Aftermath

Lucy told Mike not to have any weird thoughts about the kiss. Mike proceeds to have nothing but weird thoughts — in his dreams, in class, and finally out loud, in exactly the wrong company. Can Lucy snap him out of it before he gives himself away?

Aftermath
Chapter	15 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	August 1, 2006 (2006-08-01)
Page count	4
Major characters	Mike, Lucy
Minor characters	David, Paulo, Daisy, Yashy, Blur, Sex-Ed Teacher, Sir Poodles of Noodles
Locations	Mike's house, Roseville Elementary School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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Synopsis

Mike lies awake the night after Confrontation's fight, still sore and replaying Lucy's thank-you kiss along with her insistence that "I can tell you wanted it. So.. I'm repaying you, that's all." He admits to himself that he liked it, and wonders if that makes him selfish. Trying to daydream about anything else goes just as badly. An innocent round of imaginary paddle ball ends with Lucy offering to kiss it better, and mistletoe sprouts in his daydream tree. Even his "MAN ONLY club" game of truth-or-dare turns on him, with imaginary David daring him to kiss her. By the time he finally drifts off it is morning, and Blur is cheerfully serving tea.

The sleepless night follows Mike to school, where Daisy notices right away that something is off. He waves her away, only to overhear Paulo and David gossiping that Katie is absent with mono. Mike loudly insists it wasn't him before anyone has even thought to accuse him. Lucy arrives late because Yashy had nightmares, much to Yashy's fury at having that shared. All Mike can manage at the sight of her is a blushing, lip-pouting "Hi", and Yashy asks if he's having an affair with the air. He flees to class and falls asleep at his desk, where he shouts "NO! I DON'T WANT TO THINK OF YOUR PRETTY LIPS!!" in his sleep. He wakes to find the sex-ed teacher glaring down at him.

Of all the classes to sleep-talk about pretty lips in, it had to be sex-ed.

Lucy spends math class quietly saving Mike's skin. When the poodle teacher calls on him mid-doze, a whispered "76" from Lucy's seat gets him through unscathed. In the hallway afterwards, Daisy marvels at his sudden talent for equations, and Yashy rats him out as a fraud, since whispering answers to a math-challenged Mike is apparently an old habit of Lucy's. Daisy asks for a demonstration. As Lucy whispers away, sparkles and all, Mike murmurs "So.. pretty.." right out loud, then scrambles to claim he was talking about Daisy's hair. Daisy is thrilled that he noticed, and Yashy calls her a whore for it.

Later, Mike resolves to clear his head once and for all, and promptly punches David for offering him a handful of Hershey's Kisses. David happily eats the spilled chocolate off the floor, but Paulo has seen enough and demands that Mike spill whatever is going on. Lucy bails him out. Mike simply hates chocolate, she declares, "just like every other thing, since he's such a picky idiot." The insult baits Mike into a squabble so petty (the recess bell is too loud, apparently) that Paulo and David give up and leave.

The whole argument, it turns out, was Lucy's cure for his funk, and it works a little too well. Once the boys wander off, she grins, asks "Over it yet?", and strolls away. Mike is left realizing he really does feel better now that she's pissed him off. Relieved, he says out loud, "Now I definitely don't want to make out with her!" Lucy, unfortunately, is still within earshot. She storms back and chops him on the head, and the chapter closes on Mike shrieking that she wasn't supposed to hear that.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: The two come into the chapter as lifelong friends whose bickering equilibrium was just broken by the kiss at the end of Confrontation. Lucy publicly wrote that kiss off as debt repayment, then privately smiled about it once Mike's back was turned. Here, Mike spends all four pages failing to obey her "no weird thoughts" order while Lucy does the fixing, first feeding him a math answer and then picking a fight on purpose so he's too annoyed to moon over her. Veronica's commentary sums up the tactic: "Bully and harass your love interest so they stop being interested in you, very smart move Lucy!!!!!" The reset holds for about a minute. Then Mike's parting blurt tells Lucy exactly what he's been suppressing, and the "meant nothing" cover story dies right there.

Trivia & observations

• All four pages went up on the same day, March 23, 2010. Veronica's commentary explains that a continuation of Confrontation was needed "to build on the cliffhanger between Mike and Lucy."
• Oliver's commentary singles out the imagined Lucy's "Think I'd follow your dumb rules, jerk?!" as a particularly cute Lucy moment, adding "He dreams her up like the real thing!"
• This is the first time Lucy's answer-whispering routine appears on panel, though Yashy describes it as a long-established habit. Veronica calls it "More demonstration of Mike's supernatural hearing abilities.. if only he could stick to listening to whispers instead of random radios beside trash cans", a jab at the radio he smashed while drunk in Confrontation.
• Per Veronica's commentary, Lucy's nose went undrawn in the original art. Since it's red rather than black like most characters', she habitually left it out entirely, and only restored it "in the remake."
• The sex-ed teacher looming over Mike is nothing new. "Oh, that sex-ed teacher. When is she not ready to kill Mike," Veronica notes in commentary, and she's been pouncing on his accidental innuendo since Pep Rally.

Related chapters

• Confrontation: Everything here follows from that chapter's final pages. Lucy thanks Mike for the rescue with a kiss, frames it as repayment, and orders him not to have any weird thoughts about it.
• Puppy Love: The Katie gossip traces back to this chapter, where she declared her crush with a love letter and jumped onto Mike's back. That history is why the "who gave Katie mono" question lands squarely on Mike.
• Field Day: The chapter right after this one shows Lucy's reset holding. She and Mike are back to competitive bickering, and Yashy has moved on to openly teasing marriage.
• Unfulfilled Fantasy: Two chapters on, the feelings Mike has just admitted to himself run straight into a heart-covered letter from Sandy.
• Double Down: The whisper trick gets a long-range mirror ninety-nine chapters later, when Daisy whispers answers to a frozen Mike in class, staged just like Lucy's rescue here.