Bonding

Bonding
Chapter	34 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	March 3, 2007 (2007-03-03)
Page count	5
Major characters	Daisy, Augustus, Abbey, Tess
Minor characters	Paulo, Mike, Lucy, Alec McCain, David, Roger, Rachel
Locations	Roseville High School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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Abbey is the only one who notices that Daisy keeps disappearing at lunch, and Lucy knows why. Up on a sunny hill, Augustus tells Daisy all about the old Tess, then leans in for something more. Will she let him?

Synopsis

Abbey opens the chapter as the only one at the lunch table worried that Daisy is missing again. Mike guesses she has extra work to do, which satisfies nobody, least of all Abbey. When Paulo calls him an obsessive stalker, Abbey fires back with a mocking impression of Paulo's own attitude, and the two nearly come to blows. A passing McCain settles it with a deadpan translation for Paulo's benefit: "He's calling you a hormonal imbecile."

It's Lucy who knows where Daisy actually is. She's been hanging around with "that older kid", the guy in the coat, and Tess recognizes the description immediately. "I just worry he's going to use her," she admits. Abbey, for his part, silently drags claw marks into the table. Mike assures everyone that Daisy is responsible and can take care of herself.

Abbey demonstrates his fluency in Paulo.

Meanwhile, Daisy is spending her lunch on a sunny hill with that very kid. Small talk about study habits turns into a cheerful rundown of everyone she has tutored, but Tess's name wipes the smile off Augustus's face. Pressed for an explanation, he tells Daisy what Tess was like last year, when she was "Roger's girlfriend". By his account, Roger, now a Senior, made a game of taunting, stealing from and bullying freshmen, and Tess backed him up every single day. "We learned not to look at her the wrong way," he says. The flashback shows a crying boy clutching his arm, with a frightened Rachel rushing to his side.

Daisy is horrified, but her sympathy holds. Whatever Tess did back then, she reasons, she has changed and must feel terribly alone now. Augustus insists Tess is only getting what she deserves, and warns Daisy against trusting people so readily. Daisy disarms him completely: "I ignored my friends to give you a chance, didn't I?" He concedes the point, and the mood shifts. His hand finds hers, and he starts asking what really brought her out here — is she jealous of Tess, maybe? Not of what she has, but of what she is? Then he pulls her into an embrace.

Blushing, Augustus tells Daisy he really likes her. If she lets him, he'll make her feel like the most desirable girl in the world, take her away, keep her safe from all the others. Daisy closes her eyes for the kiss. Then she thinks of someone else and shoves him away. The bell rings, and she flees, insisting she can't just let go of "him" like that. She runs past a confused Mike in the hallway, looking heartbroken, while Augustus watches her go and thinks, "This isn't going to be easy.."

Character dynamics

• Daisy and Augustus: Daisy has been sneaking off to spend time with him since Follow Me, where she took his hand and decided her friends' warnings didn't matter. This chapter is where the friendship stops being ambiguous. He holds her hand, needles her insecurities about Tess, and pulls her into an embrace. Daisy very nearly kisses him back before pushing him away for the sake of "him". His parting thought makes it plain that winning her over is a project he intends to keep working at.
• Daisy and Tess: Daisy tutored Tess through her midterms in Midterm Time, but she has quietly resented the older girl's place at their table ever since Tess joined the group. Augustus's story gives her every reason to turn on Tess, and she refuses to take it. Whatever Tess was in the Roger days, Daisy decides, she deserves compassion now, even if the jealousy question leaves her squirming.

Trivia & observations

• All five pages of the chapter carry the same publication date. Veronica, replying to a reader under the final page, explained that the site was relaunched in November with intermissions split into their own numbering, which is why the older page commentary contains a few inaccuracies.
• Veronica's commentary mentions an earlier version of this dialogue in which Daisy was flustered at the very idea of Tess having had a boyfriend, admitting that "a lot of old dialogue was definitely written from the eyes of a total conservative" (in romance, she clarifies, not politics).
• Per Veronica's commentary under the last page, Daisy "was genuinely considering reciprocating his advances, but nope, too thirsty for Mike", which confirms who the unnamed "him" is.
• Nobody in the chapter says Augustus's name. The lunch table only knows him as "that older kid" and "the guy in the coat". He goes unnamed on-panel until Toby calls him "Gussie" in Moving On, and his real name isn't spoken until Pillow Talk.
• Augustus only ever calls Tess "Tessa", a name nobody at the main table uses. It's the same needling habit he showed her in Follow Me.
• The crying boy clutching his arm in the flashback is never named here, but he's Rachel's brother Aaron. Rachel blames Tess and Roger for his broken arm in Follow Me, and Pillow Talk later shows the incident itself.
• Veronica's commentary on the opening page notes that Abbey has shown a short fuse in earlier chapters, "but now it's getting a little scary."

Related chapters

• Follow Me: Daisy first started slipping away from the lunch table here, and she took Augustus's hand over her friends' warnings. It's also where Augustus frightened Tess into silence over her "little secret", and where Rachel first dropped Roger's name.
• Under Pressure: The Roger history Augustus sketches here boils over immediately. In the following chapter, Noah goes after Tess over what she and Roger did in gym class last year.
• Love My Way: The hill scene gets a much darker echo at the carnival. After Mike turns Daisy down, Augustus corners her against a tree, and this time she slaps him and tells him to leave.
• Moving On: Augustus's closing sting pays off here. He turns out to have been working for Alejandro's gang all along, and Toby mocks "Gussie" for having genuine feelings for Daisy.