Love Again

Love Again
Chapter	95 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	October 26, 2016 (2016-10-26)
Page count	50
Major characters	Lucy, Augustus, Paulo, Daisy, Abbey, Mike, Madison
Minor characters	Sue, David, Amaya, Jasmine, Haley, Mina, Cassidy, Courtney, Jessica, Rachel, Matt, Sam, Jordan
Locations	Roseville High School, Lucy's house, Northern Highway, Abandoned warehouse rooftop, Neighborhood sidewalks and streets
Collected in	Volume Six
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Lucy walks back into Roseville High School at last, Abbey and Daisy fall apart in the middle of the cafeteria, and the comic finally shows what happened the night Lucy disappeared. So who is "the boy who saved my life"?

Synopsis

The chapter opens on the walk to school, where Daisy is giddy about turning sixteen on Saturday. Her party planning hits a snag almost immediately. In the hallway, Paulo leaps away mid-invitation to go flirt with Courtney at the lockers, leaving Daisy stunned. Madison corners him afterward with a flat "Fucking pathetic." and tells him to quit stringing Rachel along. Paulo insists Rachel isn't his girlfriend, but the lecture leaves him deflated all the same.

Lucy, as the school is about to find out, is back. On the way to class, Daisy confides that she's sure Paulo hates her now, and Mike offers to talk to him. He never gets the chance. Mike steps through the classroom door and freezes, face to face with Lucy in a private-school uniform.

Lucy's first day back, and Mike is the welcoming committee.

The rest of the class is overjoyed. David lifts Lucy into a tearful hug, and Paulo pounces on her next, where a comment about her chest earns him a kick into the ceiling. Mike hangs back through the whole reunion. When the bell rings, he reaches out to her in the crowd, loses his nerve, and says nothing.

Lunch goes about as badly as a lunch can go. Lucy would rather take a walk alone than sit with the group. Back at the table, a wounded Paulo yanks Mike around by his scarf and blames him for Lucy keeping her distance. When Daisy objects, he screams her down too. Abbey demands an apology, and Paulo's retort of "Gonna teach me another lesson?!" spills the secret: Abbey choked Paulo at the con.

Daisy is horrified, but her worry lands in the wrong place. She asks how badly Abbey hurt Paulo, and Abbey decides she is taking Paulo's side yet again. He ends the relationship in front of the entire cafeteria: "You can HAVE him, then!! ... We're DONE!!" He barely makes it across the room before Jasmine waves him over to sit with her friends.

Lucy's walk, meanwhile, leads her straight to Augustus, lying in the grass by the track. She bursts into tears and leaps into his arms. Then she slaps him, furious to find him still at Roseville at all — the absentee policy has held him back a year. Toby is pressuring him to drop out, but Lucy won't hear of it, vowing "This year, I'm gonna fight for you!"

After school, Lucy brings Augustus home, where her family reacts with alarm. She settles the room with a single sentence. "He's the boy who saved my life."

From there the comic flashes back to the night she disappeared. Alone in a heavy snowstorm after the school play, Lucy spirals into despair, telling herself that "Everything will be better without me." She climbs to the roof of an old furniture building and jumps.

Augustus finds her lying badly hurt in the snow. When he flips open his phone, she begs him not to call the man who controls him, and blacks out mid-plea. His fading dialogue is what gives the truth away. He is asking for an ambulance to "the old furniture place along Northern Highway."

Back in the present, the family more or less adopts him on the spot. Lucy's mother wraps a stunned Augustus in a tearful hug. She insists he stay for chicken lasagna, and her dad offers him the guest room until graduation. Augustus can barely process any of it. He protests that the offer must be a prank, then accepts. On the stairs, Lucy sets her terms: no more skipped school days, and Daisy stays off-limits. Alone at last, Augustus flops onto his plush new bed and smiles. The peace lasts until Jordan appears with "knock knock it's knuckles" and begs his sister's savior for SAT tutoring.

Critical moments

• Mike walks into the classroom and comes face to face with Lucy, back at school after her long absence.
• Pressed by Abbey to apologize to Daisy at lunch, Paulo fires back "Gonna teach me another lesson?!" and reveals that Abbey choked him at a convention.
• Daisy condemns the assault, and Abbey dumps her in front of the whole cafeteria with a shouted "We're DONE!!"
• Lucy introduces Augustus to her family as "the boy who saved my life," and the chapter drops into a flashback of the night she disappeared.
• In the flashback, Lucy jumps from the roof of an abandoned building in a snowstorm. Augustus finds her, and the phone call she takes for a betrayal turns out to be him calling an ambulance.
• Lucy's dad offers Augustus the guest room until graduation. Augustus insists the offer must be a prank, then accepts.

Character dynamics

Chicken lasagna, clean laundry, and a bed of his own: Augustus is doing alright.

• Abbey and Daisy: The two of them walked into this chapter as a couple on shaky ground. Their fight over Paulo in Golden Hour never really healed. Once the con secret is out, Daisy's sympathy goes straight to Paulo, and Abbey reads that as betrayal. He dumps her publicly, and by the end of the period he is sitting at Jasmine's table instead.
• Lucy and Augustus: Their friendship had been a secret from everyone in Lucy's life, and this chapter is where it stops being one. At the track, she learns he is stuck and being pushed to drop out, and he learns she means to fight for him. By nightfall he is living in her family's guest room, on her conditions: full attendance until graduation, and "Daisy's STILL off-limits."
• Augustus and Lucy's family: They start the afternoon as total strangers — Sam's greeting is "Who's the creep." One sentence from Lucy recasts the stranger as her savior. By the end of the night her mom has fed him chicken lasagna, her dad has handed him a room, and Jordan wants SAT tutoring out of the deal.

Trivia & observations

• Per Oliver's commentary, Lucy's return came a little under four years after her departure in real time.
• Lucy punting Paulo into the ceiling repeats her signature move from his very first day of high school.
• Lucy's dad makes his first in-person appearance here. Up to now he had only been seen on TV, winning a race qualifier in Dinner Time.
• Veronica deliberately kept Augustus in the background before this chapter so that revealing him as Lucy's savior would come as a big surprise.

Related chapters

• Ten Seconds to Midnight: On New Year's Eve, Augustus pulled Lucy back from a rooftop ledge. This chapter's flashback is the night that scene was building toward, and this time he saves her life for real.
• Breaking Up: The aftermath of the flashback from everyone else's side. Lucy's room turns up empty, the story moves to the hospital, and Mike is told she isn't coming back.
• December: Mike's "I hate you" confrontation is the wound behind Lucy's flashback self-talk, which echoes his words almost exactly.
• Guest of Honor: The chapter where Abbey cornered Paulo in a convention restroom. That assault is the secret Paulo makes public at lunch here.
• Golden Hour: The source of the phone call Daisy regrets, and of Madison's grudge against Paulo.
• Trapped: Augustus's backstory in full. It covers Alejandro, Toby's blackmail, and the "circumstances" Lucy passes on to her parents.