Eternal Flame

Eternal Flame
Chapter	110 of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	February 8, 2021 (2021-02-08)
Page count	68
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Sandy, Paulo
Minor characters	Daisy, Haley, Lani Amalu, James, Dylan, Cassidy
Locations	Roseville High School, Mike’s house, Paulo’s house, Roseville Park, Roseville neighborhood
Collected in	Volume Seven
Chapter navigation
← Popularity Contest	Burnt Bridges →
Read chapter

Sandy finally tells Mike the truth at 4 AM, and Lucy is waiting under the old tree when his world falls apart. In BCB’s longest chapter, one honest night in the snow gives Mike and Lucy back everything they lost, and one phone call takes it away again by morning.

Synopsis

Mike trudges to school through the snow, staring at a string of texts Sandy never answered. In the morning classroom, Paulo’s friendly attempt to ask after Sandy gets shut down hard, and only Lucy won’t take the bait. When Mike goads her into speaking, she asks, “Does what I say even matter?”

That evening, the call Mike answers hoping for Sandy turns out to be Paulo, and it collapses into a screaming fight. Mike accuses his friends of laughing at him behind his back, and Paulo fires back that Mike “FORCED us to stop caring” before hanging up on him. Alone and sobbing, Mike dials Sandy over and over until a groggy voice finally answers.

Mike reaches Sandy at 4 AM in her time zone. Instead of apologizing, he tells her that she never calls him back and that he is always the one who has to call. Sandy admits that she has fallen in love with Francis, the hairdresser who confessed to her months ago. Mike pleads with her, his claws digging into his knee hard enough to draw blood. Sandy ends the relationship with “Why fix something so broken?” and hangs up. Mike hurls his phone at the wall, tears his room apart, and bolts past a shaken Haley into the night.

He runs until he reaches the park hill, where Lucy is leaning against their old tree. She offers to leave him to his alone time. Instead he grabs her hand and hugs her over her furious protests. Mike blurts out, “Because she’s been cheating on me!” Lucy owns up to years of being bossy, violent, and selfish toward him, and Mike swears he never hated her. When he realizes that their years of sitting under the tree began as a ritual for Sandy, Lucy reassures him that those memories belong to the two of them, not to Sandy.

Lucy is nearly gone when Mike calls after her. He tells her that Sandy bought his current scarf, but that he chose the one before it “thinking about your eyes.” Lucy turns back and kisses him in the falling snow, then shoves him away. They agree to talk tomorrow. As she leaves, Lucy softly tells him, “I always thought it was about her ribbon.” Mike floats home in a daze and freezes in his doorway. His cracked phone is buzzing on the floor, and the caller is Sandy.

By morning, Mike and Sandy are back together. He walks into class glued to his phone, barely noticing Lucy’s greeting. Sandy apologized, he tells Daisy and Paulo, and she promised to make more time and to “get rid of distractions”. While his friends celebrate, Lucy’s smile disappears and she glares at Mike. She hurries out at the bell, and when Mike chases her she doesn’t look back. Next time he has a problem with Sandy, she tells him, he can go to his other friends. “I shouldn’t have listened in the first place.” She walks away in tears, and his phone buzzes in his scarf.

Character dynamics

The reconciliation goes a little further than talking.

• Mike and Sandy: Mike has spent years waiting patiently whenever Sandy is too busy to call. This time he tells her that she never calls him back and that he is always the one who has to call. Sandy admits that she has fallen for Francis and ends their relationship by asking why they should “fix something so broken”. Sandy calls Mike again that night and apologizes. By morning they have reconciled, and she has promised regular calls and to “get rid of distractions”. As Daisy and Paulo celebrate, Mike repeatedly glances at Lucy.
• Mike and Lucy: Since Lucy returned, she has refused to resume her friendship with Mike and dismisses his attempts to draw her into conversation. At the tree, they apologize to one another. Lucy comforts Mike and defends him, telling him, “She doesn’t know the kinda guy she lost”. They kiss and agree to talk again the next day. Before Mike speaks with Lucy again, he reunites with Sandy. Lucy then refuses to hear about his problems with Sandy and tells him to go to his other friends instead.
• Mike and Paulo: Paulo keeps checking on Mike even when Mike responds with hostility. He asks about Sandy, tells Mike what his other friends will not, and finally swears that he will stop caring during their phone fight. By the next morning, Paulo has dropped the argument and ruffles Mike’s head over the news that he and Sandy are back together.

Trivia & observations

The chapter signs off with a crowd shot, and James’s first appearance right behind Mike.

• The commentary under the opening page calls this “the longest in BCB history” and a long-planned chapter, and places its opening “four seasons later” than the flashback that closed Popularity Contest.
• The memory montage that leaves Mike near tears in class is stitched from real earlier pages: “Knowing she’s still thinking of you after all these years?” comes from Hot Pursuit, the dodgeball “you’re worth fighting for” from the flashback in Dial Tone, and “You got what you wanted. I’m out of your hair.” from Unspoken Rule.
• The bonsai tree on Mike’s desk during the breakup call is itself a Sandy relic, her parting gift from Hot Pursuit.
• Paulo argues the entire phone fight in an apron, over a pot of instant ramen that boils over mid-rant. Veronica’s commentary notes she makes her own ramen on the stove too.
• Mike’s current scarf is the light-blue one Sandy gave him in Just Beautiful with “We should keep on matching up!”, and that matching is what Lucy means by “her ribbon”. Sandy’s contact photo on Mike’s phone still shows the blue ribbon in her hair. Veronica’s commentary adds that the scarf reveal “was originally supposed to happen around the end of the comic”.
• Mike’s dialogue on page 43 was rewritten after publication. Veronica changed his lines from bitter to sad, explaining that his anger had always been tied to defending Sandy’s perfection, which “didn’t make sense anymore” once Sandy herself had broken it.
• Mike’s phone screen cracks when he hurls it at the wall, and the next morning his thumb rests right under that crack as he tells his friends Sandy will “get rid of distractions”.
• The crowded final page contains James’s first appearance in the comic, as the beige cat eyeing Mike from behind. Dylan and Cassidy pass through too, and the commentary under the page notes “Some familiar faces here, and some new!”

Related chapters

• Burnt Bridges: The next morning, Mike tells Augustus everything that happened at the tree and promises to stay away from Lucy for good.
• Model Girlfriend: This is Sandy’s last in-person visit to Mike before Eternal Flame. They go shopping together, where Sandy first mentions Francis and praises him as an apprentice hairdresser.
• December: This is the snowy blowup where Mike told Lucy “I hate you” and called her a parasite. Those are the words Lucy has in mind under the tree when she insists he’s right to hate her, and the ones Mike finally takes back by insisting he never hated her.