Left Behind

Why is Lucy the way she is? Tess wants to know, and Mike is willing to tell her everything — for the price of a warm house and some cocoa. A childhood's worth of history later, Mike walks home with a brand new scarf.

Left Behind
Chapter	26 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	October 20, 2006 (2006-10-20)
Page count	6
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Tess, Paulo
Minor characters	Yashy, Sandy, Flower Girl
Locations	Tess's house
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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Synopsis

On a cold autumn walk, Mike shivers, Lucy tells him to wear a sweater, and Paulo picks a bad moment to offer to warm her up. One smack later he's flat on the ground, and Tess wonders aloud whether something happened to make Lucy this way. Paulo has no idea, since she's been like this as long as he's known her. Mike, though, is willing to tell Tess everything on one condition: "TAKE ME HOME!! IT'S SO COLD!" Soon he's parked in a bean bag chair at Tess's house, wrapped in a borrowed striped scarf and sipping homemade cocoa. He's so comfortable that Tess has to yell to get the story started.

Mike's story starts back in preschool, where Lucy only ever wanted to play with his toys. He told her that was weird for a girl, and she turned fiercely competitive and clingy in response. Kindergarten split them into different classes, and a ribbon-wearing girl soon invited Lucy to play Pretty Princess Adventure. Lucy drove a toy car over the dolls and offered the survivors a ten-buck ride to the castle, which got her banished from the group. The boys playing cars wouldn't have her either ("Cooties!! Eww!!"), so she spent playtime alone, which Mike says only reminded her of how alone she felt.

Lucy's taxi service charges ten bucks a ride to the castle.

First grade put the two of them back together, much to Mike's dismay. He wanted his self-appointed rival gone, and told her so, but he always gave in. Over the years they grew genuinely close. At lunch one day Lucy admitted she had no other friends, boys being mean and girls being stupid, but said she wasn't lonely anymore. "We're friends, right?" It was the first time Mike really saw her smile.

Then third grade brought Sandy, and Mike fell head over heels. Lucy spent that whole year isolated, refusing Sandy's repeated invitations to play and getting no encouragement from Mike, until she tearfully resolved not to need anyone at all. Around then she found an egg near a bush, and Yashy became the first of the pets she poured all her trust into. When Sandy left, Lucy took Mike back without hesitation.

The story ends on Lucy's first day of middle school, where older strangers cornered her in the hallway with catcalls. Badly shaken, she refused Mike's help and cracked her knuckles instead, promising to be ready for the creeps next time. That, Mike says, was the beginning of the Lucy that Tess knows.

Back in the present, Tess's verdict is that young Mike was a real jerk. Mike points out that he was nine, and would like some slack. The bad times are long over anyway, he says, and Lucy has other friends now, even if she'd never admit it. Tess tells him to keep the scarf. Mike heads home admiring the autumn leaves, thinking over everything the year has brought him.

He doesn't get far before he finds Paulo, still lying where Lucy left him and grumbling that nobody helped him up. Paulo tells Mike he looks like Harry Potter, then puts two and two together about Tess giving him a scarf. Out comes the walkie-talkie: "Calling all girls. We got a cheater on the premises. Over." A mob of furious girls chases Mike off screaming, while Paulo cackles that this never gets old.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Tess: Tess is still fairly new to the group and can't get Lucy to say a word about herself, so Mike becomes her way in. He trades the whole history for shelter from the cold, and she repays him with cocoa, a bean bag chair, and eventually the scarf itself, upgraded from a loan to an outright gift. By the end of the visit the two are proper confidants.
• Tess and Lucy: Tess starts the day with no way to find out what made Lucy so guarded, and ends it knowing more of her history than anyone else in the newer crowd. The shift is entirely one-sided, though, since Lucy herself has no idea anything changed.
• Mike and Lucy: Nothing changes between them in the present. What the chapter does instead is lay out their whole shared history for the first time, from preschool rivalry to first friendship to the Sandy-era rift and back. Mike's own summary is a generous one: "She has other friends now, even if she wouldn't ever admit to it."

Trivia & observations

• Veronica's commentary under the first page says Tess threatening to kick Paulo's ass was inspired by a Pchat with Lily, which she used to develop Tess's personality.
• The scarf has a long life ahead of it. Mike wears it to Tess's Christmas party in Feline Festivities, keeps it until Sandy swaps it out for a blue one in Just Beautiful, and years later Tess teases him for no longer wearing the present she picked out. The commentary under the final page frames the gift hopefully, wondering whether "the orange and yellow scarf can make him.. happy? Maybe?"
• This is the only time Yashy's origin is shown on-panel. Veronica has said the pets were inspired by wanting Lucy to hold cute little animals, like Misty's Togepi in Pokémon and the baby Yoshis in Super Mario World.
• Flower Girl has a background cameo in the kindergarten flashback, chronologically her earliest in-story appearance, though her publication debut came in Pep Rally.
• Per Veronica's commentary under the second page, the original version of the chapter spelled "Kindergarten" as "Kindergarden", a mistake editors later corrected.
• All six pages went up on the same day, March 22, 2010, rather than page by page.

Related chapters

• Flirting with Disaster: The very next chapter is this one's companion piece, with another childhood flashback filling in Lucy and Paulo's history, including his arrival as a new student in fifth grade. That puts Paulo around for about a year before the middle-school turn Mike describes here.
• Feline Festivities: Mike returns to Tess's house for her Christmas party wearing the scarf she gave him in this chapter, and admits he was too cold to pay attention on his first visit. It's also Lucy and Yashy's first look at the mansion.
• Unfulfilled Fantasy: The third-grade Sandy era gets a full chapter of its own here, told from Mike's side, right down to the goodbye that this chapter covers in half a sentence.
• A Difficult Choice: The girl-mob cheater gag got its start in this chapter, with Paulo whipping up a crowd against Mike. By this chapter's final page it's an acknowledged running bit.