The Day Before Read online

  You can see why my work feels so much like play.

  “M’hija, you’re grinning like the cat that ate the canary.”

  “Hmm?” We were stretched out on the rear deck of the boat, cupping foamy cappuccinos to protect them from the wind as the boat cut smoothly through the water. I sat up and crossed my legs so I was facing her.

  “Just thinking about how lucky we are, I guess. Looking forward to the holiday. The party. It would be hard not to smile, surrounded by all this …” I gestured at the expanse of clean, squishy white cushions, the brilliant sunlight, the green-blue water surrounding us on all sides. “I may be a little bit pampered”—Mom gave an uncharacteristically indelicate snort at this—“but I’m not a sociopath.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said, sincere. “We are lucky to have all of this, of course. And we should be grateful. But we have nothing if we don’t have …” She eyed me, prompting me to finish the thought.

  “Family,” I said on cue.

  “Family,” she echoed. She finished her coffee and licked a fluff of foam from her lip. “Now, for the party decor—”

  “Well, I already know you’re not impressed by Kelly Klein’s donut wall,” I said, laughing. “But the macarons?”

  “Well, if they’re from Ladurée, they could never be tacky, but we can be more inspired. Quality always.” Our motto, and I mouthed the words along with her. “In any case, as I told you, it’s all mostly set. Rafe sent over the book with all of the party details last week. Sparklers instead of swizzle sticks for the cocktails. Nautical wreaths with red, white, and blue threading. Mini lobster rolls and ahi tacos in wax paper served on the balconies.”

  “Urban picnic, I love it,” I gushed. “I’ll get the book and we can go over today’s game plan.” I loved that our designer didn’t use Pinterest or Instagram; analog was his appeal. It made his creations that much more unexpected … and exclusive.

  I slid off the cushions and padded down the deck through the saloon and down the stairs to my parents’ cabin. I stopped just outside the door, though. Daddy was on the phone, and he didn’t sound happy.

  “And when were you going to tell me about this?” he was saying, his voice low but shaking with anger. He paused, listening to something from the other side of the conversation. “That’s not good enough. Those payments—”

  The boat rocked suddenly, as we passed through choppy waters. I lost my balance at the same time as Daddy’s door swung open. The expression in his eyes went blank as he took me in. “I’ll have to call you back,” he said tersely, and hung up without waiting for a response.

  “M’hija,” he said, turning to me as he slid his phone into his pocket. “Can I help you with something?”

  “I, uh, was just looking for Rafe’s book for the party. Mom and I were going to go over last-minute details, figure out the day. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” I stammered. Forceful phone calls were hardly new for Daddy, but there’d been something in his voice just now—a desperate pitch to his anger that wasn’t normal.

  Or was I just imagining things?

  “Have a look,” he said, and stepped out of my way so I could move to Mother’s nightstand. As I passed by, he ran a palm over the back of my head, like I was a little girl he was tucking in at night.

  I froze. “Is … is something wrong, Daddy?”

  “Of course not,” he said without hesitation. “There’s nothing to worry about. You grab the book and get back to your mother. It’s going to be our most magical Fourth of July ever.”

  “Okay,” I said. I tried to sound like I meant it. You’re just imagining things, I insisted in my head.

  But somehow, it didn’t quite feel true.

  ARCHIE

  I never thought of myself as a complicated guy. What you see is what you get: Small-town high school kid. Football, family dinners, milk shakes with my friends at Pop’s after school. You get the picture.

  Summers were always the same: long days swimming in Sweetwater River with Betty, movies at the Twilight with Jughead at night. Extra-long Frisbee tosses with Vegas. Dad grilling burgers at dusk—usually dropping one, which was great for Vegas, but a pain for Mom and me, who were usually starving by then.

  But things change, I guess, even in a small town like Riverdale where you think nothing ever does. And I should know. Because Mom left two years ago, and she hasn’t come back.

  That was hard enough. And this summer, things are weird. Betty’s off in LA, which is so great for her. But I have to admit, I miss her like crazy. And Jug and I … well, we’re not really hanging out that much. It’s mostly my fault, I guess. Because … well, because of other stuff happening that I never expected. The kind of stuff that changes everything.

  When I was little, I liked to play “what if?” “What if I’m still awake when Mom comes upstairs?” (She read me an extra bedtime story.) “What if I enter Vegas in that dog show?” (That was Betty’s suggestion. But he threw up on the judges, so no prizes for us.) “What if I try out for little league even if I’m nervous?” (Little Archie made shortstop!)

  But as you get older, the stakes of the “what if?” game get higher. What if I’d gone with Mom when she left, instead of staying with Dad? For once, I’d know what it was like to be in a big city, what life outside of Riverdale really had to offer.

  But on the flip side, what if Dad didn’t have me around this summer to help with his business? He pretended he was just making work for me, doing me a favor, letting me pour concrete and stuff. But I know better. I’ve seen him at night, hunched over the dining room table with a calculator and a stack of bills in his hands. I hear him on the phone, trying to haggle with vendors or chase payments from clients. It’s a tough time for construction. Having me around means one extra pair of hands, one less salary to scrounge up.

  Then there are the smaller things, the ones that have ripple effects you can’t possibly see coming. What if Dad hadn’t decided to clean out the garage that first week of the summer? Where would I be, then?

  I thought he was crazy. It was insanely hot, the kind of weather that breaks records and turns into the only thing anyone wants to talk about. But Dad didn’t care; when he set his mind to something, that was that. So there we were, on a hazy June evening, my arms, neck, back burning from a ten-hour shift, holed up in the stuffy garage. It was hot as an oven and smelled like dust and gasoline.

  “Do we have to do this now?” I groaned. I was collapsed into an ancient lawn chair. I could barely keep my eyes open. “I’m dead. Aren’t you dead? How are you not dead?” This was earlier in the summer, before I’d started to fill out, so I couldn’t keep up with the work without coming home ten kinds of sore.

  Dad laughed at me. “Son, when you’re my age, dead is kind of the default. You learn to push through. Try it.”

  “All right, all right.” I eased myself out of the chair reluctantly. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

  “You know what they say, Arch,” he said, pulling a sagging cardboard box from the corner. “One man’s trash is another man’s—”

  “Soviet-era melon baller?” I shook my head at what he was holding up. I’d only ever seen them on TV shows set in the ’60s. “Come on, Dad. Are you serious?”

  Dad frowned. “Hmm. Better throw that in the ‘keep’ pile.”

  “What?” He was hopeless, so I had to jump in. “Don’t be crazy. I’ll start a pile for the Salvation Army.” I grabbed the melon baller out of his hands before he could argue, even though my shoulders twinged with every move.

  One scooter with a broken wheel, one terrifying stuffed clown that was definitely haunted, and three stacks of musty comic books (those I kept) later, and there it was, staring at me from the bottom of a box: a photo of the whole family. Mom, Dad, and me. Even Vegas was there, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like it does when he gets excited. In the photo we were all smiling. Dad had an arm around Mom and she was hugging me.

  Was that when it started? What
ever it was that told her she’d be better off without us? Was this photo a clue? Dad looking at her, but her looking straight ahead? Should we have known? Seen it coming?

  “Uh, hey, Dad,” I started, uneasy, “I’ve been meaning to ask … Have you talked to Mom recently?” Maybe they’d been in secret contact all along. Maybe she knew he was struggling with the business. Maybe she’d been planning to come back, and she was packing a bag right then.

  The “what if?” game again.

  Dad stiffened. “She’s pretty busy. You know, she just started that job with that new firm.”

  “Right.” I’d been trying not to think about that. New job meant she was planning to stay a while. Even I couldn’t pretend differently. “So, I take that as a no.”

  “Hey!” For a second, I thought Dad was responding to me, like he was upset that I’d even brought it up or something. But when I looked over, his eyes were shiny and he was pulling something big and bulky out of a box. “Now, here’s something worth hanging on to. My old Stratocaster.”

  “Whoa.” Even I knew a vintage piece when I saw it. It was green, glossy, even-coated with garage grime, with a white fretboard that was scratched and worn through the mother-of-pearl inlay. Some of the strings were loose, and a few were missing. But even with all of that … it was a thing of major beauty. “Dad, you used to play?”

  My dad was a musician, once upon a time? How had that never come up? It was like I had to rethink everything I thought I knew about the old man.

  What if he’d been cool, once?

  “Oh, now and again,” he said, strumming the saggy strings. They made a quiet little pinging sound that made me desperate to plug the thing in and let ’er rip.

  “That’s sick Dad. The good sick, I mean. Can I try it?” Suddenly, there was nothing I wanted more.

  Dad gave me a look. “You should know never to touch another man’s guitar, Arch! Besides, I bought you your own. Remember?”

  I remembered. He gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. An acoustic Gibson in a dark wood that was solid and heavy when you held it. I played well enough … but never outside my own bedroom. The idea of playing for other people made me break into a cold sweat.

  You could call it stage fright, but a part of me wondered … was I just waiting for my inspiration? And what if … it never came along?

  But it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about that.

  “Earth to Archie? What’s going on in there?”

  “Huh?” I blinked. The sun was coming up, lighting up Ms. Grundy—Geraldine’s—picture window. She stood in front of it like a shadow, with a confused look on her face. The sun made her hair glow. Your hair glowing in the sunlight. Hmm. Maybe that was a song lyric? I couldn’t stop thinking in lyrics around her. She just had that effect on me. God, I was a character from a cheesy love song. “Oh, sorry, I guess I was just thinking.”

  “Must’ve been some deep thoughts.” She smiled. “You were in a trance, there.”

  I was. Playing that “what if?” game again. What if Betty hadn’t gone to LA, and my Dad hadn’t asked me to come work for him? What if we’d never dug up that old guitar so I’d take up playing again, even if I was only playing for myself? What if I hadn’t been walking home from work alone that hot, humid day late in June, when a light blue VW Bug that I didn’t recognize pulled up …?

  “Archie Andrews? What are you doing, walking in this heat?”

  I squinted. The woman behind the wheel had wavy, dark blond hair and worried-looking eyes behind sunglasses. Ms. Grundy! Riverdale High’s music teacher. I almost didn’t recognize her outside of school and not all buttoned-up the way she was when she was working. “Umm, building character?” It sounded silly when I said it, and we both laughed.

  “Well, hop in before you die of heatstroke,” she said, leaning across the seat to open the door for me.

  That day, she dropped me straight at home. I didn’t think much of it, except for how weird it always was to see teachers out in real life. But the next day, she was waiting for me just past the construction site again, like she’d actually planned to drive me home. And then the next day, she was there again, and after that, it was like we’d just come to some unspoken agreement.

  There’s a part of me that will always think it was fate, running into her that day. Because suddenly I had a person to talk to about the guitar … and the songs I’d started writing—just scribbles, mostly, at first. She saw the guitar on my porch one afternoon and asked me if I played.

  I was worried that I wouldn’t be good enough for her. I tried to protest, but she insisted. I was scared she’d run away, and I’d be right back where I started, alone.

  But she listened and took me seriously. She saw something in me that no one else had, not even Betty. When I played for her, she smiled at me and … everything made sense.

  “You have potential, Archie,” she told me. “Have you considered private lessons?”

  We both knew what she was really asking. And we both knew the answer to that: yes.

  Eventually, we were sharing … other things. One afternoon, without saying a word, Geraldine took an unexpected turn on our way home. The next thing I knew, she’d parked the car down a little hideaway bank of the Sweetwater River. Soon it became our place.

  Maybe—probably—a part of me knew what we were doing was wrong (she was a teacher, after all—it was probably even illegal, even though it was what we both wanted), but it didn’t matter. As time went on, my feelings for her became stronger than for anyone I’d ever met before. Soon she was the most important person in my life.

  That was why I’d come running over this morning (literally, I was still in my sweaty Riverdale gym shorts, which maybe wasn’t so romantic, but it was the easiest way to get to her first thing in the morning without raising any suspicions). It was July 3, the holiday was here, and I wanted to do something special with her. I wanted to be with her, always.

  I turned to Geraldine now. “I was just thinking about the Fourth,” I started, feeling a little nervous, even though I didn’t know why. “Uh … are you doing anything for the holiday?”

  Geraldine gave a little smirk while she poured herself a cup of coffee. “Actually, I was going to go camping down by the river …” She took a sip. “Want to come?”

  We both knew the answer to that, too.

  BETTY

  Dear Diary:

  You will never believe what just happened. I can’t believe it. That’s not an exaggeration; I am literally hiding in the Hello Giggles supply closet writing this all down because when I pinched myself, it still didn’t make it more real.

  I’m finally, finally getting my first big break here.

  When I woke up this morning, all I was thinking about was how strange it was to be spending the Fourth of July away from my friends, away from my family … away from Riverdale. Good strange, but still. I have plans to meet Brad tonight, but otherwise, my time here is always pretty wide open. Just one big adventure, like I’d hoped.

  Hiking in the morning, showering in Aunt Gertrude’s guest bathroom with the funny lace skirt around the tissue box, digging up a pair of skinny jeans and a tank that’s as “LA” as my wardrobe gets … sitting in thirty minutes of traffic just to go three miles on the 405 … all pretty standard stuff.

  But when I got to the office, there was a totally different vibe than usual. For starters, it was quiet. The clean, bright white of the reception desk was still, and there weren’t any phones ringing.

  “Hello?” I called out, tiptoeing in carefully like I was afraid of surprising anyone.

  The lounge area, usually chill central, was empty. Normally, you’d find at least two writers draped over the peacock-blue midcentury chairs, or browsing the bright yellow bookshelves. Instead, I saw a lone iPad resting on a table, its owner nowhere to be found.

  I tentatively made my way into the bullpen. “Oh, hi.” It was Cleo, the features editor, hunched over her desk and gnawing on a pink glitter pencil. “It
’s … where is everyone?”

  Cleo tapped her pencil on her desk and looked up at me. Her eyes were giant behind the big red frames of her glasses. “Holiday,” she shrugged. “People go away. I’m actually leaving for Palm Springs in”—she consulted the Apple Watch on her wrist—“an hour.”

  “Oh.” I scanned the rest of the office. No signs of life. “Is anyone else here at all?” I kind of relished the idea of being alone here, to be honest. There was always plenty of filing or random emails to sort, and the idea of doing it without Rebecca hunched over my back sounded pretty … peaceful.

  Cleo made a “duh” face. “Rebecca’s in the conference room going over wallpaper and fabric swatches for the living room makeover challenge.”

  “Right, of course.” That little bloom of hope deflated. Of course Rebecca wasn’t the type to miss work because of a holiday.

  I headed into the conference room to deliver her lunch. The door was ajar, and I knocked lightly so it wouldn’t seem like I was just barging in.

  “Come in.”

  I did, walking softly. For some reason, just being in Rebecca’s presence sent me into tiptoe mode. “I have the lunch order.” The paper bag made a deafening rustle as I put it down.

  Rebecca was by the back wall, swiveling her gaze back and forth from several different wallpaper swatches: blue flowery, purple flowery, green flowery, and metallic flowery. Flowers of all sizes and shapes, from pop art to Laura Ashley Queen Anne’s lace. There was obviously some kind of theme happening.

  She sighed. “I don’t know. Do you think it’s … too much?”

  Rebecca had never actually asked my opinion about anything before, not so baldly, anyway. “What? Me?” I coughed. “I mean, the wallpaper?”

  She turned and rolled her eyes, but nicely enough. “Yes. I mean, florals … overdone?”

  “I never think so,” I answered honestly.

  She flicked her eyes over my clothing. “Well, sure. But … ugh, the metallic. On the one hand, it’s the most interesting of them all. But on the other hand …”