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
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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 trip opens mid-tour, with an aquarium guide droning through shark fin evolution while Lucy stares up at the big tank looking uneasy, Yashy squirming in her arms to reach the fish. Paulo livens things up by tapping on the glass. Lucy yells at him to quit before he gets them all killed, but as far as he's concerned he's just "trying to get a shark's attention", and Yashy immediately volunteers to help. Lucy hauls him away from the tank, and he answers with an uninvited hug. She kicks him head-first into the glass, and he slides down it in a heap. As she stomps off, Mike and Daisy wave her over for the seal feeding, and Lucy visibly tenses up.

Her mood gets no better at the seal show. Daisy proudly presents an already-finished worksheet, but when Mike turns to ask Lucy about combining answers, she doesn't respond at all. She has gone stiff and silent, and her breathing gets heavier as the show starts. Mike realizes he's forgotten all about her fear and quietly takes her hand. He reminds her of an old vow: "I gave you my promise.. .. A promise I fully intend to keep!" Lucy blushes, then smacks him upside the head for breaking his other promise, the one about never touching her. Daisy, who has been glaring at the pair from behind her clipboard, pounces on the opening to offer herself as an alternative.

One hand-hold, three very different reactions.

Paulo cuts the tender moment short, having begged his way into being the show's volunteer. He dangles a fish in front of the seal, yanks it away with a triumphant "SIKE", and laughs right in the animal's face. The seal's tail knocks him straight into the pool, and the class watches in horror as it goes after him. A terrified Lucy winds up clinging to Mike's arm, and when he teases her about her own no-touching rule, she's too mortified to do anything but yell at him to shut up.

On the bus ride back, David sobs into a soaked, fed-up Paulo's shoulder over his best friend's brush with a watery grave. Lucy declares the trip the worst experience of her life and vows to call in sick next time. Daisy pops up over the seat to lecture her about field trips broadening the mind, and gets a piece of paper stuffed in her mouth mid-sentence. Lucy then asks whether staying home would really cost her much, beyond the chance to ".. Repeatedly fail at flirting with some jerk who barely even likes you?" Mike is sitting right there, and he very pointedly looks away.

There's one last twist waiting back at school. Mike quietly tells Daisy not to take Lucy seriously, while Paulo celebrates arriving in time for early dismissal — right up until the teacher announces that nobody leaves without a completed worksheet. Paulo shoves Mike to the ground and puppy-dog-eyes Daisy into helping him, which she allows on the condition that he actually thinks about the answers this time. That leaves Lucy, looking a little embarrassed, to offer the flattened Mike a hand up. He takes it and muses that everyone deserves a little help sometimes. She responds by planting her foot in his face, laughing: "Maybe not if you're gonna say corny stuff like that!!"

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.