When I got home, Archie and I watched one of my favourite movies. I didn't talk at all. If someone asked me something, I'd simply nod my head or point to whatever they were talking about. There was too much going on in my head for me to talk. Too many things that the past few hours had left for me to think about. How did Jason drown in a river that rarely had any waves in it at all? How did Cheryl make it out and not him? Where was his body? Why wasn't it in the river? If it was still in the river, how come they didn't find it? Should they have tried other methods? Did we need to be questioning the way the police search rivers for bodies?

The questions my mind was throwing at me were fucking ridiculous but, they wouldn't stop coming and I was going to have to deal with that. My head was of course trying to work faster then necessary to answer all of these questions. I couldn't focus on anything else. It was too much. I couldn't give any attention to things that didn't matter. I was stubborn and curious and I needed answers so I sat on my bed and just tried to figure everything out. There were a lot of things in life that i hated, but one of the things I hated most was being confused. Unfortunately that was something that I was a lot. One of the many perks of being me.

All of sudden, I recognized what it was that I was feeling. It was familiar and it was there. The feeling of slowly slipping further and further into the twisted depths of my mind. Like I was falling into a tangled web of questions that I knew would only keep me stuck there for far too long. The problem with this was that it was literally like falling. Once you fall, the only thing that can stop you is either something catching you or most likely (and most unfortunately) the ground. I had fallen before. Archie had caught me. My dad had caught me. Betty had caught me. Kevin had caught me. I didn't want to know what would have happened if I had hit the ground.

When I'm inside this strange state of mind, it's like the only thing that matters is that I untangle the web that's keeping me from the rest of my life. In some odd way it feels like if I give more than a few minutes of attention to anything else, that web will remain tangled forever. When this happens, I end up sitting in silence, letting life pass by. I often don't leave someone's side, especially not at school. I didn't want to do that. Not again.

As I sat on my bed, realizing what was happening to me, tears began to fall down my cheeks. Not that I noticed. I stared at the wall. Fuck, fuck this is not happening. I was not going to become some crazy girl who can barely put together a sentence. That was not happening this time.

I wasn't sure when Archie had entered the room but, he was here, waving a hand in front of my face, trying to get my attention.

"Y/N!" he said, his voice wavering a little.

"Arch, hi. When did you come in?" I asked. When I saw the look on his face, I could tell that he knew what was happening to.

"Y/N... please... just try to stay here, okay? I don't want to watch you go through that again."

I took a deep, shaky breath, "Arch, it's not up to me. You know that. I don't want this to happen."

"Just promise me you'll try not to... not to shut down, okay? We have to start school again in two months. Just please, I can't watch you walk around like you're not even there. It's terrifying. I never know when you're going to be okay again or if you are ever going to be okay."

I nodded, said I would try, but in my mind, I knew it was probably too late. When an avalanche starts, you can't try to stop it but, you can try to protect yourself. The only way for me to do that was to make myself focus on something. That was the main reason that I baked at night, built the contraptions in my room, drew anything and everything I could think of, took photos and messed with the lighting and the colours, made an insane amount of pointless photo collages, read tons of books, wrote shitty songs, only for them to be deleted, erased or thrown out.

As I stared at the wall, I heard a noise. It was quiet, but getting louder. It must of been going on for a while before I had realised that I could hear it because it was getting louder and louder as if whoever or whatever was causing it was trying to get someone's attention. Right now, I just wanted them to shut the fuck up. The noise was taking attention away from my thoughts. Then it dawned on me that I could be the person whose attention was wanted. This thought jerked me back to reality and I realised that Jughead was at my window.

My eyes widened and I walked over to the painted frame to open it.

"Hey." he said.

"Hi. I'm sorry, have you been here long?" I asked.

"Wait, you don't know how long I've been there?" he asked, looking confused. I shook my head. "You were sitting on your bed the whole time I was knocking on the window, three feet away from you. I thought you were mad at me or something."

"Why would I be mad at you?" I asked, moving back to my bed as he climbed into my room to sit on the bed with me.

"I have no idea, I was confused. How did you not know I was there?"

"There's a lot on my mind." I said with a quiet voice. I was very afraid that if I spoke about it, I would either lose my grip on reality or have a break down right here in front of the boy I really liked, all because I was afraid of that I was going to lose my grip on reality.

Jughead put a hand on my cheek. The gesture made me smile. I knew Juggie wasn't exactly the biggest fan of contact or comforting people and to know that he was doing both those things right now, just for me, was making me feel special and different and once again, it was the first time that feeling had been a good thing.