Wonderland

Wonderland
Chapter	49 of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	November 2, 2009 (2009-11-02)
Page count	6
Major characters	Lucy, Mike, Sandy
Minor characters	Yashy, Chirpy, Lily
Locations	Lucy’s house
Collected in	Volume Two, Omnibus 1
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Dreaming in full color and dressed as Alice, Lucy finally has a Mike who is sweet, protective, and back in his old blue scarf. It’s a lovely dream, right up until Sandy joins it.

Synopsis

Lucy comes to on a patch of purple grass, dressed head to toe as Alice in Wonderland, with a cheerful pink rabbit perched beside her. Mike drops out of the sky, back in his old blue scarf, and greets her with a breezy “Hey, sunshine.” When she brings the scarf up, he offers to reveal why it’s that particular shade of blue, provided she can catch him first.

The chase gets Lucy no closer to an answer. Mid-run, dream-Mike turns around and asks her point-blank whether she likes him. Red in the face, Lucy shouts “YES!!” Then he stops at the edge of a cliff, wonders aloud whether she likes him enough to follow him off it, and dives.

Bracing herself, Lucy pinches her nose and jumps. Mike calls “I’ll catch you, brave girl!”, catches her, and the two of them splash down into the lake below. Lucy, terrified of water, freezes and then flails in a panic, but Mike calms her with promises to keep her safe. She’s so thrilled at not fainting that she begins to confess her feelings, only to turn and find Sandy smiling at her in Mike’s place.

Sandy takes Lucy’s hands as the light dims around them, then shoves her under the water. “Please do not be sinful.” Behind her, Mike stands against shadowy trees in his present-day striped scarf, smiling blankly while Lucy drowns.

Then Lucy jolts awake in her own bed, and the color drains out of the comic along with the dream. Yashy, Chirpy and Lily are sleeping soundly around her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she realizes this is the third dream like this in one week, and makes up her mind: “School’s starting in a few hours.. I HAVE to tell him this time.”

Character dynamics

Dream-Mike is, in every sense of the word, a good catch.

• Lucy and Mike: The real Mike never appears, and nothing changes between the real pair in this chapter. Only Lucy changes. She dreams of the Mike she longs for — warm, patient, protective enough to be worth jumping off a cliff for, and wearing the blue scarf from before Sandy. Dream-Lucy can shout that she likes him without a second thought, which her waking self has yet to manage, and after the third such dream in one week she decides it’s time to say it out loud.
• Lucy and Sandy: Lucy doesn’t dream of Sandy as a person in her own right, but as the obstacle between her and Mike. Sandy is all sweetness until she holds Lucy under the water, while Mike watches without a flicker of concern. The scene reflects Lucy’s fears, not the real Sandy, who does none of this.

Trivia & observations

• Lucy’s blue dress, white apron and black Mary Jane shoes are straight out of Alice in Wonderland, pink rabbit included. The rabbit never gets a name or an identity.
• Per Veronica’s commentary under the first page, this chapter kicked off BCB’s three-updates-a-week schedule. Before it, chapters were posted whole whenever they were finished, with gaps so long that “a lot of people thought I ended the comic.”
• The whole chapter is in color, a rarity for this era. The commentary under the final page notes the next chapter returns to “standard Volume Two style,” which means no color.
• Veronica has named Wonderland among her favorite chapters, saying Mike’s “I’ll catch you, brave girl!” makes her tear up “LITERALLY every time I read it” because it captures the best parts of his and Lucy’s early relationship.
• Dream-Mike wears his original blue scarf for the whole idyll. The blank-faced Mike who watches Lucy drown is back in the orange-and-yellow stripes Tess gave him in Left Behind.
• Dream-Lucy’s giddy “I haven’t fainted!” nods at her actual track record. She fainted at the middle-school pool back in Carry On.

Related chapters

• A Distance Apart: Lucy follows through on her resolution in the very next chapter. She confesses her love to Mike, and he turns her down, telling her he has Sandy now.
• Troubled Waters: Lucy’s terror on the lake goes back to this chapter, where Mike explains that she has been deathly afraid of water ever since he nearly drowned when they were kids.
• Dial Tone: Much later in the series, Mike experiences a dreamscape nightmare that mirrors Lucy’s with the roles swapped. He sinks underwater, and dream-Sandy is the hostile figure.
• Eternal Flame: Dream-Mike dangles the answer to the scarf question and never gives it. The real Mike does, over sixty chapters later, when he tells Lucy he chose the old blue scarf thinking about her eyes.