Bonding
| Bonding | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Chapter | 34 of 129 (list of chapters) |
| Published | March 3, 2007 |
| Page count | 5 |
| Major characters | Daisy, Augustus, Abbey, Tess |
| Minor characters | Paulo, Mike, Lucy, Alec McCain, David, Roger, Rachel |
| Locations | Roseville High School |
| Collected in | Volume One, Omnibus 1 |
| Chapter navigation | |
| ← Onwards to Adventure | Under Pressure → |
| Read chapter | |
Abbey is the only one who notices that Daisy keeps disappearing at lunch, and Lucy knows why. Up on a sunny hill, Augustus tells Daisy all about the old Tess, then leans in for something more. Will she let him?
Synopsis
Abbey is the only one at the lunch table worried that Daisy is missing again, and Mike’s guess that she has extra work satisfies nobody. Abbey’s frustration boils over into a shouting match with Paulo, complete with a mocking impression of Paulo’s apathy.[1]
It’s Lucy who knows that Daisy is actually hanging around with an older kid in a coat, and Tess admits, “I just worry he’s going to use her.”[1]
Daisy is indeed spending her lunch on a sunny hill with that very kid. Their small talk sours when Tess’s name comes up, and Augustus tells Daisy what Tess was like last year as “Roger’s girlfriend”.[2] By his account, Roger, now a Senior, made a game of taunting, stealing from and bullying freshmen, and Tess backed him up every day.[3]
Daisy is horrified, but she reasons that Tess has changed and must feel terribly alone now. When Augustus warns her against trusting people so readily, she disarms him by pointing out that she ignored her friends to give him a chance. His hand finds hers, he asks whether she might be jealous of what Tess is, and he pulls her into an embrace.[4]
Augustus tells Daisy he really likes her and offers to make her feel like the most desirable girl in the world, safe from all the others. Daisy closes her eyes for the kiss, then thinks of someone else and shoves him away. She flees at the bell, running past a confused Mike in the hallway, while Augustus watches her go and thinks, “This isn’t going to be easy..”[5]
Character dynamics
- Daisy and Augustus: Daisy is the one person who gave him a chance over her friends’ warnings, and she has been sneaking off to spend her lunches with him since Follow Me.[6] By the end, Augustus’s interest in her is openly romantic, while Daisy remains conflicted. He presses on her insecurities about Tess and pulls her into a near-kiss, and she comes close to returning it before shoving him away for the sake of an unnamed “him”.[4][5] His parting thought makes it plain that winning her over is a project he intends to keep working at.[5]
- Daisy and Tess: Daisy tutored Tess through her midterms in Midterm Time,[7] but she has quietly resented the older girl’s place at their table ever since Tess joined the group.[3] Augustus gives her every reason to turn on Tess, but she refuses. Whatever Tess was in the Roger days, Daisy decides, she deserves compassion now, even if the jealousy question leaves her squirming.[4]
Trivia & observations
- In her commentary, Veronica says an earlier version of this dialogue had Daisy flustered at the very idea of Tess having had a boyfriend. She admits that “a lot of old dialogue was definitely written from the eyes of a total conservative” (in romance, she clarifies, not politics).[3]
- In her commentary under the last page, Veronica says Daisy “was genuinely considering reciprocating his advances, but nope, too thirsty for Mike”, confirming who the unnamed “him” is.[5]
- Nobody in the chapter says Augustus’s name. The others at lunch know him only by descriptions such as “that older kid” and “the guy in the coat”.[1] He goes unnamed on-panel until Toby calls him “Gussie” in Moving On,[8] and his real name isn’t spoken until Pillow Talk.[9]
- Augustus only ever calls Tess “Tessa”, a name nobody at the main table uses. It’s the same needling habit he showed her in Follow Me.[3][10]
- The crying boy clutching his arm in the flashback is never named here, but he’s Rachel’s brother Aaron. Rachel blames Tess and Roger for his broken arm in Follow Me, and Pillow Talk later shows the incident itself.[3][11][12]
- Veronica’s commentary on the opening page notes that Abbey has shown a short fuse in earlier chapters, “but now it’s getting a little scary.”[1]
Related chapters
- Follow Me: Daisy first started slipping away from the lunch table here, and she took Augustus’s hand over her friends’ warnings. It’s also where Augustus frightened Tess into silence over her “little secret”, and where Rachel first dropped Roger’s name.
- Under Pressure: Augustus sketches Tess and Roger’s history here. In the following chapter, Noah immediately goes after Tess over what she and Roger did in gym class last year.
- Love My Way: The hill scene gets a much darker echo at the carnival. After Mike turns Daisy down, Augustus corners her against a tree, and this time she slaps him and tells him to leave.
- Moving On: Augustus turns out to have been working for Alejandro’s gang the whole time he was courting Daisy, which makes his “This isn’t going to be easy..” read a lot colder. Toby also mocks “Gussie” for having genuine feelings for her.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 34: Bonding, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 34: Bonding, page 2
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Chapter 34: Bonding, page 3
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 34: Bonding, page 4
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Chapter 34: Bonding, page 5
- ↑ Chapter 32: Follow Me, page 6
- ↑ Chapter 29: Midterm Time, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 40: Moving On, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 55
- ↑ Chapter 32: Follow Me, page 3
- ↑ Chapter 32: Follow Me, page 7
- ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 29