I have no idea, Ronnie. The Register hasn't taken any new employees. Someone must have broken in."

"That's great. That's just great." I shook my head.

"Did you really leave? Why? What changed your mom's mind?"

"Some threat she got, saying that if Hiram didn't get Penny out of jail, she would send one of her Ghoulies out on me and my mom."

"That's horrible!"

"Mhm. And my mom was with Fred Andrews."

There was a pause on the other end. "Wait, what?" Betty asked, confused.

"I don't know. She was with him right before we left."

"That's... odd..."

"Yeah."

"Well, good news. Since Jughead's only accused of one murder now, the police have decided to give him bail. He obviously can't pay it, it's just too much for me, but could you?" She asked hopefully.

"Betty..."

"I know! I know you're in a time of crisis but can you please do this for me and Jughead?"

I debated with myself. "Fine. Meet at the police station in 10." I hung up.

{-}

I saw Betty, huddled outside the front door of the Police Station. She waved and smiled brightly when she saw me.

"Alright. Let's go free James Dean." I said. Betty laughed and we walked into the station.

"You're back! I would say this is a surprise, but it's really not anymore." Minetta said.

"I'm here to pay Jughead's bail." I threw the bag of money at him. "So here. We're going to go get him now." He didn't even try to stop us. We grabbed the key from him and we walked over to Jughead. When we saw him, I literally stopped. Betty looked horrified. Jughead was slumped over in the corner of his cell. He looked too thin, his hair was dirty and messy, he had bruises all over, and he basically just looked really sick and beaten up. Betty rushed over to him.

"Oh my god, Jughead, what happened?" She asked.

He laughed a pained laugh. "Nothing. Got into a fight with one of the inmates. I stopped eating."

"Why would you stop eating?" I asked.

"What's even the point anymore? I'm going to be stuck in here forever."

Betty grabbed him from where she was. "No, Jug, you're not. Don't talk like that. We're actually here," She took the key and unlocked his door. "To free you."

Jughead sat up and stared at the open door like he had been in there all his life. "What?" He asked, confused. "I have no bail-"

"Veronica paid it. Since one of your charges were dropped, they let you have bail. They didn't tell you?" She asked. He shook his head no, and hugged Betty.

"Everything was so hard without you." He whispered to her. I rolled my eyes. Sweet. So sweet. A 'Thank you' for paying the bail would have been nice.

I cleared my throat. "You're welcome."

He got up and came over to me. "Thank you, Veronica. Truly. It must have been expensive. I owe you one. Really."

I waved my hand. "It's fine."

We walked back to the front entrance of the station, and I carelessly tossed the keys in the general direction of Minetta. I braced myself, because I knew that as soon as I stepped out of those doors, I would be the "Spoiled rich girl who wanted to free her criminal boyfriend". But that was okay. I could handle it.

I was Veronica Lodge, after all.