Off to the Movies

Off to the Movies
Chapter	12 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	June 27, 2006 (2006-06-27)
Page count	6
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Paulo, Daisy
Minor characters	David, Yashy, Amaya
Locations	Roseville cinema, Lucy's house, Neighborhood sidewalks and streets
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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Lucy wanted a quiet movie with Mike and got the whole gang instead, plus a horror-romance-comedy-drama about a heroine who confesses her love too late. On the walk home, that ending starts to feel a lot less fictional.

Synopsis

At the Roseville cinema, Daisy arrives with Paulo and David and invites Mike and Lucy to join them, and Mike agrees without checking with Lucy first. Lucy starts to admit she'd been hoping to watch something alone with him, but Paulo interrupts to caress her back and turn on the charm. One panel later he's lying inside the popcorn machine while Lucy dusts off her fists.

Inside the auditorium, David erupts into barking at Paulo, leaving him shaken and teary-eyed. During the climax, the dying heroine confesses that she only acted like a jerk because of her feelings, and that she left it too late. Lucy watches intently, then looks down, shaking.

Once the credits roll, Lucy quietly wipes her eyes, and Daisy catches Paulo fighting back tears too. He eventually admits that childhood bullies once barked him right out of a park. When Daisy praises his openness as strength, he spends the rest of the outing volunteering ever-flimsier confessions.

On the walk home, Mike and Lucy's movie talk turns transparently personal. Lucy says the girl should have confessed her feelings sooner, and only acted like a jerk out of fear of rejection. Mike agrees that trusting someone is hard, but sometimes the risk is worth it, and that everyone could see the couple were meant for each other but them. He softly brushes her cheek and asks if there's a lesson in that. Lucy blushes, then dives into her house, declares the movie was stupid after all, and slams the door. Mike is left alone, wailing "THAT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN".

Turns out the risk isn't always worth it.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: Until now, Lucy has swatted down Mike's smaller advances, like the hand-holding in Gone Fishing that got him told off for saying "corny stuff". This chapter has both of them pining at once. She wanted the movie to be just the two of them, and Maria's too-late confession leaves her shaking in her seat. The walk home is Mike's first sustained overture, filtered through movie talk, and Lucy's fear of rejection wins out at the door. Nothing has visibly changed by the end, but the obstacle between them is now plainly fear rather than indifference.
• Paulo and Daisy: Daisy trades her silence about Paulo's tears for the truth behind his phobia, then tells him his openness proves his strength. Paulo, discovering that vulnerability wins Daisy's admiration, immediately starts performing it for her, one invented tragedy at a time. Veronica's commentary under the final page backs this up, noting that Daisy "seems to like when Paulo is a polite, nice sensitive person".

Trivia & observations

• Yashy's opening line is a phonetic rendering of Knuckles' theme from Sonic Adventure. Veronica's commentary admits she built the whole chapter around Yashy reciting those lyrics, with no idea where the story would go afterwards: "Even the more important stories can start from a goofy meme."
• Veronica also describes the scene she almost wrote instead. Had Mike refused Daisy's invitation, Paulo would have teased the two about wanting to be alone, and Lucy would probably have "kicked Mike in the face and rushed off in embarrassment". She notes Lucy is feeling particularly vulnerable here.
• Per Veronica's commentary, the four bullies in Paulo's flashback were originally meant to return and considerably affect the cast's lives. The chapter was rewritten so they stay one-off bullies who never see Paulo again.
• This is Amaya's first appearance anywhere but school, working the cinema's concession stand. The connection runs in the family, since Featured Attraction later reveals her father manages the theater.
• Veronica has pointed to this as her go-to chapter for the era "where Lucy was finally becoming more vulnerable about her feelings for Mike", after chapters of rebuffing his advances.

Related chapters

• Catty Remarks: The interlude directly after this chapter opens on Mike sleepless, exhausted, and blushing at Lucy at every turn. The movie night never comes up by name, but it reads like the morning after that door slam.
• Confrontation: Both of this chapter's threads pay off hard two chapters later. Toby turns the barking gag into real menace by pinning Paulo down and barking in his face, and Lucy kisses Mike while insisting she's only "repaying" him.
• Gone Fishing: Where Mike's last attempt at affection earned him a telling-off for "corny stuff" — the cheek-brush here is a considerable escalation.
• A Distance Apart: Paulo's phobia is remembered long into high school, when Lucy of all people bares her teeth and barks him into a cringe. She was one of the mock-barkers in this chapter, so she knows exactly what she's doing.