New Beginnings

New Beginnings
Chapter	46 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	March 16, 2009 (2009-03-16)
Page count	13
Major characters	Daisy, Abbey, Lucy
Minor characters	Jessica, Rachel, Molly, Abraham
Locations	Daisy's house, Psychiatrist's office, Park, Abbey's house, Neighborhood sidewalks and streets
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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Why did everyone come home to find Daisy and Abbey holding hands? Lucy gets the full story: a therapy appointment, a birthday picnic, one badly timed confession, and the most aggressively announced first kiss in the comic.

Synopsis

Lucy and Daisy sit in Daisy's bedroom, where Lucy asks whether Daisy really took Abbey to his "appointment with the shrink" herself. Daisy knew Abbey had problems with his old family, but the night at the carnival showed her how bad it was, so she wanted to make sure he got proper help.

On the walk to the psychiatric office, Abbey relives a memory of his younger self running crying toward his father's car. In the memory, Abraham urges a woman named Cynthia to pack, telling her "Charlotte knows," while she demands to know what he did to her. The session leaves Abbey wrung out, and he stands motionless while Daisy hugs him.

Daisy has the afternoon planned too, starting with a birthday picnic in the park. Abbey's mood lifts until Jessica and Rachel wander over and he coldly identifies them as the sophomores who abandoned Daisy. The girls never liked Katie, and it was Daisy they wanted around all along. Their teasing over whether Abbey likes Daisy gives his crush away, and they knowingly excuse themselves.

Once they're alone, Abbey admits he never said anything because he didn't want to trouble her, given her feelings for Michael. Halfway through her guilty apology, he takes her by the shoulders and tells her, "Daisy. I love you."

The walk back to Abbey's house is an excruciating stretch of blank stares. Daisy asks whether he really meant it, and when Abbey hedges that it's hard to truly know, she demands he be selfish for once and announces that she is going to kiss him. The two psych each other up like prizefighters, freeze, and then Abbey shyly cups her cheek and kisses her. He really, really loves her, and Daisy can't say it back yet, but she really, really likes him, which he calls a pretty good start.

Sweeping a boy off his feet, the Daisy way.

Back in the present, Daisy says she'll always really like Mikie but can live with the idea it would never work out. Lucy turns stern: "He's a good kid. Don't use him."

Character dynamics

• Abbey and Daisy: They went into this week as close friends with one lopsided secret. Abbey had been sitting on his feelings for a long while, unwilling to trouble Daisy given how she felt about Michael. Jessica and Rachel's teasing forces the issue, and his blurted confession makes everything more awkward before it makes anything better. It takes Daisy demanding a wholehearted, selfish confession to bridge the gap. They come out of it a couple on honest if uneven terms — he loves her, she isn't ready to say it back yet, and both are content to call that "a pretty good start." By the frame story, everyone from Lucy to Molly is treating them as a settled item.
• Daisy and Jessica/Rachel: Daisy spent months convinced the older girls had dropped her along with Katie, ever since Katie's "total mess" brush-off. In reality they can't stand Katie, and it was Daisy they liked all along. A few minutes of picnic conversation reopens the friendship on the spot, after a full nine chapters without an appearance from either of them.
• Daisy and Mike: Daisy has been chasing Mike since the comic's earliest chapters. She'll always really like Mikie, she tells Lucy, but she can live with the idea it would never work out, and it's the first time she has said anything of the sort.
• Lucy and Daisy: The friendship runs on blunt candor, and Lucy's way of looking out for Daisy is a warning rather than a hug. She hears the whole giddy story out, allows that Abbey is a good kid, then flatly tells Daisy not to use him. Daisy is hurt that Lucy would even think it of her.

Trivia & observations

• Veronica's commentary under the first page marks this chapter as the official start of the "Volume Two" art style, traditional lineart with digital colouring, and notes that Oliver recoloured every page of the chapter.
• The title is a quote. Daisy ended Love My Way musing that "Sometimes you find new beginnings in what first seem like conclusions..", and this chapter takes her up on it.
• Veronica called page 2 "Probably one of the hardest pages I had to draw" and said Abbey's flashback scene is "oddly personal" to her, declining to elaborate. Throughout the sequence, young Abbey's colouring deliberately frays outside his own lines.
• Page 3 is the first on-panel appearance of both Abraham and Cynthia, and the first time the name Charlotte is spoken anywhere in the comic. Abraham himself had been named on-panel long before he was ever drawn.
• Lucy pointing at her deaf ear while Daisy backpedals revives a gag from the comic's very first chapter, where Daisy also forgot ("It's like you're deafer than I am.").
• Oliver singled out Rachel's "bunny boy" line as a favorite of his. It also caps a runner from carnival night, where Daisy cooed over Abbey's cute bunny ears.

Related chapters

• Love My Way: The "night at the carnival" Daisy cites on the first page. Augustus's assault on Daisy, Abbey's breakdown, and Daisy first hearing about his family history all happen there.
• Moving On: Where the therapy plan begins. Abbey tells Daisy he's going to try seeing a counselor over the break, and this chapter shows him following through.
• Invitation: Explains both why the pair had Roseville to themselves and where the birthday debt came from. Abbey's friends threw him an early birthday celebration before the flight, and Daisy stayed behind with him.
• Return: The chapter this one is answering. The travelers come home to find Daisy and Abbey together at the airport, and Lucy's questions here pick up directly from that reveal.
• At Loose Ends: Replays and greatly expands the memory from this chapter's therapy walk, showing the same confrontation from young Abbey's full perspective and finally explaining who Charlotte and Cynthia are.