Gone Fishing

Gone Fishing
Chapter	10 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	June 20, 2011 (2011-06-20)
Page count	6
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Paulo, Daisy
Minor characters	Yashy, David
Locations	Aquarium, Roseville Middle School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
Chapter navigation
← Show and Tell	Pep Rally →
Read chapter

A class trip to the aquarium would be great fun if Lucy weren't quietly terrified of the whole place. Mike is the one who notices, and an old promise gets dusted off in the process. Paulo, meanwhile, learns the hard way that seals don't appreciate being teased.

Synopsis

The class field trip to the aquarium starts badly for Lucy, who stares uneasily up at the shark tank while Paulo amuses himself by tapping on the glass. When she hauls him away he answers with an uninvited hug, and she kicks him head-first into the tank.

At the seal show Lucy goes stiff and silent, her breathing growing heavier, until Mike realizes he's forgotten all about her fear and quietly takes her hand. He invokes an old vow, "a promise I fully intend to keep", and Lucy blushes before smacking him upside the head for breaking his other promise, the one about never touching her. Daisy glares at the pair jealously from behind her clipboard.

One hand-hold, three very different reactions.

Paulo, who begged his way into volunteering at the show, taunts the seal with a fish fake-out and gets knocked into the pool by its tail. A terrified Lucy ends up clinging to Mike's arm.

On the bus home, Lucy declares the trip the worst experience of her life. When Daisy pops up to lecture her about field trips broadening the mind, Lucy asks what staying home would really cost her beyond the chance to ".. Repeatedly fail at flirting with some jerk who barely even likes you?" — with Mike sitting right there.

Back at school, the teacher announces that nobody leaves without a completed worksheet, and Paulo shoves Mike to the ground while begging Daisy for help. A slightly embarrassed Lucy offers the flattened Mike a hand up, and when he muses that everyone deserves a little help sometimes, she plants her foot in his face and laughs at him for being corny.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: They come into this chapter as squabbling childhood best friends, complete with a standing rule that Mike isn't allowed to touch her. He breaks it anyway when her panic peaks, and the promise he invokes earns a genuine blush before the usual smack lands. The ending plays the same tune, with Lucy offering him a sincere hand up and then answering his gratitude with a foot to the face, so the old equilibrium survives more or less intact.
• Lucy and Daisy: Daisy spends the seal show glaring at the hand-holding from behind her clipboard, and on the bus Lucy stops leaving the rivalry unspoken. The jab about Daisy's flirting is cruel enough that Mike takes her aside afterward to soften it. Veronica's commentary calls it Lucy "hitting her where it hurts", physically and mentally alike.

Trivia & observations

• "Gone Fishing" started out as a bonus chapter exclusive to the first book. Veronica's commentary under the opening page notes it "has now made its way to the website", and the web release came as a single six-page drop rather than the usual serialized run.
• Per Veronica's commentary under the second page, the rewrite deliberately toned Paulo down so that he reads as "a prick that needs to get better at boundaries, rather than irredeemable". Oliver adds that the extreme anime-style gags stopped making sense once the cast was fleshed out.
• Oliver remembers the third page as a headache from converting the comic to vertical Webtoon format. Lucy's face in its first panel sits behind a speech bubble and was never inked, so "there's NO face behind that bubble."
• Veronica describes the chapter as exploring "some of Lucy's lesser-talked-about traumas", with foreshadowing whose answers only come much later.
• The poodle teacher who spoils Paulo's early dismissal is the middle school's regular homeroom teacher, on the job since Merry Snow Day.

Related chapters

• Troubled Waters: This is the chapter that answers both of "Gone Fishing"'s open questions. Its flashback shows the near-drowning that left Lucy terrified of water, along with the promise Mike makes her afterward and invokes at the seal show.
• Carry On: Lucy's fear resurfaces at the school swimming pool, with the seal-show staging reversed. This time it's Lucy who grabs Mike's hand in a panic, right before she faints into his arms.
• Turning Tides: Paulo's teasing gets meaner with age. Years down the line he taunts Lucy as "Poor little hydrophobic Lucy..", throwing the exact fear on display here right back in her face.