PART ONE: MY IDENTITY CRISIS, AND EVERYTHING IN-BETWEEN

A fifty dollar tip, just for a couple of pancakes and some hash browns. I pocket the cash and look to the door, to say thank you, but it swings closed and the man is already getting in his car.

Another day, another giant tip at Greasy's diner. Lindsay has this theory that the diner is a popular rest stop for rich businessmen traveling from Washington to California, and my natural charm milks them dry. By natural charm, I think she means my blond hair and my sizable breasts.

Lindsay is the owner of this substandard establishment, taking over from her mother, Susan, who passed away about five years back. She is fifty years old and beautiful, with wavy blond locks and smooth, gravity-defying skin. She is the warmest person you will meet in the whole state of Oregon. Two years ago, my job interview here took place over a booth with a coffee and a plate of freshly-baked cookies, and I got the job just by feigning interest about the lady's cats. I call her my second mother, though I like her a lot more than my real mom. We won't get into that right now.

The diner itself is an ancient repurposed train carriage, except the metal exterior has been torn out and replaced by wood. From the outside, the place resembles a giant log on wheels. I don't know why that draws in a slew of tourists year-round, but it does. It lies on the outskirts of my home town, the one and only Gravity Falls. Never heard of it? Good. You're normal.

I wipe down the table and carry one plate back behind the counter. I pass it through the window to the kitchen for Julio to take, catching a wave of that permanent, unbearable heat that I don't know how he hasn't died from. I turn away from it and wipe the sweat from my forehead.

The bell above the door rings and in my peripheral vision, I clock a couple sit down at the booth I just cleaned. My cheeks puff out as I exhale. 3:30 P.M., and the lunch rush has not let up. It's Friday, too, and we're only going to get busier over the rest of the weekend.

Lindsay squeezes my shoulder from behind and says, "take a break. I'll get this one."

"It's fine," I tell her, pulling my notepad from my front pocket. "You're busy enough as it is."

Halfway to the table, I regret my decision. On my first step, I see a girl sitting on one side of the booth. On my second step, I see long brown hair that curls a little at the end, I see a red sweater, and I see blue jeans and sandals. On my third, I think, no. No, it can't possibly be her.

But it is. She is here. Here. Plain as day.

I panic. My heart surges, my clammy palms dart to my hair to smooth it back, to ensure every strand is neatly tucked away in my ponytail. I glance down at my sky blue shirt, scrutinize it for coffee stains or grease or crumbs, all of the things that are totally reasonable to be on the front of a waitress' clothes but that I will not accept right now. I think I'm in the clear. Is there a zit on my forehead? Nope, I popped that this morning. Shit, this is ridiculous. It does not matter. She does not matter.

Stepping up to the table, I recite, "hey guys, welcome to Greasy's. What can I get you?"

There is a man sat opposite her, most likely in his mid-twenties. I decide to focus solely on his bearded face. He stares back at me for a moment and then says, "do you not have the concept of ladies first up here in Oregon?"

Oh. He is a prick. I narrow my eyes at him. "Excuse me?"

"Jason," the girl across from him hisses. "Don't be a jerk."

If her appearance didn't give it away, her voice does. Unmistakeable. Kind of nasally, like she perpetually has a tissue stuffed in one nostril, but in an adorable way.

Not adorable. Irritating. I do not like her.

"I'll have a strawberry milkshake, please," she says, as my quivering fingers struggle to grip the pen, "and he will have a coffee because he is clearly not fully awake yet, despite it being 3 P.M."

"Sure," I murmur. "You want spit in that?"

Jason's glowering eyes catch mine. "What?"

"You want cream in that?"

"No. Black."

Mabel giggles as I turn away. Jason sounds irritable; maybe he can't figure out why his pubic hair keeps growing out of his chin. When I'm behind the safety of the counter, I clutch it with my hands and face the wall, exhaling bottomless breaths.

Lindsay materializes out of nowhere again and rubs my shoulder. "Are you feeling okay?"

"Yep. Mhmm. Fine," I lie, grabbing a clean cup and a glass from under the counter.

"Why don't you go lie down for a little bit, hon?"

"That... that sounds great, actually," I sigh. I thought I could handle a couple more tables. I was not expecting her to walk in.

I let myself into the tiny break room adjoining the kitchen, which consists of one couch and a desk with a computer running a Windows 98 screensaver. I fall into the plushy cushions and shut my eyes, but when I keep seeing her face in my eyelids I plaster them open and gaze at the grease stain on the ceiling. How did that even get up there?

About fifteen minutes pass, I think. Time only loosely exists in the break room. Lindsay comes in and waves a ten dollar bill in my face.

"What's this?"

"From the girl at table four," she says. "She said she apologizes for the man's behavior."

I take the bill with a tentative hand and knit my eyebrows. It doesn't confirm that she recognized me. Mabel would have done that for anybody.

I wake up in my second-floor apartment, on the couch, to my feet being tickled. The first thing I see as my eyelids flutter open is black curly hair and a satisfied smirk - my roommate, Nina. A pretty sight, sure, but she isn't immune to my morning wrath. I grunt and check my phone.

"Ugh, what the fuck? It's only 8 o'clock."

"Didn't make it to your bed last night then?"

Slightly dazed, I sit up and examine myself to find I am still wearing yesterday's work clothes. I replay last night's events on fast-forward, but nothing scandalous springs to mind. "I must have crashed out when I got home."

Nina, arms folded and foot beating the carpet, doesn't seem satisfied by that answer. We'll call her my third mother. "Did you have a drink?"

"No," I tell her, and rub at my temples. I have a headache, but if I have been sleeping since I got home then that's twelve hours, and anything longer than nine usually has that effect. "At least, I don't think so."

She rolls her eyes and stomps to the kitchen adjoining our living room.

"No, I definitely didn't. I left the diner and I came straight here, and I didn't drink anything here, because look-" I lift up all the couch cushions, gesture wildly to the coffee table. "Nothing."

"Alright," she concedes. "Coffee?"

I sit at one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter and nod. My head falls naturally into my hands and I catch a whiff of my shirt - fries. Lots and lots of fries. My nose scrunches up. "Think you could wash these for me before my shift?"

Nina fixes me with the coldest of looks as the coffee brews. "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response."

"It's just that you're so much better at it than I am."

"I'm better at throwing clothes into a washing machine and turning it on?"

"Yeah but you have to pour in the detergent and I always forget which tray you're supposed to pour it into."

"The left one," she sighs. "It's the left one."

Nina's a pretty great roommate. She's the same age as I am but she has the whole responsible-adult thing down to a tee, probably because she was raised to do shit by herself and not depend on everyone around her like a newborn puppy. I'm like the newborn puppy, but I'd say I'm more of a retarded newborn puppy. I was raised by narcissistic moneybags and butlers that fueled my laziness and threw cash at my problems to make them go away. I'll use that as the excuse for why I barely know how to operate a washing machine.

"Are you going to your AA meeting today?" Nina asks, while I'm trying to enjoy my first sip of coffee.

"Probably not today."

"Okay. Wrong answer. I'm driving you there."

"Ugh, do I have to? It's so humiliating. We all have to sit in a circle on those awful plastic chairs and I have to say, hey, everyone, I'm a twenty-one-year-old alcoholic."

"Better to be a twenty-one-year-old recovering alcoholic than a twenty-one-year-old alcoholic though, don't you think? Also, I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but everybody in an AA meeting is also an alcoholic, so I don't know who you think is making you feel humiliated."

I gaze into my coffee, at the steam rising up. Floating away, fading to nothing. Sometimes I wish I could float away.

Nina places her hands over mine. Her eyes are deep, understanding, caring. "Pacifica, you know if you can't bring yourself to attend one AA meeting you don't stand a chance of beating this thing, don't you?"

Tough love. I don't deserve her. I nod.

"Be ready to leave by 9:30."

Before I change my clothes, I withdraw the cash from the back pocket of my pants and stash it away in the piggy bank in my bedroom. When I take money out of the piggy, the piggy knows exactly what I am going to spend it on. If the piggy senses that I'm going to use the money to drink, the piggy judges me with its cold black eyes, and I don't like being judged by non-sentient objects. Look, I'm not insane, alright? When the tried and true methods of curing alcoholism don't work, you have to start thinking outside the box.

We pull up outside the community center in White City, half an hour's drive from Gravity Falls, where my Alcoholics Anonymous group meets every Saturday morning, sometimes with my presence and sometimes without. Maybe I would be more motivated to show up if there were a group closer to home, but probably not. Getting here is the easy part - the hard part is walking up the steps and crossing the threshold of the door, because that's admitting I have a serious problem. Like a complacent little kid, I gaze out the window at the building without unbuckling my seatbelt.

"Okay," Nina says in that hesitant tone, like she's scared I'm about to have a mental breakdown. "I'll pick you up in an hour?"

"Yeah. Thank you," I tell her, finding the courage to step out into the early-summer air.

Nina smiles sympathy and drives away.

Every now and then, this pesky yoga group steals our regular meeting room because they need natural light to properly cleanse their souls, or some similar bullshit. There's a note on the door telling me that we're in one of the underground conference rooms today, so I trudge to the elevator and lower myself into the well of misery that is my AA group.

I'm on time this week, at least, so Sarah is there to greet me at the door. She's always so happy to see me, which I don't understand. I'm not exactly a pillar of friendliness within the group. Then again, the woman is always happy to see anyone. She's in her early forties with brown frizzy hair, and six years ago she kicked her alcohol addiction and replaced it with coffee. I take a chair in the half-formed circle and browse Facebook on my phone, trying to resist the temptation of looking up Mabel Pines and finding out why she was in Gravity Falls. Whether it was only for a day. Whether I'll ever see her again.

If it were up to me, AA meetings would be an hour of this - let us all wallow in our own pity, let the talkative ones talk among themselves. Sometimes all I need is a long timeout in a room that doesn't have a drop of alcohol within reach. But, alas, the rest of the group filters in and it's time to start sharing our stories.

The people that are here week after week tell abridged versions of theirs, primarily to update everyone on how many weeks sober they are. Or months. Or in one man's case, two years. If you've been sober for two years and you still turn up to an AA meeting every week, isn't that just bragging? I've been told not to think things like that. This is a judgement-free zone.

But this could be as judgement-free as a jury full of kittens and I still wouldn't share what I've been up to lately. What would I say? I haven't had a drink in seven days, but when I did, I made out with a stranger in some other stranger's house, drafted a text to my mom telling her I loved her and I missed her and then sent it to the number of my nearest Domino's, and then I passed out on the floor next to the door of my apartment because I was trying to use the wrong key. These are the things that I try to erase from my memory the morning after they happen. What good would come from declaring them out loud, days after the fact?

So I shake my head when Sarah asks if I would like to share, and she at least understands and moves swiftly to the woman on my left.

But Sarah also very much believes that actually making an effort to stop drinking is key in one's battle to stop drinking, so when the hour's up, she is leaning on the wall by the main entrance of the building, and I take a deep breath. This is my own fault. I always make myself a coffee to-go after the meeting so I don't have to walk out with everyone else and partake in small-talk.

"I see you've given up trying to be subtle," I say. "You are literally blocking my way out of the building."

Sarah shrugs and grins at me like we're a sitcom duo. "You don't have to speak to me if you don't want to."

"What's up?"

"I think it's great you came this week. But, sometimes, only sometimes, I get the feeling that you'd rather not be here at all."

Duh?

"And it's fine if you don't want to share every week. AA isn't all about talking and you can gain a lot by listening, but AA starts with wanting to get better. And if you don't share your story with us - again, that's fine - then we might want to look at other avenues we can explore to begin helping you. You do want to get better, don't you?"

I let out a sigh. "I want to get better for the people around me. Like Nina. And my boss."

"There we go, that's a start." She smiles, places an arm on my shoulder. I resist my instinct to jerk away. "I won't keep you any longer, but next week, keep Nina and your boss in your head, see if that makes a difference. Once you break through this first barrier - sharing with the group for the first time - I think you'll be surprised by how easy it becomes to say whatever's on your mind. Okay?"

I manage a smile. "Okay. Thank you, Sarah."

Nina's sitting on the hood of her car in the parking lot, smiling at me. "Oh," she says, spotting Sarah walking to her own car on the other side of the lot. "Is that her? Is that Sarah?" Sarah turns her head at the sound of her name and Nina waves obnoxiously.

I thwack her hand away. "Don't do that," I hiss. "That's embarrassing."

When we're back in the car, the DJ on the local radio station repeats the same news story we've been hearing for weeks about a sheep gone missing. "How was it?" Nina asks me.

I hold in a groan. As much as I hate giving my AA meetings a post-mortem, I shouldn't be mad at her for caring. "What do you want me to say? It was great! I got to listen to lots of exciting stories about how people's lives have fallen apart."

She shakes her head. "You know, this whole thing would be a lot easier if you kept a positive attitude."

"Yeah, well." I turn my head and gaze out at the fields scrolling by. "That isn't really me."

I start my shift at the diner at 2 P.M., not drunk. On Saturdays, Lindsay takes off at 7 and I'm left to handle customers on my own until 11, when we close up for the night. The great thing about that is that by 11, I'm too tired to do anything but head straight home and fall asleep.

It's kind of nice, working the evening shift by myself. I dim the lights when it gets dark outside, and then we're an orange glow by the side of the road, a beacon of warmth in the gloomy forest. We usually have a handful of quiet patrons that make small orders, and Julio cooks me something from the menu, at random, which I'll then eat at the bar with minimal interruptions.

Tonight, I'm mopping the floor behind the counter when Wendy Corduroy, a long-time friend of mine, walks in and slinks into an empty booth. I start brewing some coffee for her and hurry over to the other side of her table.

"What happened?" I ask her. "Aren't you supposed to be on a date?"

"Yup. I left the bowling alley, I couldn't stand him."

I belly-laugh and disrupt the serenity. "Are you serious?"

"Oh yeah, he was disgusting. Dude very clearly had not washed his hair today, and then, get this," she says, leaning across the table, "he started lecturing me that if you review the news footage, there was something really odd about how the towers collapsed on 9/11. Completely unprompted."

"What? You're making that up."

"P, you have no idea. I had to get out of there. I told him I had to take a phone call outside, then I booked it. He's probably still standing at the lane, wondering whether to take my turn for me."

I let my giggles fizzle out and then I stand to go pour her coffee, but she stops me.

"No coffee, thanks. I stopped at the bar on the way here, actually."

"Oh." I hate that just the mention of a bar makes me so uncomfortable.

"Actually, do you guys sell beer here? Bad joke. I'm sorry."

"It's fine," I say, and then we sigh in unison.

"Three dates, now. Three dates in a row where the guy has turned out to be a total shithead. I don't know how it's never obvious from their profiles."

"Sounds like it's time to switch over to girls."

She snickers. "Yeah, maybe."

"And you know I'm first in line when you do."

"Oh, really? You've reserved me, have you?"

"I'm just saying," I smirk, "I smell nice, I have clean hair, and I recognize 9/11 as an act of terrorism. A lot of girls do."

"I dunno, P. You're too dainty and delicate. I'd be worried about pulverizing you in bed."

"So you've thought about it?"

"Alright, settle down. If I ever lose interest in boys, you'll be the first to know. I promise."

"Oh my god," I blurt out, remembering something. "Guess who waltzed into this very fucking diner yesterday afternoon?"

"What? Who?"

"Guess."

"Who?!"

"Only Mabel freaking Pines."

Wendy's hands fly to her mouth. "What?"

"Yeah. I started hyperventilating, for real."

"Holy shit. Have you spoken to her since-"

"Nope. Not a word."

"What did you say to her?"

"Nothing. Not directly, at least. I just took her order. She was with a guy, too, and I think it was the same guy as before."

"No way. From four years ago?"

"His name was Jason, right?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Same guy, then. Unless it's a coincidence."

"Do you think Dipper's with them?" Wendy asks, her eyes lighting up.

"I have no idea. Like I said, I didn't talk to them at all. I don't know if they've been here long or if they're staying for long."

"Man, I haven't spoken to Dipper in so long. I should call him."

An old man in the corner of the restaurant calls me over to pay his check. I hold the door open for him as he leaves, my mind suddenly ablaze with thoughts of the Pines twins. Lost memories, flickering back to life. I sit back down opposite Wendy, but we're both silent for a while, pensive.

"Do you still think about her?" she asks.

Hmm. In the early hours of the morning, as I toss and turn and try to fall asleep. At the bottom of a bottle, when her face digs its way out of the deepest crevice of my mind. Whenever I walk past the Mystery Shack, and I glance up at the window to the attic, and the light is always off.

"Yeah," I say, but my voice comes out as more of a croak. "A lot."