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The Girl Next Door	By : CeeCee Category: Comics > Archie & Co. Views: 4771 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Archies fandom. I'm not making any money for writing this piece of sh- I mean, fiction.

Chapter List
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Author’s Note: I was feeling this plot possibility for a while when I was in the middle of writing Pigtails. This story is less about the different guys who like Betty, or her rivalry with Ron, and more about how Betty feels about Reggie as a whole. This is kind of a companion piece to Pigtails, almost a what-if. It’s an AU, not particularly canon, to an extent, because I’m ignoring some of the common, popular background pairings. That’s how I roll. Get used to it.
“Stop. Where are you going with those?”
“Outside.” Alice stared down at her twelve-year-old daughter quizzically, deciding Betty had been too quiet all day. She looked like she was up to something.
Not just one, but two melting twin pops, fresh out of their clear cellophane wrappers, were clenched in her hands. Alice shook her head.
“Not before dinner. And just one.”
“I want to share the other one,” Betty explained quickly.
“With who?”
“A friend.”
“Dinner’s in a half an hour.” Alice backed off her end of the discussion long enough to check the roast she had in the oven. “Which friend?”
“Um… well…” Betty hedged, and her cheeks turned beet red.
Ah. It made sense to Alice in that moment that it was wiser not to ask too many questions.
“You can give Juggie a popsicle if you want, but that’s it. Just one.” Betty almost laughed with relief. Her mother drew her own conclusion, and she hadn’t been found out.
Jughead was Alice’s logical conclusion. Betty and Forsythe, indolent, scabby-kneed, skinny and owning the appetite of a three-hundred-pound truck driver, were thick as thieves. He was often her partner in crime for trips to the park to play with his remote control cars; comic collecting; going to the penny candy store; fishing in the creek with nets; watching Mighty Mouse cartoons and reruns of the Six Million Dollar Man, and jumping into more tomboyish pursuits than her mother could even catalog.
Why wouldn’t she give Juggie a popsicle? Betty hurried out the back screen door, letting it slam shut. “Careful with that door!”
“Sorry!” Betty offered without turning back. She was off and running, out of the back yard and through the side fence. She elbowed open the latch to avoid dropping the twin pops.
Automatically, she headed next door. She beamed when she noticed a familiar five-speed bike in the driveway. Good. He was home. Her cheeks flushed again, and her stomach fluttered as she skipped up the front steps and hit the doorbell with her pinkie.
“Get the door, sweetie,” Betty heard Mrs. Mantle cry from the back of the house. Betty’s heart hammered and she licked a drop of cool, sticky red juice from her hand while she waited.
“C’mon, c’monc’monc’mon,” she muttered under her breath. A sudden rush of footsteps from behind the door both thrilled and terrified her. The front door was tugged open after she saw the edge of a shaggy black head peek through the ruffled curtains in the window.
Reggie stood before her, hand on the screen door handle, brows drawing together. “What do you want?”
“Hey.”
“Hey.” He nodded to her hands. “Where did you get those?”
“My house. Come outside. Have one with me.” She ignored his exasperated little sigh and wanted to dance with glee when he opened the door and stalked out onto the porch steps.
His summer tan was fading a bit from spending the past three days inside. The long, thick cast that covered his arm from knuckles to elbow was the culprit. Reggie’s mother was protective of him and refused to let him back out onto the ball field with a busted radius and fractured wrist. Reggie’s dark waves of hair were slightly tousled and mashed in the back from lying back against the couch cushions. He automatically reached for the red popsicle but hesitated. “Which one did you lick already?”
“The purple one,” she lied. Betty licked both of them to catch the drips; it couldn’t be helped. She handed it to him. “Here.” She sat on the top step of the porch and sucked on the twin pop noisily. Grudgingly he sat beside her.
“Thanks.”
“Sure.”
“What’ve you been doing all day?”
“Nothing. Hung out with Jug earlier. I read his new Spider-Ham today.”
“Spider-Ham’s lame,” Reggie sneered, shaking his head. Betty elbowed him.
“No he’s not! I love Spider-Ham! He’s funny!”
“LAAAAME,” Reggie protested. He temporarily held his popsicle with his bad hand and made a “loser” ‘L’ with his finger and thumb over his forehead.
“You’re missing out,” she assured him as she went back to her pop, but she was suppressing a grin.
“What else did you read at Jug’s, the Care Bears?” Reggie prodded, smirking as he bumped up against her with his shoulder.
“No,” she huffed. “Please. They’re so sissy. Yuck.”
“So? You are sissy,” he shrugged.
“Am not!”
“Sissy,” he pronounced.
“Wuss. I’m not the one in a cast. And you throw like a girl,” she accused.
“No, I don’t!” he snapped, but she grinned at him. “YOU throw like a girl! Hello.” But to her credit, Betty had a wicked curve ball, and she’d outpitched them all, including Big Moose.
“So? What’s your excuse?” Betty caught the drips from her twin pop and smirked at him with purple lips.
“Jerk.”
Betty eyed his cast, poring over all of the scribbles; there was hardly any blank space left on the orange plaster. “Who drew all the little hearts?” she pressed. Reggie chuckled and wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“Ronnie and Midge. At least they didn’t make flowers or Smurfs or other girly stuff.” But he sounded a little proud, regardless.
“What are you doing today?”
“Nothing. I did my paper route this morning, even though I can only throw with one arm. It sucked.”
“Maybe I can help next time.”
“I don’t need any help, it just took longer, that’s all,” he argued. “What did you do?” His expression looked slightly doubtful, as though she couldn’t have done anything that impressive, but she’d saved him from further boredom; Reggie hated being cooped up inside alone.
“Eh. Nothing much.” Nothing he’d be interested in hearing about, Betty decided. She spent a great deal of her morning cleaning out her closet of clothes that she had outgrown, helping her mother bag them up for Goodwill to make room for new ones. She searched for other topics of discussion, anything to justify hanging out on his porch.
It was a useless effort.
“REG!” They both turned at the sound of Chuck Clayton’s voice and the whizzing of his bike wheels as he sped up Reggie’s driveway. Betty waved, but for the most part he ignored her. “Dude, what’s goin’ on? When do you get that thing off?”
“I’m benched til school starts,” Reggie muttered miserably.
“You can’t even swim? We’re going to the lake. My dad’s bringing the grill.”
“That sounds cool,” Betty chimed in.
“What’s up, Cooper? Did you come over to nurse little Reggie back to health?” Chuck teased, and his voice rose to a girly pitch, no big stretch since he was only twelve. “Can I fluff your pillow, sweetie pie?”
“Shut up!” Betty retorted, and her cheeks flushed a deep scarlet. Why did boys have to be such jerks?!?
“Yeah, Betty? What’s up? I don’t need any girl babying me!”
“Am not!”
“Sure looks like it,” Chuck accused. Betty shied away from Reggie, now embarrassed to be caught sitting beside him, resenting the sneer twisting her crush’s features.
“Whatever,” she tsked.
“C’mon, man. We’re going to the lake at three.”
“I’ve gotta ask my mom. I can’t get my cast wet.”
“Who else is going?” Betty inquired.
“Not you,” he mocked.
“So?”
“So why do you wanna know?”
“I was just asking a question,” Betty told him haughtily. “Whatever.”
“Is that all you know how to say?” Reggie added. His dark brown eyes were full of laughter, and if she wasn’t ready to kick him in the shins, he would have been cute.
“Bye,” Betty offered. “I know how to say that, too.” She trotted down the steps and stalked back into her own yard, fuming.
“Oooooo,” Chuck crowed. “She looks ticked.”
“Eh. Yeah.” Reggie bit a huge chunk from his pop, feeling slightly guilty. “Who else is going, anyway?”
“Huh? Nobody. Just Arch, Jug and Moose, mostly.”
“Mostly?” Reggie’s ears perked up. “Who else, dude?”
“Nobody,” Chuck huffed.
“C’mon, man, we’re bros.”
“I asked Nancy if she wanted to come,” Chuck confessed.
“Nancy!”
“C’mon! She goes to our church! My parents told me to ask her,” he explained hastily, throwing out his hands. But Reggie wasn’t about to let go of the bone that Chuck threw out there.
“Chuck likes Nancy…”
“Shut up, dude!” Chuck made shushing gestures at him, to no avail.
“CHUCK LIKES NANCY! Aw, man! I’m telling everybody!”
“You ain’t right.”
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The Girl Next Door