The Visit

(January 30-31, 2015)

1

From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Friday afternoon: Because track season begins in a week, Coach Dinson had us practice until nearly five, and then we broke up to go home. It was a good session, and I'm happy with the JV's chances. Our first meet is small, just four other schools, and I think we've got an edge on all of them, so I'm hoping for some early wins to get the team morale way up there.

So anyway, we left the track and climbed uphill to the gym and hit the showers. I still feel self-conscious in a mob of laughing, joking naked guys! They rag on me a lot about having "a girlfriend in Canada," even though a couple of my teammates stand up for me and talk about the gorgeous redhead who showed up last year at the finals.

Anyway, I showered fast and dressed and walked out of the gym alone, swinging my workout bag. I can walk home from the school—it's only a couple miles—but usually I catch a ride with one of the Varsity guys, unless I want to have some thinking time.

This afternoon, though, as soon as I came out of the front doors of the gym, I saw my Grunkle Ford, standing there in his black pants and his burgundy-colored turtleneck sweater. Um, not the one that Mabel knitted for him with "Silver Fox" appliquéd on it, but just the plain kind he usually wears. Oh, speaking of that, Mabel says that now he's looking younger, she's going to have to make him a different sweater, but she says, "Brown-haired fox" doesn't have the same ring. She's still thinking about what she plans to put on it.

Anyway, I was real surprised to see my Grunkle standing there patiently. "What are you doing here?" I asked. I guess that sounded rude, but I didn't mean it that way.

He chuckled. "It's good to see you, too, Ma—ah, Dipper. Oh, I had some business in the Bay Area, so I thought I'd drop in for a quick visit. I've called ahead and spoken to your mother already. She, ah, has invited me to stay in the guest room tonight."

"That's great!" I said. All around us the team, both guys and girls, were pouring out of the gym, chatting and laughing.

"I have a car," Ford said. "This way."

It was a rental, a bronze Subatsi Seppuku mid-sized sedan. Ford opened the trunk with a remote, and I tossed in my gym bag, next to his brown suitcase. Then we got in the car. He's as big as Grunkle Stan—well, that goes without saying, they're twins—and he had a hard time squeezing into the driver's seat until he reached down and slipped the seat back about six inches. "That's better," he said. "I should have done that when I first drove the car from the rental agency!"

"Why didn't you?"

"Oh, things on my mind, you know how it is." Ford, fussing with the dash, grumbled, "I really don't approve of all the changes they've made to automobiles in the past thirty-odd years. I don't even have a real key for this, just a little microchipped fob that remotely opens the doors and the trunk lid. The car somehow senses that it's aboard and lets you start the engine without a real key, if you remember how. Somewhere there's a device to start the engine, but I don't recall just where—"

"Uh, the little black button that says 'Start' in white letters," I suggested, pointing.

Ford perked up. "Ah, so it is. This vehicle is a hybrid, you know. It's not actually a cross between two different brands of car, but it runs partly on electricity, partly on gasoline."

"I . . . yeah, I've heard of that," I replied, trying not to laugh.

He put the car into reverse to back out of the parking slot. "And look! There's even a color television screen on the dash that shows what's behind the car, preventing me from backing over a pedestrian or hitting another vehicle. I do like that feature, but there's also an annoying computer voice that keeps telling me to take turns I don't want to take."

"Um, that would be the GPS," I told him. As soon as the rear display was off the screen, I got into the GPS menu. "Here, this is the trouble. The last person who rented it had the airport set as destination and it must not have been cleared out. It's been trying to direct you back to the rental agency." I fixed the GPS, cancelling the route, and silenced it.

"Much better! Excellent work," Ford said. We got to the street. "Thank you, Mason. That voice was most annoying. Now—which way do I turn for your house?"

I could have set the GPS, but instead I just said, "Turn right here at the light. I'll navigate."

Again, he said, "Thank you, Mason."

I smiled. "Thanks for calling me 'Dipper' back at the gym, Grunkle Ford. Though the meet programs always list me as 'Mason,' so everybody at school knows now." That isn't really accurate. Most of the students don't follow the track team.

"Ah, but your friends still call you 'Dipper,'" Grunkle Ford said understandingly.

"Uh, yeah, right . . . all my friends call me that." Now that my pinkies have come in, I can count my friends at school on one hand. I mean, I've got some friendly teammates, but real friends? Not so many of them. About half my high school class came from my old elementary school, where everyone knew me as an uncool nerd. I guess I'm still a little paranoid about getting close to other people, and it's hard for me to make new friends, or any friends, really. "Left here, and then the next right."

He wouldn't tell me why he was here—"Let's save that until Mabel can join us and we can all discuss it"—but he did ask me about the publisher and my progress on my young-adult novel.

"It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be," I told him. "The editor wanted about half a dozen small changes, toning down a little bit of the violence—not taking it out, but, like, saying that when the Gnarl is caught with the leaf blower and blasted into the forest, I just had to add a line that went something like, 'The twins didn't know it, but Gnarls are extra-tough, and the flight over the trees and the crash didn't hurt Joff at all. In fact, though he was a little angry at his wedding plot being foiled, he sort of wanted to take the ride again.' Then the editor found some typos and stuff, too, but they were easy to fix. I've already sent the revised manuscript back, and if the editor likes all the changes, the next step is for the company to send the first check to the agent."

"Impressive! You're way ahead of schedule! Congratulations, young man!"

I smiled. Dad was kind of surprised that I had a book accepted, and Mom kept wondering if it was going to affect my grades. Mabel complained that the character based on her wasn't glamorous enough.

Grunkle Ford was the first relative of mine to whole-heartedly approve of my trying to be a writer.

I smiled, sighed, and said, "Yes. But now I'll start plotting out the next one, the lake-monster book. They want me to turn that in by September. OK, now we're getting into our neighborhood. Next right, and then the next right after that, and then down to the end of the street."

"Of course. Now I recognize it."

I looked out the passenger window as we passed our old house. It's already been sold, though I don't know who bought it, and whoever it is hasn't moved in yet. It feels kind of weird going past it every day, like part of me still wants to go in the door, up the stairs, and into my old room. I hope the new family likes the place and treats it well.

We reached the cul-de-sac, where Ford pulled into our driveway—it's double-wide, and I told him to park on the left, because Dad usually pulls into the right side of the garage—and we got out.

Mabel came zooming out of the front door and threw herself on Grunkle Ford for a bear hug. "It's been like forever!" she said at the top of her lungs.

"Um, it's been twenty-five days," I corrected her. "You and I got back from Gravity Falls on the fourth of January."

"Seems like forever!" she said. "Where's your suitcase? Dipper, you can carry your stinky gym clothes. Got it! Wow, you bought a rolling suitcase! Welcome to the twenty-first century!"

"It was handy for our trip to Paris," Ford said, laughing as Mabel hauled the suitcase out of the trunk and extended the tow handle.

"Yeah, where's Graunty Lorena?" Mabel demanded as she started to trundle the suitcase along the walk to the front door.

"Lorena has to work," Ford said. "Well—she doesn't have to, but she loves her job. She's on the desk at the museum library this weekend, so she couldn't come."

Mom met us at the door. Ford hugged her—he's still awkward about things like that—and she said, "The guest room is all ready for you, Uncle Stanford."

"Thank you, Wanda," he said. "I plan to fly back Sunday, so it will only be the two nights. I hope I'm not intruding."

She laughed, sounding surprisingly like Mabel. "You can't intrude," she said. "You're family!" That's a new thing with Mom. Until she and Dad met our Grunkles and spent some time with them, I never heard her speak so warmly of family. I like it when she does.

"Dip and I will put your suitcase away!" Mabel announced. "Come on, Brobro! Forward, mush!"

She didn't really need any help, but I know a hint when Mabel gives me one. I've learned to spot them early to avoid a sharp elbow in my ribs. I mean, some of Mabel's hints have left me with actual bruises. We went down the hall.

The guest room is across from my parents' bedroom, and the guest-room windows look out over the front lawn. Since we're at the end of a cul-de-sac, there's not much traffic, so at night it's quiet and you don't get headlights waking you up at all hours. Sometimes we do get sirens from over on Oakland Avenue as ambulances race toward the Kaiser hospital, but even that isn't awfully loud.

Mabel grunted as she plopped the suitcase on the bed, then demanded, "Why's he here, Dip? Is he working on some case? Some big conspiracy? An international threat to world peace? Are the woodpeckers suing for divorce? What? Spill it!"

"I—don't know," I said. "He just told me he had business in the Bay Area. But I think it involves you and me. He said he wanted to talk to us privately, but he wanted to wait until we're all together."

"Mom and Dad, too?"

"Uh, no, I think just us."

"Time's a-wasting!" Mabel pronounced, and she thundered back down the hall.

I followed more slowly. I knew that we wouldn't get a chance to talk privately until after dinner, anyhow.

But I had a bad feeling, because I couldn't help wondering—

Maybe Grunkle Ford had a lead on whoever had created that thing that summoned the T'klatlumodh that had attacked Wendy.

Like Mabel, I wanted to find out what Ford was up to.

Unlike her, I knew that I'd just have to wait.