Melanie

From Candypedia
Melanie
GenderFemale
Age20
Birthday1988
SpeciesCat
OccupationStudent
AffiliationAlejandro’s gang
DebutTrapped, page 11
December 24, 2014 (2014-12-24)

Melanie is a cat and the girlfriend of Alejandro during the years Augustus spent running with Alejandro’s gang, a stretch of his childhood he recounts in Trapped. A high-schooler a few years older than Augustus, she treats the milk-stealing kid like a little brother, and later, rather less defensibly, like something more than that. Her plan for life is to keep her grades up, win a scholarship, and use it to get out of town for good. In that account, she is the only one who got away.

Personality

Melanie’s latest project leaves Augustus with no say in the matter.

Melanie spends her afternoons on the edge of a college fountain at a school she doesn’t attend, smoking and watching the students go by as if they were a motivational poster. She is dry with strangers, soft with the one kid who brings her soda, and prone to sudden projects like piercing somebody’s eyebrow on a bathroom floor because it simply has to happen right now. Under the shrugging, unbothered surface, though, she is a teenager in a very bad situation, and the calm cracks whenever someone says out loud what she already knows.

Most of what Melanie says about her boyfriend is an excuse for him. When a ten-year-old Augustus remarks that Alejandro seems kind of mean, her smile slips and she settles on the explanation that “he’s got a temper.”[1][2] She tells Augustus not to give her that look when she admits she needs breaks from him.[3] When he yanks her hair over how she’s wearing it, she is the one who apologizes,[4] and from a hospital bed she laughs at the idea of involving the police.[5] Veronica’s commentary spells out why she suffers alone: she would get angry if Augustus stepped in, because that would give the two of them away.[6]

The scholarship is pretty much Melanie’s only plan. She hangs around the campus because watching students is, in her words, sort of motivational, and she wants to graduate, win a scholarship, and leave town.[3] Later she is blunter still, calling an out-of-town scholarship her excuse and her escape.[7] She pays for it too. In senior year she admits to Augustus that “It’s hard maintaining an A average,” and she looks it.[6]

Melanie’s calm collapses when escape stops sounding simple.

That chill is a thinner coat than it looks. Having just told a little boy that she wants to get the fuck out of here, she catches herself and grins about laying heavy stuff on a kid out of nowhere.[8] But when Augustus presses the point that Alejandro will kill them, the grin goes wide and manic and she shouts that of course she knows, that he has promised to hunt her down if she leaves.[7] Veronica says she drew those faces on purpose, to show Melanie was never just naturally chill: “She’s a freaken teen!”[7] The same impulsiveness turns up in kinder form when she takes one look at teenage Augustus’s cloak and decides on the spot that he needs an eyebrow piercing.[9]

Appearance

Melanie turns up in Trapped with a black eye and a question on her face.

Melanie is a cat with long, wavy hair, freckles, a striped tail and several piercings in each ear. She first appears in a jacket, shirt and pants.[10][11] She is a good deal taller than the ten-year-old Augustus she meets.[12] A black eye turns up at the fountain and again, along with scratches and bruises down her face and arms, in the hospital.[12][5]

The Trapped flashback is drawn in grayscale, but Veronica describes Melanie as peachy, with orange-reddish ginger hair and gold-orange eyes.[13] Veronica also noticed after the fact that Melanie’s fluffy hair looks like Abbey’s mother’s, and insists the resemblance was completely unintentional.[12]

Significant events

Melanie enters the comic in Trapped, inside a grayscale flashback to Augustus’s childhood. Alejandro, Toby and Melanie catch a ten-year-old Augustus stealing milk, and when Alejandro decides to take the boy home, Melanie is the only one who asks whether that’s a good idea.[10][14] She loses that argument, introduces herself as they trail behind the others, and stands by smirking at his first haul.[1][15] Before long Augustus is turning up at the campus fountain to see her.[12]

The years then roll by in montage. Melanie pierces the teenage Augustus’s eyebrow, then initiates a secret relationship with him, hidden from Alejandro through her sophomore, junior and senior years.[16][17][18][4] In her senior year, Toby overhears her telling Augustus that she loves him. He tells Alejandro she is seeing someone else, but conceals who it is.[19][20]

Trapped leaves no doubt what Melanie is escaping.

Alejandro strangles her almost to death in Alejandro’s apartment, and Toby takes her to the Hospital.[21][22] The beating is what finally frees her: her grandmother finds out and demands she come and live with her, so Melanie leaves town, expecting never to see Augustus again.[23]

The BCI what-if All or Nothing picks her story up at that fountain confession and takes it somewhere very different. In that version Melanie spots Toby in the bushes, only to learn he has already sent his text.[24] When Alejandro turns on Augustus, she intervenes with a wrench, beating Alejandro to death before calling 911 on herself.[25][26] She is led away in handcuffs telling Augustus they are free.[27] None of it is main continuity.

Major relationships

Augustus

Melanie makes the first move, and Augustus has no idea what to do with it.

Melanie is the first person in Alejandro’s orbit to treat Augustus like a child rather than a recruit. Augustus soon starts seeking her out. She asks his name when nobody else bothers and declares it cute,[1] and by the time he is carrying her favorite soda to the fountain she is ruffling his hair and calling him thoughtful.[12] His own narration calls her someone to look forward to.[12] The advice she leaves him with, a hand on his head, is “Don’t let ’em ruin you.”[8]

Augustus never really gets a say when Melanie initiates the kiss. Oliver puts her at fifteen and him at thirteen when, fresh from piercing his eyebrow, she cups his cheek and kisses him. He leans back, startled, and she moves closer.[17][2] In bed afterwards he lies rigid and says Alejandro will kill them, and she answers, eyes closed, “That’s why we won’t tell him.”[18] Then she folds him into her escape plan, promising the scholarship will be his way out too.[7] Veronica has since said plainly that Melanie pushed him into a relationship without his consent, while refusing to make her a “sole evil entity,” since she was an abused teenager herself. Her past, in Veronica’s words, doesn’t justify what she did to him.[28][29]

Melanie has already told Augustus he can’t step in when Alejandro hits her, because Alejandro would start guessing.[6] When he tries to pull Alejandro off her mid-strangling, she rakes her claws across his face with a scream of “BACK OFF!!”, splitting his eyebrow. The outburst seems meant to make him look like a bystander who got too close.[30] Afterwards he sneers along when Alejandro calls her a dumb bitch.[22] In the Hospital she still manages “You look ridiculous.” before telling him her grandmother is taking her away and saying she is sorry, and he holds her hand.[5][23] Years later he sets her memory beside Daisy’s and calls her the only one who got away.[20]

Alejandro

Melanie points out “the guy in the bandana” as her boyfriend while trailing behind him in Trapped.

Melanie is trying to graduate away from Alejandro. Early in the flashback, though, she defends him. He shuts her down in front of the gang with “Who even asked you anyway?” when she questions bringing Augustus home,[14] and she admits she hangs around a campus he is banned from because it gives her a break from him.[3] Augustus eventually says out loud what she has been living with: Alejandro hits her after merely dreaming she cheated. Melanie adds that he has promised to hunt her down if she leaves.[7] By senior year he is yanking her by the hair for wearing it like his ex, and Veronica’s commentary sums him up as a boyfriend who punishes you for everything that makes him remotely mad.[4]

The beating that nearly kills her is also the one that gets her out. Tipped off by Toby, Alejandro strangles her demanding to know who the other man is, blood running from one eye.[21] Afterwards he tells Augustus he’d be in trouble if he gave her what she deserved.[22] From her hospital bed she laughs off the idea of going to the police, because “It’s a miracle I’m not dead,”[5] but grants that Alej did “ONE good thing” for her, since the assault made her grandmother step in and take her away.[23] Alejandro carries a facial scar into the present day. In Confrontation, he tells Lucy the last girl who hurt him gave it to him, and Lucy claws him back with a swipe dedicated to his ex.[31][32]

Minor relationships

Toby

Alejandro, Toby and Melanie corner a very small milk thief, and Melanie calls it “real clever”, in Trapped.

Toby is the third member of the gang on the day Melanie meets Augustus, and the two of them never exchange a word in their main-comic scenes.[10][1] What he does instead is watch. He is in the bushes when she tells Augustus she loves him,[19] and he stands with his arms crossed while Alejandro strangles her before eventually stepping forward with a mild “Dude, wait.”[21][30] He is also the one who takes her to the Hospital, and the one who tells Alejandro he couldn’t identify the other man while quietly holding what he heard over Augustus.[22][20]

Quotes

Oh, he’s just.. he’s got a temper. Melanie, explaining her boyfriend to a ten-year-old in Trapped

I want to graduate. I want a scholarship. Melanie, watching college students from the fountain in Trapped

Don’t let ’em ruin you. Melanie, with a hand on Augustus’s head in Trapped

Has the master thief considered stealing a little fashion sense? Melanie, reviewing Augustus’s cloak in Trapped

It’s a miracle I’m not dead. Melanie, on why she won’t be calling the police in Trapped

I’m free. Melanie, from her hospital bed in Trapped

Trivia

  • A timeline chart posted on the official Tumblr gives Melanie a July birthday and puts her at 13 when she meets Augustus in August 2001, 15 when their relationship begins in November 2003, 17 in her senior year, and 19 in May 2008, the comic’s present when the chart was posted.[33]
  • Veronica’s commentary on Trapped says a chapter about this backstory was always planned, and that it had been loosely implied years earlier in a BCI story set in an alternate timeline.[15]
  • Veronica has ruled out Melanie turning up as a student teacher at Roseville High School, calling the idea “too soapy”.[34]
  • In Made Fresh, Augustus opens an acceptance letter that comes with a partial scholarship, the exit Melanie once told him would be his as well.[7][35]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 13
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Oliver (2015-01-24). “Oliver explains the ages of Augustus, Melanie and Alejandro”.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 18
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 26
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 32
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 27
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 25
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 19
  9. ↑ Chapter 86: Trapped, page 21
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 11
  11. ↑ Chapter 86: Trapped, page 14
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 17
  13. ↑ Veronica (2015-05-05). “Ask response on Melanie’s colors”.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 12
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 15
  16. ↑ Chapter 86: Trapped, page 22
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 23
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 24
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 28
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 34
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 29
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 31
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 33
  24. ↑ All or Nothing, page 5 🔒 (members only)
  25. ↑ All or Nothing, page 13 🔒 (members only)
  26. ↑ All or Nothing, page 16 🔒 (members only)
  27. ↑ All or Nothing, page 18 🔒 (members only)
  28. ↑ “Ask response on Augustus’s feelings and Melanie”. 2026-05-22.
  29. ↑ “Ask response on Melanie’s responsibility toward Augustus”. 2026-05-24.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Chapter 86: Trapped, page 30
  31. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 17
  32. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 18
  33. ↑ “Timeline chart of character ages”. 2015-01-30.
  34. ↑ “Ask response on Melanie reappearing”. 2026-07-24.
  35. ↑ Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 41
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