Lucy’s house

From Candypedia
Lucy’s house
First appearanceSimple Pleasures, page 1
November 2, 2009
Related charactersLucy, Mike, Augustus, Lucy’s mom, Lucy’s dad, Jordan, Sam, Yashy, Chirpy, Lily

Lucy’s house is a two-story brick house on a residential street in Roseville, home to Lucy, her family, and her pets. It is the first location ever shown in the comic, which opens on Lucy asleep in her bedroom.[1] Since Love Again, Augustus has also lived here, in the family’s guest room.[2]

Exterior

The house sits among neighboring homes, with the curb close enough for a van to pull up right out front.[3] A path leads from the street up a short flight of steps to the wooden front door, with a bush planted alongside.[4][5][3] A large tree stands beside the house, within sight of Lucy’s second-floor bedroom window,[6] and the brick wall below that window is climbable for a sufficiently determined visitor.[7]

Rooms

Inside, the staircase rises close to the front door, so anyone coming down the stairs is in full view of the living room.[8] The living room has a couch, a TV, and a china cabinet.[9][10] A side table by the couch holds a lamp and the parents’ wedding portrait, and a framed baby photo of a frowning Lucy hangs on the wall nearby.[11] An open kitchen and dining area with a big wooden table adjoins the living room,[12] and there is a bathroom with a brick-patterned shower wall.[13]

Lucy’s bedroom is upstairs, behind a plain brown door.[14] Inside are a bed by a curtained window, a bedside table with an alarm clock, a dresser with a mirror, and a tall bookshelf loaded with books.[1][14] By high school the walls hold a grayscale rock-band poster.[15] Jordan has a room of his own, complete with a toy basketball hoop.[16]

Living room with framed pictures on the wall, a lamp, an old-fashioned corded phone, and a couch where family members are gathered.[17]

Augustus’s room is the family’s guest room, reached down a flight of stairs from the ground floor.[2] It comes furnished with a large blue bed, a dresser with a vanity, a trunk, a ceiling fan, and a bedside table with a green lamp. The authors’ commentary sums the arrangement up as “Augustus living like a king.”[18]

A bedroom with a bed with teal covers, a window with curtains and a potted plant, a standing fan, and a radio on the floor.[19]

History

In the early chapters the house is a busy, friendly place. The pets hold the front door as their personal post, with Lily declaring “I shall protect this castle with my life!” as Lucy heads out,[20] and Mike is by far the most regular guest, dropping in for snow days, video games, and time on the couch.[9][21] The front door also gets slammed a lot. After their movie date in Off to the Movies, Lucy bolts inside and shuts it in Mike’s face.[22]

The house’s biggest moment actually happens years before the comic starts. In a flashback in Pillow Talk, a seventh-grade Mike is snowed in at Lucy’s. He calls his mom from the living room, and Lucy pulls him upstairs to her bedroom. Under a green blanket he tells her “I really really like you” and kisses her.[23] Lucy panics and orders him out, then watches from her window as his mom leads him away through the snow.[4] A memory in Dial Tone shows Mike climbing in through that same window at night as a freshman, something he did often enough that Lucy complained he was getting too heavy for the windowsill.[24]

After the events of December, the house goes quiet. Lucy shuts herself in her dark bedroom, and the family dinner meant to coax her out in Dinner Time falls apart at the table.[25] Paulo’s birthday-cake delivery in Piece of Cake gets as far as that dark bedroom before the door slams in his face,[26] and Jordan shows him out.[27] Mike doesn’t even make it to the door. He walks up to the corner of the house through the snowfall, then turns around without knocking.[28]

On New Year’s Eve in Ten Seconds to Midnight, Carol, Jordan and the visiting Sam confer on the couch about “a big step” for Lucy,[29] who overhears the whole thing from the staircase.[30]

Paulo finds out what that step was in Breaking Up. He pounds on the locked front door, gets no answer, and climbs the brick wall up to Lucy’s bedroom window. The room on the other side has been emptied down to a vacuum cleaner and a cardboard box.[7] Lucy has been sent away, Jordan is braced against the door inside, and Paulo breaks down in the yard.[31]

Lucy comes home in Love Again, and she brings Augustus with her. She introduces him to her startled family in the living room as “the boy who saved my life,”[32] and Carol hugs him in tears.[33] Her father offers him the guest room, with an open invitation to stay “’til graduation.”[34]

Left alone on the couch while the family bustles around him, Augustus can only manage “It’s so.. quiet..”[35] Lucy then leads him down the stairs, lays out a few ground rules, and leaves him to flop onto his enormous new bed.[2][18]

Paulo hasn’t given up on the doorstep, either. In Unspoken Rule he ambushes Lucy there with a fresh haircut and a carnival-date proposal, and she shrugs a “Hey, why not?” while Mike hurries past in the background.[36] Carol gets her turn at him in After You, vetting him over a bowl of cake batter.[37]

The house also does duty as a hiding place. In Escape Route, after another of Toby’s phone calls, Augustus reassures Lucy, “They don’t know you’re back from your aunt’s, let alone where you live.”[38]

One of Lucy’s worst nights happens down in the guest room. After Mike’s outburst in Burnt Bridges, she tries to kiss Augustus. He refuses, and she collapses on his bed sobbing “I wanna die so bad..” while he holds her and talks her down.[39]

The living room hosts a crowded family party on New Year’s Eve in New Year’s Resolution, and Lucy slips out to the front steps, where she and Augustus shake on staying alive and getting into college.[10][40] And when Lucy walks in late one evening, Carol asks her “No Michael?” Lucy says no, and Carol answers “Good.”[41]

Residents

  • Lucy — a resident since the comic’s very first page. Her bedroom is upstairs.[1]
  • Carol — Lucy’s mother. She runs the kitchen and keeps a close eye on who comes through the front door. On Halloween she assigns herself candy duty.[37][42]
  • Lucy’s father — a professional race-car driver, seen winning qualifiers on the living-room TV more often than sitting in front of it.[43]
  • Jordan — Lucy’s brother and the household’s self-appointed bouncer.[27][5]
  • Sam — the brother away at college, back for holidays and family crises.[29][10]
  • Yashy, Chirpy and Lily — Lucy’s pets, who treat the front door as their post.[20]
  • Augustus — resident of the guest room since Love Again, with wake-up duty on school mornings.[2][44]

Trivia

  • In the seventh-grade flashback in Pillow Talk, Lucy’s bedroom wall has a poster of a Jigglypuff wearing a French beret and holding a microphone, a reference to Pokémon.[45]
  • After Lucy is sent away in Breaking Up, the house does not appear again until her return in Love Again, a real-world publication gap of more than three years.[31][32]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Chapter 1: Simple Pleasures, page 1
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 48
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 114: Double Down, page 2
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 50
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 7
  6. ↑ Chapter 47: Pick Me Up, page 11
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 9
  8. ↑ Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 37
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 3: Merry Snow Day, page 1
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 1
  11. ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 43
  12. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 1
  13. ↑ Chapter 8: Helping Hands, page 6
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 59: Rehearsal, page 2
  15. ↑ Chapter 59: Rehearsal, page 3
  16. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 2
  17. ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 44
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 49
  19. ↑ Chapter 1: Simple Pleasures, page 1
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 1: Simple Pleasures, page 2
  21. ↑ Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 1
  22. ↑ Chapter 12: Off to the Movies, page 6
  23. ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 47
  24. ↑ Chapter 91: Dial Tone, page 20
  25. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 18
  26. ↑ Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 6
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 7
  28. ↑ Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 28
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 3
  30. ↑ Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 5
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 10
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 30
  33. ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 42
  34. ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 45
  35. ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 44
  36. ↑ Chapter 96: Unspoken Rule, page 28
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Chapter 97: After You, page 1
  38. ↑ Chapter 102: Escape Route, page 32
  39. ↑ Chapter 111: Burnt Bridges, page 25
  40. ↑ Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 2
  41. ↑ Chapter 129: Tickets Please, page 32
  42. ↑ Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 2
  43. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 19
  44. ↑ Chapter 114: Double Down, page 1
  45. ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 44
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