Mabel and Teek's Excellent Adventure


(July 4, 2014)


Chapter 1

From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Friday, July 4: It's only seven, and I've been up for an hour and a half. Wendy came over super early for our exercise and run—we got up the nerve to take our nature route, but we gave Moon Trap Pond a wide berth. And we briefly visited the Bill Cipher effigy, but he didn't seem to be at home.

Then, darn it, Wendy had to go home. The Shack's closed today for the holiday, and Soos is planning a great big cookout and barbecue for anybody who wants to drop in. The Museum will have an open house, free admission, but I guess the gift shop won't open at all, unless Grunkle Stan comes over to run the register. Which he probably will . . .. "Never lose an opportunity to separate a mark from a buck" is his motto.

Anyway, Wendy and her family are going to visit one of her aunts, who's recovering from gall-bladder surgery, and that will take until about three or four o'clock this afternoon, so we don't get to hang out together. I've volunteered to help Soos and Melody set up everything for the cookout, which means setting up a whole bunch of tables and folding chairs.

Normally I guess Teek would do the grilling, but Soos gave him the day off (with pay, same as Wendy), and he hired an older couple, the Willetts, to cook just for the day. They're retired, but they used to own and cook at a restaurant over in Mossy Run, and Soos says they're great.

Mabel is so proud of herself. She's babysitting Little Soos all day long. She has the whole kit—diaper bag, cooler bag with three or four bottles of milk (Melody's milk. I didn't ask how they got it into the bottles, and I don't want to know), toys, the whole bit.

"Sis, are you sure about this?" I asked her.

"Brobro," she said in that I-know-what-I'm-doing tone of hers that means she doesn't, "I'm fourteen! I am a competent care-giver for babies!"

"Should I remind you of the Vernet baby and the bulldozer incident?" I asked. The Vernets are down-the-street neighbors of ours in Piedmont, and back in the spring they had asked Mabel to sit with their three-year-old, Chimber (long story behind that name, never mind) just long enough for them to go have dinner and see a movie. Afterwards, the authorities estimated damages at close to fourteen thousand dollars.

"Pffft!" Mabel said. "That was three months ago! I'm WAY more mature now. Besides, they shouldn't have left the keys in the thing."

"Don't take Little Soos away from the Shack," I advised her.

"Don't worry, bro-o-mine! Teek is coming over to help me keep an eye on Soosie!"

I felt a little better. Teek is a nice guy, and he's responsible. So Soos and I moved tables, unfolded the legs, set them up, and taped down butcher-paper covers—three layers on each table so when they got messy we could just peel down to the next one—and unfolded folding chairs. There were five tables and a total of eight chairs at each. "What if we get more than forty at a time?" I asked.

Soos shrugged cheerfully. "Got it covered, dawg. Melody dug out, like, a dozen vinyl tablecloths, right? So we'll make the front yard the picnic lawn! That is, like, using our resources. Also our brains. High five!"

We were halfway through the job when Teek came biking up. He hopped off and offered to help, but Soos shrugged. "Eh, got it covered, T.K. But thanks, man! Mabel's inside. She's watchin' over Little Soos, and you can help her do that."

"OK," Teek said. He gave me a little shrug that said clearly, "I just talked to Mabel on the phone about this!"

"You sticking around for the fireworks at the lake this evening?" I asked Teek.

"Uh. Yeah, I guess so. If I can catch a ride."

"No worries, man!" Soos said. "Long as I got a truck, you're, uh. You—huh. ALMOST had a slogan, dawg."

"As long as I got a truck, you're in luck," I offered.

Soos stared at me. "Dude! You can't drive. You're like, a year off from a learner's permit!"

"Oh. Well, in that case, you can use the slogan," I said.

Soos did an air-pump. "Yes! It's all falling into place!"

Teek grinned at me, waved, and went into the Shack. I guess I shouldn't worry. Between the two of them, Teek and Mabel should be able to handle one little baby. Well, big baby—he IS Soos's son. But still . . . I'm sure it'll be fine.

Reasonably sure.


The first hour or so went fine. Little Soos played with foam-rubber blocks, practiced creeping—you couldn't yet call it a crawl, more like a floor-swim—took a brief nap, got a diaper change, had some milk, burped some of it back up, you know—normal baby stuff.

Grunkle Stan showed up around eight and came in to see his godson. "He's gonna grow up to be a big one!" he said, raising Little Soos way up over his head and then down again, making him giggle. Little Soos, that is. Stan rarely giggled.

Mabel had gone to change her sweater—she had been holding Little Soos to burp him when the splootch of milk had glurched up on her shoulder—and she came back grinning. "He likes that, Grunkle Stan!"

"Yeah, you know, you did, too when you were just a baby. Dipper, though, it scared the dickens outa him."

"Huh?" Mabel asked, tilting her head. "You saw us when we were babies?"

"Kiddo, didn't I tell ya? I was there the day you two were born! 'Course your parents thought I was my brother Stanford. Man, I'll never forget that day. Dipper nearly died."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, he was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Came out blue. They were gonna put him on oxygen, but I gave him a little bit of mouth-to-mouth—don't look shocked, I had the courses—an' he started to breathe on his own. Close call, though."

"Oh, wow."

Stan shrugged. "Yeah, an' I visited your family over the next year, I guess, two-three times. Then I got real busy and the next year just made it down once. And then, well, not at all. I mean, your parents were so happy with you I kinda felt like I was intrudin', so—didn't see you again until you were twelve."

Teek took Little Soos from Grunkle Stan, and Little Soos started playing his own personal favorite game of Stick-My-Fingers-Up-Your-Nose.

"We were so lucky that we got to come to the Shack," Mabel said.

Stan laughed. "Luck, shm—uh, I mean, luck had nothin' to do with it. Your parents were worried, mainly 'cause of Dipper—I talked to your mom on the phone that May, an' she said that in the summer he did nothin' but read books. She wanted him to get out in the fresh air. So, they were lookin' around for summer camps, which only go for maybe a couple weeks an' cost like an arm and a leg. I told her I had lotsa room, that Gravity Falls had fresh air and nature and squirrels and birds and like that, and you guys would love it here! And—" his face twitched, he clenched his teeth, and between he them said—"I told her it would be free. Man, still hurts to say that! But you were family, and—I guess I was kinda lonely. Anyways, I'm glad it worked out and we all survived."

"Me, too," Mabel said. "It would have been a bummer if you'd lost your memory for good. Or if one of us had died. Or I'd had to marry a thousand Gnomes."

"Yeah, all of that would kinda suck," Stan agreed. "Well-p, I'm gonna run th' gift shop today. That knucklehead Soos is lettin' the suckers in for free, but that don't mean we can't snag some of their dough!"

"Hey," Mabel said, "you remember that first week we were here when we were just twelve years old? How you let us each take a piece of merch?"

"Yeah, Dipper's trucker hat an' that cockamamie grapplin' hook. Oy! How could I forget?"

"Well, Teek's a loyal employee! Shouldn't he get his pick of something, too? Just asking, 'cause you're my favorite Grunkle!"

Stan looked uncomfortable. "Aw, Pumpkin! You should really ask Soos, 'cause he's the manager. No, wait. Soos'd give him somethin' worth hundreds of dollars."

"But you and Grunkle Ford are the owners!" Mabel told him. "C'mon. For me? Pleeease?"

"Aw, OK! Just don't use them cuteness mind powers on me! T.K., look around the shop an' find somethin' you'd like as a souvenir. Anything under ten bucks!"

"Grunkle Sta-an!"

Stan sighed. "Twenty or under, an' that's my final offer! Take it before I change my mind completely!"

"Cool," T.K. said. "Thanks, Mr. Pines!"

"Yeah, yeah. Mabel, you go help him pick somethin' out. I don't even wanna watch. Meanwhile, Soosie, ya wanna go for a pony ride?"

Little Soos clapped his hands and laughed, so Stan sat in his old chair, put the baby on his knee, and began to jounce him up and down.

Mabel and Teek went into the gift shop. "OK," she said, "look around an' pick out something good. You don't get a chance like this every day with Stan!"

"Aw," Teek said, "I don't even know where to start."

Mabel kissed him on the cheek. "I'll be your guide!" she said.

So, they wandered from shelf to shelf, looking at T-shirts with images of pumas, panthers, and multibears on them. Pine-tree caps ("Nope," Mabel said. "They'd remind me too much of pinecest." "What?" T.K. asked. "Later, Teek," Mabel said, "I will explain the term 'shipping' to you."). Mystic pendants guaranteed to turn your neck green. Whistles that no one, not even dogs, could hear. A trick quarter that had not two, but four heads (it involved the fourth dimension, probably). A Gnome figurine that, when you pushed on the red cap, would barf up a rainbow, but then the colors mixed and got messy and you had to scrub it off the table with steel wool and bleach.

Teek had shuffled around a shelf of assorted tchotchkes—paperweights, small coin banks in the shape of the Shack, picture frames that would hold no image larger than 1 ½ by 2 inches, that kind of thing—and way in the back, he found and pulled out a sphere of solid yellow glass about two inches in diameter. "Cool," he said. "A crystal ball!"

"Huh," Mabel murmured. "Never noticed that back there before. You like it?"

"Sure," Teek said. "Watch." He rolled the yellow ball across his palm, over his outstretched fingers, turned his hand over, rolled it down the back of his hand, flipped it into the air, and caught it again in his palm. It lay there like a miniature sun, gleaming in the light.

"Wow!" Mabel said. "Can you juggle?"

"Uh, sort of," Teek said, blushing. "I mean, I couldn't with something like this, I'd need rubber balls or tennis balls. And, uh, I'm not good. I can usually do like three jugs before dropping one. But I'm practicing." He punched his round glasses back into position on his nose—they had a tendency to slip down—and shrugged. "But yeah, this would be fun to fool around with."

"And you can gaze into it and see the future!" Mabel said.

"Yeah. That, uh, that's sort of the kind of thing that Mr. Mystery tells the tourists," Teek said with a smile.

They took the ball back and asked Stan if that would be OK as Teek's souvenir.

He held it and said, "Sure. It ain't glass, by the way, it's genuine crystal." When Mabel put her hands on her hips and shot him a come-now glance, he said, "It's true, on my mother's grave! This was somethin' I found when I first moved into the Shack, after Ford had, you know, had his accident. It was in a box and the box had been labeled in pencil, 'Rare 100% Clear Citrine Crystal.' I put it on th' shelf an' stuck a thousand-dollar price sticker on it, crossed out the figure and replaced it with SALE! $250, figurin' some mark would go for it, but nobody ever did. So sure, take it if you like it."

Teek did, and when Stan went into the gift shop to stock the register and don the fez, black suit, and tie, Mabel and Teek took Little Soos outside, where he rode on Waddles's back—actually Mabel held him in place, but he thought he was riding Waddles—for a few minutes, and then they spread out one of the tablecloths on the grass and let Little Soos tumble around on it for a while, and Teek practiced his hand moves with the yellow crystal, which gleamed brightly in the sun, and got better and better with the moves.

Then Little Soos saw the globe and reached out for it.

"Too big for him to swallow," Mabel said. "Want to let him see it?"

"Sure," Teek said, and he handed the crystal ball to the baby.

Who clutched it, peered into it, cooed, and tried to suck it.

And vanished into thin air.

The ball dropped to the tablecloth.

Mabel said, "Uh-oh."

And that seemed to sum it up.