“I don’t know, man. I’ve been feeling sick all day, and, like, a friend of mine just died, you know? I kinda just want to get back into bed and sleep until next year.”
To his surprise, his cousin didn’t immediately argue with him.
“Prediction!” Bingo announced, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his fingertips to the crown of his head. “You will sleep for three—no, four—hours, you will wake up feeling like a million bucks, and you will be starving!” He opened his eyes again, flashing that same, sharp-toothed grin. “Lucky for you, my parents are going out tonight and will be leaving their credit card behind so their son can order as much pizza as he and his favorite cousin can scarf down.”
“That sounds cool, but I don’t think—”
“Save it, cuz!” Bingo actually pressed a finger against Jughead’s lips to shut him up. “It’s not healthy to be all sad and miserable all the time, so don’t argue with me about it. You’re gonna sleep this off and feel great later—and don’t you kind of wanna get out of Riverdale for a while anyway? I mean, not to ‘go there,’ or whatever, but your buddy was killed, like, a minute from your house.” With a grimace, he stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “So come hang out at mine for a while. We can finally watch that zombie apocalypse movie you never shut up about. Plus, The Bingoes cut a new demo, and I need somebody who isn’t a total butt-kisser to listen to it and tell me how it is.”
Bingo smiled, rocking on his heels as he waited for an answer, the wind ruffling his hair again. He expected a yes, because that’s the only answer he ever got—and if he didn’t get it at first, he’d just keep trying until his cousin couldn’t take it anymore. The only hope Jughead had of getting home any time soon was to give in and then resume the argument later. Like, over the phone, with Bingo all the way back in Midville, where he couldn’t do anything about it but be annoyed.
“Yeah, fine,” Jughead said at last, and Bingo pumped his fist in a dorky celebration of victory. “I’ll call you when I wake up, or whatever.”
“My parents are leaving at seven thirty, so be over at eight!” Clapping Jughead on the back, Bingo started down the street with a good-bye salute. “And bring your appetite!”
Jughead watched until his cousin turned a corner and disappeared from view, until the street was empty again, and the only sound was the wind cutting through the chain-link fence. His stomach still tied in knots, he looked back down at the dark substance caught under his fingernails, and an eerie sense of certainty swept over him in that instant. Whether it was genuine ESP or just plain old paranoia, he was suddenly convinced of one thing: More death was on its way to Riverdale.
FOR AS LONG AS ARCHIE could remember, his family had lived next door to the Coopers, and he’d had a view of Betty’s bedroom window from his own. As kids, they’d played charades or performed puppet shows for each other across the divide between their homes, and as tweens, they’d exchanged secret messages at night, using flashlights to blink out strings of Morse code when they were supposed to be sleeping.
Recently, it had become a little more awkward for them to have such an intimate view of each other’s personal space, and so Betty’s curtains were drawn more often than they weren’t. Even so, the soft glow of light through the peachy fabric that backed the panes, and the movement of a shadow in the room beyond, was enough to tell Archie that the girl was home. And when that light went suddenly dark at exactly a quarter to eight, the redheaded boy snapped to attention, crawling to his windowsill and peeking over the edge for a side view of the Coopers’ front porch.
It took only a minute for Betty to appear, dressed in yoga pants and a leather jacket that he had never seen before. As she strode down the front walk, headed for the Volkswagen Beetle she drove—a car that had belonged to her sister, until Polly went away to college, where she couldn’t afford to keep a vehicle on campus—Archie raced out of his room. Pounding down the stairs, bolting through the kitchen for the back door, he shouted a garbled explanation to his parents and hurried out into the night.
Betty was just pulling away from the curb, her rear lights glaring at him like bright, angry eyes as he dashed for his own car, lunged behind the wheel, and cranked the engine to life. His back was sweating as he accelerated after her, his headlights off so she wouldn’t notice him right away—and he knocked over two trash bins and nearly took out a mailbox in his desperate haste to make sure she didn’t get away.
“I’ll come by after sundown. Just make sure you’re ready for me.” He’d known Betty Cooper his entire life, from coordinated Halloween costumes to uncoordinated middle school dance moves; what was she hiding from him? And what could it possibly have to do with what happened to Dilton? “A friend of mine is dead, and it’s my fault.” Wherever she was headed, Archie had to know. If she was in trouble, there might be something he could do to help.
Or maybe … maybe she was trouble. Shaking his head, Archie tried to rid himself of the thought. It was absurd; this was Betty, for Pete’s sake—there was no way she could be up to something nefarious. Somehow, there had to be another explanation.
He kept Betty’s car in his sights but did his best to hang back as far as possible. Archie was shocked when, after a few minutes, he realized they were headed to the west end of town—the lumber district. There was nothing there but feral animals, collapsing buildings, and illicit dump sites for car parts, furniture, and electronics that people didn’t want to haul the extra fifteen miles to the actual junkyard between Riverdale and Midville. Archie was trying to figure out what business Betty could possibly have in such a rundown and potentially dangerous neighborhood, when the Beetle slowed and veered into the wide, sloping driveway that serviced one of the neighborhood’s aging warehouses.
Pulling swiftly to the curb, Archie killed his engine and yanked a pair of child’s binoculars—the only ones he’d been able to dig up on short notice—from the pocket of his letterman’s jacket. Through them, he watched Betty come to a stop before a fenced gate that stretched across the entrance to the warehouse’s lot. He watched her get out of the car, use a key to undo the padlock that secured the chained barrier, and drive onto the lot. Moments later, she returned on foot and looped the chain back around the gateposts from the inside, replacing the padlock again.
Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of his car, his face pulled into a brooding frown, Archie gave himself a pep talk. He wanted to know what was going on inside a creepy, supposedly abandoned warehouse in a creepy, supposedly abandoned part of town. The area was filled with terrifying, cat-sized rodents, and probably also a gang of mean and fashionable punks—like the ones who always populated the bad parts of town in the movies—but the only way he was going to know is if he did it.
Cursing Betty for doing whatever she was doing that led them here, and cursing himself for not thinking to bring a weapon when he left the house, he eased out of the car. The air was damp, soured by a lingering smell of decay, and as Archie scuttled across the street, the hairs lifted one by one along the back of his neck. Choosing a section of the fence farthest from the few lampposts they bothered to do maintenance on anymore in the lumber district, he found a toehold in the chain link, reached up with his hands, and started to climb.
To his credit, he only almost fell off twice. When he landed again on the other side of the fence and immediately lost his footing, he also just missed tumbling into a stagnant pool of dirty water that filled a pitted section of the warehouse lot’s crumbling pavement. The building itself was nondescript—two stories, boxy and industrial, the color impossible to determine even with the generous illumination of the full moon. From this angle, Archie could see a pair of small square windows just below the roofline, their grimy panes lit from within.
Crouching low, he darted across the blacktop, not at all sure what he was doing. There was a heavy-looking metal door that faced this side of the lot, but the security light above it was out, and Archie had a feeling he wouldn’t get a very good reception if h
e just knocked and politely asked to come in. Betty’s car was parked nose-in against the wall to the right-hand side of the lonely entrance, and two other cars, neither of which he recognized, were parked beside it. She wasn’t here alone.
He tried the handle on the door, but it was locked. From where he stood, he could hear music playing inside, and he wished there was some way he could climb up and peek in through the windows. They were at least fifteen feet up, though, and the side of the warehouse was completely flat. Inching along the perimeter, he rounded a corner and stepped into deep shadows, where the building blocked both the moon and streetlight. Here, to his surprise, he found a small, square window at shoulder height—with a badly damaged screen.
A little elbow grease was all it took to force the screen out of the frame, at which point he confronted a single-hung pane of frosted glass. It slid up maybe ten inches before it caught fast, leaving a small, rectangular hole that gave Archie a view of nothing but darkness inside. It wasn’t big enough to pass a normal-sized microwave through, but if he took off his letterman’s jacket and held his breath, he was pretty sure he could make it work.
Over the summer, Archie had spent a lot of time in the weight room, trying to build up the kind of physique that he hoped would catch the attention of the girls in his life. Now, however, he regretted every single overhead press and lateral raise he’d done when he stuck his head and right arm through the opening … and immediately stuck fast, his left shoulder unable to fit past the narrow frame. With some considerable kicking and twisting, however—and the shredding of about six inches of important skin off his very personal rib cage—he managed to force his way through at last. Tumbling headfirst through the gap, he dropped into the shadows.
The air left his lungs as he crash-landed on a hard floor next to the porcelain base of a pedestal sink. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Archie took in the pale, cracked underbelly of a nearby toilet, and a mop and bucket propped against the wall. He was in a bathroom, the tile beneath him dusty but otherwise not unclean. The music was louder now, something high-octane, with a throbbing beat, and he could make out a faint glow coming in under the door.
Grabbing his jacket from where he had dropped it, and easing the door open with care, Archie stepped into a dim corridor, light slanting in from the far end to cast the flaking plaster of one wall into high relief. The music was louder still—synthesized horns and a frenetic rhythm, something that belonged in a dance club—and Archie tiptoed in its direction. Along the narrow passage, doorways to either side stood open, empty sockets so filled with darkness that it was impossible to guess what secrets they guarded. But when he reached the point where the hall ended, opening abruptly onto a vast space that soared all the way to the roof, he drew up short and gaped in shock.
Right in the middle of the otherwise empty warehouse, caught in the crossfire glare of floodlights angling down from the ceiling, stood some sort of massive obstacle course. Ramps and hurdles, ropes and rings, irregular barricades and precarious, spring-mounted beams sprawled across a flooring of athletic mats. As the music thudded away, a disembodied voice filled the air from unseen speakers, shouting, “Go!”
Instantly, a figure raced out from the shadows on the far side of the warehouse, charging for the obstacle course with a fierce expression. Wearing yoga pants and a loose-fitting T-shirt, her blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, it was Betty Cooper. Leaping into the air, she launched herself over the initial barricade headfirst, landing in a tuck and rolling to her knees. Two objects sprang from the floor on either side of her, cardboard circles, each marked with a bright red X—and in a single, deft move, so fast Archie didn’t even see her draw, she produced a pistol from a hip holster and fired two shots. Capsules of black paint burst over both targets, dead center, and Betty was on her feet again.
She leaped onto a balance beam next, which wobbled and swung under her weight, the springs stretching and rebounding unpredictably. As she pranced across, more X-marked circles appeared, snapping out from behind the barricades—three that were red, and two that were orange—and Betty fired with lightning reflexes. Black paint burst across the red targets only, and the girl lunged off the end of the beam, diving into another somersault to pass beneath a padded crossbar.
She moved like a machine, swinging between dangling ropes, dodging foam projectiles that launched at her unexpectedly from floor-mounted cannons, and throwing herself over barriers while simultaneously aiming and firing with astonishing accuracy. Archie forgot himself as he watched, openmouthed, awed by the performance he was witnessing. He’d seen Betty do backflips and tumbling passes on the field with the other cheerleaders at Riverdale High; he’d always known she was an athlete. But he had no idea she was capable of something like this.
When she reached the end of the course, Betty’s chest heaved, and her face and neck gleamed with a thin veneer of perspiration. The music ended abruptly, and Betty bent over, her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.
“Adequate,” came the woman’s booming voice over the unseen speakers again, “but you hit two orange targets and missed a red, and you’re almost four seconds over time. Take a short break, and we’ll reset.”
“The target colors are too similar,” Betty complained, shouting irritably at the shadows that surrounded the obstacle course. “You can barely tell them apart!”
“That’s the point. Sometimes you can barely tell your targets apart, Betty. Your job here is to figure out how to make that an instinct.”
“I hate this,” Betty muttered, her voice carrying through the otherwise empty warehouse, but there was no answer. She scooped a bottle of water off the floor and took a long drink, while Archie shifted his feet—hovering in the dense gloom that filled the corner where he’d emerged from the narrow hallway. He wanted to confront her, to ask what all this was about, and what it could possibly have to do with Dilton. But he was also starting to realize just how out of his element he was, and how it might be best to ask her about all this on more neutral turf. Like maybe at school, where there were lots of people around and she couldn’t pound him into the floor.
“Excuse me, sir,” came a woman’s voice from immediately behind him—the same voice he’d just heard from the speakers, only now it was swimming out of the darkness at his back and making his blood run entirely cold. “Do you mind if I ask to see your invitation to this party?”
Very slowly, his hands out at his sides, Archie turned around to face the person addressing him. But he’d barely opened his mouth to defend himself when a booted foot slammed against his chest, stealing the breath from his lungs and sending him hurtling backward through the air.
As much as Jughead hated to admit it, his cousin was right. The second he got home, he crawled between his sheets, where he tossed and turned—still nauseous and sweaty, plagued by the vision of Dilton’s silent scream—until he finally dozed off. Then, true to Bingo’s prediction, he woke again after about three hours of a deep, dreamless slumber. His thoughts fuzzy with a naptime hangover, he was surprised to find that he felt … almost refreshed. Not hungry, exactly, but for the first time all day he didn’t feel like he was being punched in the stomach from the inside.
He still had no intention of taking Bingo up on his invitation, no matter how hard it was to imagine turning down an offer of free pizza. The things he couldn’t explain, the sights and sounds that were starting to feel less and less like a dream and more and more like a memory, had him rattled all the way through. Nothing appealed to him about trying to socialize—to put on a fake smile and pretend he wasn’t scared of his own brain.
But Bingo proved right a second time when Jughead wandered downstairs, finding his mother sitting in front of the television. One story after another flickered past on the screen, an endless barrage of news coverage about the grisly death and dismemberment of Riverdale High’s most accomplished student only a quarter mile from their front door. Dilton’s yearbook picture, atmospheric shots of the cemet
ery, and unsettling crime scene photos showing the boy’s shattered eyeglasses and a blood-soaked scrap of fabric made up a horrific montage.
Thirty seconds later, Jughead was dialing his cousin and asking if the invitation still stood. The only thing worse than faking his way through an evening of pizza and movies would be faking his way through an evening of “Local Teen Torn to Pieces in Old Cemetery.”
To his surprise, hanging out with his cousin ended up being … kinda fun. His aunt and uncle had a finished basement with a massive entertainment center, and the two guys sat in beanbag chairs, stuffing their faces with food while watching zombies take over the world. Bingo mocked the movie all the way through, but the minute the credits started to roll, he was nagging Jughead about watching the sequel next.
After that, they had a competition to see who could drink a two-liter of soda the fastest, and suddenly, Jughead realized that he was actually smiling. Whole hours had gone by, and he hadn’t thought about his nightmares or Dilton Doiley even once. For the first time since he’d woken up that morning, he was starting to feel like his old self again, and he had his cousin to thank. He almost didn’t want to admit it, but hanging out with Bingo had been exactly what he needed.
When their chugging contest was over, they finally put on the new demo that The Bingoes had cut, and Jughead gave it his undivided attention.
“Well?” Bingo asked with an anxious look once the last note played. “Let me have it, Jug—both barrels. How bad do we sound? Should I sell my guitar?”
“Gimme a break.” Jughead fixed the boy with a level stare. “This track is great, and you know it. You’re just fishing for compliments.”
A Werewolf in Riverdale Page 4
