Right now, the one thing that Joyce needs is for Becky to hug her... for her to get hugs from all her friends. She needs to be reassured that there really are safe places and people that love her and won't casually betray her trust in the name of their own self-interest and desire to control their families.
It's a crying shame that Joyce's memories of her happy childhood and safe home have been so contaminated by the truth of the people who were hiding behind those smiling masks. I suppose (given Willis's own past and the fact that she is somewhat-autobiographical of him) something like this was inevitable. It's still a shame, though; a part of me thinks that a happy childhood should be sacrosanct.
So! Joyce has got her first red panel. I just hope that this isn't the start of her journey down the path that Amber is walking. I also notice that Sal and Amazi-Girl are not anywhere around. I suspect that Sal evacuated Amazi-Girl and they have their own confrontation awaiting them before the end of this chapter.
I notice from the last panel that the police are finally arriving.
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I’ve got this feeling that any anonymity/urban myth status that Amazi-Girl has ever had is going to vanish in the aftermath of this.
I expect that Joyce (wanting to avoid attention aimed at herself) is going to credit everything achieved to Amazi-Girl’s efforts. The result is going to be a copy of the local news-sheet… maybe even the local TV news… running a blurry ‘phone-cam picture of Amazi-Girl riding on the top of Ross’s car and the caption: “Who is this mysterious woman in a mask?” If there are any decent journalists, stories of petty thugs and crooks in the Bloomington area turning up tied to lamp-posts and babbling about a girl in a tan-and-blue costume beating them up will doubtless emerge quickly enough after that. Will they call her a heroine or a threat?
It might be time for the nasty, opinionated talking heads from the Walkyverse to make a return and spew their reactionary, paranoid fantasies about poor Amber across the television screens of Indiana. This may lead to Sal, of all people, becoming her strongest partisan on campus: Anyone who is the target of the scorn of the Establishment is okay by her!