You Only Get One Chance
(July 2014)
1
It gets a little complicated . . . .
Dipper and Mabel had enjoyed their five-day excursion to Vancouver, which included a three-day sail aboard the Stan O' War II . . . even the sea-sickness part, which hit just about the moment they chugged out past Cape Flattery and into the Pacific.
Well, Mabel was seasick. Dipper enjoyed watching, though, and timing her bouts of nausea and feeding the fishes. "How was that?" she asked after the third one, wiping her mouth.
"Not bad. Two minutes and twelve seconds."
Mabel punched the air. "Yes! A new personal best!"
But that was on the first day out, and she got her sea legs the next morning and had no more trouble. Well, of a seasick nature, anyway. Of course, Ford wanted to check out a minor anomaly, and that turned into a major adventure—but maybe more of that at another time.
This is just about how you only get one chance.
Except when you don't.
2
So they had limped back into port again and had tied up at the pier. Ford spent some time arranging for boat repairs and said he would come back in a couple of weeks to sign off on them. Then they piled into Ford's big black Lincoln—the third one he'd owned since coming back from his adventures in other dimensions, but by that time he finally seemed to have got the knack of driving back and wasn't quite the terror on wheels that he had been—and headed for the States.
"Oh, man," Mabel said, scrunching down into the back seat. "I think I'll try to catch some Z's." It was a saying of Grunkle Stan's, and he chuckled from the front passenger seat.
Dipper had his Journal 2 open on his knees, writing (in somewhat shaky handwriting, true) his account of the voyage and how they had come close to losing the Stan O' War II, their sanity, and perhaps their lives.
He'd have time to finish the entry and then some—it took between eight and nine hours (depending on traffic and whether Ford or Stan was driving) to make the trip back to Gravity Falls.
His phone chimed, and he checked it. Wendy, answering his texts telling her they were back on shore and relatively safe and sound: Cool, dude! Can't wait to hear about the whole thing. Do me a favor and buy me some peppermints.
Heh. That was kind of their code.
Dipper replied, Sure thing. We'll be late tonight getting in, but I'll have them for you first thing tomorrow morning.
They had to stop for gas, and Ford pulled into a Petro-Canada station not far off the freeway. Dipper went inside and found the perfect gift: a bag of striped peppermint candies, each one labeled with the red Canadian maple leaf. He had to pay with American money, but that didn't seem to matter to the clerk.
After that, back into the car, and like Mabel, Dipper dozed soon enough. He woke up when Stan relieved Ford at the wheel. "Where are we?" he mumbled. It was getting toward sunset.
"Oh, ya decide to rejoin the land of the livin'?" Grunkle Stan asked. "We're in a little burg called Issaquah. That's in Washington State. You an' Mabel have been asleep since we went through Customs at the border."
"Are we close?"
"Nah," Stan said, slamming the driver's side door. "Won't be back in Gravity Falls before midnight. You guys can stay in McGucket's house tonight, an' I'll drop you off at the Shack tomorrow morning. I know you don't want to miss your run with Wendy." He put a knowing little spin on the word run.
"Uh—maybe a bathroom break?" Dipper asked.
"That would be a good idea, Stanley," Ford said from the passenger seat as Stan started the engine.
"If you weren't so finicky about goin' behind a tree—"
"I had quite enough of that in the dimension of Arborea," Ford said. "Let's look for a place."
Not five minutes later, Dipper said, "Oh, my gosh! Pull in there! Grunkle Stan, pull in there!"
"What, that carnival? We'll hafta pay, an' then it'll be stinky Porta-Potties—"
"I'll pay!" Dipper said. "Just pull in! Please!"
"It sounds urgent, Stanley," Ford said.
"Well—when ya gotta go, ya gotta go." And Stan turned into an unpaved parking area serving possibly the cheapest traveling fair in the Pacific Northwest.
3
They got back to Gravity Falls not at midnight, but at one a.m. Stanley carried Mabel—really, at fourteen, too old for that—up to the second floor and to the bedroom she used when they stayed over. Dipper went to his own room and fell on the bed fully dressed and slept that way.
Yet at six-thirty they were up, in the Stanleymobile with their suitcases, and on the way to the Mystery Shack. Stan went to the kitchen there and put on coffee—technically, he and Ford still owned the place, but he let Soos do all the running of it these days, though he loved to drop in from time to time to keep his hand in.
Mabel staggered back to her bedroom, where she would sleep for another three or four hours. Dipper hauled his bag up to his room, unpacked, dressed out in running shorts, and then he put Wendy's present in a decorative gift bag left over from some celebration. The bag was too big, but everything fit easily, anyway.
He was early on the lawn, but he stretched out for fifteen minutes until Wendy's forest-green Dodge Dart came crunching into the parking lot. She got out grinning. "Hiya, Dip! So how was the cruise, man?"
"Great," Dipper said, grinning all over his face. "Uh—I brought you this." He held out the bag.
"Dude, I can't eat that many peppermints! I—oh, Dip!"
She had pulled a weird-looking thing out of the bag. It was a plush stuffed animal, but what species it represented was difficult to say. Dipper had rubber-banded its arms together so it held the plastic bag of Canadian mints.
Wendy stood holding it and smiling. "You remembered," she said softly.
"Yeah," Dipper said, shrugging. "See, we passed this carnival, and I recognized it, and the ball-throw game was still with it and still they had these, so this time I made sure there was nobody around to get hit with a ricochet, and on my tenth pitch I finally—"
"Man," Wendy said, holding up the purple and pink panda duck, "this dude is gonna sleep right beside me! Thanks, Dipper."
Lucky toy, he thought, but he said, "Well, you know. I got it for you, 'cause—you know."
"I know, dude," she said. "Let me put my new friend in the car, so's I won't forget it this afternoon. Then we're gonna run. But first, I got something for you."
She did indeed. And even without peppermint, it was sweet.
The End