Breaking Up

Breaking Up
Chapter	75 of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	May 4, 2013 (2013-05-04)
Page count	28
Major characters	Mike, Paulo, Jordan, Lily, Sue, Daisy
Minor characters	Abbey, David, Lani Amalu, Lucy, Yashy, Chirpy, Sam, Stacy
Locations	Roseville High School, Lucy’s house, Hospital, Roseville neighborhood
Collected in	Volume Four
Chapter navigation
← Curtain Call	Leaving Home →
Read chapter

Lucy’s desk is empty, her bedroom is stripped bare, and her family isn’t answering the door. Mike is the one who finally learns why, and by the chapter’s end all he has left to say is “I’m sorry.”

Synopsis

The gang files into homeroom at Roseville High School, still puzzling over the stranger who crashed the celebration after the play. In flashback, a tall dog-man in a suit introduces himself as “a famous music producer” and offers Lucy a music career on the spot. The whole group gapes at the offer. Lucy just looks him in the eye, says “No.”, and walks off, leaving the agent wailing about the star she could have been. Back in the present, David notices her desk is empty yet again.

Miss Amalu grimly calls the class to order and announces that “Lucy will no longer be attending this school.” After that, the whole group winds up frozen on the doorstep of Lucy’s house, nobody willing to knock until Sue does. Jordan opens the door a crack, glares at the lot of them, and slams it shut. Paulo shoves past and pounds on the door, demanding answers. Then he scales the brick wall to Lucy’s bedroom window. Her room has been emptied out, down to a vacuum and a cardboard box.

Paulo comes apart at that. He begs Jordan through the door to tell him what happened. When Daisy tries to calm him down, he whirls on her and screams, “You don’t fucking GET IT!!” He deflates in shame almost immediately and walks off crying. Daisy, herself in tears, keeps a furious Abbey from going after him.

Mike waits down the street for Jordan to come out of the house. Jordan refuses to talk. He eventually throws a punch, which Mike calmly dodges and catches. Mike promises to keep following him until he gets an answer, and Jordan finally breaks down. He drops to his knees in the snow, clinging to Mike’s arms: “I don’t want to lose my little sister..” Mike’s eyes go wide, and he sprints off without a word of explanation.

A bus ride later, Mike is at the doors of a hospital emergency room. Lucy’s mother and Sam are waiting at the help counter, and a red-eyed Lily stops Mike at the door. She won’t tell him what happened, only that Lucy will be out in a week, and all Mike can gasp out is a horrified “She DIDN’T..” Lucy is not coming back, Lily tells him, and asks whether that isn’t what he wanted. Then she bids him a weary, formal farewell. On his way out, Yashy tells him goodbye by name.

Mike storms off down the sidewalk, insisting to himself that none of this is his fault and that Lucy was a terrible person. Then he starts remembering her. The memories run from her old insults through her reluctant thank-yous to her smile, and finally to a blushing “I love you..” Back in the present, he claws at the brick wall beside him, sinks to his knees, and sobs out the chapter’s last words: “I’m sorry.”

Character dynamics

Mike won’t be shaken off, and he won’t be hit, either.

• Mike and Lucy: With Lucy only appearing in flashback and memory, the focus stays on Mike. He is still standing by his winter verdict, the one where he cut her off and called her a parasite. He never gets to make good on the fresh start the two of them agreed to just the night before. His first response to the news of what she did is denial (“She was a terrible person”). A memory montage then ends on the love confession from A Distance Apart he once rejected. He ends the chapter on his knees, apologizing to someone who can’t hear him.
• Mike and Jordan: The two have no real relationship before this chapter, but Jordan sees Mike as somebody to blame. He refuses to speak to Mike, then swings at him. Mike’s flat refusal to leave finally cracks Jordan’s anger open into grief. Nothing gets patched up, but Jordan’s breakdown is what tells Mike where to run.
• Mike and Lily: Mike has been part of Lucy’s home life for years — familiar enough that even Yashy’s nickname for him dates back to their childhood. At the ER, Lily blocks him at the door and asks whether Lucy’s departure isn’t exactly what he wanted. She closes with “It was a pleasure to know you, Michael.”, a farewell that reads like severance.
• Paulo and Daisy: Daisy is the friend who reaches out when Paulo is at his lowest, and this time it earns her the ugliest outburst of the chapter. He regrets it almost before it’s out of his mouth, but he leaves without apologizing, and Abbey has to be physically held back on her behalf.

Trivia & observations

Homeroom announcements are rarely this grim.

• Veronica’s commentary reveals the music-producer opening is a deliberate parody of Degrassi-style instant-stardom plotlines, played completely straight for two pages. She had wanted weekday updates running by the chapter’s launch just so the first page wouldn’t sit around for days looking sincere.
• The announcement page’s layout, with Miss Amalu dead center and every character’s reaction orbiting her, is summed up in Veronica’s own commentary as “ANIME SHOCK PANELS!!!!!”.
• The memory montage is color-coded, from a cold blue for Lucy’s insults, through purple as she softens, to a warm pink by the time of her confession. Veronica’s commentary labels the phases “B-baka!”, “Tsun tsun” and “Dere dere”.
• Per Veronica’s commentary, Jordan is older than everyone in the main group. Dinner Time backs that up on-panel, with Lucy needling him about being bound for community college.
• Yashy has called Mike “Flea” ever since her very first appearance, but her farewell here is a flat “G’bye, Mike.”, real name and all. It’s also the last time Yashy, Chirpy or Lily appear on-panel in a main chapter. Much later, the comic reveals the pets ended up at Lucy’s aunt’s, with Lily watching over them.
• Lily’s “Isn’t that what you wanted?” cuts even deeper with Just Beautiful in mind, where Mike muttered to himself, “Maybe it’d be fixed if she just died.”
• Veronica later confirmed on Tumblr that a Volume 4-era chapter deliberately reuses Miss Amalu’s pose from this chapter to add to Mike’s guilt. In her words, “I definitely do.. lots of call backs. Some repeating patterns.. metaphors..”

Related chapters

• Curtain Call: It’s the morning after Curtain Call’s school play, with the cold open flashing back to the celebration afterward. At the end of Curtain Call, Mike apologizes backstage and offers that they “could start things over”. The truce is therefore exactly one day old when Lucy vanishes.
• December: The blow-up Lucy’s family is holding against Mike. In that chapter he renounces the friendship outright and calls Lucy “a parasite” to her face, the cruelty behind both Jordan’s “It’s all your fault” and Lily’s cold reception at the hospital.
• Leaving Home: Next comes the immediate aftermath. Paulo turns his grief on Mike. Mike hides the truth from Sandy, telling her only that a friend moved away.
• Love Again: Lucy eventually comes back to Roseville in this chapter. A flashback shows what “Breaking Up” leaves unspoken. She attempted to take her own life, and it was Augustus who found her and called for help.