Lucy's house

Lucy's house
First appearance	Simple Pleasures, page 1 November 2, 2009
Related characters	Lucy, Mike, Augustus, Lucy's mom, Lucy's dad, Jordan, Sam, Yashy, Chirpy, Lily

Lucy's house is a two-story house in Roseville where Lucy lives with her mother Carol, her father, her brothers Jordan and, when he's home, Sam, and her pets Yashy, Chirpy and Lily. It is the first location ever shown in the comic, which opens on Lucy asleep in her bedroom. Since Love Again, Augustus has also lived here, in the family's guest room.

History

In the early chapters the house is a busy, friendly place. The pets hold the front door as their personal post, with Lily declaring "I shall protect this castle with my life!" as Lucy heads out, and Mike is by far the most regular guest, dropping in for snow days, homework on the couch, and video games. The front door also gets slammed a lot. When Mike brushes Lucy's cheek on the doorstep after their date in Off to the Movies, she bolts inside and shuts it in his face.

The house's biggest moment actually happens years before the comic starts. In a flashback in Pillow Talk, a seventh-grade Mike is snowed in at Lucy's. He calls his mom from the living room, and Lucy pulls him upstairs to her bedroom. Under a green blanket he tells her "I really really like you" and kisses her. Lucy panics and orders him out, then watches from her window as he walks away down the path in the snow. A memory in Dial Tone shows Mike climbing in through that same window at night as a freshman. He did it often enough that Lucy complained he was getting too heavy for the windowsill.

Paulo gets his turn outside the house in Pick Me Up, where he talks Lucy through a fight with Mike a few feet from her door and earns a grateful hug for it. Mike and Lucy make up over video games inside, and Paulo watches her lit bedroom window from a tree outside.

After the events of December, the house goes quiet. Lucy shuts herself in her dark bedroom and refuses to come out. Paulo's birthday-cake delivery in Piece of Cake gets as far as that dark bedroom before the door slams in his face, and Jordan shows him out. Mike doesn't even make it to the door. He walks up to the corner of the house through the snowfall, then turns around without knocking. On New Year's Eve in Ten Seconds to Midnight, Carol, Jordan and the visiting Sam confer in the living room about "a big step" for Lucy, who overhears them from behind the couch.

Paulo finds out what that step was in Breaking Up. He pounds on the locked front door, gets no answer, and climbs the brick wall up to Lucy's bedroom window. The room on the other side has been emptied down to a vacuum cleaner and a cardboard box. Lucy has been sent away, Jordan is braced against the door inside, and Paulo breaks down in the yard.

Lucy comes home in Love Again, and she brings Augustus with her. She introduces him to her startled family in the living room as "the boy who saved my life," her mother hugs him in tears, and Lucy's dad offers him the guest room, with an open invitation to stay through graduation.

Augustus takes the room and settles in. Left alone on the couch while the family bustles, he can only manage "It's so.. quiet.." From then on he's part of the household routine, waking Lucy for school in Double Down and chaperoning her on Halloween in Witch Hunt, an arrangement hashed out in the living room after Sue turns up trick-or-treating at the door.

Paulo courts Lucy mostly from the doorstep. He ambushes her there with a fresh haircut and a carnival-date proposal in Unspoken Rule, and she shrugs a "Hey, why not?" while Mike hurries past in the background. In After You, Carol vets him over a bowl of cake batter.

The house also holds one of Lucy's worst nights. After Mike's outburst in Burnt Bridges, she sobs face-down on her bed, telling Augustus "I wanna die so bad.." while he holds her and talks her down. On the chapter's final page, the house is a dark silhouette against the night sky.

Later appearances are gentler. The living room hosts a crowded family party in New Year's Resolution, and Lucy escapes the noise to talk with Augustus on the front steps. Carol swoons over her husband's fan mail while Jordan comes home with a thin envelope of college news, and when Lucy walks in late one evening, Carol asks her "No Michael?" Lucy says no, and Carol answers "Good."

Design

The house is a two-story building with pale brick walls, a small front stoop, and a lawn running down to a street where cars can pull up at the curb. A path leads up to the front door. Lucy's bedroom window sits on the second floor with a ledge beneath it, and the brick wall below is climbable for a sufficiently desperate visitor. A tree stands within sight of that window.

Rooms

The living room has yellow walls, a red-orange carpet, and a blue couch. A round wooden side table beside the couch holds a lamp and framed photos, among them the parents' wedding portrait and a baby picture of a frowning Lucy in a pink bow. A staircase with a wooden banister rises straight out of the room, with an oval mirror on its wall. There is a TV, and in the flashback era there was an orange landline phone on a side table. A kitchen with a breakfast table and a ground-floor bathroom adjoin.

Lucy's bedroom is upstairs. It has pink walls, a blue bedspread, and a tall wooden bookshelf loaded with books. The decor changes with the years, from a poster of Jigglypuff in a beret in seventh grade to a grayscale rock-band poster and a small picture of Mike by high school.

Augustus's room is the family's guest room, reached down a flight of stairs from the ground floor. It comes furnished with a large blue bed, a dresser with a vanity, a trunk, a ceiling fan, and a bedside table with a green lamp. The authors' commentary sums up the arrangement as "Augustus living like a king."

See also

• Mike's house
• Paulo's house