Call Waiting

Call Waiting
Chapter	62 of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	June 17, 2011 (2011-06-17)
Page count	7
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Augustus, Paulo, David
Minor characters	Daisy, Sue, Jasmine, Lani Amalu, Amaya, Katie, Mina, Cassidy
Locations	Roseville High School
Collected in	Volume Three, Omnibus 1
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Mike’s shiny new iPhone promises round-the-clock Sandy texts, but it also puts his number in David’s hands. Meanwhile, Lucy skips the lunch table entirely and spends the period with Augustus, the one cat her friends trust least. What could those two possibly have to talk about?

Synopsis

Mike arrives at lunch dancing, teasing the table with a mysterious rectangular shadow that has Lucy murmuring “.. Bigger than I thought.” It turns out to be a brand-new iPhone, his very late birthday present and his early Christmas present rolled into one, bought so he and Sandy can text each other all the time. Lucy quietly gets up and leaves the table during the Sandy talk. David, meanwhile, has an iPhone of his own, and he wants Mike’s number.

Lucy has taken herself out to the yard, where Augustus is lying in the grass, and she admits she needed to get away from her friends. He earns a kick in the head for muttering that Daisy needn’t have stopped him. He will talk about Daisy, though. She isn’t helpless, he insists, just held back by her own lack of confidence, and if she grew past it she could be the most incredible girl in the world. Lucy can see that. Then he adds that he likes girls who aren’t pathetic and worthless, “Which is why I’d never date a bitch like you.”

Back inside, Mike gets his first look at Lucy’s new company. He spots her down the hall, smirking and trading rude gestures with Augustus, then turns away in disgust: “God she’s so PATHETIC.”

David wastes no time putting the number to use. During Ms. Amalu’s class, the phone stashed in Mike’s scarf keeps buzzing, first with a “Hi”, then an insult, then an attachment vile enough to make Mike scream mid-lesson. Paulo is in on it, naturally, and afterwards in the hallway he is crying with laughter while David takes every furious word literally, protesting “But I wash myself every day!” when Mike calls him repulsive. Mike reaches into his scarf to block them both and finds it empty. Back in the classroom, Ms. Amalu is holding his buzzing phone, blushing hard.

Character dynamics

Augustus’s mental picture of Daisy comes complete with flower petals.

• Lucy and Augustus: The two go from open adversaries to something like real company. Lucy still calls him a villain to his face and kicks him in the head for his worst comment, but with her friends unbearable to be around right now, he’s the one person she can stand to sit with. By the end of lunch the pair are hanging around the hallway together in full view of everyone. Veronica’s commentary puts the arrangement bluntly: “You know you’ve hit rock bottom when the only person you feel you can go to is not exactly someone you trust.”
• Mike and Lucy: Mike was freezing Lucy out well before this chapter, walking past her without a glance on her own birthday. When he sees her getting along with Augustus, he responds with open contempt. It’s the first time his coldness has come out as something so plainly hostile.

Trivia & observations

• Page 1 stages the phone reveal as an off-panel rectangular shadow, complete with Lucy’s double-entendre reaction. Veronica jokes about the fake-out in her commentary on the next page, assuring readers “I’m sure all of you thought it was a phone... PRETTY OBVIOUS!!!”
• Oliver’s commentary notes that an iPhone at this point in the story’s late-2000s timeline “would have been a very hot commodity,” and that the phones “cement the class status of these comfortable cats (and dogs).”
• Mike’s parting shot at Lucy repeats the very insult Augustus handed her out in the yard. In the space of one lunch period, “pathetic” is the insult both Augustus and Mike use for her.
• Veronica’s commentary under the final page explains she had to considerably rewrite its dialogue to make clear David’s attachment is “weird stuff from the internet” rather than a photo of himself, and adds a semi-serious “DON’T CYBERBULLY, KIDS.”
• In a 2016 Tumblr ask, Veronica pointed to this chapter (along with Trapped) as one of the places that hint between the lines at how Lucy and Augustus grew close. She declined to spell the backstory out.
• Mike keeps the phone tucked inside his scarf, where it buzzes during class. When he reaches for it before the final punchline, the scarf is empty. The scarf-as-pocket habit sticks with him for years afterward.
• The blushing final panel is Ms. Amalu’s biggest moment yet, but not her debut. She’s had speaking lines since A Distance Apart, and the classroom rules poster in Pillow Talk already declared “Ms. Amalu is awesome”.

Related chapters

• Pillow Talk: Lucy hit rock bottom just one chapter ago. Mike walked straight past her on her birthday without a word, she tore up her party invitation alone on the bleachers, and Augustus was the one who found her there.
• Love My Way: The carnival incident behind Augustus’s “she didn’t need to stop me” happens here. He corners Daisy against a tree and presses unwanted advances on her until Abbey hauls him off, and Daisy herself slaps him and orders him to leave.
• December: Lucy and Augustus’s odd companionship carries into the winter, and his brutal candor hasn’t softened either. He bluntly calls her “absolutely worthless”, the same word he reaches for in this chapter.