After You

From Candypedia
After You
Chapter97 of 129 (list of chapters)
PublishedMay 10, 2017 (2017-05-10)
Page count26
Major charactersLucy, Paulo
Minor charactersCarol, Daisy
LocationsLucy’s house, Roseville neighborhood, Carnival
Collected inVolume Seven
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Paulo finally gets his carnival date with Lucy, complete with teddy bears, a Ferris wheel, and months of gossip to catch up on. It all goes wonderfully, right up until Lucy decides he deserves the truth.

Synopsis

Before the carnival there’s homework, and before the homework there’s Lucy’s mom, who calmly looks Paulo over mid-whisk and asks her daughter, “Is this a bad one”.[1] Upstairs, the study session doesn’t produce much studying. Paulo hasn’t brought a single workbook, and in the end Lucy just shrugs and slides her answers over for him to copy.[2][3]

On the walk over, Paulo can hardly contain himself: “You’re here again! My Lucy’s back for good!”[4] He catches her up on months of gossip, but Lucy goes flat the moment Mike’s name comes up, and Paulo settles for a side hug.[5]

At the Carnival, Paulo pays for both tickets on his Burger-Tron wages, and they tear through the rides. At the ring toss he wins a green teddy bear after plenty of misses, while Lucy lands a blue one on a single casual throw. Blushing, they swap prizes without a word.[6][7]

When Lucy asks how Abbey and Daisy are doing, Paulo explains over shaved ice that the two broke up yesterday, after a mega-drunk Daisy admitted at Rachel’s party that she still isn’t over Mike.[8] He claims Abbey “thinks I wanted to rape Daisy or some shit”, and his story of how far the confrontation went keeps shifting.[9] Then he lets slip that it happened after the crash, which also hurt Lucy’s brother Jordan. Lucy erupts at him, then admits that seeing Paulo hurt scared her in a way she can’t explain. The fight ends in a quiet hug.[10][11]

Lucy spends the walk to the Ferris wheel talking Paulo down about Daisy, and he admits what really bothers him is how much control she has over him.[12][13] On the wheel, a guilty Lucy pulls out of their embrace and starts confessing.[14] Coming back was never part of the plan. She had agreed to leave weeks before the school play, and going the day after was her own idea. Even the makeout before she left wasn’t affection. She was only trying to tide Paulo over, knowing she’d be gone, and she calls herself “no better than Jessica” for it.[15]

She tells him not to wait for her. Paulo, in tears, asks why she won’t be with him, and Lucy yells back, “You IDIOT!! If I wasn’t LEAVING I wouldn’t have done ANYTHING with you in the first place! YOU NEVER HAD A CHANCE!!” Paulo rips the head off his blue teddy bear and hurls it out of the car.[16][17]

Even freshly rejected, Paulo doesn’t get to sulk in peace. When he declares he’s skipping Daisy’s party, Lucy goes full drill sergeant, pinning him against the car’s bars until he agrees to give his shift away and attend.[18][19] The night ends with the glowing Ferris wheel and Paulo’s parting wail: “Why do I keep letting cute girls CONTROL ME!!”[20]

Character dynamics

Paulo and Lucy blush and glance away as they silently trade the teddy bears they each won at ring toss.
A wordless trade of prizes, at the high point of the night.
  • Paulo and Lucy: Years of one-sided devotion finally get a straight answer, and it’s the worst one on offer. Paulo has been openly courting Lucy since her return, and she accepted this date already knowing how he felt.[21] Lucy can’t live with letting his hopes ride on what she did before she left, so she tells him the truth at the top of a Ferris wheel.[15][17] The romance is closed off for good. The friendship survives the same night. Within minutes Lucy is back to bossing Paulo around for his own good, and he pouts rather than walks away.[19]
  • Paulo and Daisy: The grudge is thinner than Paulo pretends. He spends the whole evening swearing Daisy hates him, yet he daydreams about her fussing over his homework. What he really resents, he admits, is how much control she has over him.[3][13] Lucy refuses to let him keep avoiding Daisy. By the end of the night he’s under strict orders to give up his shift and go to Daisy’s party.[19]

Trivia & observations

Paulo, eyes narrowed, rips the head off the blue teddy bear.
The bear Lucy won for him doesn’t survive her confession.
  • Veronica planned this chapter to open Volume 7, since Paulo recapping months of events to Lucy makes a natural volume start, leaving Unspoken Rule to close Volume 6.[5][22]
  • Paulo showing up without a single workbook is on purpose. Veronica’s commentary notes she deliberately never gives him a backpack.[2]
  • Veronica rewatched the Teen Titans episode where Beast Boy and Terra visit a carnival as a reference for the date montage.[7]
  • Emma, the blushing ticket vendor, previously appeared as the theater employee Paulo charmed at the cinema in Boy Toy.[6][23]
  • The panel drains of all color the moment Lucy asks how Abbey and Daisy are doing, a full page before the recap turns grim.[24]
  • In a later ask response, Veronica explains that Paulo knows next to nothing about Abbey, never considers that his constant ribbing might be feeding the dislike, and treats high-school relationships as something “for messing around”.[25]
  • Per the authors’ Tumblr, the storyline at this point is set in September 2008.[26]

Related chapters

  • Curtain Call: The makeout Lucy confesses to happened backstage here. Right before the play went up, she pulled Paulo aside with a blunt “Let’s make out.” — the encounter she now admits was only ever meant to tide him over.
  • Moments Apart: Daisy’s birthday party takes place in the following chapter, and Paulo attends exactly as ordered. He even tells Daisy she should probably thank Lucy for twisting his arm into changing that shift.
  • Happy Hour: Rachel’s party from Paulo’s recap, where the group held a drunken wake for the departed Lucy, sobbing Mike and all. It’s also the night Paulo warned Mike that he’d lost his chance with Lucy if she ever came back — words that land right back on Paulo in this chapter.

References

  1. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 1
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 2
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 3
  4. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 5
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 6
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 7
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 8
  8. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 10
  9. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 12
  10. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 13
  11. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 14
  12. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 15
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 17
  14. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 19
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 20
  16. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 22
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 23
  18. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 24
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Chapter 97: After You, page 25
  20. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 26
  21. ↑ Chapter 96: Unspoken Rule, page 28
  22. ↑ “Ask response on the Volume 6/7 split”. 2017-07-02.
  23. ↑ Chapter 87: Boy Toy, page 14
  24. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 9
  25. ↑ “Ask response on Paulo’s understanding of Abbey”. 2019-05-19.
  26. ↑ “Ask response on the BCB timeline”. 2017-06-13.
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