Chapter Text
“Miss Cooper, I have some concerns with Josie-Belle’s behaviour in class.”
Betty sighed, she hated going to parent’s evenings. Her four-year-old daughter was drawing on some coloured paper on the other side of the classroom, crayons and pens of every shade were spread out like a halo around her on the floor and her tiny hands were spotted with bright ink, she was completely oblivious to the conversation going on between the two adults.
“Concerns?” Betty repeated wearily, raising her eyebrows at the older woman. She already knew that Mrs Russell’s ‘concerns’ had nothing to do with Josie’s behaviour, and everything to do with her situation as a single-mother. She was often seen as incapable; people assumed that because she was on her own and working full time that she was denying her daughter a fulfilled upbringing with enough love and attention, but that simply wasn’t the case. She sensed that Mrs Russell was one of the people who assumed that she had chosen to become a single-parent, and consequently thought her to be selfish for refusing Josie a relationship with her father. Nobody assumed that perhaps they were better off without him.
“Yes, she is very outspoken and rather opinionated. I fear this may be a result of a lack of male influence in the household” she stated coldly, pursing her lips in disapproval at the young mother sitting in front of her. She noticed, with further dissatisfaction, that Betty’s pale blue shirt was creased and the sleeve of her cardigan was stained with tomato sauce.
“No offence Mrs Russell, but that isn’t really of your concern” Betty said politely. “As for Josie being too opinionated” she continued, “don’t you think we should be encouraging young girls to speak up for themselves?”
“There is a difference between speaking up for oneself and rudeness, Miss Cooper” the woman snapped. Betty wondered whether she was still referring to Josie or if she had promoted herself onto the woman’s naughty list. She didn’t care though because she knew her daughter better than any closed-minded and prejudiced teacher. Josie was kind and considerate, and Betty loved that her little girl was opinionated; it meant that she knew how to stand up for herself. Of course, Josie wasn’t perfect; she knew how to throw a tantrum just like every other child and she frequently toed the line, pushing Betty to the absolute limit sometimes. But, her daughter wasn’t rude. Betty had always believed that manners lay the foundations for a person’s character, and that was something she had enforced in her parenting.
“Perhaps we should just agree to disagree Mrs Russell?” Betty said sweetly. The other woman huffed. Thankfully, Betty’s ten-minute time slot was over as another set of parents poked their heads around the classroom door, their chubby blonde son between them. Mrs Russell gave Betty a look as if to say that is the proper way to raise a family and then turned her attention to the approaching parents, immediately gushing about how ‘Rupert’ already knew his alphabet off by heart.
Betty knelt down by her daughter and began absent-mindedly running her hand through the little girl’s curly auburn hair as she thought about how Josie had already learnt the alphabet and numbers up to fifty before she even arrived at school. Why wasn’t that the focus of Mrs Russell’s feedback rather than Betty’s relationship status? In fact, Josie’s teacher hadn’t mentioned anything about her academic progress. Betty wondered whether Mrs Russell was the kind of teacher who disapproved of parents teaching their children; just like Scout’s teacher in To Kill A Mockingbird who was convinced that Atticus had taught Scout to read incorrectly. Although that novel was set in the 1930s, surely New Yorkers in the 21st century could be more open-minded?
Betty began gathering up all the pens and crayons that Josie had scattered across the floor and put them back in the correctly labelled draw, and commended her daughter on her drawing of what she thought was a butterfly.
“Mummy?” Josie asked, tugging on the sleeve of Betty’s cardigan.
“Yes sweetheart?” Betty replied, helping her daughter into her blue jacket that had beautifully embroidered sunflowers on the back, one of the only items of clothing that Betty had bought for Josie full-price because she couldn’t help herself.
“You have tomato sauce on your cardigan” the girl said innocently, staring up at her mother with her sea-green eyes which were the exact same shade as Betty’s, and pointing at the red splodge on Betty’s sleeve. Betty looked down and sighed, she seemed to be all over the place today.
“Mummy is a mess today, isn’t she?” Betty laughed as she hoisted her daughter up into her arms, making Josie giggle in delight and earning yet another disapproving look from Mrs Russell, and carried her out of the stuffy classroom and into the cool October air outside, the sleepless sounds of the city ringing through the late afternoon.
Jughead scrunched up another sheet of paper in his long fingers and threw it across the room – missing the waste paper basket yet again – and groaned, running his hands through his dark hair in frustration. The smell of stale coffee seemed to cling to his apartment and he glanced over his desk, realising with disgust that there were several discarded half-filled mugs among the piles of wasted paper and empty pens. He stood up and stretched his muscular arms above his head, listening to the satisfying click of his shoulders as he released the tension, and moved over to the window, pulling up the cheap blinds.
Shit. The sky was already darkening as the sun slipped gracefully below the surface of the horizon and evening crept over New York. As he stared across the city, the lights of buildings sparking on like fireflies, Jughead couldn’t quite believe that he had wasted the whole day. He hadn’t even written a line for his new novel and he had promised his editor that he would get a rough draft of the first chapter completed by the end of the week. As if to confirm how long he had been staring at empty pages, Jughead’s stomach rumbled and he realised that he hadn’t eaten all day. Gathering up his dirty coffee mugs, he kicked a scrunched-up ball of paper across the room, and stalked towards the kitchen in search of something to eat.
The kitchen was just as messy as his office. Empty pizza boxes lay stacked on the counter, the bin was overflowing, and the sink had turned into a mountain of washing. Jughead pulled out a plate of cold pizza slices from the fridge and began devouring it, not even bothering to heat it up. He wondered whether all the pizza he had been consuming was the reason behind his writer’s block. It wouldn’t surprise him at this point if his brain had turned to mozzarella. He winced as his phone rang and correctly assumed that is was Toni - his editor - checking up on his progress, and reluctantly picked it up.
“Hey Jughead, how’s the writing going?” she asked cheerfully.
“Can we change the deadline?” he muttered in response.
“That bad, huh?” she didn’t seem at all surprised.
“Yup” he sighed.
“I’ll extend your deadline by a month on one condition” she began.
“Yeah..?”
“You go to a creative writing class” she reasoned.
“Creative writing class? Toni! I’m a published author, I don’t need lessons” Jughead protested, grimacing at the idea.
“It might knock some inspiration into your head! Besides, I’ve already booked you in. I’ll send you the details by email”
“Josie-Belle Cooper” Betty scolded, “if you don’t get into the bath this minute, I’m going to phone up Uncle Kevin and tell him not to come over tonight.”
That caught Josie’s attention as she immediately crawled out from where she was hiding behind the sofa in just her underwear and ran towards the bathroom, giggling. Her wild red hair was covered in splatters of paint in green, blue, and yellow, and she left tiny footprints of red paint behind her on the wooden floors as she trotted off to the bathroom. Betty was still clueless as to how her daughter had managed to completely cover herself in paint. It would seem that Josie always threw herself into every activity, quite literally in this case. Betty waited until she could hear Jose’s contented splashing, and then retrieved the mop from the cupboard and began to clean up the now-multi-coloured kitchen.
Twenty minutes later, after Betty had scrubbed all the paint off both the kitchen table and her daughter, she curled up with Josie on the sofa and began braiding her daughter’s slightly-damp curls into two neat plaits to prevent the chaos of messy hair the following morning. She couldn’t help but smile as she listened to Josie babble on about her day at school. Betty had always been in awe of her daughter’s confidence; the little girl was always so sure of herself whereas Betty had been shy and insecure as a child, weighed down by her parents’ expectations. When Josie was born, Betty had been overwhelmed with such unconditional love for her little girl that, even though she had only been eighteen, she knew that she would do everything to ensure that Josie knew she was loved and wanted despite the fact that her father was absent.
“Mummy, how long is Uncle Kevin babysitting for?” Josie asked.
“Only a couple of hours, sweetie” Betty reassured, although she suspected Josie’s interest had less to do with separation anxiety and more to do with the excitement of being allowed to stay up past her bedtime. Asking Kevin to babysit was like putting a child in charge, although she was confident enough that he wouldn’t set fire to anything and she couldn’t afford to pay anyone. Josie shrieked in excitement when the doorbell rang and scrambled off Betty’s lap, scampering off towards the front door of their tiny apartment. She threw open the door and was immediately in the arms of a tall dark-haired man in a blue sweater, giggling as he chucked her up into the air and caught her again, making Betty panic slightly with motherly concern.
“Look at you my little chicken tikka!” Kevin crooned as he tickled Josie all over her stomach, making her laugh harder. “I do believe you’ve grown!”
“Uncle Kevin!” Josie laughed, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “You saw me yesterday! I haven’t grown that fast!”
“Oh yes you have, it must be the vegetables!” he said, winking at Betty who smirked, she was always trying to encourage Josie to eat more vegetables.
“I don’t like vegetables” Josie frowned.
“Well if you want to grow up all big and strong like your Uncle Kevin then you better start liking them” Betty warned and she gathered up her bag, hastily shoving a notebook and a few pens inside, realising that she was already running late for her evening class. “Bedtime is at 7:30pm and there is homemade cherry pie in the fridge for you Kevin” she said as she pulled on her boots and yanked her coat down off the peg. “Please try not to burn the apartment down” she cautioned as she kissed both Josie and Kevin on the cheek and practically stumbled out of the door.
“Bye Mummy!” she heard Josie call as she pulled the door closed. Just before she headed down the stairs however, Betty listened a moment outside the door to discover what kind of mischief her daughter would cause. “Bedtime at 9pm and five stories” she heard her daughter negotiate.
“8:30pm and we’ll watch The Little Mermaid” Kevin offered in return.
“Okay, can I have some cherry pie?”
Betty rolled her eyes.
Jughead was late, as usual. In fact, he had been trying to make himself late on purpose to prove a point to Toni - that a published author did not need classes - but he had unintentionally got off at the wrong subway stop and now he was running through the rain with only a thin denim jacket and his grey beanie to protect him, his notebook clutched to his chest. He cursed under his breath as he stared at the buildings around him through the pouring rain, none of them matching the address written the scrappy piece of paper in his hand. He was about to turn around and head back to his apartment, forgetting Toni’s deal about their new deadline, when someone called to him from the other side of the street.
“Are you looking for the creative writing class?”