Helping Hands

Helping Hands
Chapter	8 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	July 15, 2011 (2011-07-15)
Page count	9
Major characters	Paulo, Daisy, Lucy
Minor characters	Mike, Katie, Stacy, Chirpy, Blur, Yashy
Locations	Neighborhood sidewalks and streets, Lucy's house, Roseville Middle School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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An injured bird and an oncoming car turn Paulo and Daisy's walk into a rescue mission — and into the first chapter the two of them get all to themselves. Lucy plays nurse, the rain plays havoc with Daisy's curls, and the bird's thank-you gift turns out to have a rather awkward intended purpose.

Synopsis

Daisy spots an injured bird lying in the middle of the road and bursts into tears. When a car comes barreling toward it, Paulo dives in and scoops the bird up just ahead of the bumper, then gives the honking driver a long, spectacularly rude piece of his mind, middle finger included. He turns around grinning, expecting approval, and finds Daisy glaring at him instead.

Daisy scolds him, then softens once she checks that the bird is still breathing. With no hospital nearby, the two settle on taking it to Lucy. On the walk over, Daisy teases that being open about liking kids would make Paulo popular with girls, and his "I already am." slips out before he can catch it.

The hero of the hour has some feedback for the driver.

The rain starts partway there, and Daisy's fur frizzes up from head to toe, to her utter horror. They run the rest of the way to Lucy's house, where one smirk at Daisy's state sends her running for the bathroom to fix herself up. Mike, of all people, is standing right there at the sink, and Daisy freezes, then shrieks.

Inside, Daisy restores her curls on Lucy's couch, still crying that Mikie saw her like that. Paulo, serious for once, tells her: "If he was worth your time.. he'd like you no matter how you looked." It clearly means a lot to her. Lucy agrees to look after the bird.

At school after the weekend, Lucy tells the pair that the bird left them last night, letting their faces fall before irritably clarifying that he was all better by Sunday and simply left her house. Once her yearbook photos showed him who had actually saved him, though, he built his rescuers a thank-you nest. Paulo and Daisy share a quiet, pleased look over it, right up until Lucy adds that he called it "the perfect place to keep your offspring after you mate." The final panel is both of them screaming in horror.

Character dynamics

• Paulo and Daisy: Going in, these two are friendly classmates and nothing more. Each is busy pining elsewhere: Paulo still drifts off dreamily at the sound of Lucy's name, and Daisy's biggest catastrophe of the day is Mike seeing her frizzy. In fact, their only real one-on-one history before now is the baby-doll assignment Daisy teases him about on the walk. The rescue warms things up considerably. Paulo drops the bravado long enough to tell her that anyone worth her time would like her however she looked, and the bird's parting gift treats the two of them as a matched set. Nothing romantic comes of it, but the pair walk away noticeably fonder of each other.

Trivia & observations

• Veronica's commentary under the first page explains the chapter's origins: "This was an original chapter dreamed up for Volume One when it was first printed."
• That history shows in the schedule. The first four pages went up in March 2010, and the remaining five arrived all at once on July 15, 2011, after a 479-day wait — the same week Volume One physically arrived from the printer.
• Per Veronica on Tumblr, "Helping Hands" was one of three chapters made into promotional minicomics around Volume One's production, alongside a redrawn "The Burden of Parenthood" and the Aquarium chapter.
• Veronica switched to an inkbrush partway through the eighth page, and her commentary calls the resulting lineart "SO GOOD" compared to retracing with pens.
• Paulo's blushing and looking away in the rain has an official explanation: per Veronica's commentary, he finds frizzled Daisy "kinda cute".

Related chapters

• The Burden of Parenthood: The source of the extra credit Daisy brings up on the walk. Paulo earned it caring for a mechanical baby named Alegria in sex-ed, and got rather more attached to the doll than he'd like anyone to remember.
• Flying Lessons: Where Chirpy, the other bird in Lucy's household, came from. Yashy rescues an abandoned egg and raises the chick that hatches, which helps explain why "take it to Lucy" is the obvious move here.
• Blurry Memories: The answer to Lucy's "what's up with birds and rain" grumbling. In this chapter's flashback, Mike once carried another soaked, unconscious bird to her door in a storm, and that one stayed on as Blur.
• Rain Check: The long-range payoff of Paulo's couch speech. Years later, he comforts a rain-frizzed Daisy who is spiraling over her looks, tells her she's cute, and the two finally get together. There's a smaller echo along the way in Date Night, where Paulo blurts out that Daisy's frizzy hair looks nice.
• Carry Me: Paulo pulls off the same rescue again in this chapter, yanking Lucy out of the path of an oncoming car and flipping off the driver for good measure.