I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you.
One More Spring
(January-May 2017)
To Dipper and Mabel Pines, beginning a new year was like opening a door to one of those rooms Soos was always discovering in the Mystery Shack. They never knew what lay beyond the door. However, that never once stopped them from opening it. Admittedly, this New Year's Day door was different from all the others. It was marked 18?
Not literally. But that's what it felt like. This year they would be eighteen. And then . . . ?
1: Love Matters
Dipper and Mabel got back from their Christmas trip to Gravity Falls on January 1. By the time they'd hauled their dirty laundry, guitar cases, sewing and crafting supplies, luggage, and themselves into the house in Piedmont, they were already missing their friends.
Well, in the cases of Wendy and Teek, more than just friends. But, you know, the twins soon got busy enough to dull the edge of missing them because of school. It was their last term of Senior Year, the big run-up to Prom and State Track Meet and Graduation and then one summer in Gravity falls and—college and all that.
In other words, they both had plenty of distractions from love-longings. That term, Dipper had two extra-hard classes. Mabel, for once outsmarting her brobro, had the easiest schedule she'd enjoyed since Freshman Year, three art classes, for one thing, which she was going to ace and which she could almost teach. The other two courses weren't easy A's, but they were interesting enough for her to keep up the work necessary at her own relaxed pace. As Mabel said, easy schedules result from crafty planning.
Then on a Saturday in late January, she received her official acceptance packet from the Olmsted College of the Arts, up north, a scant three miles from Western Alliance University, where both Dipper and Wendy had already been accepted. She'd received the actual letter before Christmas, but now she unpacked the campus map and the activities calendar and the catalog and the bulletin and so on and so forth.
She fretted about the dorm situation—the packet informed her that owing to unusually crowded conditions, she might have not one, but three roommates. They were putting an extra bunk-bed in each room of the freshman dorm.
"Three roomies! I can't stand it!" Mabel lamented.
"What's wrong with that?" Dipper asked her. "You're gregarious."
"No, I eat both meat and vegetables," Mabel said. "What does diet have to do with it? Anyhow, yeah, ordinarily I'm the life of the party, and if there isn't a party, I start one. But I know me, and that kind of free-range behavior could get me into trouble real quick. Think of it—four in a room would be like a sleepover, seven nights out of the week!" She brooded over the dorm photos in the color brochure. Dipper had to admit that even with two girls in the dorm room, it looked crowded. "I'm too, what did you say, gregarious for my own good!"
"Good point," Dipper agreed. "Maybe you should learn some control. Seems to me that a key to keeping your sanity's self-control."
Mabel sounded upset: "I don't want to be one of Santa's selves! I want to be a dentist!"
Dipper, who had been half-paying attention while also studying a chapter in his Calculus II textbook, glanced up at her. "Huh?"
Mabel just shrugged. "Sorry, little hangover from Christmas. Oh, I don't know. The student handbook says I can live off-campus if I'm twenty-one, or even younger if I have a relative to live with, and if I have my own transportation, and I've got Helen Wheels. Hey, maybe I could live with you and Wendy?"
Dipper laughed, nearly snorting. "We're applying for an apartment in Married Housing! Want to see that floor plan?" He put his textbook aside and went to his file cabinet—yes, he had actually asked for and received a filing cabinet as one of his Christmas gifts—and found the sheet. "Here you go. Take a look and tell me where you plan to sleep."
"Waugh," Mabel said, spreading the plan on the table she used for sewing. "Is this it? A bedroom, a little study area, and a bathroom? And it's all open except for the bathroom! This is inhumane! How many square feet is this, anyway?"
"Let's see. It's fourteen feet wide and twelve feet deep. The bathroom there is four feet wide by eight deep, and that's a little closet behind it, six feet deep by two feet wide. Work that out."
"A hundred and twenty-four feet?" Mabel asked. "Not even a tub in the bathroom, just a little tiny shower stall. You guys will get, like, cabin fever! You'll kill each other! Or else you'll never get out of bed and you'll both flunk out! That's ridiculous! Our craft room here's at least that big!"
She had a point. They were sitting in Dipper's guitar-practice room and Mabel's sewing room, and it undoubtedly was somewhat larger than 124 square feet. However, Dipper said, "It is what it is. And it's not cheap. That little apartment is thirty-six hundred dollars a semester."
Mabel frantically studied the floor sketch. "Wait, where's the kitchen? The dining room?"
Dipper reached for his calculus textbook again. "It doesn't have them. There's a communal kitchen for each six units."
"One kitchen and six couples? Impossible! That means you can't ever cook!"
"We can, but—"
"No fridge! No midnight snacks! Why don't they just send you to prison?"
"Well," Dipper said, "we could live off-campus—like Olmsted, at W.A.U. it's a rule that freshmen have to stay in the freshman dorm for at least their first semester, but that's waived for married students. Wendy and I aren't thinking of doing that because it would be a heck of a lot more expensive. Rents run high around there. I checked, and even a tiny little cottage with just one bedroom and one bath ran three thousand dollars a month."
"What do I have to pay for my cell?" Mabel asked. She sorted through the information from Olmsted until she found it. "Oh, I can't believe this! Says here that to pay for my part of a four-girl room, it's nearly $6500 for the year. That's robbery!"
"Expensive, like I said. I think we may burn through half our savings by going to college," Dipper said. "Of course, I'm supposed to have some more TV money coming in this year, but still—face it, Sis, college costs a lot."
Mabel pretended to faint and lay stretched out on the floor. She stared up at Dipper, who sat on the floor leaning against the wall. "Wait, you have scholarships, though! Two of them!"
"Which pay for my tuition and books," Dipper said. "That helps a lot, but things like housing and food are extra. Wendy was smart to get her freshman year taken care of by going part-time to a community college. Lots cheaper."
"But that's too late for me! Wait, how big's my room gonna be?" Mabel asked.
The materials she'd received didn't specify, but online they visited the school's website and discovered that Audubon Dorm—the designated freshman dormitory at Olmsted—featured very basic rooms: Two smallish closets, a shared bathroom with gang showers down the hall, bunk beds and two desks, and, Dipper calculated from photos, only about 110 square feet of actual living space.
"For four of us?" Mabel wailed. "That's only 27 and a half feet for each of us!"
"You'll just have to make an effort to get along with your roomies," Dipper said.
"What if I can't stand them? What if they don't like me?"
"Maybe you can get to know who they are before college starts," Dipper suggested. "You could mail them or email them and like that. That could help you adjust."
Mabel wasn't at all sure about that, but she didn't know what else to say.
About a week later, Mabel finally got up the nerve to have the Talk with Billy Sheaffer. I like you a lot as a friend, Billy, but, well, I'm just too old for you. You'll find somebody your own age. Hey, don't be hurt. I'm not saying I won't be your friend anymore! I'm gonna be here for you, and things aren't going to change . . . .
Mabel had eavesdropped that time after she, Dipper, Soos, and Wendy had explored Ford's bunker, and she remembered how Wendy had handled a similar situation. This was the same tune, just different lyrics. Same-y but different-y, too.
And if it was hard on the eleven-year-old boy, it was difficult for her, no use to lie about that. Still, as she put a little distance between her and Billy, feeling-wise, she tried to be empathetic and understanding and all that cool stuff, and she offered him lots of reassurance. In a way, Billy was even more insecure than her brother, and that meant he might even have set a world record.
As Mabel talked, Billy grew upset—she could read that on his face and see it in the tears spilling from his good eye—but she got through the spiel and then went out of her way to be extra-nice to him over the following week, and he started to seem glumly resigned to not eventually marrying Mabel.
In fact, he finally admitted to her that, at eleven, he wasn't really sure about this whole proposition of falling in love. A crush is one thing; love is very different and much more difficult, especially for someone who embodied the spirit of a dream demon who had never once felt love.
Every time they saw each other, Mabel talked to him about it. "Love is when somebody means so much to you that you'd do anything to help them or protect them. If they want to go on a long trip far away without you, you let them, even if it makes you lonely. That's because you like them more than you like yourself, even," she said as they sat on the floor in his living room playing checkers on a board spread out on the coffee table.
"I don't always even like myself," Billy admitted. "I get mad and want to hurt people. The ones who make fun of me and push me around at school. Then I think of how they all must see me, just this useless little damaged kid. No wonder girls get creeped out by me. Sometimes I think I can't do anything right."
"What are you talking about?" Mabel asked, smiling. "Right now you're beating me so bad at checkers—look, I'm down to three guys, and not one of them crowned!—not even Grunkle Stan can beat me like that."
"This is just a game," Billy said.
"So's romance, Billy! Hey, I can teach you the rules. See, when boys get interested in girls, ninety-nine per cent of them are too dumb to know what girls like in a guy or how to act around a girl, even. Let me give you the valuable inside information, and you'll go into the game with all your checkers already crowned! Um, that's like a metaphor."
Billy actually chuckled a little. "I didn't think checkers was a way to make girls like me."
"Ah-hah! First rule of the game: You can't make a girl like you, Billy. If you try, she'll know you're trying, and at worst you'll scare her off and at best she'll feel pity for you. Trust me, you don't want that. Pity is the acid that dissolves the honey of love!"
"O . . . kay," Billy said slowly.
Mabel waved her arms. "All right, all right, forget the metaphors. Let me see how I can put it simply. Um, you can never make someone love you. But you can make yourself someone who deserves to be loved."
"I don't know how to do that," Billy said, his shoulders slumping.
"That's why I'm gonna be your coach of love!" Mabel told him. "Hey, I'm the second-best matchmaker alive! The guy in first place, believe me, you don't want to mess with him, he's overweight and sings too loud and tends to foul things up, but I'll give him this: he can match-make like nobody's business! OK, so I'm on your side, let's start. Who are some girls in your class? Ones you'd like to just be friends with?"
"Um, well—" Billy cooked his finger at his lips and frowned in thought, and Mabel got a little shiver. That pose reminded her a little bit too much for comfort of Bill Cipher planning world domination. "There's Penny Abrensen. She's nice, but—you know, well, she never notices me."
"What's Penny like?"
"Oh, she's always laughing. And she can make other people laugh. I mean, she makes silly faces and does goofy things." Bill smiled. "She's pretty, too, and she dresses in these real bright colors, and she doesn't care if nobody else does."
Nodding her approval, Mabel said, "I'd say she's a winner. Penny, she's number one on our list of possibles. Who's another girl you wouldn't mind being friends with? We should look at about three more."
"It's kind of hard for me to be friends with anybody," Billy mumbled. "I always know that I'm different. And they know."
"Different, the same, what's the diff?" Mabel asked. When Billy looked as if he didn't quite get that, Mabel said, "Look, opposites attract, OK? You don't gotta be the same as the girl you like. You just have to let her be who she is. And appreciate that. And let her be herself. And you be yourself, too, but find things you can share and agree on. That's the best way, Billy. So—who's another girl?"
"China Hartbrough," he said. "People make fun of her name, and that makes her mad, but—well, she's quiet and always looks a little bit sad for some reason. She's kinda nerdy, I guess. Wears glasses, and she's real smart, always makes A's. She, uh, doesn't have many friends. She seems kind of lonely. But I wouldn't know how to start."
"Easy. Start by sitting near her at lunch, or out on the playground, or somewhere. Just say 'Hi,' and then say something nice about her."
"Like what?" Billy asked.
"Um, her name, for instance. First thing," Mabel said. "You talk about your own name. Say, oh, 'William's such an ordinary name.' And then tell her, 'But you've got a real interesting name, China. I really like your name.' Then she'll say something."
"What?" Billy asked.
"What am I, a mind-reader?" Mabel kidded him. "Really I don't know, but she'll say something. She may say, 'I hate my name!' Or maybe she'll tell you how she got it. Or she might say she thinks Billy is a nice name, whatever. It doesn't matter! Once she starts talking to you, listen to her. I mean, really listen. Look at you right now, you're staring down at the checkerboard. When a girl talks to you, look at her face! Watch her lips, watch her expression. Practice by looking at me. That's better! And take what she's saying in. Pay attention. Then you say something back—if she says, 'I hate my name!' you say, 'It's because people tease you, isn't it? But that doesn't matter. Your name is part of you, and I like it because I like you.' Don't turn red! This is just your first checker move in the romance game!"
They came up with two other girls as possibles, but in the end, Billy thought he might start with China, because she looked like she needed a friend. Mabel approved. All in all, on that January day, Mabel gave young Billy Sheaffer quite a few things to think about. And he made up his mind that he would try some of her suggestions out, yes, he would! Some day. Soon. Probably.
Piedmont High's track and field season started in early February. Dipper looked at the team he captained with considerable pride. They'd trained hard and shaped up, and when they won their first meet handily, he congratulated them all.
"Great going, guys and girls!" he said, standing up front after they'd boarded the bus. "If you weren't keeping score, we took firsts in both the girls' and boy's 4 by 800 relays—Lara, Mary Dean, Jen, Madison, Mark, Xavier, Bailey, Donald, congratulations to you all! And Marcie took a first in the 100-meter hurdles, and Jimmy got a second in the boy's hurdles. Trina got a second in the hundred-meter dash, and Xavier got a first in the 1600 meter—"
"Hey, Cap!" Gene Wyler said. "Don't short-change yourself! You got a first in the 200-meter dash!"
"Well, yeah," Dipper said with a grin. A Grunkle Stan response came to him: "I was gonna get to it eventually, just building up to mentioning the most important victory!" He got a good laugh from them and went on, singling out everyone who'd won or placed and telling them it was great that out of twenty-four events, they had seven first places, eight second places, and nine thirds. "So we got medals in every event," he finished. "More than any of the other schools. A couple of you had bad luck, but you all put in the effort. All I'm going to ask is—keep doing what you're doing!"
Coach Dinson, sitting behind the driver, called out, "And let's cheer our team captain, guys! Big one for Dipper Pines!"
As the kids shouted and clapped, Dipper felt pleased, but not as pleased as he was that evening, when he face-timed Wendy with the sports report. "I always wanted to be engaged to a jock!" she teased him. "Seriously, man, I'm real proud of you. Wish I could give you a big kiss right now to show you how much."
"Oh, I wish too, Wendy. I wish you could. So much."
"Yeah, this long-distance thing gets old fast," she agreed. "But close or far, I love you, Big Dipper."
"Love you right back, Magic Girl."
All in all, little glitches and small setbacks and worries about the future aside, it seemed to Dipper and Mabel as though things were going good.
If only they would keep going that way.