Model Girlfriend

From Candypedia
Model Girlfriend
Chapter94 of 129 (list of chapters)
PublishedJuly 4, 2016 (2016-07-04)
Page count46
Major charactersMike, Sandy, Paulo, Daisy
Minor charactersAbbey, Sue, David, Rachel, Amaya, Haley, Chris, Frank, John, Gym teacher (High School)
LocationsRoseville High School, Roseville shopping mall, Roseville Park, Mike’s house, Paulo’s house
Collected inVolume Six
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After weeks of unanswered calls, Sandy turns up outside Roseville High School for one precious afternoon with Mike, and the gang finally meets the famous girlfriend in person. The dream date goes beautifully, mostly. So why does Sandy end the night in tears?

Synopsis

The news that Sandy is visiting after school has Mike floating through the entire day in a blissed-out daze.[1] His friends are unnerved enough that Paulo has David bean him in the face with a dodgeball, which changes nothing but the shape of his cheek.[2] In the locker room, Paulo asks whether he and Sandy are actually okay. Mike bristles, insisting the visit “shows how much she really cares.”[3] When the final bell rings, the whole gang invites itself along to meet her.[4]

Sandy is indeed waiting in front of the school, every inch the model.[5] Daisy fares far worse than the rest. Sandy needs three tries to place her old best friend, and then remarks, “You’ve really.. Grown!”[6] Once the couple ride off in her limousine, Daisy collapses sobbing into Abbey’s arms, convinced she never mattered to Sandy at all.[7][8]

Mike and Sandy have a smooth start at the Garden Square mall. Then Mike spots the arcade and chokes mid-sentence when he starts to say who he used to go there with.[9] Sandy is a hopeless novice at the games, so Mike quietly crashes his own car to let her win the racing round.[10] She’s thrilled until she loses a fair rematch, and soon she’s done with the place: “This stuff just isn’t for me.”[11] He salvages things with a plush rabbit from the claw machine.[11]

On a sunset walk through the park near Mike’s place, Mike leads Sandy to a hilltop tree. It reminds him of their very first lunch together as kids, and she pronounces him a romantic.[12] He tags her and races up the hill, needling her to follow despite her shoes. From the bottom of the slope, she explodes: “Why don’t you just GROW UP?!”[13] Mike slinks back down to apologize. Sandy stays icy until he calls himself an idiot. At that, she brightens, decides his boyishness is what makes him cute, and forgives him so long as he never does it again.[14]

Back at Mike’s house, the visit takes its strangest turn. Sandy discovers his old game console. When she muses that she’d never have time to waste on games anymore, Mike spirals into forced cheer,[15] until she asks if she can just watch him play.[16] She enjoys it, leaning into him as he plays. Then, growing sad, she cups his face and kisses him.[17] They tumble to the floor kissing until a teardrop lands on Mike’s nose. Sandy is crying, and the only explanation she can offer is “You’re just.. So.. So nice..”[18]

Mike tells Paulo the rest over the phone that night. Dinner with his family went perfectly, and Sandy left in tears at the door.[19] Paulo offers hard-earned advice drawn from his time with Jasmine about not getting walked over, but Mike has stopped listening.[20] Sandy has texted, and the message ends with “I love you!!”[21]

Character dynamics

Sandy stands at the bottom of the hill with her fists clenched, shouting "Why don't you just GROW UP?!".
Sandy is not in the mood for a race.
  • Mike and Sandy: Sandy has spent weeks going quiet on Mike, while he makes excuses for her and insists to everyone that things are fine.[3][22] The two of them are genuinely tender with each other, which explains why Mike stays. He still spends the whole date shrinking himself to fit — throwing games he could win, disowning his own hobbies, calling himself a “big loser” for playing them at all.[10][11][15] Sandy loves him, but on her own terms, and her forgiveness on the hill only arrives once he’s blamed himself.[14] They part closer than they’ve been in months, with none of it actually resolved.[21]
  • Mike and Paulo: The old rivalry has settled down enough for Mike to lean on Paulo, who admits he used to write Sandy off as make-believe. Now Paulo looks out for him instead.[23] He presses him in the locker room on whether the relationship is really okay, demands the full story of the date, and offers earnest advice drawn from his time with Jasmine.[3][23][20] Mike is touched enough to call him “a sweetheart”, and comfortable enough to tune him out completely the moment his phone buzzes.[23][21]
  • Daisy and Sandy: The childhood friendship Daisy treasures turns out to live mostly on her side. Sandy has meant a lot to Daisy for years,[24] but here Sandy can barely place her, and the first thing she points out is how much Daisy has grown. The observation lands squarely on Daisy’s insecurities.[6] By the end of the scene, Daisy has decided she never mattered to Sandy at all.[8]
  • Paulo and Rachel: Whatever is between these two stays unspoken, as usual. Rachel watches Paulo gawk at Sandy, wilts quietly, and walks off from the group alone. Only Amaya notices.[6][7]
  • Paulo and Daisy: Paulo won’t let himself be seen caring about her. He reaches out toward the sobbing Daisy, stops his hand halfway, and covers with leering remarks about Sandy that cut Daisy deeper than anything Sandy said.[8]

Trivia & observations

Sandy cups Mike's face and kisses him while he still holds his game controller, his eyes wide with shock.
Mid-platformer, Sandy decides she’d rather kiss him.
  • David wonders aloud whether Sandy’s driver is named Jeeves. Sandy later introduces him as Geoffrey, and the commentary under the page settles the matter with a flat “David was wrong”.[7][25]
  • Veronica has since said David’s odd blankness around Sandy comes from being “on Paulo’s wavelength” and seeing her as “horrendously bad news for Mike”. She described his apathy as “one moment where he’s being nice to Mike! In a way!”[26]
  • Veronica has said Sandy’s main outfit here was inspired by a black-and-white dress she owned herself, and that its resemblance to a Cardcaptor Sakura costume style may have been subconscious.[27]
  • Looking back well after this stretch of the story, the authors said Mike had “been far too passive and submissive in letting Sandy off the hook”.[28]
  • “Super Boxer Champions”, the cartridge Mike frantically hurls across the room, is the fighting game he and Lucy played in December. The commentary under the page teases him about it: “Aww c’mon you have so many nice memories about that game! :^)”[29][30]
  • Rachel’s “No glove, no love” send-off is the exact line Yashy delivered ten years earlier in Farewell.[31][32]
  • Haley bursts in on the couple right after the tears. Per the commentary, she “was just standing outside the door the whole time until her mother said dinner was ready” before making her entrance.[33]
  • Oliver calls Daisy’s baffled “What’s happening to him?” from the dodgeball scene his “favourite Daisy line ever”.[2]

Related chapters

  • Unfulfilled Fantasy: The first lunch Mike remembers on the hilltop, with a young Sandy leading him to eat under a tree and telling him “Oh, you’re so nice!” — the same word a tearful Sandy reaches for at the end of this visit.[34][35][12][18]
  • Dial Tone: The rough patch Paulo pokes at in the locker room. Mike spends his nights redialing Sandy’s answering machine and getting nothing but her greeting.[36][3]
  • Eternal Flame: Francis, the apprentice colleague Sandy praises in her stories here, is the boy she later confesses to falling for. The relationship this visit patched together comes apart there for good.[37][38]
  • Link Play: Mike winds up back at this same arcade with Lucy, right down to the Maggot Mania light gun cabinet and the racing game. Lucy, for the record, wins her race by ramming him off the track rather than being handed the victory.[39][40][10]

References

  1. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 1
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 2
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 7
  4. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 8
  5. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 9
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 11
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 13
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 14
  9. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 18
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 20
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 25
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 31
  13. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 33
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 34
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 37
  16. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 38
  17. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 39
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 41
  19. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 44
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 45
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 46
  22. ↑ Chapter 87: Boy Toy, page 23
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 43
  24. ↑ Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 16
  25. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 27
  26. ↑ “Ask response on David’s attitude toward Sandy”. 2025-12-09.
  27. ↑ “On the inspiration for Sandy’s outfit”. 2021-05-26.
  28. ↑ “The authors look back on Mike and Sandy’s dynamic”. 2021-05-05.
  29. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 36
  30. ↑ Chapter 68: December, page 15
  31. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 12
  32. ↑ Chapter 18: Farewell, Middle School, page 4
  33. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 42
  34. ↑ Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 5
  35. ↑ Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 6
  36. ↑ Chapter 91: Dial Tone, page 18
  37. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 28
  38. ↑ Chapter 110: Eternal Flame, page 28
  39. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 10
  40. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 21
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