There’s a terry-cloth robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, so she puts it on and then ventures out. She’s been to Cheryl’s house plenty of times but usually for parties where she and Betty and the boys stay down in the vast kitchen, or out on the deck. Only once has she actually been in Cheryl’s bedroom, and that was years ago, when they were little kids and forced to go to each other’s birthday sleepovers even though they didn’t really want to.
Veronica steps lightly through the corridors, trying to find her way to Cheryl’s room, and eventually she sees a soft pink light emanating from a crack in a door. She knocks and then pushes it open. “Cheryl?”
Cheryl looks up, sitting in the middle of a huge bed. Her hair’s wet, too, and she’s wearing a robe, but hers is silk. “Hey,” she says with a small, tired smile. “Feel better?”
“Cleaner, at least.” Veronica comes in and then hovers. Cheryl’s bedroom is kind of like Betty’s but on steroids and with an altogether darker undertone. Betty’s bedroom is like a cotton candy cloud; Cheryl’s is the Moulin Rouge, all pink and red satin, frothy tulle curtains, pink bulbs in the lights dotted across the ceiling so everything seems to glow.
“Sit,” Cheryl says, patting the bed, but when she moves she makes a pained face.
Veronica moves over and crouches by the bed, peering at Cheryl as she inspects her for any sign of injury, any damage that Reggie might have inflicted on her. “Did he get you at all?” she asks. “I tried to get here as fast as I could, but—”
“I’m fine,” Cheryl says, shaking her head. “I almost wasn’t, but—” She stares down at Veronica with her gleaming brown eyes. “You saved my life.”
The way Cheryl’s looking at her makes Veronica feel uneasy, a swoop in the space behind her ribs, and suddenly she feels more responsible than she cares for. “It’s— I mean, I only—”
“Why?” Cheryl’s eyebrows slope together now as she cuts off Veronica’s babbling, a frown of confusion. “That’s all I can think about now. Why did you come here—why did you help me—when you hate me?”
“What?” Veronica inches back and then sits on the floor, the ivory carpet like a cloud beneath her. “Cheryl, I don’t hate you. Why would even think that?”
Cheryl gets up and begins walking around her bedroom, idly touching trinkets that she passes. “Because it’s true,” she says. “Or—okay, fine, maybe you don’t hate me, but you don’t like me. Nobody really likes me.”
“Um, hello? Didn’t you just have practically everybody from school partying at your house on a Wednesday night?” Veronica holds up her hands. “Who else could get people to do that?”
Cheryl turns, leans on her dresser, and gives Veronica a look like she’s being deliberately obtuse. “They came for a party,” she says flatly. “Not for me.”
“But they—”
“See how fast they all left?” Cheryl says, cutting Veronica off again. “See how they all ran out of here and not one person, not a single one, not even Midge and Nancy, who are supposed to be my friends, stopped to make sure I was okay?” And then she shakes her head again and looks to the ceiling. “It’s fine. I don’t expect you to understand. You have Betty; she’s your best friend. And then you have everybody else, all those people who actually like you, who want to be around you even when you’re not giving them anything. You wouldn’t get it.”
Veronica rakes a hand through her damp hair. “Cheryl—” She exhales. She’s never known Cheryl feels this way. She’s the most popular girl in school, the one everyone’s equal parts in awe and afraid of. Never shies away from an argument, always ready with a snappy barb or the kind of up-and-down look that lets you know exactly how little Cheryl cares about meaningless you.
But Veronica looks at the girl in front of her, barefaced and vulnerable, and it’s obvious.
God, it’s so obvious she feels like an idiot for not seeing it before this second.
It’s a shield. Cheryl’s acting, too.
Veronica knows all too well what that feels like. “I don’t hate you,” she says, softly now, almost like the pink light and the delicate surroundings demand it. “Actually, I think we have a lot in common. More than anyone would think, probably, and not just the surface stuff. Not the Vixens, or our legacies.”
But Cheryl’s shaking her head. “I knew you wouldn’t get it,” she says again. “It’s like—who would you call, right now, to pick you up? Betty, right? And she’d be here in a heartbeat, because that’s what best friends do. You have someone to rely on who knows you inside and out, and all I have is a bunch of people who like me for my parties and a group of girls who like me enough to have me on their team but never invite me to hang after practice, never ask me to stay over the night before competitions or games. Look at me.” She gestures dramatically at herself. “None of them would want this version of me. I have to be Cheryl Bombshell all the time, and I’m exhausted.”
Veronica crosses her legs, holding on to her ankles. “Cheryl.” She looks up at her. “You think you’re the only one putting on a show?”
Cheryl says nothing, but her eyes widen a little.
“I’m Veronica Lodge,” Veronica says, the emphasis apparent. “There are days I wish I didn’t have to be me, because then I could do whatever I wanted without worrying that it’s somehow going to get back to my father and give him another reason to dismiss me. There are days I wish I didn’t have to be me, because then I wouldn’t have to watch my best friend get the boy she likes while I sit on the sidelines waiting for whatever scraps he’ll give me. And then there are times when I wonder—do I even like that boy, or am I just stuck in this pattern of doing only the things that I think Veronica Lodge would?” She swivels to kneel, a little like prayer position. “Sure, people like me. But they don’t know me. They like the Veronica I give them, and if I ever try to step outside of that?” She laughs a little. “I spend a couple days wearing something that’s not pristine-preppy-perfect style and Betty can’t bear it. I come here for you, and even you think I’m doing something wrong or weird.”
Cheryl is looking at her own reflection, and when she turns back to Veronica, her face has gone carefully blank. “Oh, boo-hoo,” Cheryl says. “You want me to clap for you?”
Veronica laughs again. “Oh my god,” she says, half of her surprised and the other half not at all to see Cheryl’s wall snapping back up so fast. “You can’t help yourself, can you? I’m trying to tell you that I do get it. Maybe we don’t have the exact same problems, but I—I’m not somebody you should be jealous of. I’m just a person, like you.”
And then Cheryl catches her gaze, the blankness dropping and the question apparent in her eyes. “You’re not, though, are you?” she says.
Veronica swallows, hard.
“You’re not a person at all. Right?” Cheryl moves suddenly, fast enough that she’s right in front of Veronica in a second. Close enough now that Veronica can see the light freckles scattered over the bridge of Cheryl’s nose, smell the dark amber of her shampoo or lotion or perfume, maybe. “So what are you, Veronica Lodge?”
“PICK UP, PICK up, pick up.” Betty chews on her thumbnail as she paces her bedroom, wearing a path in the carpet between the door and the window. “V, come on.”
It’s been almost two hours since Veronica took her car and raced off to whatever crisis was in progress, and Betty’s been trying to reach her ever since. She has a bad feeling in her bones, worsening since she saw the news flying over social media: some kind of incident at Cheryl Blossom’s party, something about two crashers freaking out and attacking, like they were high or something.
High on blood, Betty thinks. Or being controlled by a malevolent vampire puppeteer, maybe.
The call goes to voicemail again and Betty throws her phone down, letting out a little yell of frustration. She has no car, since Veronica took hers. Walking all the way to Cheryl’s will take too long.
She picks her phone back up and tries Archie first: nothing. Then Dilton: similarly,
no answer. In her desperation she even calls Cheryl, but as it rings and rings, she’s already given up.
In the end she settles for a text to both boys: Have you talked to V? I think she might be in trouble. Let me know if you hear from her.
Betty falls asleep fully dressed, phone clutched in her hand, and dreams of bloodied fangs.
VERONICA’S HEART IS pounding. She can feel her chest lifting and falling, almost in sync with Cheryl’s.
Fine. She wants to know, then she deserves the truth. She did just help me bury a body.
Or two.
“It would be easier if I … showed you.”
“Showed me?” Cheryl repeats.
“Like this—” Veronica opens her mouth wide and flicks out her fangs to show Cheryl. At first they were uncomfortable in her mouth, but she’s quickly gotten used to them. Her own personal weapons.
Cheryl stares, but the look in her eyes isn’t one of fright. It’s pure curiosity.
She lifts a hand. “Can I?”
Veronica nods.
Cheryl touches her middle finger to one of Veronica’s fangs, and it takes absolutely every ounce of Veronica’s willpower not to shift lightning fast and sink her teeth into Cheryl’s wrist.
Human blood. It’s the one thing she really wants, and that’s why she can’t let herself have it. She doesn’t want to end up like Reggie, drunk on it. She can’t let herself go that far.
When she feels the sharp edge of her tooth pierce Cheryl’s soft flesh, Veronica darts backward. “See?” she says. “I’m a vampire. There’s your proof.”
“Ow,” Cheryl says without anything behind it, and she sucks the drop of blood on her fingertip away.
Veronica smothers the flash of jealousy she feels. What she would give to have that drop of blood for herself.
“Huh,” Cheryl says after a moment. “So. Monsters are real.”
Veronica’s sharp when she answers. “Is that what you think?” she asks. “That I’m a monster?”
Cheryl shrugs as she steps away, walks over to the bed. “I mean, aren’t you?” she says. “Vampires. Who would have thought?”
Not me before this week, Veronica thinks. She moves to sit on the bed, too, Cheryl at the head and her at the foot. “It’s kind of a messy story,” she says.
That only makes Cheryl smile. “I want to hear it all,” she says. “Spare no detail.”
So Veronica tells her, haltingly at first as she tries to sort the blur of the last five days into separate events, doubling back to explain herself when Cheryl says things like A strig-what? and Wait, wait, Dilton Doiley did what?
And then Veronica has to tell Cheryl the worst part—for Cheryl, at least. “So I know where Theodore’s going to try to do this thing,” she says slowly. “That gala your parents are throwing on Friday.”
Cheryl’s mouth drops open. “No,” she says, outrage saturating the word. “Excuse me, but no. I have been working on this event for months now. I am not going to have it ruined by a bunch of vampires coming in and trying to make their stupid little vampire gang. No freakin’ way.”
Veronica almost laughs at Cheryl’s indignation. Almost, but not quite. “Don’t worry,” she says, even though that’s mostly what she does now, when she’s not distracting herself with new clothes and new personas. “Now that we know, we’re going to figure out how to stop them.”
“What’s to figure out?” Cheryl repeats. “Don’t you already know? Isn’t it just like with …” She swallows, lowering her voice. “Reggie and Moose? Doesn’t stopping them mean killing them?”
Veronica takes a deep breath. “In theory, sure. But it won’t fix things. If I killed my parents—” She swallows hard at the thought of it. “It wouldn’t stop anybody else. And as pissed as I am at my father right now, I’m not sure I want him dead dead. No, killing him wouldn’t take care of the real problem. As long as Theodore Finch is still alive—”
Cheryl startles. “What did you say?”
“As long as the strigoi who turned everybody’s alive—”
“No.” Cheryl leans forward. “His name. Did you say Theodore Finch?”
Veronica nods slowly. “Yeah,” she says. “Why? Have you heard of him? Because Dilton and I did some research, and it seems like he belonged to a founding family, but I’ve never even heard of the Finches.”
“Heard of them?” Cheryl widens her eyes. “Of course I’ve heard of them. They weren’t just a founding family, you know—they were the first founding family.”
“First?” Veronica leans back, trying to grasp at a connection she knows is somewhere there.
Oh, she knows this has to be more than just a power grab. And if once upon a time Theodore Finch’s family started this whole town, if they were even more powerful and influential than the Blossoms and the Lodges—well. Where are the Finches now?
“Do you know anything else about them?” she asks Cheryl. “It’s been nagging at me this whole time. I know there must be something else to his plan that I haven’t figured out yet. Maybe it’s connected to his history here, I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, either, but …” Cheryl gets up and goes to her dresser, rifling through the third drawer down. She turns and throws a pair of black pajamas in Veronica’s direction. “Get dressed,” she says. “We’re going on a mission.”
MAYBE “MISSION” IS a grandiose way of saying to the library on the second floor of my house, but Cheryl doesn’t care.
She takes Veronica to the imposing room, the heavy door clanking shut behind them. “The book should be in here somewhere,” she says. “It’s, like, an entire record of early Riverdale history, starting from the founding and going up to around the fifties. Whatever we need to know, I think it’ll be in there.”
Veronica puts her shoulders back. “Then let’s start looking.”
They begin searching the stacks for the old leather-bound book, and Cheryl somewhat absentmindedly wonders what this chapter of Riverdale history will say when people in the future look back: During the Great Vampire Invasion, many figures from the town were transformed into mind-controlled zombie vampires. However, some escaped the mind-control aspect and got to retain their free will. One of those was Veronica Lodge, last in the line of the founding Lodge family. (N.B. As she is immortal, the Lodge family line technically has not ended.)
Cheryl shakes her head, clearing the thought, and glances over at Veronica working her way through the E section.
A vampire. Veronica Lodge, Frenemy Number One, is a real-life, actual vampire.
Cheryl wouldn’t have believed it so quickly if she hadn’t seen it all with her own eyes, hadn’t seen the red film over Reggie’s pupils and those fangs of his ready to rip her throat out. Until Veronica saved her.
Veronica did save her. And then of course I had to go off on her about how jealous I am of her and Betty, how nobody likes me, how I’m, deep down, just a loser. If there’s one way not to convince somebody to be your friend, then it’s probably by complaining about how few friends you have.
But she’s here, still, a part of her thinks. She could have left and gone back to Betty, or Archie, or apparently even Dilton Doiley, which is beyond weird—
Cheryl stops herself. No. Why is it weird that Dilton and Veronica might really be friends? Isn’t she just doing exactly what she hates everybody else for doing to her: judging him for the person she thinks he is when she’s never really spoken to him at all?
Veronica glances over, catches Cheryl watching her. “What?” she says. “Did you find it?”
Cheryl shakes her head. “I feel like I didn’t properly thank you,” she says. “You know, Reggie really would have killed me. I would be dead right now, if it wasn’t for you. So—thank you.”
“Cheryl.” Veronica smiles at her. “You don’t have to keep thanking me. Friends save friends’ lives, right? It’s no big deal.”
Friends.
The idea of it is warm, wondrous, and Cheryl doesn’t know what to do with that feelin
g because it’s been so long since she felt it. Friends. She and Veronica are friends.
“Oh!” Veronica tugs a book off the shelf. “Is this it?”
Cheryl goes over and takes the book from Veronica, running her hands over the gold embossing. From Ice to Industry: How Riverdale Became a Town of Success by R. M. Eames. “Yes,” she breathes, and takes it over to the mahogany table by the window, curtains open to the dark outside that the glow of wall sconces is keeping somewhat at bay. Cheryl lays the book out and begins flipping through it until she passes the boring introduction and comes to the section titled “Founding Families: An Alliance and a Betrayal.”
“Betrayal?” Veronica reads over her shoulder. “Well. Might explain why we don’t talk about the Finches anymore.”
Cheryl turns the pages. “Only one way to find out,” she says, and they begin to read.
ARCHIE WAKES WITH a start, groaning at the noise that pulled him from sleep.
His phone is ringing, and he throws a hand out to find it while he sticks his head under a pillow. Eventually he grabs it and brings it to his ear, not opening his eyes to see who it is. He doesn’t really have the energy to open his eyes.
Turns out, being held hostage with no food or water for two days really takes it out of you.
“Hello?” he answers blearily.
“Archie! Don’t you text people back anymore?”
“Betty?” Archie groans again. “God, what time is it?”
“Time to get up and get over here,” Betty says. She sounds obscenely awake and energized. “V needs us. You, me, and Dilton. So wake up, I’ll call Dilton, and then you can drive us all over there.”
“Over where?”
“To Cheryl’s.”
Now Archie’s awake. “Wait,” he says. “Cheryl Blossom’s in on this now?”
Betty makes an irritated sound. “Just get dressed and meet me in ten,” she says. “Chop, chop.”
Interview with the Vixen Page 15