Hot Pursuit

Hot Pursuit
Chapter	20 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	September 6, 2006 (2006-09-06)
Page count	14
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Sandy
Minor characters	Lily, Yashy, Blur, Ellen
Locations	Mike's house, Neighborhood sidewalks and streets, Maraschino City, Maraschino mall
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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One glimpse of a parade broadcast convinces Mike that Sandy is in Maraschino for the day, and he tears off to find her with a stubborn Lucy in tow. Between bad directions, a persistent con artist and a lookalike, the search goes nowhere. The real Sandy, as it turns out, spent the afternoon somewhere Mike never thought to look: his own house.

Synopsis

On the last weekend before school, a news broadcast from a parade in Maraschino shows Mike a black-haired girl he is certain is Sandy, due to fly home that night. He brushes off Lily's warning that it might be time to move on, and when the wind rips his scarf away he abandons it rather than lose time. Lucy refuses to be blown off and invites herself along. On the bus, Mike dreams of a tearful reunion, while the real Sandy waits for hours in the city, hoping he might come.

In Maraschino, bad directions strand the pair on an empty dock, and the directions Lucy kicks out of a pushy con artist lead straight back to it. Mike screams "I HATE THIS DOCK!!", and a duck in the water takes credit.

Two visits in, the dock is winning.

Mike finds the parade but no sign of Sandy, until he spots a girl with black hair and a bow and bolts after her, leaving Lucy in his dust. The chase tears through a huge mall and ends at a fountain, where a perfect stranger turns around. The trip back lands him on the dock a third time, where Lucy has waited all day, shaking. On the night bus home, she whimpers in her sleep, "I dun.. wanna drown.. Dun let me drown.."

Back at Mike's house, his mom reveals that a dark-haired girl stopped by two hours earlier on her way to the airport. Sandy was there the entire time, and the bonsai tree she left recalls the one they sat under in third grade. Mike breaks down crying in his mom's arms.

It is Lucy who talks him down, reminding him that Sandy clearly still cares, though she trails behind on the way home looking sad. That night, a shadow outside Mike's window sets off one last false alarm, but it is only his lost scarf tangled in the tree. He tosses it onto his desk and wishes the figurines under the bonsai "Goodnight, Sandy."

Character dynamics

• Mike and Sandy: Before this chapter, the long-distance romance had thinned to the point where even Mike admitted the two were living separate lives. One wasted day in Maraschino later, he learns Sandy found her way to his front door, and the bonsai she left proves she remembers her side of the childhood promise, tree and all. Mike recommits on the spot, vowing to keep trying "even if takes another four years".
• Mike and Lucy: Lucy forces her way onto the trip without knowing what it's for. In fact, the name "Sandy" only reaches her when Mike leaves her in the dust at the parade. She spends the rest of the day waiting beside the water she plainly dreads, then comforts Mike about her own rival anyway. For all that, she walks home looking sad, and Veronica's commentary supports reading Lucy as coming away feeling "like a second prize".

Trivia & observations

• The whole chapter went up in one batch, with all fourteen pages carrying the same publication date of 23 March 2010.
• Veronica's commentary explains that Maraschino is deliberately "totally NOT New York". She gave it a made-up name to match "Rickter", the town Sandy moved to, which she calls "pre-BCB canon LORE".
• Per Veronica, the toy store Mike races through was modeled on the famous F.A.O. Schwarz store, which has since closed. Readers also spotted a tribute to Jackie Lesnick's webcomic Girly hidden on its shelves.
• Veronica notes the Sandy lookalike was originally designed to be "a bit.. ugly", but she scrapped the idea on the grounds that black hair simply isn't rare.
• Mike's mom, Ellen, makes her first appearance in the series here. Her cameo prompted Veronica to address the near-total absence of parents in the comic with a flat "WE ARE NOT IN AN ANIME."
• Lucy shaking at the dock and dreaming of drowning is deliberate long-game setup. Per Veronica's commentary, readers at this point still had no idea why water is such a big deal to her.
• Years later, the authors weighed in on Sandy's side of this era. Endorsing a fan theory, they wrote that "Sandy's attachment to Mike is of a reminder of happier times before the mantle of responsibility was thrown upon her" — her modeling career being a real source of stress at the time.

Related chapters

• Unfulfilled Fantasy: This is the chapter everything here builds on. It shows the third-grade goodbye and the promise Lily worries about, introduces Rickter as Sandy's new home, and depicts the tree memory the bonsai recalls. The conversation Lily accuses Mike of forgetting happened there too.
• Enter High School: The school Monday this whole weekend has been counting down to.
• A New Leaf: Mike's resolve to keep trying pays off here. He gets in touch with Sandy, and she becomes his girlfriend.
• Troubled Waters: The chapter that finally explains Lucy's drowning nightmare and her dread of the water.
• Feline Festivities: The Sandy-lookalike fake-out gets staged all over again at Christmas, when a black-haired caroler gets Mike's hopes up.
• Just Beautiful: Mike finally meets Sandy in person at her fashion show, years down the line. The scarf thread gets its send-off there too, with Sandy taking his old scarf and giving him a new blue one.