𝕢𝕦𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝕠𝕗 𝕣𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕕𝕒𝕝𝕖

8

After school that day, Arabella invited Kevin over her house to chill a little.

They were sharing a pie of pepperoni pizza and watching Clueless when Betty called out of the blue.

The young Queen jumped in on her couch when she heard that her Hedwig's Theme ringtone was on full-volume, but quickly answered when she saw the Caller ID.

"Hey, Bet," the girl answered simply, gaining the complete attention of Kevin.

"Hey, Ara, I only have a few seconds to talk," she said on the other line in almost a whisper.

"Wha... oh my god, Betty, were you kidnapped?!" Ara asked with false worry, knowing very well that she most likely wasn't.

"What? No. It's just that... Veronica and I just had a falling out," the blonde began, "she was saying how it's not her fault that Archie doesn't like me and like how I was pining after him before she got here."

'What's she saying?' Kevin mouthed but Ara just playfully shooed him away.

"Bet," Ara said sympathetically, trying to find the right words to say, "as much as you don't want to hear it, Manhattan Mystery is kinda right."

"Really?" The blonde girl asked sounding a tad hopeless.

"Betty-" Ara tried to explain, but her friend wasn't having any of it.

"I gotta go. Cheryl and I are going to get mani-pedis," Betty explained in an annoyed tone and now Ara was beginning to feel the same way but for a completely different reason.

"With Cher-... well, that's not a dick move," the young Queen spoke sarcastically after her blonde friend had hung up.

Kevin looked at his short friend, eager to get information.

"So," the girl began, "Betty just told me that she's going to get mani-pedis with Cheryl. The week may've just begun, but I that is the strangest thing I've heard all week."

"That's weird," Kevin said, taking a drink of water from his bottle, "she was supposed to get mani-pedis with V today."

The young Queen's eyebrows furrowed slightly as she processed this new information and tried to put pieces together in her head.

The conclusion: Betty was so upset at Veronica, that she took the appointment that they had and went with Cheryl Blossom instead.

But Betty wouldn't do something that shallow, right?

•••

That night, Arabella was sitting at the desk in her bedroom doing homework after Kevin had left.

The house was quiet, as it usually was when her mother was traveling for work. The woman was gone for about a day now, and though she did travel a lot, there was never a time in Arabella's life when she saw too little of her mom.

The two would Skype almost every night and became closer after what had happened to Ara's father.

The girl was solving one of her last math problems when she heard what sounded like a pebble hitting the glass of her second-floor window.

At first there was slight fear considering that the girl was home alone, at least until her caretaker, Freida, came back. But when she looked down, with a heavy vase in hand, the young Queen had just noticed her too familiar guy friend looking up at her with a straight face.

Her black pug, named Sirius, waddled up to her side and stood by her feet as she still held the vase.

"Jug?!" She shouted, loud enough for him to hear, "if this is some kind of romantic gesture, I already have a guy!"