December

December
Chapter	68 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	October 3, 2011 (2011-10-03)
Page count	39
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Augustus, Sandy
Minor characters	Paulo, Daisy, Abbey, David, Sue, Sir Poodles of Noodles, Haley, Chris, Ellen, Jasmine
Locations	Roseville High School, Mike's house, Sandy's house, Neighborhood sidewalks and streets
Collected in	Volume Three, Omnibus 1
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A paired essay assignment throws Mike and Lucy together for an afternoon, and over a few rounds of video games it almost looks like the old friendship might come back. Then a text from Sandy arrives, and Mike says everything he's been holding in for years.

Synopsis

The last assignment before winter break is a paired World War II essay, and Mike talks himself straight into trouble. He interrupts Mr. Noodles's roll call to complain about being "Stuck with Lucy. As usual." As it turns out, Noodles had actually paired him with Sue — but since Mike made a fuss, now he really is stuck with Lucy.

The library is where Lucy's real state of mind comes out. Augustus needles her about letting Mike walk all over her. Lucy asks how he copes with rejection, and admits she's "about ready to give up on everything." Augustus has made his peace with Daisy not wanting him, he tells her, because even from a distance, he knows she's happy.

Lucy's "thinking face" finally gets a laugh out of Mike.

The afternoon thaws anyway. Lucy's puffed-cheek "thinking face" catches Mike off guard, and he cracks up despite himself. Back at his house, she throws a controller into his face and bullies him into a few rounds of Super Boxer Champions. After three years of losing, she finally trounces him, and the two of them end up laughing together like the bad year never happened.

Mike's phone buzzes just as they agree to one more round. He reads a long text and tears up, smiling. Then he sours and tells Lucy she should get going. She refuses to leave without an explanation, and Mike finally blurts it out: "SANDY'S COMING TO VISIT NEXT WEEK!!" Lucy collects herself and says she's glad someone can make him happy again. To Mike, that sounds like she thinks he wasn't happy already.

Mike grabs Lucy by the shoulders and lets years of resentment out. He doesn't want her as a friend, and he screams "I HATE YOU!!" through tears. He has never been her friend at all, he says, and Sandy helped him understand that. A run of unmarked flashbacks shows why. Over years of phone calls, a younger Mike cheerfully reported Lucy's smacks and slaps, and a horrified Sandy eventually decided she didn't like Lucy at all.

He announces he's leaving the lunch table in January, and he's sure Daisy, Abbey, Paulo and David will follow him. When Lucy protests that Paulo wouldn't leave her, Mike scoffs that Paulo doesn't even love her, that nobody does. "You're a parasite."

His mom's arrival snaps Mike out of it, and he runs off downstairs to share the news. Lucy sits alone in his room until she's sick into his trash can. Her eyes land on his unattended phone. When Mike returns, she's holding a plastic bag and answering in monosyllables. The whole essay, she says, will be in his locker. He checks his phone, finds it untouched, and relaxes. Lucy slams the front door and throws the bag into a dumpster. As she runs crying through the blizzard, Augustus's words replay: "It's from a distance.. but I know she's smiling." The final panel is Mike at his open locker, looking down at the finished essay.

Critical moments

Years of resentment come out all at once.

• Mike's preemptive tantrum in class backfires. Noodles had actually paired him with Sue for the essay, but the fuss lands him with Lucy after all.
• In the library, Lucy confides to Augustus that she's "about ready to give up on everything." He calls her "absolutely worthless" for it, then shares how he has come to live with Daisy's rejection.
• Over Super Boxer Champions in Mike's bedroom, the old friendship briefly comes back to life. Lucy finally beats Mike after three years of losses, and the two end up laughing together.
• Sandy texts that she's coming to visit next week, and Mike's joy curdles the moment Lucy asks about it.
• Mike renounces the friendship outright: "I DON'T WANT YOU TO BE MY FRIEND!! … I hate you."
• Unmarked flashbacks show where Mike's change of heart began. Over years of phone calls, Sandy grew horrified at Lucy's roughhousing and finally concluded "I don't like her. At all."
• Mike announces he's leaving the lunch table in January, calls Lucy a parasite, and tells her nobody can love her for who she is. Lucy walks out in silence and finishes the essay by herself.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: This chapter finishes the friendship off for good. It was already broken in practice — Mike rejected Lucy's confession in A Distance Apart and has refused to be her "babysitter" ever since. Even so, Lucy walks into the essay assignment still hoping to patch things up, and for one video-game evening it looks like she might. Sandy's text ends all of that in a single evening. Mike renounces the friendship entirely, insists it never existed, and announces he's leaving the table. Lucy leaves without a word and finishes the essay alone.
• Lucy and Augustus: Their recess bickering turns into something much closer to trust. Augustus is the only person Lucy tells how bad things have gotten. His answer is cruel at first and then genuinely kind, and it's his line about Daisy smiling from a distance that follows Lucy into the blizzard at the chapter's end.
• Mike and Sandy: The long-distance devotion is finally headed for an in-person reunion, with Sandy's visit confirmed by Mike's mom and marked on the calendar for December 21st. The flashbacks also show that her dislike of Lucy goes back years, to phone calls where she cried over every bruise Mike shrugged off.

Trivia & observations

• The "thinking face" sequence wasn't part of the original plan. Veronica's commentary says she added it after counting the chapter's pages, since "It's not like Mike and Lucy became friends out of nowhere…"
• Lucy's small talk on the walk to the library contains the comic's first mention of Haley, and Veronica declared the spelling "Haley" canon on the strength of it. Haley herself had already appeared on-panel in the background of A Distance Apart.
• This is Chris's first appearance in the series. Veronica's commentary explains that Mike had a baby sister in her childhood version of the comic, and she ties the gender flip to her own childhood worries about sibling mortality.
• Augustus calling Mike "green eyes" revives the nickname Alejandro's gang coined for him back in Confrontation.
• Lucy's video-game victory turns the tables on Gaming Rivalry, where three in-story years earlier Mike was the one doing all the winning. She admits she "spent a few nights practicing", and Mike ribs her that it only took her three years.
• Veronica's commentary confirms that the plastic bag Lucy carries out is her vomit, cleaned up rather than left behind.
• The "You're a parasite." page broke 1,000 comments, a site milestone that Veronica's commentary on the following update calls "PRETTY AMAZING".
• Veronica has confirmed on Tumblr that the much later chapter Line in the Sand was intentionally written to mirror this one, calling the pair "two nightmare sibling chapters". Augustus even quotes the parasite line back at Mike there.

Related chapters

• Another Shoulder: Mike's "I told you once already" points back to this chapter, where he first told Lucy he wasn't going to be her babysitter anymore. It's also where Lucy spent the night with Paulo, the "dumb rebound" Mike sneers at.
• Just Beautiful: Sandy's December 21st visit takes place here, and Mike finally learns what Lucy did while alone with his phone. She had texted Sandy that he would be better off without her.
• Love Again: Its flashback shows Lucy's suicide attempt years later, and in her last thoughts beforehand she calls herself a parasite, in Mike's exact words.