One-Track Mind

One-Track Mind
(Intermission)
Chapter	“115.1” of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	July 8, 2022 (2022-07-08)
Page count	2
Major characters	James, Mike, Finn
Minor characters	Paulo, Lucas, Max, Darwin, Felix
Locations	Roseville High School
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← Track Meet	Link Play →
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Just how oblivious is James? This two-page intermission replays scenes from three earlier chapters through the track team’s eyes, revealing exactly where Mike’s future teammates were during his worst moments, and how James managed to miss every single one of them.

Synopsis

Each vignette borrows the title of an earlier chapter and shows where James was while its events played out. During Love Again, Paulo corners Mike in the cafeteria and blames him for the state Lucy is in. A few tables over, James is busy balancing three drink cartons on his nose, crowing “Look what I can do, look what I can do!”

During High Expectations, the rest of the team watches Mike slam Paulo’s face into a lunch table. James misses the whole scene because he’s home in bed with the flu.

Burnt Bridges is where James finally takes notice of Mike. Eating lunch alone beside the track, he overhears Mike telling someone offscreen, “Please remember.. I meant what I said. I won’t bother her again.” Mike jogs away, and the only thing James takes from any of it is that Mike is fast and simply has to join the track team, pronto.

Character dynamics

The main plot rages on behind James, who has cartons to balance.

• James and Mike: After overhearing the end of Mike’s conversation and seeing him jog away, James decides he has to recruit him for the track team. Mike knows nothing about James’s interest during the four months James spends watching him, which Mike later describes in Track Meet as stalking.
• The track team and Mike: The team wants to recruit Mike for his running ability. When they see him slam Paulo’s face into a cafeteria table, Darwin questions whether they should still pursue him. Finn insists that Mike’s speed is all that matters: “He could flip the table directly onto that guy and I’d still want him running with us.”

Trivia & observations

• Veronica’s commentary calls the chapter “a fun little intermission between chapters”, drawn up because readers had a whole lot of questions about how James could have missed all of this.
• Per the same commentary, James is not craftily distracting his teammates from the fight in the opening panel: “He’s an idiot. He’s just showing off his balancing skills”.
• Veronica also figures James would get along well with Paulo and David thanks to their chocolate milk fights, a cafeteria pastime on record as early as Enter High School.
• Lucy never appears on-panel, but both of the replayed dramas revolve around her. She’s the “she” Paulo blames Mike for, and the “her” Mike promises to leave alone.
• James’s actual first appearance in the comic is a background cameo on the final page of Eternal Flame, where he walks behind Mike and eyes him curiously.
• In a 2026 ask response, Veronica revealed that James wasn’t originally meant to matter much to the plot. He began as a little crush for Paulo before “the crush stuff transferred to Mike instead”, and the track team was the last piece of his character to come together.

Related chapters

• Track Meet: The chapter just before this one, where James and the whole track team are properly introduced. It’s there that Mike finds out he’s been watched for four months.
• Burnt Bridges: In that chapter, a tearful Mike promises Augustus he will never talk to Lucy again. James is nearby but overhears only the very end of their conversation.
• Link Play: In the very next chapter, James and the track team take Mike along on a mall trip, and James finally gets to spend time with the boy he was so eager to recruit.