Lucy's Birthday

Lucy's Birthday
(Intermission)
Chapter	"27.1" of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	November 8, 2006 (2006-11-08)
Page count	3
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Paulo
Minor characters	Tess, David, Abbey, Daisy, Lily, Yashy, Chirpy
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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Lucy has never once been caught off guard on her birthday, and Mike has officially given up trying. Paulo hasn't, and he's got balloons, a cake, and an ulterior motive. Somebody's wrist is not coming out of this chapter intact.

Synopsis

It's Lucy's birthday, and Mike has long since given up on surprising her. Tess finds him moping and asks if a surprise party is in the works, which sends Mike into a flashback of past attempts. Lucy has caught him crouching in a thorn bush and hanging upside-down from the ceiling, each time before he could finish the word "surprise," and he's run dry on ideas. Paulo volunteers himself and David to throw a party so awesome she'll lose her mind, with the small ulterior hope of a reward once everyone else goes home. Mike is unmoved: "I await your inevitable failure."

The party itself goes about as well as Mike predicted. David, Paulo and Abbey tie balloons all over a forest clearing, around a cake topped with candles in the shape of a "14," and Abbey wonders aloud whether the balloons aren't a pretty obvious giveaway. Daisy comes running in a panic because she couldn't find Lucy anywhere. She needn't have worried, since Lucy is already standing behind them, entirely unsurprised, and critiques the setup in nearly Abbey's exact words. Undeterred, Paulo pivots to his plan B and extends a flirtatious hand her way. Lucy grabs his wrist instead, and something cracks loudly. "GOD SHE BROKE IT!!" David caps the scene with a solemn "Double owned!" while Daisy hands Lucy a present in the background, neither girl sparing Paulo a glance.

Mike's most heartfelt gift yet, up until someone reads the label.

On the walk home, gift bag in hand, Lucy lets her guard down a little. "They really like me, huh?" she thinks. "I'm not sure if I deserve it." Then Mike steps out from behind a tree. Blushing and avoiding her eyes, he holds out a heart-shaped box of chocolates and tells her there are no surprises this year, just something he's been meaning to share now that they're being a little more honest with their feelings. Lucy is visibly touched.

The heart-shaped box turns out to be a prank, and not an especially gentle one. The label is decorated with hearts and a carnation, and written across the middle in fancy cursive is the name "Paulo." Mike bursts out laughing and teases that she has pretty bad taste, which earns him a karate chop to the head. He grins right through it as Lucy yells at him to get over himself. The pets get the last word: Lily admits she was about to call him unfaithful, Yashy announces a newfound respect for "Flea," and Chirpy, in a tiny birthday hat, wishes "Girl-Kitty" a happy birthday.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: The two of them came out of Flirting with Disaster newly candid, with Mike declaring to the whole table that he and Sandy are together and Lucy forced to admit Paulo was her first crush. This chapter shows what Mike does with that candor: he dresses a prank up as sincerity, letting Lucy believe in the heart-shaped box for several long panels before she reads the name on it. It's also a return of serve, since Lucy has flustered him before with Sandy's pet name for him, "Maishul." Nothing between them actually changes, but the honesty they arrived at last chapter now runs in both directions.

Trivia & observations

• Veronica's commentary under the final page frames the prank as deliberate payback: "If Lucy can tease Mike about Sandy, surely Mike can tease Lucy about Paulo!" She also calls Mike a bit salty over the whole affair.
• Veronica's commentary on the first page points out the irony that Lucy, half-deaf, still detects every one of Mike's surprise attempts before they start.
• David's "Double owned!" escalates a live running gag. Yashy scored the first "Owned!" when Lucy shoved Paulo off her, and David delivered one himself at the end of Flirting with Disaster, just one chapter earlier.
• Yashy has been calling Mike "Flea" since almost the very beginning of the comic, and rarely as a compliment, so the real joke in her closing line is Yashy approving of Mike at all.
• For all the screaming, Paulo's wrist heals off-panel. The injury is never mentioned again, and he's in perfectly good shape by the next chapter.
• Despite the March 2010 dates on the current pages, the chapter originally ran in November 2006 as a single update. Oliver later split it into three pages and forgot to update the page count at first, as he owned up to in the comments when a reader noticed.

Related chapters

• Flirting with Disaster: The immediately preceding chapter, and the direct setup for this one. Lucy's Truth-or-Dare confession that Paulo was her first crush is exactly what Mike's chocolate box teases her about, and David's closing "Owned!" there gets its "Double owned!" sequel here.
• A New Leaf: Sandy makes her relationship with Mike official over the phone in this chapter, which is what gives Lily's crack about calling him "unfaithful" its bite.
• Mike's Birthday: One of the earlier pocket-sized birthday interludes, alongside Daisy's Birthday. Lucy's Birthday follows the same decimal-numbered format, just with a couple of extra pages.
• Pillow Talk: Lucy's next birthday chapter, for anyone tracing the birthday thread.