Wardrobe Malfunction

Wardrobe Malfunction
Chapter	24 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	September 25, 2006 (2006-09-25)
Page count	4
Major characters	Mike, Paulo, Lucy, Daisy
Minor characters	Tess, Sue, David, Gym Teacher (High School), Katie
Locations	Roseville High School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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It takes Paulo a whole week to notice Mike has stopped wearing his scarf, mostly because he's used to wiping his nose on it. The story of where it went involves an angry mob, raw eggs, and some very guilty friends.

Synopsis

Gym class finds Paulo in a sorry state, sneezing through warm-ups while Daisy tries very hard not to look at the results. When Mike offers to take him to the nurse, Paulo insists he's fine. Then he absentmindedly reaches over to wipe his nose on Mike's scarf and grabs nothing but air. Mike hasn't worn the thing all week, and Paulo is only noticing now. Mike starts to explain what happened to it, then works out the real story mid-sentence: "So you've been using it to WIPE YOUR SNOT?!"

A flashback shows where the scarf went. An angry crowd mobbed a bruised Mike over having "messed around with two girls by mistake", with Paulo grinning behind a baseball bat and Katie raising her fists. The crowd finished the job by pelting him with raw eggs to a chant of "cheater cheater cheater". Not wanting to make his mom wash the mess, Mike dumped the egg-soaked scarf in his locker and simply never took it home.

Back in the present, Mike flatly refuses to go fetch it for Paulo's nose, but Tess is happy to help, leaning in with a tissue and a "Blow for me honey ♥". The flirting gives Paulo a spurting nosebleed on top of the snot. Now caked in blood as well, he shambles zombie-style after a horrified Daisy, begging for help. The gym teacher cheerfully converts the chase into the day's mile-lap speed test and threatens to fail them all. Daisy begs Lucy to stop Paulo, and Lucy obliges with a single punch to the face. Paulo goes down cold, and Lucy's fist comes away coated in the mess for her trouble.

Paulo, as it happens, was not the only culprit. When Lucy asks after the scarf too, Mike demands to know who else has been using it, and the confessions roll in. David volunteers eagerly, Sue admits she used it whenever the cafeteria served something sticky, and Daisy hums guiltily before spilling it: "It's just so soft! Feels nice to rub your nose on it.. Especially when I have a cold.." While Mike seethes, Lucy calmly wipes her dirty hand clean on his back, since she had to improvise somehow.

David's approach to chemical burns leaves a little to be desired.

Three flashback "cases" then lay out the rest of the evidence. Lucy once wiped a swatted fly on the scarf while Mike beamed about the nice weather. Sue used it to mop up her spilled milk at lunch, swearing everyone to secrecy. And David, after burning his hand on a spilled beaker in science class, wiped the smoking thing clean on Mike's scarf and knocked Mike out with the fumes.

Back in the gym, Mike learns that the lab incident actually landed him in the hospital, while Lucy is mostly annoyed she had to finish the lab alone. He finally snaps with an "I HATE YOU ALL!!" and storms off to run his laps, Lucy wiping the last of the mess onto his tail as he goes. Tess remarks that she wouldn't be surprised if Mike kills them all one day. Lucy is too busy admiring her freshly cleaned hand: "Good as new!"

Trivia & observations

• All four pages of the chapter were published on the same day, March 22, 2010.
• Paulo's spurting nosebleed at Tess's flirting is a deliberate anime nod. Veronica's commentary crows, "LOOK AT THAT NOSEBLEED JUST LIKE IN ONE OF MY JAPANESE ANIMES".
• The chapter as presented is a redraw of the original pages. Veronica's commentary on the punch page recalls that in the original run, the blood and snot kept jumping between Lucy's left and right hand, forcing several rounds of editing and rescanning.
• Mike's "I HATE YOU ALL!!" is word-for-word what Lucy said to the group back in Enter High School.
• This is only the second appearance of the gym teacher, who debuted running the dodgeball class in A Difficult Choice.
• The original artwork of the chapter's first page was later sold through the BCB store as part of the "Best Buds" original-pages pack, paired with the first page of Buddy System.

Related chapters

• A Difficult Choice: The flashback restages the cheater mob from this chapter, where Paulo turned the whole school against Mike over the Sandy reveal, baseball bat and all.
• Left Behind: Mike's scarfless streak ends here, when Tess gives him a new orange-and-yellow scarf. Paulo marks the occasion by summoning the cheater mob all over again.
• Unrequited: The abandoned scarf turns up again much later, still sitting dirty in Mike's locker. It's even drawn in its original blue, standing apart from the chapter's coloring.
• Feline Filibuster: Lucy revives this chapter's central gag by loudly blowing her nose on Mike's scarf at the lunch table.