Field Day

Field Day
Chapter	16 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	August 4, 2006 (2006-08-04)
Page count	12
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Katie, David, Paulo
Minor characters	Yashy, Daisy, Sue, Blur, Amaya, Chirpy, Turtle
Locations	Roseville Middle School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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It's field day, and Mike and Lucy intend to settle once and for all which of them is the better athlete. Meanwhile, Katie would give anything to learn the secret behind David's impossibly shiny fur.

Synopsis

Mike talks himself into a war with Lucy before the first event even starts. He begins sweetly enough, reassuring her that their races have always been close. Then he keeps right on talking, pointing out that he always wins those races, and that their famous fourth-grade sprint only went her way because he walked the whole thing. The two are soon nose to nose trading declarations of hatred. When Yashy pipes up with a crude question about where that leaves their romance, they blast her flat with a joint laser-eyed "AYU BEEM!!"

Katie comes in with her own agenda for a day of partnered activities. She means to pair up with the hottest boy and charm a prom invitation out of him. She announces this out loud without noticing, but it hardly matters, because moments later she spots David and his impossibly shiny fur. Asked what kind of product he uses, David beams "Ovaries" and wanders off, leaving Katie to comb through a copy of Teen Life for answers.

Some exotic new brand, presumably.

The partner races both end in dead ties, mostly at Katie's expense. Mike claims Paulo for the two-legs-tied-up race, so Lucy drags the distracted Katie in as her own partner. Katie face-plants over and over, still puzzling out avocado theories, until Lucy gives up and simply sprints for the line with her partner screaming behind her. She hits the ribbon at the same moment as the boys, and her flushed, wheezing gloating leaves Mike blushing and Paulo loudly declaring "I AM SO TURNED ON". The rematch goes no better. Lucy poaches Paulo for the carry-each-other-by-the-legs race, so Mike recruits the freshly bandaged Katie. A mid-race taunt from Lucy makes him snap, and he plows his fallen partner face-first through the dirt to tear the ribbon right alongside her. It's another tie, though Mike insists it counts as a moral win given his partner's "handicap".

With partners abandoned, Mike and Lucy go head-to-head at the game stations, and they tie on absolutely everything: archery, ring toss, ball through hoop, even a pair of identically missed basketball shots that earn them a thumbs-up and an "Equality!" from David. Katie tantrums her way through the same stations and fires an arrow that nearly hits Lucy. Mike shoves her out of its path and holds her face for a long moment. When Katie then makes straight for David at the archery range, the pair share a horrified daydream of him accidentally putting an arrow through her head, and they physically hold her back.

The deciding footrace ends with Mike on the ground and the rivalry forgotten. He pulls far ahead almost immediately, but the sight of Lucy straining after him softens him up, and he genuinely considers letting her have this one. Then he trips over a grinning turtle and hurts his leg for real. Paulo and Daisy jog past assuming he's throwing the race on purpose, and it's Lucy who runs back. She wipes a tear off his face with a "Watch where you're going next time, idiot" and shouts for the medics.

David wins the race, with Paulo grumbling into second place that long legs are cheating. David then helps the collapsed Katie to her feet, and up close she finally gets her answer: a good roll in the dirt, three times a day, "opens up the pores". Katie trots off after her new "beauty guru", hearts in her eye. Mike, now sporting a cast and cane, watches with Lucy, who writes the whole day off as giving him a pity win. Yashy teases the pair about marriage and gets golf-smacked into the sky for it. Mike decides he's going to love this cane.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: Best friends and standing rivals, and this chapter runs on both at once. Mike's boast about the fourth-grade race turns a pep talk into a day-long war, and the two prove so evenly matched that every single event ends in a tie. It takes a real injury to break the deadlock. The moment Mike is actually hurt, Lucy drops the rivalry on the spot and tends to him. Veronica has said the chapter shows how similar the two are, and that Mike "gets a lot out of proving himself to her".
• Katie and David: Strangers at the start, with Katie admiring David's fur strictly from afar. After a full day of failed approaches, it's David who closes the distance. He helps her off the ground and hands over his dirt-rolling beauty secret for free. Katie leaves the field utterly devoted to her new "beauty guru", and even Mike and Lucy remark on how well the two are getting along.

Trivia & observations

• The arrow through Katie's head near the end is only a daydream, playing out inside Mike's thought bubble. Plenty of first-time readers were fooled, and Veronica's commentary spells it out: the scene "looks like it ACTUALLY HAPPENED, but it didn't."
• Mike's fall, on the other hand, is completely real. Veronica stresses that he isn't pretending to hand Lucy the win, and notes the irony that he was considering exactly that when he tripped. Her commentary on the final page marks this as the start of the Injured Mike arc, with the damage "probably just a sprained ankle or something".
• "AYU BEEM" is a Di Gi Charat reference. Veronica notes she "used to make a lot of references to Di Gi Charat" in this era.
• The flag the teacher raises to declare the first race a tie bears a picture of a necktie.
• The grinning turtle has done this sort of thing before. Its first appearance was in Simple Pleasures, where Paulo's skateboard hit it.
• Oliver's commentary singles out Blur's "It's been over!!" as a favorite silly line he "had to preserve" from the chapter's original version.

Related chapters

• Unfulfilled Fantasy: Mike is still hobbling around on the new cane when the next chapter opens, and Lucy ends up chasing him with it once he ditches it. The quieter mood after the rivalry also gives that chapter room to open up the Sandy backstory.
• Pep Rally: The earlier school-athletics chapter this one builds on, which Veronica describes as Field Day's "older sister". Katie's cheerleading credentials were established there, and David's "ZERO SERVING ZERO!" is him parroting the teacher's volleyball call from that chapter.
• Farewell, Middle School: The cane makes its last appearance here, when Lucy kicks it out from under Mike. The prom Katie was scheming toward also turns up in that chapter's flashbacks, and Katie makes it there, though not on David's arm.
• Confrontation: Two chapters before Field Day, this one ends with Lucy kissing Mike. The all-day rivalry here runs on the tension that kiss left behind.