Garden Square mall

From Candypedia
Garden Square mall
First appearanceFlirting with Disaster, page 4
November 3, 2006
Related charactersMike, Lucy, Paulo, Sandy, James, Felix, Lucas, Finn, Emma, Aaron

Garden Square mall is the Roseville area’s indoor shopping mall, a long terracotta building with its own tower, parking lot, and arcade. It is the cast’s default spot for gift runs and hangouts, and Mike grew up playing in its arcade.[1] Sandy gives the mall its one on-panel naming when she asks to go there during her stay in Model Girlfriend. Every other visit just calls it “the mall.”[2]

Description

From outside, the mall is a long reddish-terracotta building with an arched parapet running along the roofline and a square tower capped with a little pyramid. Visitors take a crosswalk over to the glass front doors, which are set into tan brick.[3] The mall has its own parking lot, and crossing it brings you to a Fiesta Pizza restaurant, where Emma waits tables.[4][5]

Inside are long corridors of storefronts with big square floor tiles, mannequin window displays, and pretty relentless shopper crowds.[6] An open plaza holds a round upholstered bench built around a planter of red flowers, plus a small fountain, right across from the arcade’s marquee.[7] Matching red-flower planters and bench seating also line the corridor at the arcade’s entrance.[1]

The tenants seen on panel include clothing stores with fitting rooms and sale racks, a toy aisle, a video-game section with a demo kiosk, and a bookstore with a manga section.[8][9]

Arcade

Mike cashes in at the arcade’s token machine, with the dotted carpet underfoot.[10]

The arcade’s marquee reads “QUARTER ARCADE”.[7] The inside is dark and lit mostly by screen glow, with a dark-blue dotted carpet and a red token machine labelled “DUMP YER CASH MONIES HERE”.[11] The games include twin sit-down racing cabinets, a six-seat formula-one racer, a dance game that draws its own crowd of onlookers, and the two-player light-gun game Maggot Mania, along with basketball, Skee-Ball, air hockey, and claw machines.[12][13]

History

Garden Square mall’s terracotta façade rises against the winter sky, its little pyramid-topped tower dusted with snow.[14]

The mall’s earliest appearance is a flashback in Flirting with Disaster. As a shy sixth-grader, Paulo watched a high schooler named Aaron stroll through with a girlfriend on each arm, worked up the nerve to try his very first pickup line, and found to his amazement that it worked. He has been flirting ever since.[15]

Mike and Sandy go to the mall for the one real date of her visit in Model Girlfriend. Mike hauls an ever-growing pile of shopping bags between outfit try-ons, then lights up at the sight of the arcade, though he trails off while explaining its appeal. “I used to come here all the time with.. With friends!”[1] Sandy, for her part, doesn’t take to the place at all. Mike deliberately crashes their race so she can win,[16] and after Maggot Mania leaves her fuming, he wins her a plush rabbit as a consolation prize.[17] The day ends with Mike emptying his savings on clothes before her chauffeur collects them out front at sunset.[18]

In Link Play, James invites Mike and a few of the track guys out for some last-minute Christmas shopping,[19] and everything is open late in the snowy days before the holiday.[3] At the arcade, Mike keeps finding Lucy already stationed at every game he loves.[20] She refuses to budge for him. “I have the right to be here. And I’m not gonna let you scare me away.”[21] James, having no idea who she is, waves her into the empty seat of their six-player race, where she rams Mike off the track and walks out.

Mike chases her into the corridor and offers his first apology since the December phone call: “I’m sorry for being such a terrible friend. I’m.. I’m sorry about Sandy.”[22] Lucy points out that he told Augustus he would never talk to her again.[23] Even so, she answers him with a quiet thanks before disappearing into the crowd.[24] The group finishes the night with dinner at Fiesta Pizza.[5]

Trivia

A mall corridor with cushioned bench seating and potted red-flowered planters lining the tiled walkway.[25]
  • During Model Girlfriend, readers widely predicted Mike would run into Lucy at the arcade. The authors say the Link Play encounter wasn’t written to match those predictions, since “Mike and Lucy are just so similar that surely she’d be enjoying herself at the arcade.”[20]
  • More than six years pass in-story between the arcade’s two big visits. Mike’s surprised “It’s still here?!” in Model Girlfriend implies he hadn’t been back since middle school.[1]
  • Veronica greeted Link Play’s opening page with dread over drawing mall backgrounds: “the boys are going to the MALLLLLLLLLLLLL :) why do i do this to myself.”[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 18
  2. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 12
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 1
  4. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 26
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 27
  6. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 17
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 8
  8. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 3
  9. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 26
  10. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 19
  11. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 19
  12. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 23
  13. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 17
  14. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 1
  15. ↑ Chapter 27: Flirting with Disaster, page 4
  16. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 20
  17. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 25
  18. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 27
  19. ↑ Chapter 115: Track Meet, page 21
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 10
  21. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 19
  22. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 23
  23. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 24
  24. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 25
  25. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 18
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