Pick Me Up

Pick Me Up
Chapter	47 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	March 31, 2009 (2009-03-31)
Page count	11
Major characters	Lucy, Mike, Paulo
Locations	Park, Neighborhood sidewalks and streets, Lucy's house, Silvershore Islands
Collected in	Volume Two, Omnibus 1
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Lucy finally works up the nerve to tell Mike everything, and picks a screaming match with him instead. Luckily, Paulo happens along to survey the wreckage, armed with a fresh-picked flower and one truly terrible follow-up line.

Synopsis

Lucy combs the park for Mike, resolving to tell him everything once she finds him. When she does, her nerve fails her; she accuses him of glaring at her, and within seconds the two are screaming at each other. Mike calls her selfish and unfair, backed up by flashbacks of years spent absorbing her punches. He tells her she's lucky they still hang out at all, then walks off with a parting "Please just take a hint and leave me alone."

Lucy winds up crying alone on a low brick wall until Paulo happens by. She tells him to go away; he plants himself beside her instead. "Make me." He offers her a fresh-picked flower and the promise of a comforting shoulder. Lucy is genuinely moved, right up until he adds that afterward he gets to ram her. She considers it for a second, then kicks him in the throat.

The flower routine was going great, right up until the fine print.

Paulo walks her home and pries until the truth comes out. It's never Mike's fault, she admits; she picked the fight so he wouldn't notice how nervous she was, and now she feels like nothing but a burden. Paulo calls her a drama queen, but his actual advice is sound — Mike just wants some recognition, so she should apologize. Relieved, Lucy throws her arms around him, and Paulo is blushing and hugging her back when Mike's voice cuts in.

Mike walks up to find them in each other's arms outside Lucy's house. Paulo excuses himself breezily, and the pair blurt out simultaneous apologies. They talk over each other until Lucy lands on ".. Michael. Thank you for everything.." — stunning Mike into a bashful you're-welcome.

Inside, the two are soon back to normal over video games. Lucy starts what sounds like a serious confession, only to crow that she was distracting Mike to win the round. Outside, Paulo takes one last look at the lit window and strolls off. "She'll have the guts one day.."

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: The pattern Mike describes mid-fight, with Lucy dishing out abuse while he quietly takes it, goes back to their kindergarten days in Left Behind. This is the first time he cashes that resentment in on-panel. The reconciliation puts the friendship back on its warm footing, and Lucy's thank-you is precisely the recognition Paulo said Mike was after. Still, Mike's warning that his tolerance has a limit is now on the record, and the confession Lucy came to make never happens.
• Paulo and Lucy: The flirt-and-kick banter is business as usual, but underneath it Paulo gets promoted to genuine confidant. Lucy tells him the truth about why she picks fights with Mike, something she's told nobody else, and she physically stops him from settling the score for her. Paulo, now fully aware of where her heart is, coaches her toward the apology and steps aside without ever being asked. It helps that his clinching argument is true: he really did save Lucy from the river in Troubled Waters without asking for a thing.
• Mike and Paulo: Nothing changes on the surface, and they part with the usual needling. But Paulo has quietly done Mike a favor by sending Lucy back to apologize, and Mike never learns of it, much like the river rescue Paulo once kept quiet so nobody would feel indebted.

Trivia & observations

• Veronica's commentary reveals the chapter was originally drawn as a side story, never meant to be published online. Once she decided to make it canon, she drew the first two pages to show how the argument started. That ready-made backlog fits neatly with all eleven pages going up across just two days.
• Page 1 had a rough life behind the scenes. Oliver's commentary explains the full-resolution file was accidentally saved over, so thousands of printed books carried the upscaled shading before the page was finally reshaded at 600dpi for the omnibus.
• Per Veronica's commentary under the final page, Paulo was originally going to fill Zachary's role as the unbiased observer of Mike and Lucy's conflict in the Summer Vacation arc, before Zachary existed.
• Lucy didn't entirely imagine that opening glare. Veronica notes Mike "REALLY wasn't happy to see her," even if the reaction it earned was a bit much.
• Veronica's commentary on the flower scene singles out the one contest Paulo wins over Mike, being completely unthreatened by Lucy: "He's probably the most at ease with her. And it drives her CRAZY."
• The chapter is a strict three-hander, with nobody but Lucy, Mike and Paulo on-panel for all eleven pages. Even Sandy only rates a mention as "his imaginary girlfriend," a dig Paulo has been using since Flirting with Disaster.

Related chapters

• Troubled Waters: The stream rescue Paulo invokes happened here, when he dove in and pulled a drowning Lucy out of the river. This chapter's gratitude hug even re-stages that one's thank-you hug almost move for move.
• Search and Rescue: Mike's cliff flashback comes from this chapter, where he holds a broken land bridge one-handed at the Silvershore Islands while Lucy clings around his waist.
• Wonderland: Two chapters later, Lucy still hasn't recovered her nerve. Her recurring nightmare here ends with her vowing "I HAVE to tell him this time."
• A Distance Apart: Three chapters later, Lucy does have the guts, just as Paulo said she would. She tells Mike she loves him, and he turns her down.
• Another Shoulder: After that rejection, Lucy once again brings her Mike troubles straight to Paulo, who leans into the role he takes up here by reminding her that she's "talking to ME, not Mike."