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 she was only repaying him. He admits to himself that he liked it, and every daydream he tries to escape into is invaded by Lucy anyway.

The sleepless night follows him to school, where he falls asleep at his desk and shouts "NO! I DON'T WANT TO THINK OF YOUR PRETTY LIPS!!" in his sleep, waking 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 quietly saves his skin in math class, whispering him the answer when the poodle teacher calls on him mid-doze. In the hallway afterwards, Yashy rats him out as a fraud, since whispering answers to a math-challenged Mike is an old habit of Lucy's. As Lucy demonstrates for Daisy, Mike murmurs "So.. pretty.." right out loud, then scrambles to claim he was talking about Daisy's hair.

Later, Mike resolves to clear his head once and for all, and promptly punches David for offering him a handful of Hershey's Kisses. Paulo has seen enough and demands that Mike spill whatever is going on, so Lucy bails him out by declaring him a picky idiot and baiting him into a squabble so petty that Paulo and David give up and leave.

The argument turns out to be Lucy's cure for his funk. Once the boys wander off she grins, asks if he's over it yet, and strolls away, leaving Mike relieved to realize he really does feel better. He says out loud, "Now I definitely don't want to make out with her!" Lucy, unfortunately, is still within earshot, and she storms back to chop him on the head as Mike shrieks 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.