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Pigtails	By : CeeCee Category: Comics > Archie & Co. Views: 11153 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own the Archies fandom. This is a work of fanfiction for entertainment only, and I'm not making money from it.

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Summary: Nothing in the world is crueler than middle school, except summer break.

Author’s Note: I was never a popular girl in school, so I know a little of what Betty is going through – what I’m putting her through. Call me evil…muahahahaha. But yeah, I got into trouble fighting with different “Reggies” every day on the playground from grades K thru six.

Five years later:

“Put on that Britney Spears CD next,” Ronnie demanded imperiously. “And could you get my back?”

“Okay.”

“Wait, let me undo this first.” Ronnie laid on her stomach and undid the back of her red and white striped bikini top. Betty dutifully uncapped the sunscreen and squirted a generous handful into her palm. “Brrr, that’s cold!” Ronnie complained as she smoothed some on her upper back.

“Could you do me next?”

“When I’m ready to flip over. Not now, Betty.” Betty suppressed a sigh; her skin was more sensitive than Veronica’s, so it wouldn’t have killed her to get her back before she lay down. Betty opted instead to put her blue tank top back on over her suit, even though the sun had felt good on her bare skin.

It was a nice day to be at the lake. Betty almost regretted that school started in another two weeks, but she was excited to start seventh grade. Her stomach had a million butterflies in it the day they’d taken a field trip to Riverdale Junior High for the tour and orientation. Betty practically had the class schedule they’d sent in the mail memorized. Ronnie had already grilled her to death about what to wear the first day, nagging Betty for her opinion and then throwing aside all of her suggestions. If previous years were any indication, Betty would like endure the same ordeal the night before the first day of school. It didn’t really matter what Veronica picked out, anyway. She wouldn’t go to school looking like anyone else. Her parents had taken her on vacation to Paris earlier that summer, and her mother shipped home boxes of clothes from all of the best boutiques for herself and her daughter. Betty was less jealous of the clothes and wished that she’d had the chance to see Paris itself and hear the locals speak real French.

Veronica didn’t even bring her back a tee shirt.

Betty reached into her mini cooler and pulled out a can of Coke, wiping down the top with the edge of her towel.

No sooner than she’d taken a sip than she heard a rushing of feet behind her.

“BOOGABOOGABOOGA!” The sudden, raucous voices shocked her into exhaling the fizzy soda through her nose, squirting it out over her upper lip. It burned! Betty sputtered and look up in annoyance at Reggie as he jumped into her line of vision.

“HAHA! Scared you! Betty’s a lil’ scaredy cat!” Behind him, Archie and Jughead were smirking and elbowing each other. Ronnie was glaring up at them from her stomach, trying her best not to lean up too high. She struggled to get a hold of the straps of her suit that tied around her neck.

“You should’ve seen the look on your faces,” Archie added, grinning as he peered down at Veronica. Betty was indignant that he wasn’t looking at her, mentally blaming her modest little tank top and suit.

“Creeps,” Betty muttered as she rescued her soda.

“Whatsamatter, Betty? You cold?” Reggie jeered. He, unfortunately, noticed what she was wearing, and she wished he hadn’t. “Can’t you see the sun’s shining? Whoo,” he added, fanning himself for emphasis.

“What do you care?” she shot back. “It’s none of your business what I have on, Reggie.”

“Poor widdle baby doesn’t want anyone to see her in her suuuuuit,” he continued. He held up his hand to his hair and set his other on his hip, feigning a fashion model pose. “Look at me, I’m Betty, I’m so shy and ladylike, oh! Don’t LOOK at me!”

“Stop it, Reg!”

“She doesn’t talk like that,” Ronnie giggled. “So what if she doesn’t want to show off?”

Ronnie was secretly glad, since it gave her all the attention. But she continued to fumble with the straps of her suit.

Reggie picked that moment to shift his target. Ronnie was making it too easy.

He ran at her and kicked up the loose sand, coming perilously close to her face.

“OH! ACK!” Instinctively she jumped back and scooted away, but not before giving everyone nearby an eyeful. Reggie took the opportunity to snatch up her suit top from her damp beach towel and dart away.

“BETTY!” she shrieked.

“Don’t just stand there, help me!” Betty snapped at Archie and Jug, who were agog at what happened. Archie kept shooting looks at Veronica, who had her arms hugged tightly around her chest to protect her modesty.

The memory of her thirty-two A’s was emblazoned on his memory, flesh two shades lighter than the rest of her except for medium pink, stiff little nipples. If he didn’t live to see his teen years, Archie Andrews could still die a happy man…

“Jerks!” Betty hissed as she got up and ran after Reggie, who was already taunting her from the lake’s edge. She chased him, and he led her to the pier. His footsteps were quick, thudding loudly over the planks.

“GIVE THAT BACK! REGGIE, YOU CREEP!”

“Finders keepers, losers weepers!” She was hot on his tail, making his pulse speed up as her footfalls closed in on him. Betty was the second fastest girl in gym class, slower only than Big Ethel. Reggie confidently spun around and planted his feet broadly.

“Nyahhhh!” he teased, sticking his thumbs in his ears and waggling his fingers like antlers while he stuck out his tongue. The suit top was still clenched in his fist. He feinted out of her way each time she made a grab for it.

Betty learned from previous mistakes. Somewhat.

She reached out and lunged for his side, jabbing him in the waist.

“OOF!”

“GIMME!” He brought his arm down to protect himself, and she grabbed the dangling straps of the suit.

He recovered and resumed ownership, tugging on it with both hands.

“LEGGO!”

“Make him give it back, Betty!” Ronnie demanded from the lakefront. She was decent again after finagling Archie’s tee shirt from him, but she wanted her top back. Archie stood back shirtless and amused until the momentum shifted.

He recognized the look on Reggie’s face, because he’d been on the other end of it before. Archie’s blue eyes widened.

“Let go!”

“What are you telling her that for?” Ronnie snapped.

“BETS, LET GO!” Archie cried more loudly, cupping his hand around his mouth.

“Uh-oh,” Jug muttered as he took a sip of Betty’s abandoned Coke. He watched the scene unfold with a sense of resignation. He didn’t feel like getting up and chasing anybody, but he almost felt badly for Betty. Reggie was a creep.

And too late, just like that, Betty realized her error.

There was an ugly gleam in Reggie’s brown eyes…

“Fine, you can have it!”

Once again, her momentum carried her backward. She stumbled back one, two, three steps and mentally cursed Oh, shit! as her feet left the pier. She was airborne for two helpless seconds, suit top clenched in her fist.

The water was unrelentingly cold. Her splash was large and loud from Veronica’s vantage point from the shore. Betty’s heart was pounding out of shock and humiliation.

She wanted to kill Reggie. Not just smack him around. Kill him. Slowly. With power tools and kitchen appliances.

She sputtered as she came up for breath. She heard Reggie’s laughter first. He was doubled over and pointing at her. “I can’t believe you did it again! You fell for it! Nice!”

Betty had enough. “Leave me alone.” She began to swim for the shore, still clutching the top.

“Aw, c’mon, Betty, climb back up here.”

“No.” She stubbornly breast-stroked alongside the pier.

“You ran all the way out here; you don’t have to swim back,” he insisted. His voice had lost some of its smugness. Betty refused to look up at him.

“Drop dead.” She reached the shallows and slogged her way back to shore, looking thoroughly miffed. She handed Ronnie her dripping top, which she took back gingerly, as though it was somehow unsavory to touch after its journey. “Here’s your top.”

“Your shirt’s all wet.”

“So? I’m all wet, Ron, news flash.”

“You don’t have to be snippy about it!” Betty gave her a sour look and grabbed up her shorts. “Betty, what’re you doing?”

“Leaving.”

“You can’t go yet!” Ronnie was aghast, as though the past ten minutes had no impact on her reasoning. Betty being mad at Reggie at the Lake + Reggie being a jerk = Betty packing up her shit and going home.

“Why?” Archie asked.

“You know why,” Betty insisted.

A tiny voice inside her beseeched Archie, Tell me why I should stay. Betty continued to put her sandals back on and hopped into her shorts, the effort made more difficult by her wet suit.

“Got anything besides Coke?” Jug asked, burping slightly as he gulped down the last of the can. Betty tsked.

“Not much. You can have it. I’m taking the cooler.” He scrambled to grab the small hero sandwich and bag of grapes.

“You’re supposed to be coming back to my house!” Ronnie reminded her.

“Some other time.” Reggie joined them again, treating them all to his patented crooked smile. His brows beetled together incredulously, an expression only he could manage.

“Can’t hang, huh?”

“Not with you,” Betty huffed.

“G’wan, then, get outta here!” he jeered half-heartedly. “Shirt’s all wet.”

“Gee, wonder why.” Betty was already astride her bike, half-walking it to the path. She focused on ignoring him.

She didn’t notice Reggie focusing on her retreating back. He could see the outline of straps of her racerback one-piece in stark relief beneath her wet shirt. The blue cotton clung to her less than modestly. The light wind that whipped up chilled her, too, raising goosebumps on her skin and making her chest “stand at attention.”

It wasn’t the first time Reggie noticed that Betty and Veronica were built almost the same; sometimes they shared clothes, he knew that much. She wasn’t badly built.

But he’d never tell her that. It was too much fun to rile her.

“Maybe you should take it off,” he called after her.

“You wish,” she replied over her shoulder. She didn’t look back, pedaling fully now. The wind whipped her damp blonde hair out behind her, promising to dry it by the time she got home.

“You don’t have anything we need to see anyway, I guess,” he answered back. She didn’t so much as shrug. Reggie gloated over having the last word.

Until Ronnie spoke up.

“You’re mean,” Ronnie sniffed. She walked over to Jughead and gave him a light kick where he sat. “And you’re a pig!”

He belched. “Thanks!”

Archie continued to stare after Betty even after she was gone. Shouldn’t someone go after her? The thought nagged at him.

Betty would have played Marco Polo with them if he’d suggested it. She also would have lent him some sunscreen; she burned as badly as he did, if memory served. Betty shared everything with anyone who asked. It was like she kept a convenience store in her backpack. Gum, pencils, cough drops, Kleenex, Motrin, Band-Aids. If you needed it, Betty had it.

“You didn’t have to pick on her,” Archie muttered lamely to Reggie.

“So? You laughed when I scared her,” he pointed out, nonplussed. “What’s the big deal?”

But Archie and Veronica were giving him irritated looks that told him that he’d pushed things too far.

“Too bad she didn’t pack another sandwich. This one was pretty good.” Jughead balled up the empty grape bag and sandwich plastic together and pitched it into a metal trash barrel.

“Sheesh,” Archie muttered, slightly disgusted with his best friend’s one-track mind. Another thought occurred to him. “Can I have my shirt back?”

“No. What do you think? I’m not just going to change in front of you boys!” Especially not without Betty, who would have at least shielded her from them while she tried to work herself back into her suit top.

“We already saw what you got,” Reggie said slyly. He winked. Ronnie grimaced.

“You ARE a creep, Reggie Mantle.” Ronnie turned to Archie and eyeballed him. “You’re already getting burned.”

Archie shrugged. “So?”

“Here.” She picked up Betty’s abandoned sunscreen and motioned for him to turn around. “Let me get your back.”

Reggie burned with jealousy as he retreated to the nearby rope hanging from a tall oak. He made mad runs at it, swinging out over the placid water with loud whoops. Eventually he fought over each turn with Jughead, who’d waited his requisite half hour after eating to join him.

But Veronica pretended not to notice. She just giggled while Archie criticized her pile of “chick music” CDs, some of which were Betty’s. She joined in on making fun of them, squashing down the niggling guilt that she was trash-talking about her best friend.

*

Back at home, Betty laid out on her parents’ back porch on a lawn chaise, freshly showered and wearing her bathing suit again, even though it still smelled like lake water, but at least it was dry. She borrowed her mother’s sunscreen this time and slathered what parts of herself that she could reach. A peanut butter sandwich sat on a plate beside her on the tiny TV tray she brought out with her. Her MP3 was plugged into her ears and her foot tapped to the music. Betty munched on a cheese curl and licked the orange paste from her fingers, glad no one was watching her.

She’d get a mild tan without the nuisance of Reggie Mantle, and without having to play shining knight to her best friend. Betty kept the handset to the phone beside her, too, in case Ethel or Nancy called her back and wanted to come over.

Reggie ruined everything. It never failed.

He pulled her braids all the time. Betty took to wearing her single ponytail by the middle of fifth grade, which was less encouraging, and, Betty was pleased to find, made her face look older.

You don’t have anything we need to see anyway, I guess. That had hurt. She felt the impending prick of tears but refused to let him see them. Betty glimpsed down at her body briefly. There was nothing wrong with it. Her tummy was pleasingly flat. Her navel was an inny, nothing unusual about that. Her breasts weren’t particularly fantastic – yet – but she outgrew her training bra a year ago. She could claim to have more than mosquito bites, thank you very much. Her silhouette in her jeans announced to the world that she had the beginnings of hips. It wasn’t bad to be Betty Cooper. Not at all.

She guessed Veronica had what they wanted to see. Betty took savage satisfaction in hindsight that they saw it, but not in the fashion that Ronnie would have preferred. Betty wasn’t the one who lost her top. Betty almost heard her mother’s reasoning in her head: What twelve year old girl needs an all over tan? Who would even see it??? It was her same argument for why she didn’t understand Betty’s need for bikini panties or a bra with a bow in the middle. Betty couldn’t appreciate that she would probably agree with her mother in twenty years.

Dimly Betty heard what sounded like the doorbell. “Hm?” She unplugged one of her ear buds and listened again.

Someone was ringing it like they’re life depended on it. Her mother wasn’t home yet, so that left Betty to answer the door. She decided not to down the driveway to meet them from outside; she didn’t want the whole neighborhood to see her running out in just her suit into the front yard. Betty grabbed a beach towel on her way inside from the laundry alcove and wrapped it around herself like a sarong.

“I’m COMING!” she called out. The ringing stopped just short of her reaching the door. She could have sworn she heard footsteps trotting down her front porch steps. “Who is it?”

No reply. “Who’s there?” she said, almost not wanting to open the door to someone who didn’t announce themselves.

She peered out the side window, nudging back the curtains. She couldn’t see anyone from that angle.

She decided she would keep the front screen door locked. Betty tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and opened the door.

The porch was empty. Incredulous, Betty opened up the screen door and stepped out onto the porch, looking both ways up and down her street.

“What the heck?”

She caught herself as she almost tripped over something.

Her mini cooler.
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Pigtails