#thought about just doing “cherry” but i also like “petri” like petri dish

[damsxlette]

ranting in the tags ⬇️

[radroachrepellent]

🍒Cherry Notes🍒

-> appearance, personality, habits, a good bunch of stuff! playlist linked as well! read if ya want to get to know her more teehee...

Appearance

Cherry has thinner lips, almost naturally resting kind of in a twitchy smirk. If you look pretty closely you can see she bites them a lot.

One of her ears is a lot more turned out then the other. Mismatched ears! Her ears aren’t super visible since her hair usually covers them. She doesn't have ear piercings.

Her hair is almost always tied back in a messy bun. Her hair texture is somewhere between a 2c-2b wave. She doesn't really take care of it hence the knots and it always being in a bun. She also likes to wear a hat.

She is heavily freckled and they are dark, some more like moles. They cover her lips and her entire body.

Cherry has coloboma in both eyes. Her eyes are a reddish brown that is lighter than her pupil so you can kind of see how her pupils drag down. It affects her vision and light sensitivity.

She is around 154 cm (5’ 1”~) in height, 73 kg (160 lbs~) weight. I would describe her body and build as pear shaped and she has a good bit of fat and muscle.

She likes color and puts on blue eyeliner that’s graphic inspired every morning. She has to go one eye at a time with her glasses bent to figure it out using a pocket mirror.

Random

I imagine she has the Fallout traits of “Four Eyes” and “Small Frame” (like. vertically challenged. she thick af)

Cherry has bad vision and genuinely needs to have glasses on 24/7. I think she maybe takes them off to clean at night and that’s it. She has a few different pairs she brought from Coney Island that are her prescription.

If it’s possible to have a negative charisma modifier that’s Cherry! Do not ask her to haggle with people she will fail tremendously. It's funny because objectively she looks pretty cute and normal so like if someone just spoke for her like Impractical Jokers earpiece dialogue she could probably do well.

Situationally (when Cherry is under the influence of chems) she has a reverse "Black Widow" perk where she gets possessed by an alter ego and can decently well butter up older women. That's it tho. "Heyyy Bobbi-No Noseeee"

She definitely says "erm" sorry Cherry.

She is addicted to chems. Nothing beats a classic New York hotdog but she gets chem cravings for the Feltman’s Fantastic Floating dogs. (Everyone thinks she's making it up and has 0 idea what she's talking about. Chem filled hot dogs? That's gotta be a mentats trip thing.)

Chems make her feel like calm and more grounded than she actually is. She has some obsessive compulsive tasks and thoughts and chems distract her from that. She also just thinks it’s fun to see brighter colors. Gives her ideas of things to doodle or write down or ideas for her projects.

She usually carries a shotgun or rifle of sorts with ammo, a notebook, extra gloves, extra glasses, pens, chems, medical supplies, and a few melee weapons. Hot dog shaped whistle. Handmade blue eyeliner. Random canisters and small bags to stuff things she finds but she cannot carry a lot weight value wise.

Doesn't wear jewelry or anything to draw attention. Just her lab coat, wifebeater, pants, boots, gloves. She is objectively pretty but looks a little covered in dirt at all times. Harvested plants and what not shoved in her pockets. A petri dish falling out, etc. She just likes her makeup and having fun colors on her face and does self care that way.

She tries to lean away from direct combat but having to kill deathclaws for her passion project makes this a little challenging! she has definitely ended up almost dead before (wistful look to Bunny and Hancock)

She has developed a thought out hunting/trapping plan with time in the Commonwealth and more deathclaws killed. Like imagine a tornado tracking person but its just Cherry sprinting into an alleyway with a gun as a deathclaw spawns.

Luck or agility stat important here! I would say she's pretty useful to have as a companion for a character without like chemistry knowledge, medical knowledge, or needing a further away lucky shot. She might not be as trained or strong as the others but she can run settlements really well with her past.

Cherry looks like she would be punched and die immediately with the whole lab coat scientist vibe but I think she’s pretty sturdy she’s just not super focused on scrapping but maybe practices more after meeting the crew and realizing some of the skills she's lacking.

Background

Cherry grew up around Coney Island, her family origin tying back to Charles Feltman and the start of hot dogs in the US. Many years of radiation and wars later, some distant Feltman relatives start up the Feltmans hot dogs company again - finding that America’s highly preserved food could survive nuclear fallout.

(King of unrelated, but I think they might not actually be Feltman's. but like Cherry's father's parents kind of just. took it LMAO. like there is some tie to the OG German immigrant somewhere but I don't think they are as directly related as Cherry will say. She might find out about this in the Electric Eden DLC as a wtf moment.)

They worked on trying to can/preserve the OG recipe of fully made hot dogs to rival Cram. something that could last as long and taste better. Also new york flair.

They live in Coney Island in a house that attaches to a food factory which doubles as a tourist site. Cherry grew up generously, the work of her father and some relatives paying off.

They bioengineered long lasting lettuce, made their own types of ketchup, created the “meat” of the hot dogs, the whole deal. They tried to sell from "fresh" for a bit but it wasn't super popular until they got more radio coverage. Cherry’s family in specific kind of had it fall into their laps as their previous generations kept it alive and did most of the work.

Cherry grew up running the hot dog stand (literally handing out canned hot dogs and only rarely serving them “fresh”(taking it out of the can))

She also worked in the lab and gained a lot of skills with animals, chemistry, etc. After her Floating Dogs incident, she worked the lettuce farm.

The “Feltmans Floating Dogs” refers to a joke batch made by a rebellious teen Cherry that accidentally got distributed to real customers. She basically shot a hot dog full of chems to see if it would hit different and made a lot to get herself high and give to her friends and a lot of them got canned and sent out to the people of Coney Island. (They became coveted by druggies much later)

This caused some PR issues as the company was trying to export out of Coney Island and grow to be as big as Cram. Some members of the family switched to the more business/museum side of the history of the hot dog in the US over the actual preserved hotdog after Cherry’s stunt.

Cherry had a few close friends growing up but didn’t really feel fulfilled doing what her family had done with the hot dogs for generation's. She was rebellious after her pigtail farming wearing days. She wanted to be something bigger.

I forgot to mention this earlier but her name is actually Cherie but either her uncle or someone in the family thought Cherry was more catchy and could help with advertisement. Like being the Wendy's girl (basically) adopting the other spelling of her name.

Cherry’s mother died in childbirth and she is the only child and youngest out of her larger family meaning that she felt some pressure.

Her family is huge I like the idea of her in the Commonwealth environmental dialogues being like "Oh yeah my unc' met up with that guy once" Like kind of like Shaundi and her ex's LMAO.

Cherry has always been a little weird and kooky but she was a lot more extraverted about it in Coney Island as all of these people knew her.

Cherry attended school and met some good people. She was a little rebellious as well and met her ex-girlfriend at an eyeglasses store and tried to pay her with chems only to fail the charisma check. Cherry doesn’t know how she got a date after that either.

Her and her ex-girlfriend have matching tattoos of the outline of the state of new york with a cherry. Cherry’s is somewhere around her left ankle.

Cherry's father is named Francis but goes by Frank. Well for. Reasons. (thanks teddy) ANYWAY he solely raised Cherry to be a good person like accepting of all people, help out those around you, stay strong, etc. He is a show-man type personality so Cherry absorbed that but in a more unhinged way.

Transition to Commonwealth

One of Cherry’s struggles is with dealing with uncomfortable feelings. She would much rather run away from those feelings than sit with them. She’d rather be high and just not there. She doesn’t know how to comfort people well. Imagine crying breaking down person in front of Cherry and she feels bad but doesn’t know what to do so just stands there deer in headlights. It kind of adds to her being mischaracterized as dense or emotionless.

Father Frank starts to act weird and she realizes that him manning the lettuce fields and being outside so much resourcing meat, etc. was slowly turning him into a ghoul. Half of the reason Cherry was sent to the lettuce fields was due to painful ghoulish blisters appearing on her father’s arms and hands. He denied it but Cherry could tell by how he was acting.

Frank Feltman loved the people of Coney Island and the history and this really fucked a lot of things up, he lost a lot of confidence and became agoraphobic and did not leave the factory like ever. He just continued to work on the hot dog and would not give up on it.

Cherry felt a mix of pity for her father’s condition, but also that same growing feeling of not being content or happy that she's felt forever.

She got high and thought of how to make her father happy again and tripped about skinning animals. Uhhh. Somehow she gets the idea to make a skin graft so he can feel just as human again. Through animal skin. using a skin graft to encourage tissue regrowth and began testing as many animals as she could.

(She has morals and would not skin cats or dogs but uh everything else is up for grabs basically. Cherry in her early twenties just covered in blood hacking at livestock and making prototype skin grafts can be found around her old house)

She stayed in Coney Island kind of manic for a bit trying to test on all the animals she could and neglecting her relationship and trying to be out of the house away from her father as watching his decline made her have to sit with those uncomfortable feelings again.

She spoke to traders and heard of different mutants and creatures in the Commonwealth, far away from Coney Island. It made her excited to leave but she also felt guilt at wanting to just leave her entire life so quickly.

Cherry abandoned the hot dog life for exploring for this skin graft idea. Not wanting to really confront the people around her about it, she completely skipped town on her friends and partner at the time with no communication. And then never came back.

She did talk to her father before going. He told her this was what she wanted and that she didn't have to come back for him. She said she would come back which she half believed. She didn’t care that he was turning into a ghoul, but the way he acted so differently make her uncomfortable and want to run away. Cherry wanted to prove her worth outside of hotdogs to herself and him and the world. She wanted to do something to change peoples lives completely. If her father's life was going to be so long, she wanted to come back with something that could make him feel how he used to.

She sends her father letters weekly, bi-weekly, on what she has been up to. for years. all of the stories of helping ghouls with prototypes, getting beaten up, etc. she writes everything. for years. she hasn't made it back to Coney Island yet. She doesn't hear back from him but continues writing out of compulsion. I don't think she really talks to anyone about it although the people she's closest with find out. Like asking about her tattoo or past I think she would be reserved unless you're around 750 approval with her. Asking her what's she's writing it would probably be a "drawing you pregnant" or "my next genius idea" comment instead of what she's actually doing until like 250 LOL.

A lot of Cherry’s idles are adjusting her appearance: glasses, coat, hat, gloves, etc. Another idle of hers is taking out a notebook and pen and writing. Sometimes in settlements she's talking to the pack Brahmin, tucking a letter in by some luggage. She also doodles and will make fun of people or her companions via stick figure drawings and pretend she is having some genius idea. Sometimes she leaves them out for people to find.

Cherry is pretty sarcastic personality wise, very much rolling with the punches but still trying to be somewhat optimistic. I feel like she kind of comes off as a more jaded Laois Touden lol. 

She gets along best with Hancock and Bunny. It takes a minute but I think at first those two are who she kind of sticks near and annoys at first. I don't know a ton about the other companions as I haven't deep dived but just adlib I think she would think Deacon is funny, Danse annoying but giggle to herself drawing him getting stuck in power armor, asks Codsworth to sharpen her pen as he says sharpening pens is not a thing people do, Preston's fine... Uh I think she would like Cait and Piper too. Loves Dogmeat. Wants to skin Strong.

She approves when you try to be funny and also help people. She approves with stuff that involves science or medicine and trying to help or be involved in that process. She approves when you pass charisma checks. She approves when you help the common folk. She approves also with random bloody encounters. She likes to be entertained and to be listened to when yapping. She likes soap opera moments and helping people.

She dislikes food or supply waste. She dislikes the overkill of animals or people that didn't deserve it. (She contradicts herself with deathclaws tho as she dislikes if you pacify deathclaws as she'd rather skin it and have it dead immediately) She dislikes characters that are purely violent and dark. I would say normal or caps oriented people bore her but she doesn't oppose them.

[trippybigcat]

Ngl, I've been fighting sadness lately.

It just seems like everything I'm trying to do is happening at max friction, if you know that feeling.

I thought I'd write out a journal of sorts, real quick. I'm trying really hard to keep track of things.

I got up today and wanted to play my six string in the chair swing, but I've had a broken G for months. I cannibalized a string from this fixer-upper 12 string I came into possession of, but not without putting that string through my thumb at least an inch :( pulling it back out was pretty gruesome... but I got my six strung and tuned (EADBBE for some reason)

Which sounded really pretty. I spent half an hour with my coffee and guitar and vape in the chair swing and it felt really therapeutic and refreshing.

My thumb hurts a little, but it was probably more gross than painful.

I have some trees and berry bushes to plant today so I dug four holes and took a break for breakfast. I had mushrooms and fried eggs, and now about half a gallon of water sounds pretty good.

I've been doing my mushroom grows without any grain for a while now, but I just started prepping some grain yesterday, and I'm trying a new fruiting block recipe... I'm giving it a go the way the professionals do it.

At some point I want to find a free and wild alternative to grain, here on my land, but I now know that I can do without and still reach the finish line.

I've noticed inky-caps popping up in my lasagna beds and compost, and today I realized they would be a great fit for a time lapse, since they seem to fruit and then melt, so quickly, so I'm trying to get a culture of those. They seem to be thriving in wet dirty straw, so I'm thinking/hoping they'll be easy to grow.

I put some stem butts into a container of damp straw and I plan on collecting some of their *ink* for the petri dish.

I'm watching my radishes and kale and beans and zucchini as they get closer to harvest. Seems like the beans are flowering prematurely, so thats probably not good.

The state's dept of conservation raises native plants and trees and lets people order them really cheap, so I went in on an order with the neighbors and I've planted a lot of berries, and cherry, plum, persimmon, and now cottonwood trees, plus apples I've started from seed.

I made a slurry of leftover material from the chicken of the woods that didn't go into the freezer, and used that to inocculate a couple dead trees I pushed over in early spring. I drilled holes into the wood, filled them up and capped them with wet clay that I collected while digging all these holes. I also have good healthy cultures going in petri dishes and containers.

We have cottontail rabbits here, and every evening when I go to close the chickens up, this rabbit and I startle eachother.. I get within like 6 foot of it and it takes off, and its kinda funny.

I guess thats all for now.

I'm gonna keep putting effort and positive energy in, even though I'm feeling discouraged.

[caffy91]

A review of Gilmore Girls: A Cultural History

Rating: 2.5 stars. 

I know there are two authors, but because there is no distinction between them in the writing, I will refer to them as one entity. Here are my thoughts on the book: if you are Team Jess or Team Luke, this is a series of essays you will, for the most part, like. That being said, there are a lot of things about this book that I found lacking. My main criticism of this book is that the author cherry picks the examples she wants to use to prove her point and fails to mention other ones that don't add to it. Specifically, she very rarely addresses anything in season 7 (which, okay, different writer, I get it), and does not address Luke's daughter at all (okay, once, in a parenthesis), despite that fact that much of the essays talk about Lorelai as a mother, but nothing about her as a potential step mother to either April or Gigi. Further, in the entire section on Luke as a father figure to Rory, she does not address the fact that Luke does have a daughter and his handling of that, but only uses examples of his guardianship of Jess. I can freely admit that I was always Team Logan and, though I was horrified at the revivals characterization of his relationship with Rory, felt this books writers did him a injustice. The authors own feelings about Logan, which she outright admits to (“Full disclosure: we don't get Team Logan fans, but we'll do our best to represent what you could possibly be thinking as we work through what he says about Rory...and you”) make it so I can't take her criticisms seriously because what she condemns in him, she forgives in others. She constantly points out his less than perfect moments, but makes no mention of some of Jess' or Deans less than admirable interactions. The author is so blatantly Anti-Logan, that I spent most of the book resenting her defense of other characters and her own bias. At one point she makes a character judgment about him saying that Rory would be “exposed to a walking petri dish of unwanted STD's and venereal disease,” I suppose on account of the fact that he had casual sex with other consenting adults-- but this judgment is never made on other such characters that are sexually open, like Louise and Madison, who are also only mentioned once, or Paris who cheats on her boyfriend for half a season. While I realize that this next portion is the part of the show that has the most wildly varying opinions and debate, here is my rebuttal to what the author has written. I would also like to preface this by saying I don't hate Jess-- I actually quite like his as a character and wish his spin off had worked out. However, in the case of this book... The author diminishes the growth that Logan makes over the course of the show at every turn. The Logan that the show ends with is not the Logan you meet in season 5 and I resented the authors focusing on the early relationship that Rory had with Logan and his class-ist behaviour, when I would argue that Jess' behaviour was more deplorable when we first meet him, as he actively pursued someone in a relationship, and felt “above” the small town he was forced to move to (a form of social class-ism in itself). However, the author glosses over Jess' treatment of Rory, except when referencing how other characters reacted to Rory and Jess dating. One fresh take the author has is that she compares Dean to Luke, and not Luke to Jess, which is the more common interpretation. That being said, I disagree that Logan and Christopher are the parallel, though they do have shared characteristics (rich boy who is pressured into things he has no say about because of his family, financial recklessness, lashing out when they don't get their way). I would argue that it is actually Jess and Christopher that are the parallel (though I did find the authors implication that it is Lorelai that Jess can be compared to compelling). Both are inconstant in their presence, leave when things get hard and they don't want to deal with it, and have an insensitivity towards others feelings. Likewise, they both insert themselves into the Gilmore Girls lives when they feel like it, with no regard to the current circumstances of Rory and Lorelai's life. Teenage Jess also makes no attempt to fit into Rory's life or social circle, only to attempt to uproot her, like Christopher (in suggesting he and Lorelai have more kids). Further, if Christopher is Lorelai's teenage love (or the one that got away), then Jess is Rory's, both encapsulating the longing for the simplicity of their younger years, before their lives got so complicated. The main comparison I would make between Christopher and Jess is this: they only put effort into their relationship with Rory and Lorelai when they are not with them. At one point in the show, Rory wants to go to one of the festivals that the town is throwing and wants Jess to come with her pointing out he has gone to festivals in the past, and then Jess says something along the lines of “that is when I wanted you, and now I have you,” implying no more effort needs to be put into endearing himself to Rory. It is not until Dean makes himself available to Rory at the festival that Jess feels threatened and likewise decides to go. (So in an instance of the author cherry picking, this scene goes unmentioned, but Logan being jealous at having caught Rory talking to an ex-boyfriend at night is criticized.) Further, Christopher does the same, only making himself available to the Gilmore's when he himself is inclined to want to be with Lorelai, but never on someone else's terms. Logan, on the other hand, constantly puts effort into his relationship with Rory, visiting her when she is overseas, calling her to see how her day is going, surprising her with gifts and dates and adventure, something the author never addresses. And while the authors argument seems to be that Logan also has “daddy issues” similar to Christopher's, this does not account for Jess' own issues with fatherhood and authority. I personally feel that that is a part of Christopher's issues that is not overly addressed: in the early show he cannot hold down a steady job, I would presume to being irresponsible and not taking the authoritative body of work seriously. Jess, likewise, does not take well to authority figures and his own father was never present in his life. On the whole, this book makes some compelling arguments and I wouldn't write it off just because I disagreed with something that the entire internet has been debating about for over a decade. I was just not able to get over this one aspect of the authors argument because it happens to run throughout the entire book. That being said, the essays do focus on other parts of the show (class, money, culture, feminism, etc), and those are worth looking into. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the most contentious topic in this series of essays is the most contentious topic in all debate about the show.

[irisstory2021]

Chapter 1: Adaptation

2035 -- Present Day

The plants were alive when I last saw them. 

I walked into the testing lab, half-heartedly tossing a coat over my civilian clothing. I wasn’t supposed to be here outside of my shift -- my father’s way of trying to pull me out of my career and brush me against something resembling a personal life -- but I couldn’t get the image of that infant out of my mind. In the footage, she’d been as pink and full of life as a fresh peach, the first baby born on New Year’s Day in 2011. Then, in what felt like a flash, the color had been sucked out of her, she’d turned white as frost and her veins could be seen pulsating, even past the grain of the frames. I couldn’t stop thinking about how quickly she had shifted; her veins sprouted out like the pigment from a brush dipped in clear water. 

I shut my locker, catching a glimpse of the plants again. There was a pot for peace lilies, which stood tall, their white petals mimicking the white walls. A pot for fastia, which my immature coworker always thought resembled marijuana leaves with their pointy ends. Then, a pot for monstera, a plant native to tropical regions that reminded me of the roundness of fat lobster claws. They were sitting in a row against a ledge on the wall that must have been left over when the windows were removed and built over when they first built the lab. They were the plants that needed the least amount of sunlight. I didn’t know why my father bothered to set them out -- their greenness and inert otherness looked stupid in such a white, clean room -- but he insisted. They honored something, or stood for something, he said -- “A reminder that nature can still exist and persist, despite man.” 

I rolled my eyes at the irony. Someone needed to be taking care of the plants, watering them at the very least. In a sunless, rainless environment like the lab, nature could only exist if it was created by and coddled by the likes of us. And the person in charge of watering them -- presumably, my father -- couldn’t even do the bare minimum.

Turning to step inside the separate room where samples of the serum were kept, I suddenly gasped at the sight of my father. The clock behind him read far too late for either of us to be here, and yet he looked at me as if I was the only one in the wrong. 

“Iris,” he said, with a raised brow, his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re not supposed to come in for a few more hours.”

I shrugged my shoulders and gave him somewhat of a petulant look. Though I was almost 30, he still treated me like a teenager, and at this very moment, it was as if I was sneaking back into the house after a rambunctious night out. “I’m getting an early start.”

“4:30 in the morning early?”

“You’re here too, you know,” I said, brushing past him to perform my retina scan on the wall. The doors to the separate room swished open, letting both of us into a room where the temperature easily dropped 10 degrees. “Besides… I’m usually up this early. You know how I like my routines.” 

“Yes, you’re just like your mother, you two could never get a full night’s sleep, always restless.” He shook his head and pulled out the day’s sample for me.

We kept two versions of the serum in the lab: The original version, alpha, which was currently in commission, and the experimental version, beta, which was a copy of the original that we could test on and improve upon. Only when we made any sort of notable improvement to the beta could we eventually replicate the same improvements to the alphas we had on hand, and even then, it would take months of approval and months more of the changes to be made for the completed version to actually begin being used. 

Nothing excited me more than a fresh beta. Of course, in the petri dish, it looked clear as water -- yet, the next 10 hours I would spend working on it meant endless possibilities to bring it to life. It almost brought a smile to my face if my father hadn’t been there. 

I put on a surgical mask and a pair of gloves, wiped down the counter with some bleach, and retrieved the sample in the petri dish from my father before setting it down on the counter. “I’ll see you at lunch, dad,” I dismissed him, lowering myself to be at level with the sample as I thought about what I could do to it today. “And water those plants.”

“I will. Don’t forget these,” he said, dangling a pair of goggles in my peripherals. I sighed, snatching them with a sarcastic smile and putting them on. Satisfied, he finally left me in the lab. In the small, square window of the sliding doors I could see him pouring cups of water into the pots. 

My father and I were biologists for Plethora, a pharmaceutical company that worked on cures for human diseases. My father has been working for Plethora ever since he earned his master’s degree; the company paid for his education so long as he remained an employee. In my eyes, Plethora was a good company -- it didn’t seek to reinvent the wheel, and instead sought for ways it could keep the wheel spinning. What stopped it, of course, were terminal illnesses like cancer, heart disease. Plethora looked for cures by exploring what proteins to introduce to invasive cells rather than what could be done to eradicate them, hoping to recreate the way a tree grows its leaves back every spring despite the way it seems to die in the winter, or the way its branches grow around telephone poles instead of stop growing altogether. Adaptation.

I agreed with almost everything that Plethora did. 

As I looked at my fresh sample, I wondered what I always did whenever I started the day. What could I do that any of the other scientists -- especially my father -- hadn’t thought of yet? What could I contribute to change this seemingly perfect, sterile sample into an alpha candidate? It hadn’t killed anyone yet -- was I smart enough to keep it that way with whatever new thing I’d conjured up? I began to think about what the alpha was before it became the alpha; who was the scientist in this very same room and what were they thinking? 

Most mornings, I dove deep into this slump, and my wonderings became intrusive thoughts of whether I was good enough or just following in the footsteps of my father after losing my mother. I could never really focus until somehow pulling myself over this slump. But today, my mind drifted back to footage of that infant again -- and gone were those self-absorbed thoughts. What replaced them dared to be more sinister. 

❧

My father showed me the footage a couple of days ago over dinner. In a strange way of connecting with me, he often told me stories of when he first began working for Plethora. For dual-method purposes, he might have also been trying to convince me to stay at the company long enough, knowing I was slowly but steadily losing interest in it. I always felt indifferent about his stories, but this one has since stuck with me.

“I’m not supposed to be showing this to you, Iris,” he said. He had found an old, cathode ray television that had a disc player built in it -- it was forward-thinking, except for the fact that it had weighed 50 pounds and its screen was only a little over a foot wide. He brought this out in the middle of dinner, while I had been uninterested in my carrots, forking them into mush. I furrowed my brows, of course intrigued by my father’s antics -- and yet something hung over him, something quite serious, and it reeled me in enough to absentmindedly taste my carrot mush for the sake of closing my slacked jaw. 

He slid the disc in and it went straight to footage of New Year’s Day in 2011. Watching diligently, I saw a mother -- her name was Terry -- giving birth in a hospital room while her husband, whose name I didn’t know, filmed the whole thing. 

“Ugh, dad, what the hell are we--” I dropped my fork in disgust, fully resigned from his clear attempt at just grossing me out. He knew I was afraid to have children and didn’t really like them in the first place. 

“Shh, just watch.”

Terry was wailing, her blonde hair stuck to her forehead and her cheeks cherry red and glistening in tears. You couldn’t really see the childbirth, since the doctor had obviously been covering between her legs, but her expression was enough to churn my stomach. Watching on, it was presented like what I expected of any record of childbirth -- the crying from the mom, then the child, then the dad. Footage of them holding the child in their arms, and then later, footage of them cooing over the child as it slept in its crib. 

I was an only child and my parents were estranged from their family, so I had never had an experience of visiting a newborn at the hospital. It didn’t strike me as peculiar when the father filmed his child -- whom they called Susie -- suddenly 

[bettystark]

“Nice legs, Gisele.”

Raising an eyebrow, Jughead resisted giving in to the temptation to look down at his legs. How could she even see them? He pursed his lips, shuffling his feet a bit and feeling the backs of his knees sticking to red vinyl of the booth.

Fingers stilling over the keys of his laptop, he looked up when he heard the squelch of the seat across from him. From over his laptop, Jughead watched as the dark-haired girl settled herself into the booth.

“Can I help you?” he questioned, fingers itching to simultaneously reach for his beanie he’d discarded and to continue typing.

“Not unless you know of a swimming pool that isn’t akin to a petri dish in a CDC lab.”

Jughead couldn’t help but snort, “Really, Veronica?”

“It’s a cesspool, Jughead,” she said primly, folding her hands atop one another on the table.

“So, why do want a private swimming pool?” he asked, while swirling around the straw in the dregs of his once-upon-a-time strawberry milkshake. He considered ordering another, but this had already been his second.

“Because it’s hot as balls out today,” Veronica exclaimed, fanning herself with a hand for emphasis.

He winced, nodding in agreement. Hence the reason he was wearing shorts. It also didn’t help that the both of them had dark hair that pulled and soaked up the sun’s ray like a magnet.

“What about Sweetwater River?”

The look she gave him could have killed. He felt an icy shiver make its way down his spine and Jughead held his hands up in defense.

“The river water is abysmal Jughead, plus fish. I need not say anymore."

He gave a ‘hmm’ and thought about some if their more affluent classmates. “Have you tried Ethel?”

“Yep,” her ‘p’ popping with a smack of her lips. “Studying abroad in France this summer,” she finished, almost sourly, just as Pop’s drew up to the table with a dark chocolate milkshake.

“Oh, thank you, Pop,” Veronica said, clasping a hand over her heart.

“Thought you could use it. It’s a scorcher out there,” the older man wiped his brow with a rag from his pants pocket, and tipped his white hat at Jughead. “You want another one, son?”

Shaking his head, Jughead politely declined and instead allowed Pop to collect his empty glass.

“Oh, there’s little I missed more than a Pop’s milkshake,” Veronica said in between slow sips of her frost covered treat.

“Isn’t there a diner on practically every corner of New York?”

“I think you already know the answer to that, Jughead,” an impeccably arched brow raised at him and he forgot for just one moment that they weren’t sophomores in high school anymore.

“Right,” he mumbled, finally choosing to close the lid of his laptop. The essay he was writing for his online class could wait.

“So, how is NYU?”

“Acceptable,” Jughead said, shrugging a shoulder and tapping his fingers against the laptop his scholarship paid for. “How’s Cornell?”

“Oh, it’s everything daddy ever wanted for me that’s for sure,” Veronica paused, taking a sip of milkshake before continuing. “Betty certainly loves it.”

Ah. There it is. The thing he and Veronica had the most in common between them.

“How is Betty?”

“Wouldn’t you know? You two are always texting.”

“Sometimes that’s hard to judge. You see her everyday, in person.”

With a shrug of her shoulders, Veronica continued sipping her drink. “She seems happy.”

With a nod of his head, Jughead tried not to let anything but impasse cross his features. Of course she’s happy, why wouldn’t she be?

Just because he thought about the soul crushing 221.4 miles between them everyday for the last year didn’t mean anything.

“Stop whatever it is you’re doing with your face.”

Scrunching his nose up, Jughead frowned. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Yes you are. You’re doing it right now. Looking like I kicked a puppy right in front of you.”

His heart had picked up and he was surely sweating through his shirt right now, despite cool and steady breeze of air conditioning that was blowing down right in their booth.

“You know, I don’t know why you just don’t tell her.”

Jughead crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the booth. “Tell her what?”

Veronica pushed the glass towards the center of the table as she leant her elbows on it. “That you’re in love with her.”

Blinking, he tried to ignore the twisting in his gut. He knew he had never been particularly obvious, at least to Betty, but for Veronica to know…

“Listen,” she started, pointing a finger at him and then taping it on the table. “I’ve known for a long time, you look at that girl like she hung the moon. Why have you never said anything?”

Sinking down a little, Jughead pursed his lips. “Why? Because just look at the differences between us. Betty would never go for the loner weirdo like me.”

Veronica shook her head at him. “The thing is, Jughead, that you’re not such a loner like you think. You’ve got friends: Archie, Kevin, Sweet Pea, Toni, me, Betty. And you’re not the piece of trailer trash you always believe yourself to be.”

Furrowing his eyebrows, Jughead looked away from the piercing basalt of her eyes. “I’m pretty sure Betty doesn’t like me like that.”

Rolling her eyes, Veronica spoke, “I have it on good authority that she might.”

The fluttering in his belly was the equivalent of a violent storm with raging waters slapping around inside him. It made made him both elated and ill.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” he said, releasing a sigh and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Plus we’re at different colleges — literal miles apart.”

“Jughead,” Veronica sighed, tilting her head at him. “You never know if something is going to work unless you try. Love is like…” she paused, eyes going a bit dreamy and her voice softer as she spoke, “—diving head first into the deep end of the pool, you have to forget about being able to see the bottom and just enjoy the water.”

His eyebrows rose, mouth dropping open a bit at her words. “Damn, Veronica. Where’d you hear that one?”

“Cosmo.”

Jughead snorted, but his lips turned up into a smile, Veronica’s grin infectious.

Digging into the pocket of his shorts, he threw some bills on the table to cover both his and Veronica’s milkshakes. Tucking his laptop under his arm, Jughead slid from the booth and pulled his beanie back over his head.

“Wait, where are you going?” Veronica questioned up at him.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll hear all about it later,” he threw over his shoulder, barely catching Veronica’s squeal of excitement.

Exactly 24 minutes later, he was sitting outside Cooper house. Of course it actually only took 14 minutes to get there from Pop’s — Jughead just had to sit with his head against the steering wheel for ten minutes down the block before convincing himself to actually pull up.

He felt shaky and sweaty, what a good impression, he thought as he trudged up the walk. Veronica’s words echoed in his brain, and he couldn’t leave the thought alone now. There was no way he would survive the rest of the summer if he didn’t do this now.

Raising a fist, Jughead knocked on the cherry red door. When it opened, the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding left him in a rush.

“Juggie, what are you doing here?” Betty asked, her face lighting up in a brilliant smile. He took in her golden hair piled up on her head, sun-kissed skin, freckled shoulders, and strong legs — and felt his heart stutter.

Betty Cooper was infinitely out of his league.

Wiping sweaty palms on the sides of his shorts, Jughead steeled himself.

“Betts, there’s something I should have told you a long time ago…”