Micol Ostow - Get Out of Town

JUGHEAD

Summer. Just the mention of the word conjures a series of comforting images. Long evenings spent watching the sunset creep over the horizon, fireflies lighting up the air like renegade Fourth of July sparklers. Lazy days on a porch swing nursing a soft-serve cone, trying to strike the balance between savoring the treat and devouring it before it liquefies, sticky-sweet, under the searing press of the suns glow.

Summer is for being idle, for swatting mosquitos and splashing in Sweetwater River, for ignoring the alarm clock and losing track of time. Its for living in that state of suspended animation where any semblance of responsibility evaporates and its just you, your best friends, and the sensation that everything you do and are is ephemeral, hazy and yours alone.

In Riverdale, summer belongs to us.

Or thats what we thought, anyway. Until this summer. Until Archie Andrews was arrested for murder and forced to spend the summer before his junior year standing trial. Before we were forced to consider the terrifyingand terrifyingly realpossibility that Archies trial was only the beginning.

Cassidy Bullock. We werent necessarily torn up about his death. After all, he and his thug friends had terrorized us when we were up at Veronicas cabin in Shadow Lake for the weekend. And they probably would have done worse if Veronica hadnt triggered the silent alarm.

So we werent sorry hed been killed (presumably by the Lodge family bodyguard, Andre). What we were sorry about was that Hiram Lodge, Veronicas father, had framed Archie for the murder. And that the charges had stuck.

Endless summer. Summer love. The poet Wallace Stevens wrote that summer night is like a perfection of thought. But for Archie, Veronica, Betty, and me, there was no perfection to be found. Only the relentlessness of reality.

For Archie, that reality meant reviewing his testimony until he was as familiar with it as he was with breathing. It was examining the case Hiram Lodge had built against him with a proverbial fine-tooth comb, alongside his mother, Mary Andrews, arguably the most devoted counsel a teen accused of murder could have in his corner.

Second to Mary on the Team Archie lineup was Betty Cooper, pragmatic and determined as always. Last summer, the sunny-with-a-side-of-edge girl next door was brushing up on her journalistic skills with an internship at a lifestyle blog in LA. Now, though, she was using her investigative talents to prove that her oldest friends innocence. All this on the heels of finding out that her father was the serial killer Riverdale had known as the Black Hood.

Meanwhile, Riverdales resident fish out of water, Veronica Lodge, had rejected her sizable birthrightand the tarnished strings that came with it. The one-time princess of Park Avenue had turned her back on her family name and all the financial security that it implied. And while she was trying to stake a claim of her own as the newest owner of Pops ChockLit Shoppe, she was also horn-lockedand hopelessly deadlockedwith Daddy Dearest. The price at the heart of their feverish feud?

One Archie Andrewss liberty. Maybe even his soul.

As for me, I was doing my best to honor my own fathers sense of loyalty, of family, adapting to my new role as Serpent King. I was worried for Archie, of coursemore like desperately scared for himthough I was trying to keep a positive spin on things. (It doesnt come easy to me, to say the least.) But I had a gangliterallylooking to me, depending on me to lead them. The Serpents would have done anything for me, and for the Andrewses, too, especially after they put us up when Hiram Lodge displaced anyone unlucky enough to be living on the Southside. With my dad retired from the Serpents, it was time for me to show people I deserved their trust and faith.

The problem was, I wasnt sure I believed it.

When Jason Blossom was murdered, the town of Riverdale lost something innate, something ineffable. For decades, our tiny community shimmered with wholesome, small-town charm. No one bothered to peel back the facade, to strip away the picture-perfect Norman Rockwell homage. No one wanted to Not even those who knew better. Those who knew all too well this towns secrets, and its rotting, dark-hearted core.

Jason Blossom. The Black Hood. And now Archie Andrews, one-time small-town golden boy, on trial for murder, twisting under a disgraced mobsters thumb. Poised to lose everything for the simple mistake of crossing the wrong man.

Summer had stretched, sticky and unforgiving, tangling the four of us in an intricate web. The days were endless, like all summer days, but now the heavy molasses pace felt dangerous, threatening.

Labor Day was bearing down. Most teens would be dreading going back to school: homework, cliques, early wake-ups.

We werent thinking about that. We would have given anything to be thinking about stuff like that. Instead, we were worried that Archies last chancehis last shot at freedom, at beating Hiram Lodge at his own gamewas slipping away from us.

And if we couldnt save Archie from the dark horrors lying at Riverdales heart, who would?

Dont miss this sneak peek at the next Riverdale novel, The Maple Murders , coming in Fall 2019!

JUGHEAD

Riverdale: our town. Loosely translated, it means the valley by the river, and indeed, our town rests against the snaking, rushing path of the Sweetwater, carrying on its rapids the sharp, sticky runoff of maple syrup tapping season.

Another thing the river carries? Secrets.

If there was one thing we had learned since Jason Blossom first vanished, its that Sweetwater River has known a lifetime of secrets.

Several lifetimes, to be precise.

Our town was officially established seventy-five years ago, but as the founding families know, it was settled long before then. Our land holds centuries of legacy within its soilmuch of it, we were slowly coming to realize, fetid and damning. The sinister secrets and bloodstained pages of our history books date as far back as the very first settlers themselves: from the Hatfield and McCoy-esque feuding of the Coopers and the Blossomscousin shooting cousin, brother with his own brothers blood on his handsto the decimation of indigenous people.

Our town knows darkness, violence, and plague. Most of it brought by its own population. By people . If youd still call them that, knowing all thats finally begun to come to light.

We were learning, we children of Riverdale, that echoes remain. From Jason Blossoms murder (only one of the most recent manifestations of what could reasonably be called a curse upon the Blossom house) to the Black Hood, a serial killer stalking sinners.

More recently: a local institution with a thorny past where more than a few of our very own classmates had once been imprisoned and forced to endure traumatic forms of so-called therapy. Gryphons and Gargoyles, an addictive role-playing game that preyed upon its players, driving many to compulsive self-destruction. And a newcomer with a promise of welcoming and acceptance, with a farm he presented as a sanctuary, who had a following whose purposes were deeply unclear and wholly suspicious.