Take Heart

Take Heart
Chapter	81 of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	January 20, 2014 (2014-01-20)
Page count	33
Major characters	Paulo, Daisy, Abbey, David, Rachel
Minor characters	Mike, Jasmine, Matt, Jordan, Sue, Lani Amalu, Mina, Roseville High School principal
Locations	Roseville High School, Daisy’s house, Roseville cinema, Roseville neighborhood
Collected in	Volume Five
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Abbey finally asks Daisy what she remembers about Rachel’s party, and the conversation ends their relationship. Paulo appoints himself matchmaker, armed with yellow roses and no tact whatsoever. And what exactly is Matt to Rachel, anyway?

Synopsis

David spends homeroom campaigning for a group outing to a film called “BIG FAT MOVIE”. Daisy loves the plan, but Abbey has gone strangely distant and won’t be coaxed. In the hallway, Paulo finds Rachel giggling arm-in-arm with Matt, a senior with, in Paulo’s estimation, a very punchable face. He insists to Mike that he and Rachel aren’t dating.

On the walk home, Abbey breaks up with Daisy. He asks what she remembers about Rachel’s party, and the answer is almost nothing, though Abbey remembers everything she said about Michael that night. Pressed to say she loves him, all Daisy can manage is “I like you very much.” “Exactly,” he says, and walks away, leaving her stunned on the sidewalk.

Paulo and David stumble out of the movie horrified by chicken nuggets and run straight into Daisy hugging a tub of breakup ice cream. Back on her couch, Paulo is floored to learn Abbey did the dumping because Daisy admitted she still kind of likes Mikie. When he rants that Abbey is asking too much of kids their age, David calmly reminds him, “You said you’d marry Lucy.” Paulo relents, admitting that Abbey likes her and saying he knows what she can do.

Paulo begins by ambushing his ex Jasmine at her locker. She’s had a drama-free year and means to keep it, but a yellow-rose “friendship” fundraiser to patch Daisy and Abbey back up wins her over. Daisy proves too shy to buy Abbey’s rose herself, so an exasperated Paulo does it for her. Once he leaves, she quietly returns to the table to make a donation of her own.

Abbey is touched by his single flower until he reads the signature, since Paulo forgot to put Daisy’s name down. Daisy pleads to get back together, but Abbey holds his line about love. Paulo loses his patience completely. He bellows that nobody would actively want to be with Abbey, and takes an outright cruel shot at his dead mother. Then he mashes the pair’s heads together with orders to make out. Miss Amalu shuts it down, and afterward Abbey and Daisy trade shy, amused smiles over Paulo’s disgrace.

By the next day, Abbey and Daisy are walking and talking together again. Then Rachel approaches, teary, holding a rose with a sweet message Paulo never wrote. Daisy’s “donation” paid for the rose. Rachel admits she won’t get serious because he’s got his Lucy and she wants a family someday, “But you make it hard not to love you.” When Paulo gestures toward Matt, she laughs herself breathless and diagnoses jealousy. Paulo says he likes what they have and thinks they’re doing fine, which deflates her a little.

On the walk home they pass Matt doting on a flustered Jordan. Asked what Matt actually is to her, Rachel will only say that she’ll “never be man enough for him”, and the penny finally drops on Paulo’s horrified face.

Character dynamics

Daisy cries it out on Paulo, who has no idea where to put his arms.

• Abbey and Daisy: Abbey knew when he confessed to Daisy back in New Beginnings that her feelings for Michael could pull their relationship apart. Hearing about her drunken party talk convinces him that strong like is all Daisy will ever have for him, and he would rather end it than settle for that. A friendship rose and a shared laugh at Paulo’s expense have them walking and talking again by the final pages, though the chapter stops short of calling them a couple.
• Paulo and Rachel: They’re “officially” casual, but Rachel isn’t seeing anyone else and hasn’t wanted to for a long time. The forged note finally gets her to say so out loud. Paulo’s jealousy of Matt gives away how far past casual he has drifted. He still won’t change the arrangement. All he offers is “I like what we have. I think we’re doing fine.” Her face visibly falls. They walk home with her feelings on the table and nothing settled.
• Paulo and Jasmine: Jasmine has avoided her ex since their New Year’s breakup in Ten Seconds to Midnight, and she’d be happy to keep her year drama-free. She warms to him when he asks for something with nothing in it for himself. By the end of the sale she’s smiling at him and admitting the whole thing “wasn’t such a bad idea”.
• Paulo and Matt: Paulo spends the whole chapter treating Matt as his rival for Rachel, when Matt was never in the running at all. Paulo only works that out on the last page, watching Matt dote on Jordan.

Trivia & observations

Matchmaking, the Paulo way.

• Take Heart debuted a whole new art style. In her commentary under the first page, Veronica describes drawing on “huge paper” with coloured inks and copic markers and tweaking some character designs. She compares the shift to the On Our Own style experiment. The same page kicked off the comic’s new Monday/Wednesday/Friday update schedule, and a new speech-bubble style followed on page two, with an apology for the suddenness.
• The page of Daisy sobbing into her breakup ice cream went live on Valentine’s Day 2014, which Veronica marked with a cheery “Happy Valentine’s Day!”
• Veronica identifies the Big Fat Movie as a nod to Super Size Me in her commentary, writing, “I sure felt the same way after watching Supersize Me.”
• Choco-Shock has history as breakup ice cream. Jasmine cried into the very same brand over a fight with Paulo back in Pillow Talk.
• Veronica’s commentary under page 16 rules out the popular theory of Daisy and Paulo pretend-dating to win their exes back: “It’s a cute theory, but it wouldn’t happen!” Among other problems, it would get Paulo “his shit kicked in by Abbey”.
• Veronica and Oliver later explained on Tumblr that Paulo “knows absolutely nothing about Abbey or what Abbey and Daisy’s relationship is really about” and figures high-school relationships are just for messing around. That outlook goes a long way toward explaining his classroom technique here.
• Veronica also confirmed on Tumblr how differently everyone weathered Rachel’s party. Daisy got “completely smashed” and remembers the least of anyone, while Abbey didn’t drink at all.

Related chapters

• Happy Hour: The damage Abbey can’t get past was done at Rachel’s party, where a very drunk Daisy clung to Mike and demanded to know what made Lucy better than her, with Abbey looking on. Matt also makes his first appearance there, one chapter before Paulo declares him a rival.
• Love Note: The friendship roses carry straight into the next chapter, where Mike gets one more flower, this one from Paulo, with a note reading “ur a faget”.
• New Beginnings: Abbey and Daisy got together in this chapter, with Abbey confessing even though he knew all about her feelings for Michael. Even then, strong like was all Daisy could promise him.
• Golden Hour: Matt’s sexuality stays an unspoken implication in Take Heart. On the summer beach trip he tells Paulo about it himself, including his fear of what others might do to him.