Neighbors

(September 1, 2015)

1

The airliner set down at the Oakland airport about fifteen minutes late. Mabel, with her usual eagerness, jumped up while the plane was still taxiing to the jetway and popped the overhead bin. "Here you go, Brobro," she said, hauling down Dipper's laptop and duffel. "And here's mine!" She pulled down a pink overnight bag that she had decorated with a rainbow shooting star painting. "Let us out of this tin can already!"

They couldn't get out, though, until the plane had stopped, the jetway had connected to the door, and the attendants signaled that passengers could deplane. Even though they weren't in first class, Mabel made it out of the plane before anyone else. Dipper was about the twenty-fourth person out, and Mabel was nowhere in sight.

He lugged his computer and bag down the terminal corridor to the Terminal 1 baggage claim, where he supposed his folks would be waiting, peering around for Mabel. He paused to text her and then trudged on. His phone chirped just as he got to his goal:

WHERE R YOU DIPPY? MOM N DAD R READY 2 GO!

He texted back: IN BAG CLAIM. WHERE R YOU?

And she to him: DOY! BAG CLAIM!

Dipper craned around. DON'T SEE U. WHERE?

Mabel again: TRMNL 2 BAG CLAIM, DUMMY DUM

OK, so for some reason they were all over in the other baggage claim area. Dipper, grumbling under his breath, made that long walk, too. He finally spotted them. "Why didn't you come to Terminal 1?" he asked his dad.

"Mabel texted us and said Terminal 2 would be faster," he said. "Turns out it wasn't, because we had to wait for you."

Dipper glared at his twin. "You didn't text me!"

"I thought you'd figure it out!" she objected.

"Our plane landed at Terminal 1! Why in the world would I come here?" Dipper asked.

She shrugged. "Well—there are all kinds of airlines using Terminal 1, and only one using Terminal 2!"

"You should at least have included me in the text!" Dipper said.

"You're the smart one!"

Dipper's mom cut in: "Mabel, please!" She gave Dipper a perfunctory hug and said, "We're all here now, anyway. Come on. We're in short-term parking."

Once they were in the car and headed home, Mabel begged their dad to stop at a restaurant so they could have some lunch.

Dipper's mood had begun to lift. "Grunkle Stan is shipping our trunks down," he said. "They should be here by the end of the week."

"So, what's the surprise?" Mabel asked.

"Wait, what?" Dipper asked

"You missed the conversation by being so slow, Broseph," Mabel said. "Mom and Dad have a big surprise for us."

"What is it?"

"You'll find out," Dad said.

"You've got someone new to meet at home," Mom said.

"A puppy! You guys! What'll we name him? What color is he? What breed is he? Is he a she-?"

"Not a puppy," Dad said firmly. "Just wait."

"Gah! I hate waiting!" Mabel said.

At Mabel's bouncy urging, they stopped at a Roam, a restaurant not represented in Oregon, where Mabel began to wolf down an outsized burger with chewy nom-nom sound effects. To give Mabel her due, the food was very good. Dipper had the best personal pizza he'd had that whole year.

"How was the summer?" their mom asked Dipper, probably assuming that Mabel couldn't speak intelligibly until the rapidly-disappearing burger was well down her gullet.

"Lot of fun," Dipper said. "We got to work in the Shack, and Soos paid us. Went hiking and saw some places in the Valley that we'd never visited. We went swimming in the lake. Oh, and thanks for forwarding the carton of my books that the publisher sent! I gave some of them away as presents. What did you think of it?"

"It looked nice," Mom said.

Dipper shrank a little inside. That meant she hadn't even bothered to read it. She seemed to consider his writing as just a hobby, nice, but . . . not important.

"Keep up with your running?" Dad asked.

"Oh, yeah," Dipper said. "Wendy made me run five mornings out of every week. We did as much as five miles some days, and she timed my sprints. I'm holding my own, and I think Coach will be happy. Wendy's a great trainer!"

"She shrr zz," Mabel said, her mouth full. "She tchzz hm ltz v thngz!" She swallowed the way an ostrich will gulp down a tennis ball. "She sure is!"

Dipper kicked her beneath the table, but not too hard.

"I only hope you're both ready for school," Mom said. "You're going to have to bear down and study hard this year. Eleventh grade is very important. There's a tendency to slack off, so you'll have to work extra hard. I'll keep my eye on your grades."

Mabel swallowed the last bite of her burger and wiped her mouth with a napkin. "Hey, can we stop at the DMV and get our driver's licenses on the way home?"

"No," Dad said, laughing. "You have to arrange for that ahead of time. The license bureau's open only on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—and you have to make an appointment online to take the tests. The earliest opening I could get for you is for next Friday, one PM."

"Friday!" Mabel wailed. "Whaaaat? I can't live that long without a license! I'll call them and tell them it's a matter of life and death!" She took out her phone.

"You will not call the DMV," her mother said firmly.

Mabel flopped face-down on the table, moaning. "How will I survive?"

"Do your best," Dad advised. "If it's any consolation, you can take your driver's test first, before Mason takes his."

"That doesn't help," Mabel told the table top. But she seemed more or less resigned to her fate, and Mom promised to drive them to the DMV on Friday afternoon and let them use her car for the behind-the-wheel test.

Half an hour later, as they drove into their neighborhood, Dad slowed the car. "Look to the right," he said.

Their old house was still there, of course. It had been repainted a light slate-gray, not a bad color at all, and two round flowerbeds thick with dark-green succulents had been added. A couple of girl's bikes stood in the driveway. "Someone new's moved in?" Dipper asked.

"Yes, a nice family," Mom said. "The Sheaffers."

"You'll like them," Dad added. "They've got twins, too—two girls, Mina and Mira. They're fourteen, I think. Right, Wanda?"

"Yes," Mom agreed. "But they also have a little boy—Billy."

Dipper felt a little chill. "Bill . . . Sheaffer?" he asked, his voice a little shaky.

"He's ten," Dad said. "Smart little guy. And guess what? His birthday is the same day as yours."

Mabel nudged Dipper and whispered, "What's wrong with you?"

He shook his head as they continued to the cul-de-sac and their new house and parked in the garage. "Ten, huh?" he heard himself ask.

"There's something you'll notice about him," Mom said quietly as they opened the car doors. "Don't let it surprise you and don't bring it up unless he does. He was born with only one eye."

Mabel turned pale and squeaked.

"His left eye is prosthetic," Dad said, slamming the driver's door. "It's very good—most people would hardly notice that it's not a real eye. But please remember not to stare at him."

Dipper swallowed hard. The Oracle and his great-uncle Ford had mentioned that if Bill Cipher were to be reborn as a human—it could be anywhere. Anywhen.

Ten years ago . . . . On the twins' sixth birthday, then, a baby was born somewhere with one eye.

But—

But it didn't make sense!

Dipper and Mabel went up to their bedrooms in the new house and unpacked by dumping their clothes from their bags onto their beds, planning to hang up everything later. And then they met in the middle, the room where Dipper practiced his music and Mabel practiced her art. "Is it him?" Mabel asked.

"Don't know," Dipper said. "But I'd say the chances are pretty good."

"Wait, my brain's gonna asplode," Mabel said. "If this boy's ten years old . . . then he was born like six, seven years before Weirdmageddon! How could Bill Cipher be him and the isosceles demon from the Nightmare Realm at the same time? How could he be in two places at once?"

"I . . . don't know," Dipper said. "We can't be in a whole different time line, because Weirdmageddon happened. We remember it. Later, Bill was there when the Horroracle nearly killed me. He warned us when Zanthar dug his way out and attacked. But—if he was also this kid—I can't wrap my head around it!"

"Could he be like half Bill Cipher or something?" Mabel asked. "If he's ten now, he would've been six when Weirdmageddon happened, right?"

"Five," Dipper said. "Nearly six."

"So . . . what if he wasn't Bill Cipher then . . . but became Bill Cipher later on?"

"I don't know!" Dipper insisted. "Wait, in that dream I told you about, Bill said something to me—he said, 'my tabula is rasa.'"

Mabel gave him an uncomprehending glance. "Tabula? Isn't that a bone in the arm?"

"No, it's Latin. Tabula rasa. Means 'clean slate.' It's the idea that a newborn baby's mind is free of any impressions, that its experiences write on its slate and it gradually becomes a person by learning. That's the opposite of Platonic idealism, which assumes that all knowledge is innate in the mind from birth and it just emerges—"

Mabel elbowed him. "You're getting Grunklier and Grunklier, Brobro," she complained.

Dipper rubbed his neck. "I guess." He sighed. "I don't know what's going on," he admitted. "But I think the weirdness from Gravity Falls just might have followed us home."

Mabel asked their mom if she and Dipper could walk up the street to the Sheaffers' house and meet their new neighbors. Mom said, "If they're busy, just say hi and go."

They started a little after two o'clock. Sunny day, puffy white clouds scattered overhead. Different smells in the air from Oregon, less balsam pine and much more hydrocarbon. Different birds in the trees. A California towhee, which they didn't ever see in Gravity Falls, sat on a branch and serenaded them with its peep-peep-peep chatterchatterchatter song. Not a woodpecker in earshot. Whole different vibe.

"I'm kinda scared," Mabel admitted.

"Me, too," Dipper said. "But—it's better to know than not to know."

It gave him a funny feeling to walk up to the front door of the house he'd lived in for so long. He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

A girl a little younger and shorter than he was opened the door. She was cute, dark, black-haired, brown-eyed, upturned nose. "Yes?" she asked in a musical sort of voice.

"Hi," Mabel said. "I'm Mabel. This is my twin brother Dipper. We used to live here. Now we live in the house at the end of the street."

The girl smiled. "We know your parents! I'm Mina. I'm a twin, too! Come on in."

It was strange, seeing the living room with a new coat of paint and different furniture. The girl said, "My name's Mina. Wait a minute, I'll get my sister and Mom."

Their mother came in drying her hands on a dish towel. She looked like both girls, and the girls were identical—Mira and Mina could switch places and Dipper would never be able to tell them apart. "Well," Mrs. Sheaffer said with a smile, "so you're Mabel and Dipper Pines! I've heard a lot about you."

"Don't believe it!" Mabel said. "I've only had one arrest and no convictions! Hah! I kid! Are you guys going to Piedmont High?"

"We're freshmen," Mira and Mina said in unison. Then they giggled. "We do that all the time!" Mira said.

"I hope we at least get different home rooms," Mina said. "Otherwise, nobody will ever learn to tell us apart."

"We'll show you the ropes!" Mabel said. She winked. "Some of the ropes you can skip, if you know what I mean."

"Where's Billy?" Mira asked.

"Probably reading," Mrs. Sheaffer said. "Go look in his room." Mira went upstairs.

"Our rooms used to be upstairs," Mabel said. "Mine was on the right, Dipper's on the left."

"That's Billy's room now," Mrs. Sheaffer said. "Mina's is Mabel's old room, I guess, and Mira's got the room that was the little office down the hall here on the first floor."

"Oh, boo!" Mabel said. "She's miles from the bathroom!"

"Not too far," Mina said. "She doesn't mind."

"Got him!" Mira said from the stairs.

Dipper and Mabel looked. A skinny ten-year-old with a shock of blond hair, a very pale kid, was coming down the stairs. He was wearing black shorts and a yellow polo shirt, not a bright yellow but almost a cream color. Dipper couldn't help staring. The boy's right eye was alert and blue. The left one matched it but didn't quite look real. It didn't move just right. The boy's expression was solemn. "Hi," he said, sounding shy.

For some reason, the voice gave Dipper a little sense of relief. It wasn't mocking and riotous. It didn't break out in a peal of mad laughter.

"Billy," Mrs. Sheaffer said, "This is Mabel and Dipper Pines. They used to live here in our house, and now they live down at the end of the street."

"Hi," Mabel said. "Hope you like the house!"

He smiled shyly. "Yeah, it's pretty lit. I like having my own room."

Maybe we were wrong. The kid sounded like any younger boy trying to mimic teen talk. Dipper said, "That was my room when we lived here. Hey, there's a secret vault in the closet!"

"You mean the loose board in the floor?" Billy asked. "Yeah, I found it! I keep my comics in there."

"Hey," Mabel said, "we got a swimming pool in our backyard now! Anytime you guys want to come down, you're welcome to use it!"

"That's nice," Mrs. Sheaffer said, "but Billy doesn't know how to swim yet."

"Pfft!" Mabel said. "Dipper doesn't either, but he can lounge around and splash in the water. He never let that stop him! And he was an assistant life guard for a while!"

"How was he a life guard?" Mira asked. "I mean, if he couldn't swim?"

"It was a Gravity Falls thing," Mabel said. "You might not understand."

"What's a Gravity Falls thing?" Mina asked.

"Gravity Falls is a town up in Oregon. We spend summers there with our great-uncles while Mom and Dad take vacation trips," Mabel said. "My boyfriend's up there! He's my bae! And my squad's there, all my friends!"

Mrs. Sheaffer excused herself—she was doing something in the kitchen—and Mabel walked Mira and Mina down the street to see the Pines house. Billy took Dipper upstairs to show him his room.

Yeah, same room. They hadn't redecorated up there, same pale-yellow walls, very similar furniture, bed in the same place that his used to be, desk where his had been. Same shelves that Dipper had crammed with books. Billy had about half as many books, but a lot more plastic models of cars and airplanes. He'd done a very good job on them—not only well-assembled but painted in painstaking detail. Dipper admired a B-24 model. Billy explained it was patterned after one of the American planes that had bombed Tokyo very early in World War II. He talked about the Doolittle raid and how it hadn't really accomplished anything except raising American morale the year after Pearl Harbor.

"You like history?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, like to read about it. Don't like stories so much. You read much?"

"Lot of books about true-life mysteries," Dipper admitted. "And paranormal and stuff like that."

"What kind of hat is that?"

Dipper took off the fur trapper's hat. "It's kind of a lumberjack thing," he said. "I have a girlfriend up in Gravity Falls, and this is her hat, really. Her dad's a lumberjack, see. When I'm up there, I give this hat back to her and I usually wear a trucker's cap. We always swap out at the end of the summer. It's something to remember each other by."

Billy tilted his head. That bright blue eye was sharp. "Did you cut your forehead?"

With a sigh, Dipper pushed his hair up. "It's just a birthmark. I know, it looks like the Big Dipper. That's how I got my nickname."

"Oh." Billy smiled. "It's kind of neat."

After a few minutes, Dipper said it was time for him to go home, and Billy walked him downstairs to the door. "Hey, look," Dipper said, pausing on the front step, "if you want, you can come and see our house some time. Not right now, 'cause we just got back and sort of dumped things all over the place, but maybe this coming weekend."

"OK."

Dipper hesitated. "Do you—do Mabel and I seem familiar to you?" he asked.

Billy shook his head. "No. 'Cept you're twins, like my sisters. Well, not my real sisters. I'm adopted."

"I . . . didn't know," Dipper said.

"Yeah. My real mother died a few days after I was born. That's all I know about her."

"I'm sorry," Dipper said.

Billy shrugged. "My mom and dad are great. My dad's an assistant professor of literature at Mills College. He's a lot of fun. Tells like the worst jokes in the world, but you gotta laugh. Mom stays home, but she's kinda cool, too. When school's in, she does online instruction for a homework hotline. Summers, they take us places. We went to the Grand Canyon last month. It was hot."

"Well," Dipper said, standing on the lawn, "nice meeting you, Billy. See you around."

In the doorway, Bill said, "See you . . . Pine Tree."

And closed the door.