Chapter 5
FP brought Jughead and Jellybean over the next day.
He was nervous in a way he hadn’t been the day before and he didn’t know why. It was fine. Penny told him to bring the kids over. She said Betty had been asking for him.
So why the hell was he nervous?
Maybe it was Jellybean’s silence. The usually sunny, talkative four year old had been unusually silent, staring out the window in her booster seat, eyes a little wide. Jughead looked just as haunted.
He’d asked questions in the past, of course. They both had. Where was she? Why didn’t she live with Penny anymore? Why was Hal so stupid?
That last question had come from Jughead. FP had never encouraged either of his kids to use that word, but he could never bring himself to correct him either.
Because Hal was stupid.
He was, perhaps, the stupidest fucking person FP had ever had the displeasure of meeting.
But he would get what was coming to him.
Even if it took a couple of years, he would get what was coming to him.
***
“Mommy!” She heard Betty call from her bedroom. “Come see, come see!”
Penny laughed tiredly, pushing herself up to stand. After another sleepless night, she wondered if she would ever sleep again. Betty hadn’t slept much either, but a five year old bounced back much faster.
In more ways than one.
After a single day, she had seamlessly slipped back into calling things hers. Her bedroom. Her playhouse. Her best friends, Jughead, Toni and Jellybean.
Jughead and Jellybean were on their way over. Toni had a dentist appointment that couldn’t be missed, and then she’d be over too. It would be just like old times.
And Penny couldn’t wait.
She turned the slight corner into Betty’s bedroom to find her daughter standing in the center of her rug that was shaped like a flower, wearing the clothes Pam had given them to get her through the next few days.
She was wearing a long sleeved purple shirt, a pair of jean overalls and dirty white sneakers. Despite the fact that she had pulled her hair into the two little half-buns Betty had favored when she was younger earlier that morning, her hair was all over the place.
It was like Elizabeth could read her mind.
“Mommy,” Betty whispered gleefully. “I look like me again!”
***
Mommy started crying.
Betty froze, scared she might have done something wrong only for warm arms to wrap around her, lifting her off her feet.
“M-Mommy?” She stammered.
“Honey, you’ve always looked like you,” mommy whispered. “Stupid, frilly dresses, tight braids, and Hal and Alice Cooper have never stopped you from being exactly who you are.”
A smile slowly made its way onto her face.
“I’m Betty, mommy!” Betty declared happily.
Mommy laughed, peppering kisses across her face to make her laugh too. “Yes you are, baby.”
***
He brushed past Penny the second the door opened without so much as a hello, desperate to see her.
Where had she been?
Jughead tried to remember the last time he’d seen her, but all he saw was a flash of blonde, curly hair. A smile. A laugh. A shout for him to chase after her.
He moved through the small house on autopilot, finally spotting her sitting on her bed. It was almost too small for her, but Betty looked smaller somehow, wearing clothes Toni had outgrown last year, her hair all over the place. Her arms were wrapped tightly around the doll he’d once jumped into freezing Sweet Water River to save because he couldn’t stand to see her cry.
He might have only been six, but in that moment, Jughead made a promise to himself that he would kill Hal Blossom someday.
Or he’d spend the rest of his life trying to make Betty smile. Whatever happened first.
“Hi Betts,” he said quietly.
“Hi Juggie,” Betty answered, giving him a half-smile, but it was better than nothing. “Want to go outside?”
***
“Tag, you’re it!” Jellybean declared, tapping Betty on the arm and then squealing with delight as Betty chased her around the yard.
Even two years hadn’t been enough time to deter the tightly woven bonds of their four children.
Penny watched as Jughead’s hand slipped into her daughter’s, determined not to let her get too far. She wondered when he would be old enough to understand. When Betty would be old enough to understand, to ask questions or recall certain details she had yet to share. Besides a few heart wrenching conversations, she hadn’t wanted to talk about her time away at all.
And that was okay. For now.
Of course, if she was being perfectly honest, Penny was twenty four now, young but not so much of a spring chicken anymore, and she didn’t understand any of it either.
This would inevitably fuck them both up at some point, of that she was sure.
But let that day come, Penny thought bravely. She had already been through one of the worst things imaginable, but now that she had her little girl back, she knew they would make it through anything.
Simply because they were together.
***
“What was it like?” Toni wanted to know. “Living with Hal... what was it like?”
Jughead threw a handful of grass blades at her, shaking his head, but Betty shushed him.
It was okay for Toni to ask, she decided. Had she not lived it, she would have been curious too.
“Hal’s really mean,” she whispered.
Jellybean nodded in agreement, though out of the four of them, she was the youngest and she probably remembered Hal the least. Jughead and Toni knew more, remembered more, but they had all lived through it.
A hand wrapped around her own in a hard squeeze.
“Hal is stupid,” Jughead told her.
Betty couldn’t help it.
She burst out laughing.
“Hal is stupid!” She echoed gleefully, glancing over her shoulder in search of her mommy. When she found her, a smile broke out across her face. “Hey mommy! Hal is stupid!”
***
She would have kept Betty at home with her forever if she could.
But fuck it, her education was important.
Elizabeth had hardly seemed fazed when Penny woke her up early in the morning nearly a week later. She had finally started sleeping through the night again, but Penny’s mind was still going a mile a minute. Trying to refrain sleeping on the floor of her daughter’s bedroom, she had settled for quick peeks through the partially open door every three hours instead.
It was obsessive, maybe even a little impulsive, but she couldn’t help it.
She wasn’t going to lose her daughter again.
“Mommy, where are we going?” Betty mumbled, sitting cross legged on the bathroom counter, watching half-heartedly as she ran a brush through her cropped hair.
Penny put the brush down. “It’s time for you to go back to school, honey.”
Her eyes widened. “In New York.”
She picked Betty up, holding her to her hip. It was a little awkward at first with the vast height difference from the last time she’d been able to hold her like that, but she recovered quickly. “No, baby, here. In Riverdale. You’ll be with Toni and Jughead the whole time.”
Betty visibly relaxed in her arms. “You promise?”
“Yes, baby, I promise,” Penny whispered. She held out her pinky and Betty’s quickly wrapped around it as they both kissed their thumbs. “And if you need anything, Elizabeth, anything at all... you have them call me and I’ll come running, okay/”
Betty nodded solemnly, hooking her arms around Penny’s neck in a vice grip.
“I love you, mommy,” she said.
“Oh honey, I love you too.”
***
Betty made the goodbye quick, worried about what would happen if she held on any longer. Mommy kissed the top of her head, and she let go.
“C’mon Little Bit!” Toni cried, grabbing her by the arm and tugging just hard enough to get her feet moving. “Just wait till you see the playground!”
She tried to smile, feeling her mommy’s eyes watching her every move, but it felt forced, and she slowly worked herself out of Toni’s grasp, staring up at the school she was expected to go to.
She loved school, loved everything about it. Her teacher in New York had constantly sang her praises, not that Hal or Alice ever cared, but it had still been nice to know someone cared. That someone saw her as something other than a nuisance.
Suddenly, she didn’t want to go.
What if going to school meant she never got to see her mommy again?
It was a silly thought, but she was scared.
“C’mon Betts,” Jughead was by her side before she could turn back and run into her mommy’s arms.
There was something about the boy with the beanie that always made her want to tell the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
“I’m scared,” Betty said.
“I know,” he replied, holding out a hand. “But it’s okay, I’m here.”
She could do this.
Mommy always told her that she could do anything.
Betty took a deep breath, suddenly braver. Calmer. Taking hold of Jughead’s still outstretched hand, she laced their fingers together and let him pull her forward into the school.
***
“You’ve got a pretty great kid there,” she mumbled to FP, watching them go.
His hand landed on her shoulder with a squeeze. “You’re not hurting in the kid department either.”
***
“Who decided that school ended at three-twenty?” She hissed to Pamela. “In my day, we went for half days, morning or afternoon, and I turned out just fine!”
Pamela almost looked amused, riding a shotgun in Penny’s old beat-up bug. “Pen.”
“I mean, really. What five-year-old needs to go to school all day?”
“A brilliant five year old who honestly might take over the world someday,” she answered.
Penny thought about it and grinned. That sounded like Elizabeth all right.
“What time is it?” She asked, returning her gaze to the window.
“Two-fifty-eight.”
“Great. What time is it now?”
“Penny.”
They both laughed.
“Sorry,” Penny pulled the hair tie from her wrist, using it to wrestle her tangled mess of hair into a stubby ponytail. “I just...”
“Want to see your daughter,” Pamela touched her arm, always so understanding. “I know, I do too.”
But she didn’t. Not really.
And she didn’t mean that in an unkind way. She was sure Pammy was anxious to see Toni, but the feeling of anxiety didn’t even begin to cover how she was feeling when it came to Betty’s first day of school.
Two years she had been gone. Two years that she had missed out on.
She wasn’t sure when, if ever, she would feel comfortable leaving her daughter.
But this was good for Betty, she knew that. She hadn’t even considered therapy, but she was doing her best to get her little girl into a routine. One where she went to school, came home and did homework and played with her friends. She had already placed a call to the studio and starting the following week, Betty would be resuming her dance lessons.
Her little ballerina.
“Hey Pen?”
“I didn’t ask what time it was,” Penny tried to joke.
Pamela snorted. “You don’t have to. Look.”
Flying towards the car was a little girl with wild blonde hair, marker covered hands, overalls and her purple backpack hanging off one shoulder. Penny shot out of her seat, running around the Bug just in time to gather her little hurricane in a bearhug.
“Hi mommy!” Betty cried. “I did arts and crafts!”