Escape Route

From Candypedia
Escape Route
Chapter102 of 129 (list of chapters)
PublishedMarch 16, 2018 (2018-03-16)
Page count33
Major charactersLucy, Augustus
Minor charactersDaisy, Paulo, Sue, Mike, Alejandro, Augustus’s mom, Augustus’s dad
LocationsLucy’s house, Augustus’s house
Collected inVolume Seven
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Augustus gets the first birthday party of his life, courtesy of Lucy and one deeply tasteless cupcake. Then his phone starts buzzing, and the chapter looks back on the night Lucy followed him home and worked out who he was mixed up with.

Synopsis

It’s Augustus’s birthday, and he’s spending it face-down in SAT prep books, so Lucy shows up with a gourmet cupcake and a “Happy birthday, loser.”[1][2] They agree this counts as the first birthday party he’s ever had. Then Lucy mentions that the cupcake looks just like Daisy. Augustus shakes her by the shoulders, laughing, calling her a bitch.[3] His phone starts buzzing. Lucy is instantly terrified it’s “him”. Augustus figures it’s just Toby, since the gang calls every day and he lets it all go to voicemail.[4][5] Lucy can’t stop staring at the phone. As she watches it buzz, she remembers the night she first saw where he lives.[6]

Lucy sneaks aboard Augustus’s bus home and waits for him, looking awfully pleased with herself. He walks straight past her, and the long, silent ride ends in a run-down neighborhood far from anywhere.[7] When Lucy realizes she has no way of getting home, he keeps walking: “Not my problem.”[8]

His house has boarded-up windows, a mother passed out cold on the couch, and, for a bedroom, a bare mattress on the floor of an otherwise empty room.[9][10] Before heading out on unexplained “errands”, Augustus leans in with a warning. He’s seeing someone who knows her, and that someone would be “more than excited” to learn she came all the way out here.[10] Lucy works out exactly who he means, and the realization horrifies her.[11] She spends the evening alone, listening to his parents’ screaming match through the walls until something smashes.[12]

Augustus finally gets back that night and wakes Lucy. He hands her his phone so Daisy can cover for her with her mom.[13] Then he blushes furiously as she explains she’s staying over “with a BOY”.[14] Lying in the dark afterwards, Lucy confirms her guess about who he’s mixed up with and thanks him for keeping her out of it.[15]

Her sleep turns into a nightmare. In a dark dream alley, Daisy, Paulo and Sue take turns looming over her, each with something cruel to say.[16][17] Mike sneers about her expecting a birthday present, then walks away while she begs him not to leave.[18][19] The last face belongs to Alejandro, cheek scratched, smiling down at her: “You know you’ll always have me.”[20] Lucy wakes into a full-blown sobbing panic attack, and a bewildered Augustus can only shout her name.[21]

Back in the present, Lucy snaps out of the memory with tears in her eyes, and Augustus steadies her with a hand on her shoulder.[22] It’s barely been a week since he went AWOL, he tells her, and the gang doesn’t even know she’s back from her aunt’s, let alone where she lives.[23] The phone finally goes quiet.[24]

Character dynamics

A bare mattress with a single blanket and pillow in the corner of an empty room with cracked walls.
Augustus’s bedroom, in its entirety.
  • Lucy and Augustus: They trade insults constantly. They also rely on each other like family. Earlier, a lonely Lucy follows Augustus home even though he does not want her there. He is perfectly willing to leave her stranded in a bad neighborhood.[8] At his house, she sees how he lives without a word of mockery, and he keeps her hidden from the people he answers to.[10] In the present day, she throws him his only birthday party and credits him with her “new lease on life”.[2][25] When Lucy grows distressed by the memory, Augustus puts a hand on her shoulder to steady her.[22]
  • Lucy and Mike: Lucy never speaks with the real Mike here. Dream-Mike treats her with contempt and walks away while she begs him not to leave.[18][19] She is still afraid of losing him after their real blowup in December, where he told her nobody could love her for who she is.[26]

Trivia & observations

The birthday cupcake, up close.[27]
  • The flashback is a redrawn, canonized version of “Another Trip”, a members-only BCI comic that ran as an alternate path to On Our Own. Veronica’s commentary at the flashback’s start admits she “had to find a way to make that comic canon”, warning that there are “some pretty significant changes” from the original.[7][28]
  • Veronica has since gone further, admitting “Escape Route was not supposed to exist in the first place”. She acknowledged that canonizing the flashback sits a little awkwardly against Lucy and Augustus’s library conversation in December, a trade-off she stands by.[29][30]
  • Per Veronica, the birthday cupcake is “a chocolate spongecake brownie with vanilla icing and edible candy pearls”.[27]
  • The nightmare is drawn with the cast’s volume-one designs, and its first page is a single continuous panel from Lucy’s point of view on the ground.[16]
  • The dream borrows from real memories. Dream-Alejandro’s scratched cheek is the wound Lucy clawed into his face in Confrontation.[20][31] Dream-Daisy’s taunt about whether Mike would really “tolerate” Lucy forever, meanwhile, echoes Mike’s own words from that chapter’s opening page.[16][32]
  • Flashback Augustus wears his old symmetrical hairstyle, which Veronica couldn’t resist heckling in the commentary: “man it’s so weird seeing augustus with symmetrical hair again”.[23]
  • Per Veronica’s commentary under the phone call, Daisy never managed to pin down who Lucy stayed with that night, “but she still lied to Lucy’s mother like a champ”.[14]

Related chapters

Alejandro looms over Lucy with a scratched cheek and a sinister smile, saying "You know you'll always have me."
Alejandro turns up last in Lucy’s nightmare.
  • On Our Own: Lucy’s failed first attempt to follow Augustus home. He tells the bus driver she’s boarding the wrong bus and leaves her behind at the curb, which is exactly what his “Well, I warned you the first time” points back to.[33]
  • Love Again: Augustus calls the ambulance that saves Lucy’s life after her suicide attempt, and her father offers him the guest room until graduation. That arrangement is why she can wander into his room with a cupcake at all.[34][35]
  • Trapped: Its flashback shows a young Augustus getting recruited by Alejandro after he’s caught shoplifting from a convenience store, and Toby’s blackmail is the reason he can’t simply walk away from the gang now blowing up his phone.[36][37]

References

  1. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 1
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 2
  3. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 3
  4. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 5
  5. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 6
  6. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 7
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 9
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 12
  9. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 15
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 16
  11. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 17
  12. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 18
  13. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 19
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 20
  15. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 22
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 24
  17. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 25
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 26
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 27
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 28
  21. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 29
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 31
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 32
  24. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 33
  25. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 4
  26. ↑ Chapter 68: December, page 31
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 “What’s Auggie’s birthday cupcake made of?”. 2019-01-19.
  28. ↑ “Which chapter is Escape Route a redraw of?”. 2018-09-15.
  29. ↑ “Veronica on why Escape Route exists”. 2026-03-02.
  30. ↑ Chapter 68: December, page 9
  31. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 17
  32. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 1
  33. ↑ Chapter 66: On Our Own, page 5
  34. ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 38
  35. ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 45
  36. ↑ Chapter 86: Trapped, page 8
  37. ↑ Chapter 86: Trapped, page 34
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