Field Day

Field Day
Chapter	16 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	August 4, 2006 (2006-08-04)
Page count	12
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Katie, David, Paulo
Minor characters	Yashy, Daisy, Sue, Blur, Amaya, Chirpy, Turtle
Locations	Roseville Middle School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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It's field day, and Mike and Lucy intend to settle once and for all which of them is the better athlete. Meanwhile, Katie would give anything to learn the secret behind David's impossibly shiny fur.

Synopsis

Mike talks himself into a war with Lucy before the first event starts. He reassures her that their races have always been close, then claims he always wins them and only lost their famous fourth-grade sprint because he walked the whole way. When Yashy pipes up with a crude question about their romance, the two blast her flat with a joint laser-eyed "AYU BEEM!!"

Katie arrives with a plan to charm a prom invitation out of the hottest boy, then spots David and his impossibly shiny fur. Asked what kind of product he uses, David beams "Ovaries" and wanders off.

Some exotic new brand, presumably.

The partner races both end in dead ties, mostly at Katie's expense. Lucy drags her in as a partner and simply sprints for the line, and her flushed gloating leaves Mike blushing and Paulo declaring "I AM SO TURNED ON". In the rematch Mike snaps at a taunt from Lucy and plows his bandaged partner Katie face-first through the dirt to tear the ribbon alongside her.

With partners abandoned, Mike and Lucy go head-to-head at the game stations and tie on everything, from archery to identically missed basketball shots. When a stray arrow from Katie nearly hits Lucy, Mike shoves her out of its path and holds her face for a long moment.

The deciding footrace ends with Mike on the ground and the rivalry forgotten. He pulls far ahead, softens at the sight of Lucy straining after him, and genuinely considers letting her have this one, then trips over a grinning turtle and hurts his leg for real. It's Lucy who runs back, wiping a tear off his face with a "Watch where you're going next time, idiot" and shouting for the medics.

David wins the race, then helps the collapsed Katie to her feet and shares his secret, a good roll in the dirt three times a day. Katie trots off after her new "beauty guru", hearts in her eye. Mike, now sporting a cast and cane, watches with Lucy, who writes the day off as giving him a pity win.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: Best friends and standing rivals, and this chapter runs on both at once. Mike's boast about the fourth-grade race turns a pep talk into a day-long war, and the two prove so evenly matched that every single event ends in a tie. It takes a real injury to break the deadlock. The moment Mike is actually hurt, Lucy drops the rivalry on the spot and tends to him. Veronica has said the chapter shows how similar the two are, and that Mike "gets a lot out of proving himself to her".
• Katie and David: A connection built from nothing in a single afternoon, with Katie doing all the wanting. She spends the day worshipping David's fur from afar, while David stays blissfully unaware he has an admirer at all. When he finally helps her up and shares his dirt-rolling secret, Katie is won over completely: she leaves the field a devoted disciple of her new "beauty guru", something Mike and Lucy even remark on.

Trivia & observations

• The arrow through Katie's head near the end is only a daydream, playing out inside Mike's thought bubble. Plenty of first-time readers were fooled, and Veronica's commentary spells it out: the scene "looks like it ACTUALLY HAPPENED, but it didn't."
• Mike's fall, on the other hand, is completely real. Veronica stresses that he isn't pretending to hand Lucy the win, and notes the irony that he was considering exactly that when he tripped. Her commentary on the final page marks this as the start of the Injured Mike arc, with the damage "probably just a sprained ankle or something".
• "AYU BEEM" is a Di Gi Charat reference. Veronica notes she "used to make a lot of references to Di Gi Charat" in this era.
• The flag the teacher raises to declare the first race a tie bears a picture of a necktie.
• The grinning turtle has done this sort of thing before. Its first appearance was in Simple Pleasures, where Paulo's skateboard hit it.
• Oliver's commentary singles out Blur's "It's been over!!" as a favorite silly line he "had to preserve" from the chapter's original version.

Related chapters

• Unfulfilled Fantasy: Mike is still hobbling around on the new cane when the next chapter opens, and Lucy ends up chasing him with it once he ditches it. The quieter mood after the rivalry also gives that chapter room to open up the Sandy backstory.
• Pep Rally: The earlier school-athletics chapter this one builds on, which Veronica describes as Field Day's "older sister". Katie's cheerleading credentials were established there, and David's "ZERO SERVING ZERO!" is him parroting the teacher's volleyball call from that chapter.
• Farewell, Middle School: The cane makes its last appearance here, when Lucy kicks it out from under Mike. The prom Katie was scheming toward also turns up in that chapter's flashbacks, and Katie makes it there, though not on David's arm.
• Confrontation: Two chapters before Field Day, this one ends with Lucy kissing Mike. The all-day rivalry here runs on the tension that kiss left behind.