Sunny Side Up

Chapter 9 is a flashback to the beginning of the previous school year. In Pennsylvania, Sunny’s mother drives her to the mall, where they shop for clothing and school supplies. Sunny takes a long time to pick out the perfect lunchbox, believing that choosing the right one will guarantee a good school year. Finally, she selects a pink-and-sky-blue lunchbox with bright yellow daisies. On her first day of school, she stands proudly outside the family home, dressed in her new clothes and holding her lunchbox. Her bathrobe-clad mother takes her picture and then sends her off to school. The scene switches to the interior of an elementary school as children stride up and down the hall.

A series of smaller panels depict Sunny sitting happily in a desk and raising her hand when the teacher calls her name. When the teacher asks if Sunny is related to Dale Lewin, and Sunny acknowledges that she is, the teacher’s face changes. As the panels cut back and forth between the teacher’s face and Sunny’s, the girl’s smile falters. The teacher says that she taught Dale last year, when she taught 11th grade. Sunny looks anxiously around at her classmates. The teacher scribbles a note by Sunny’s name, and Sunny slumps in her seat, looking worried and sad. The final panel of the chapter is a splash page. It widens out to show Sunny sitting among her classmates. The other children are focused on the front of the room, but Sunny stares sadly at her desk. Behind her, on the classroom wall, an enormous shadow looms, looking as if it emanates from Sunny herself. The shadow is not that of a little girl, however: it is Dale, holding a lit cigarette of some kind in his right hand.

Back in the narrative present, Sunny returns to her grandfather’s house, Spider-Man comic in hand. Pat tells her they are going out to dinner with Teezy and Ethel. Sunny glances at the clock in surprise, but her grandfather seems to think that four o’clock in the afternoon is actually getting a little late for their meal, and he hurries her out to the car. A series of panels follows the car on the way to the restaurant; in one panel, Sunny is pictured in the back seat between Ethel and Teezy. She is smiling. The two women urge Pat to drive faster, and when they arrive at the restaurant, Sunny realizes that they are trying to get there in time for the early bird special. The restaurant is a buffet, and the women enthusiastically tell Sunny to get whatever she wants, because everything is delicious—with the exception of the creamed spinach, which gives them gas. A long panel at the bottom of page 93 depicts Sunny staring at the buffet, which features foods like beets and lima beans. Her expression is perplexed.

When Sunny returns to the table, her eyes widen and she smiles at the enormous piles of food the older people have selected. When Pat gets up to get more food, Teezy and Ethel question Sunny about her life at home. They ask whether she has siblings, and she admits to having a one-year-old brother, Teddy. They ask whether her hometown had big celebrations to honor the nation’s Bicentennial. The page that follows features several borderless, irregularly shaped panels that show items associated with this celebration, such as the “freedom train” and historical reenactments. Large red, white, and, blue letters proclaim, “BICENTENNIAL! America’s 200th Birthday!” (95). When Ethel and Teezy ask whether there were fireworks, Sunny says yes, but her face falls, and she looks anxious.

Chapter 11 flashes back to March 1976. Sunny watches television in the lower level of the family home. In the kitchen, Sunny’s mother hands Dale some money and asks him to run to the store for milk. Dale has long hair and is wearing a Kiss band t-shirt and loose jeans. When he comes to the top of the stairs to ask Sunny if she wants to come along with him, he has added a long, army-green jacket. Sunny and Dale get into the family station wagon, and Sunny realizes that they are headed away from the store. Dale tells her that they will stop at the store later; first, he plans to teach her to drive in a local parking lot. A closeup panel shows Sunny’s shocked and excited face: she points out that she is 10 years old. Dale says that, as their teachers are always saying, “You’re never too young to learn” (102). A sequence of panels depicts Sunny’s happy, excited face behind the wheel of the car. Additional panels show the car lurching forward, and Sunny’s squeal of glee emanates from the car as it goes in tight circles, its tires screeching.

When they finally make it to a convenience store, there is a man roughly Dale’s age leaning against the wall outside. He greets Dale, and Dale hands Sunny the money that their mother gave him, telling her to go inside to buy the milk and to get herself an ice cream. As she stands at the counter to pay, she glances through the large front window and sees Dale exchanging money for something in a small paper bag. There is a close-up on her anxious face as the cashier hands her a few coins. When she and Dale return home, their mother asks them why they were gone so long. She specifically asks whether Dale was “hanging out with that Sladek boy” (106), and Dale lies, claiming that he took Sunny out to the “Dairy Barn” for ice cream. When he asks Sunny to confirm this story, she looks upset but goes along with his lie.

In the narrative present, Sunny and Buzz run into a Pine Palms resident who is searching for her cat. Sunny comments that she thought pets were banned in the retirement community, but Buzz tells her that many people have them anyway. A borderless panel shows Sunny’s shocked expression as she looks around and sees cats in four different windows. Sunny and Buzz help to search for the cat. Finally, hot and tired, they sit down on a bench and talk about their strategy. Sunny decides that they should get some tuna from her grandfather’s apartment and use this to lure the cat. When they enter Pat’s apartment, a trail of cigarette smoke hangs in the air, and Sunny grows angry. When she goes into the kitchen to get the tuna, she sees a coffee cup with cigarette butts in it.

The two children go back out and lay a trail of tuna near the apartment where the cat lives; it creeps out from under a bush, and they capture it. When they return the cat, the elderly woman surprises them by giving them a dollar, and they immediately head to the store to buy comics. Sunny chooses a Batman comic. Sunny and Buzz talk about Batman’s backstory. Buzz explains that many superheroes have tragic backstories that include the loss of family members, and Sunny is upset to realize that even superheroes cannot always save the people closest to them. Buzz and Sunny decide that they are heroes for saving the cat.

The establishing splash page features the Lewin family’s dinner table, which is set for five. No family members are yet present. It is April of 1976, and Sunny is downstairs, reading about Vesuvius and Pompeii in the family’s encyclopedias. She is horrified to learn that thousands of people were buried alive in volcanic ash. The narrative skips ahead to dinner time; Dale comes in late, and bubble-like emanata flowing from the back of his head suggest that he is in an altered state. Sunny’s father questions Dale about where he has been, and an argument ensues. A sequence of nine panels (126) shows close-ups of the family members’ faces as the argument escalates; Dale and Sunny’s father are both angry, and Sunny and her mother are both worried and sad. Finally, Sunny breaks into the conversation by asking, “HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT POMPEII?” (127), and desperately begins to talk about the eruption. Her family stares at her. Sunny’s father tells her that the story of Pompeii is a famous one and begins eating his dinner again. Dale compliments his mother’s cooking, and Sunny looks relieved that her tactic has successfully lessened the tension. The final page contains three panels, stacked vertically: on top is a depiction of the entire family at the table, happily talking and passing food around. In the center is a borderless panel with the word “FLASH!” enclosed in a large, dark yellow flash of light that bleeds into both the upper and lower panels. At the bottom, the family is depicted in the same positions as in the top panel—but this time, the picture is in grayscale, and like the victims in Pompeii, they have been covered in ash, frozen in place for all time.

One day, as Sunny is doing laundry at her grandfather’s, she sees a pack of cigarettes in the laundry basket. She also finds one in the freezer. When she confronts Pat, he claims that the cigarettes must have been in the freezer for a long time, “from back when [he] used to smoke” (131). An irate Sunny looks as if she is not done with the conversation, but a knock at the door interrupts. Buzz is there, wanting to know if Sunny wants to hang out. “Of course she does!” (132) a relieved Pat calls to him. The two friends help another neighbor find her lost cat, using Sunny’s tuna fish trick. A montage shows them locating several more cats and being rewarded by grateful owners. A splash page features Superman flying toward the viewer, surrounded by special effects text listing his attributes (134). Insets at the top of the page show Sunny and Buzz happily leaving the store with piles of comic books in their arms and Sunny engrossed in a Superman comic. Buzz and Sunny talk about what superpowers they would personally choose. Buzz is most interested in being able to fly, but Sunny chooses invisibility. A flashback explains why: she recalls standing at the school bus stop with Deb and some other schoolmates when Dale and a friend drove by. They were speeding, and Dale threw a beer bottle onto the street, smashing it. Sunny was deeply embarrassed.