Love Again

Love Again
Chapter	95 of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	October 26, 2016 (2016-10-26)
Page count	50
Major characters	Lucy, Augustus, Paulo, Daisy, Abbey, Mike, Madison
Minor characters	Sue, David, Amaya, Jasmine, Haley, Mina, Cassidy, Courtney, Jessica, Rachel, Matt, Sam, Jordan
Locations	Roseville High School, Lucy’s house, Northern Highway, Old furniture place, Roseville neighborhood
Collected in	Volume Six
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Lucy walks back into Roseville High School at last, Abbey and Daisy fall apart in the middle of the cafeteria, and the comic finally shows what happened the night Lucy disappeared. So who is “the boy who saved my life”?

Synopsis

On the walk to school, Daisy gushes that she’s turning sixteen on Saturday. Her attempt to invite Paulo goes nowhere, as he leaps away mid-sentence to flirt with Courtney at the lockers.

The real shock waits in the classroom, where Mike freezes face to face with Lucy in a private-school uniform. The rest of the class mobs her joyfully, and a comment from Paulo about her chest earns him a kick into the ceiling. When the bell rings, Mike reaches out to her in the crowd, loses his nerve, and says nothing.

At lunch, Lucy would rather take a walk alone than sit with the group. Back at the table, a wounded Paulo yanks Mike around by his scarf and blames him for Lucy keeping her distance. When Abbey demands he apologize for screaming Daisy down, Paulo retaliates by revealing that Abbey choked him at the con. Daisy, horrified, asks how badly Abbey hurt Paulo, and Abbey decides she is taking Paulo’s side yet again. He ends the relationship in front of the entire cafeteria, shouting “You can HAVE him, then!! ... We’re DONE!!”

Lucy’s walk leads her straight to Augustus, lying in the grass by the track. She bursts into tears and leaps into his arms, then slaps him, furious that the absentee policy has held him back a year. Toby is pressuring him to drop out, but Lucy won’t hear of it, vowing “This year, I’m gonna fight for you!”

After school, Lucy brings Augustus home, where her family reacts with alarm. She tells them, “He’s the boy who saved my life.”

In a flashback to the night she disappeared, Lucy is alone in a heavy snowstorm after the school play. She spirals into despair, telling herself that “Everything will be better without me.” She climbs to the roof of an old furniture building and jumps. Augustus finds her lying badly hurt in the snow. When he flips open his phone, she begs him not to call the man who controls him, and blacks out mid-plea. His fading dialogue reveals that he is calling an ambulance.

Back in the present, Lucy’s mother wraps a stunned Augustus in a tearful hug. Her dad offers him the guest room until graduation. Augustus protests that the offer must be a prank, then accepts. On the stairs, Lucy sets her terms — no more skipped school days, and Daisy stays off-limits. Alone at last, Augustus flops onto his plush new bed and smiles.

Character dynamics

Lucy’s first day back, and Mike is the welcoming committee.

• Abbey and Daisy: The two of them are already on shaky ground as a couple. Their fight over Paulo in Golden Hour never really healed. When Paulo reveals that Abbey choked him at the con, Daisy’s sympathy goes straight to Paulo, and Abbey reads that as betrayal. He dumps her publicly, and by the end of the period he is sitting at Jasmine’s table instead.
• Lucy and Augustus: Nobody in Lucy’s life knew about her friendship with Augustus until she brought him home. At the track, she learns he is stuck and being pushed to drop out, and he learns she means to fight for him. By nightfall he is living in her family’s guest room. Lucy requires full attendance until graduation and reminds him, “Daisy’s STILL off-limits.”
• Augustus and Lucy’s family: Augustus can barely process ordinary kindness, and Lucy’s family hands him more of it in one evening than he knows what to do with. They meet him as a total stranger — Sam’s greeting is “Who’s the creep” — but once Lucy tells them he saved her life, they treat him like one of their own. By bedtime her dad has given him the guest room until graduation, and Jordan has decided his sister’s savior might as well tutor him for the SATs too.

Trivia & observations

Chicken lasagna, clean laundry, and a bed of his own: Augustus is doing alright.

• Per Oliver’s commentary, Lucy’s return came a little under four years after her departure in real time.
• Lucy punting Paulo into the ceiling repeats her signature move from his very first day of high school.
• Lucy’s dad makes his first in-person appearance here. Up to now he had only been seen on TV, winning a race qualifier in Dinner Time.
• Veronica deliberately kept Augustus in the background before this chapter so that revealing him as Lucy’s savior would come as a big surprise.

Related chapters

• Ten Seconds to Midnight: On New Year’s Eve, Augustus pulled Lucy back from a rooftop ledge. That scene foreshadows this chapter’s flashback. Lucy is on a rooftop again, but this time she jumps and Augustus saves her life.
• Breaking Up: The aftermath of the flashback from everyone else’s side. Lucy’s room turns up empty, and at the hospital Mike is told she isn’t coming back.
• December: Mike’s “I hate you” confrontation is the wound behind Lucy’s flashback self-talk, which echoes his words almost exactly.
• Guest of Honor: The chapter where Abbey cornered Paulo in a convention restroom. That assault is the secret Paulo makes public at lunch here.
• Golden Hour: The source of the phone call Daisy regrets, and of Madison’s grudge against Paulo.
• Trapped: Augustus’s backstory in full, including Alejandro, Toby’s blackmail, and the “circumstances” Lucy passes on to her parents.