Max

Max
Gender	Male
Species	Dog
Breed	Pug
Occupation	Student
Affiliation	Track team
Debut	Track Meet, page 12 June 3, 2022 (2022-06-03)

Max is a brown dog on the Roseville High School track team, one of the jocks who take Mike under their wing. He’s the fellow checking his watch while everyone around him is busy having feelings.

Personality

Max is the quiet one at the track table. While James is putting on a show and Felix is saying something tactless, Max is the teammate checking the time and wondering when the coach is due back. He does have a dry streak, though, as poor James discovers.

In Second String, Max checks the time while David turns the finish into a performance.

Practice is what Max is there for, and he’d rather like everyone else to remember that. In Second String he keeps a neutral face while David shows off, calls the race off his wristwatch, and can only shrug with an uncertain frown once David starts shouting about Paulo and Daisy. He isn’t indifferent to Mike, mind you. In First-Degree Burn he watches a dejected Mike with obvious concern, and his eyes go wide with worry when Mike leaves the table to run after James.

Appearance

Max is a brown dog with a dark muzzle and folded ears. At practice he wears the same blue Hornets running kit as the rest of the team. In Second String, he also wears a wristwatch, which he uses to time a race.

Significant events

Max first turns up in Track Meet, standing in his running kit with the rest of the team as they gawk at Mike, their new recruit, and joining the group stretch afterward. His first line comes in a flashback in One-Track Mind, a jab at James over a spilled-milk incident at lunch. In Link Play, a sleepless Mike pictures him among the teammates smiling warmly at him.

In Second String, he times the race in which David outruns Mike and flatly announces “David wins.” James promptly jokes that the team doesn’t need Mike anymore. When practice dissolves into gossip, he starts to answer Lucas before Mike cuts him off with a demand to be timed. In First-Degree Burn, he sits at the team’s lunch table as Finn invites a miserable Mike to hang out with them, but Mike leaves to chase after James and David instead. Max is at the team’s own table again in Line in the Sand, while James visits Mike’s usual group.

Major relationships

Lucas

Lucas grumbles about the team’s lack of focus, and Max is the one he grumbles to. When David’s outburst in Second String turns practice into a gossip session, Lucas turns to Max to complain that he’s the only one who cares why they’re there. Max’s answer is practical rather than principled: the coach is going to freak out once he gets back. He doesn’t get to finish the sentence before Mike talks over him, and the two of them turn with the same surprised look. They tend to react in step, too, sharing an unimpressed glance at Felix’s bluntness in First-Degree Burn.

Minor relationships

Max gets a joke in about James. In One-Track Mind, James is balancing milk cartons on his nose for the third lunch running. Max smirks and brings up the day James spilled them all over himself and stank the next day. James drops the lot as he protests that he showered. He later smiles along when James looks after Mike in Track Meet.

Quotes

Remember when he spilled it all over himself and smelled like rotten milk the next day? Max, puncturing James’s milk-carton act in One-Track Mind

Coach is totally gonna freak out once he comes bac-- Max, getting talked over by Mike in Second String

Trivia

• While Lucas, Darwin, Felix and Finn make their first appearances at the lunch table in Track Meet, Max debuts in the gym instead.

See also

• Lucas
• James
• Roseville High Hornets