Just Beautiful

Just Beautiful
Chapter	71 of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	June 1, 2012 (2012-06-01)
Page count	33
Major characters	Mike, Sandy, Lucy, Yashy, Lily
Minor characters	Haley, Sandy’s mom, Chirpy
Locations	Mike’s house, Lucy’s house, Roseville neighborhood
Collected in	Volume Four
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After years of phone calls, photos and missed visits, Mike finally gets to see Sandy in person, and the reunion has everything from matching scarves to a long-awaited kiss. The walk he takes that night, to Lucy’s house, is another story entirely.

Synopsis

The chapter opens with Mike fretting his way through the drive to Sandy’s fashion show. His little sister Haley cuts the worrying short with an impersonation, posing outside the van in his stolen scarf: “Darling Sandy.. I do regret that our affair must come to an end for I am, sadly, a girl.” Mike flees inside, where security finds a pink note attached to his ticket. It’s a VIP backstage pass from Sandy, sealed with a kiss mark.

The show itself passes nearly without a word. Mike’s hopes rise and fall with every model who isn’t Sandy until she finally steps out in a purple gown and glides right past his seat. Backstage afterward he can’t find her, and his mind starts replaying every visit that ever fell through. Sandy’s voice cuts the spiral short. The first full sentence Mike manages is “You’re taller than me.”, and soon the two are pinching each other’s cheeks in giddy disbelief.

The mood turns when Sandy mentions she heard Mike had been feeling down, and that the tip came from Lucy, who texted her from Mike’s phone. Mike spirals into a panic, but Sandy makes him read the messages. In flashback, Lucy sits alone on Mike’s bed and types that he was right, that she’s only made his life worse, and that she “won’t bother him anymore”. Sandy only wants the two of them to talk things out. Mike sours at being made the bad guy again, and goes as far as wishing Lucy dead before a sharp tap on the nose from Sandy stops that line of thought. He promises to talk to her, though only for Sandy’s sake.

Sandy’s parting gift is a brand-new scarf in the exact light blue Mike wore as a kid, matched to a big blue bow already tied in her hair. Sandy’s mother cuts the goodbye short. The moment she’s busy on the phone, though, Sandy rushes back and kisses Mike. Then she makes off with his old orange-and-yellow scarf, telling him “You look better in blue.”

Mike keeps his promise that very night, walking through the snow to Lucy’s house. He never reaches the door. Yashy mobs him happily, but Lucy hides behind a snowbank rather than face him, and Lily plants herself in his path. “Please. Just go. You’ve done enough.” Mike doesn’t argue, and turns for home.

The moment he’s gone, Yashy rounds on Lily and Lucy for shooing away the boy who always comes back — until Lucy whirls around, haggard, and screams “HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND!!” They’ve been together a year, she tells the stunned Yashy, and she’s nothing to Mike anymore. Then she walks inside. The chapter closes on a single wide panel of Yashy sobbing in Lily’s arms while the snow falls.

Character dynamics

Haley gives her brother exactly the send-off he was dreading.

• Mike and Sandy: After years of long-distance dating, the two finally spend a day in the same room, and they make the most of being close. Sandy’s backstage pass gets Mike to her. She matches the new scarf and her bow to the blue in his childhood photos, and the goodbye kiss is stolen behind her mother’s back. The only complication is Lucy. Sandy wants the two of them to talk things out, and Mike agrees “only for you”, which is rather less than she was asking for.
• Mike and Lucy: The estrangement is settled here, with no fight left in it. Lucy’s texts are a complete withdrawal, taking all the blame and promising to stay out of Mike’s life, while his anger has curdled into wishing her dead. The doorstep visit changes nothing. She hides rather than face him, and by the end of the night she is telling Yashy “I’m nothing to Mike.”
• Yashy and Mike: Yashy still treats Mike as family, mobbing “Flea” the moment he turns up and demanding his overdue child support. She’s been kept in the dark about Sandy all this time at Lucy’s insistence, so the reveal takes her whole worldview away at once, and she ends the chapter in tears.
• Sandy and Lucy: The two never meet, but Sandy becomes Lucy’s unlikely advocate. She could barely remember Lucy’s name before reading the texts. Afterward, she decides Lucy “sounded really sorry” and spends the rest of the visit nudging Mike toward making peace.

Trivia & observations

The news about Mike lands hardest on Yashy.

• Sandy sealing her note with a kiss mark is an old habit of hers. In Unfulfilled Fantasy, Lily already teased Mike about an admirer who “likes sealing envelopes with a kiss”.
• Per Veronica’s commentary, the orange-and-yellow scarf Sandy walks off with originally came from Tess in Left Behind, so it’s “GOT to be worth at least $200”.
• Contrary to a common misreading, Sandy isn’t ignoring Mike when she pulls out her phone. Veronica’s commentary explains that she’s scrolling back through his anxious morning texts, “charmed by Mike’s anxiety”.
• Sandy’s mother calls her “Sandra”, the chapter’s only source for her full first name. It’s also the mother’s second appearance, after To the Top.
• Haley’s relief that her friends will “stop asking me why my brother doesn’t go to Hogwarts” is a Harry Potter joke at the old scarf’s expense.
• Veronica has said one panel of Mike setting off on his walk was drawn with young Tony Carver from Gunnerkrigg Court in mind, “closed mouth and all”.
• The original art of the reveal page was later sold in the BCB store as part of a page pack named “He Has A Girlfriend!” after this chapter’s outburst.

Related chapters

• December: Mike’s “I hate you” blow-up at Lucy happens here. The chapter ends with Lucy left alone in Mike’s room, his phone lying on the bed. That quiet scene is when she wrote the messages Sandy shows Mike backstage.
• Piece of Cake: One chapter earlier, Paulo turns up at the same front door and gets turned away by Jordan with the very words Lily uses on Mike: “You’ve done enough!”
• Breaking Up: Lucy leaves in this chapter, and the pets get their farewell. Lily stops Mike one more time, at the hospital, with a quiet “You shouldn’t be here.”
• Eternal Flame: Much later, Mike admits to Lucy that he chose the original blue scarf “thinking about your eyes”. The color Sandy so carefully matches her gift to here started out as a tribute to Lucy.