Unpacking Day
| Unpacking Day | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| (Book-exclusive) | |||
 | |||
| Published | December 1, 2018 | ||
| Page count | 8 | ||
| Major characters | Lucy, Carol | ||
| Locations | Lucy’s house | ||
| Collected in | Volume Six | ||
| Appears between | |||
| |||
Unpacking Day is a book-exclusive chapter appearing in Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six. Lucy is home again, and her mother Carol wants to help with more than the boxes. The afternoon starts with warm banter over folded shirts and ends in the fight the two of them have been avoiding ever since Lucy was sent away.
Synopsis
The chapter opens with mother and daughter hauling the last of Lucy’s boxes into her bedroom, trading jokes about who’s stronger.[1] Carol talks her way into helping fold clothes, and the folding comes with questions.[2] She wants to know whether Lucy has found any new friends, and Lucy grumbles that Carol’s old friend Ellen “raised a freaken asshole.”[3] When Carol presses about what happened between her and Michael, Lucy shouts that she wants everyone to leave her alone, and that she doesn’t care about him anymore.[4]
Carol asks whether Lucy will at least try to make new friends and lets slip that having none just isn’t normal.[5] Lucy fires back that she’s sorry she can’t be Jordan, and that nobody ever gave Sam grief for having no friends. Carol screams back, “Sam didn’t end up in a PSYCH WARD!” leaving Lucy stunned.[5]
Carol says she can’t leave Lucy alone again, not after last time. Lucy, in tears, wails that “maybe I SHOULD have died if I’m gonna be treated like a mental patient for the rest of my life!” Carol grabs her by the shoulders, screaming at her never to say that, and calls her selfish. Lucy fires back that Carol was the one who shipped away her own daughter because she couldn’t deal with the problem.[6]
Carol breaks down in tears, sinks down beside Lucy, and takes her hand to explain herself. She sent Lucy away to get her away from what was hurting her, not because she’d given up on her. She says she was scared and that it was the hardest decision she ever made. She also tells Lucy that she is not a problem.[7] They hold each other, and Lucy apologizes. Carol says she has nothing to be sorry for and asks, “So can I be your friend, at least?”[8] When Lucy wonders what they’d even talk about, Carol offers up all the embarrassing stories Ellen has shared about Michael. After a queasy pause, Lucy turns around with a sly smile and asks exactly how embarrassing.[8]
Character dynamics
- Lucy and Carol: Lucy and Carol have been leaving too much unsaid. Ever since Carol had Lucy sent away, Lucy has taken the decision to mean her mother gave up on her, and the warm banter of the opening pages sits right on top of that resentment.[1][6] During the fight, Lucy finally voices that resentment. Carol explains herself and apologizes, and by the last page she is asking to be a friend Lucy can actually confide in rather than a mother keeping watch over a patient.[7][8]
- Lucy and Mike: He never sets foot in the chapter, but he’s the one subject Lucy refuses to discuss. She tells her mother she doesn’t care about him anymore,[4] and then it’s the promise of embarrassing Michael stories that finally sells her on the whole friendship arrangement.[8]
Trivia & observations
- The chapter is a pure two-hander, with Lucy and Carol the only characters on panel for all eight pages.[1]
- As a book-exclusive chapter, “Unpacking Day” appears only in Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, slotted between Cut Short and After You in the timeline. Lucy’s own grumbling places it early in junior year.[5]
- Carol’s outburst contains the first of only two uses of “psych ward” in the searchable archive. The other comes from Augustus, telling Mike about “The words that sent her to a psych ward” in Line in the Sand.[5][9]
- This chapter is the first to reveal that Carol and Ellen have been friends since middle school, though Ellen herself had already been named on-panel in It’s All in the Mind.[3][10]
- Yashy, Chirpy, and Lily are nowhere to be seen during the unpacking, which squares with Witch Hunt, where Lucy explains the pets chose to stay with her aunt rather than come back to Roseville.[1][11]
- Carol fidgets with her pearl necklace while telling Lucy that having no friends isn’t normal, a nervous habit she shows again during another tense moment with Lucy in Tickets Please.[5][12]
Related chapters
- Love Again: Much of what Carol and Lucy fight over happened there. Its flashback shows Lucy’s rooftop attempt[13], and the chapter ends with her back home in Roseville.
- Ten Seconds to Midnight: There, Carol decides to send Lucy away, which Lucy later describes as being “shipped away”. She agonizes over it in front of Sam and Jordan, worrying out loud that Lucy “might think I’m abandoning her”. Lucy took it exactly that way.[14]
- Dinner Time: The last time Carol tried to draw Lucy out was here, over a family dinner rather than a box of shirts. Back then Lucy shut the conversation down and walked away. This time, Carol doesn’t let her.[15]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 1
- ↑ Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 2
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 3
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 4
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 5
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 6
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 7
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 8
- ↑ Chapter 127: Line in the Sand, page 17
- ↑ Chapter 103: It’s All in the Mind, page 3
- ↑ Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 7
- ↑ Chapter 129: Tickets Please, page 33
- ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 38
- ↑ Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 4
- ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 13