I DO NOT OWN GRAVITY FALLS
Look, man. It's a totally feasible ship. Don't look at me like that.
DO NOT read this story if you are uncomfortable with subject matter depicting abusive situations, violence, stalking, death, homophobic/racist/sexist slurs, and swearing.
The Catalyst Is Pink
I want to get something cleared up right away and say that I never intended for him to die. And if I did intend for him to die, I certainly didn't intend to kill him myself.
I'm sure you've heard some horrible rumors about me and about who I am. I'm sure you've heard rumors about her, too. I'm not stupid. I know these fabrications exist. And honestly, I find the extents to which someone will lie in order to make a story interesting baffling.
So let me get something else straight- I'm not telling you this because I'm the type of person to care about my reputation. I'm telling you because I can't stand the thought of strangers discussing her around their dinner table as if they knew her. As if they knew us.
And so I vow that everything I tell you within the confines of these simple words will be the truth, and nothing but the truth.
And you will just have to honor the notion that I am not a pathological liar.
Pacifica Northwest held my hand as we walked around the destroyed manor. It was covered from the porch steps to the roof shingles in toilet paper and egg yolks. The cold sun set a backlight against the massive house, and in the shadow of the place, I shivered.
The brick walls were coated in black spray paint. Pacifica squeezed my palm as we read. We hadn't gotten the chance to do so the night before.
DIE FAGGOTS
Pacifica closed her eyes for a moment and took in a deep breath. Her breathing was as shaky as my state of mind, which came to me as no comfort.
Pacifica led me inside, both of us having too much to speak about and nothing to say. It was economic scarcity in the form of words.
The interior of her house was almost untouched- save for a shattered window and a brick in the middle of her living room. The room smelled of dew and morning chill, and I could see the little particles of dust floating about the white sunlight that streamed though the impossibly high windows.
Pacifica's house looked like a church. It was the kind that used its donation money to make the building grand to please God while simultaneously denying the homeless who wanted to sleep on the pews.
I walked about the foyer as if I were walking about a hospital- with a definite destination in mind, but the reluctance to acknowledge it.
And suddenly, what happened the night before crashed upon my shoulders, and my legs buckled under its weight. I caught myself on one of the walls and slid down the rest of the way, drawing my knees to my chest and jamming my head into my hands.
"Candy?" Pacifica gasped, kneeling down beside me.
I looked up at her, and found that the sun made her icy blue eyes look as if they were painted with glow stick solution. With tremor-filled hands, I traced the bruise on her jaw. The patch of purple and black didn't make her look at all fragile or precious- but rather Pacifica, that beautiful girl, made the bruise look impossibly delicate.
"This was a mistake," I murmured.
Pacifica sighed and sat next to me, staring at the wall across from us, but not really looking at it. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
"How could you have known?"
"I don't know. God, maybe I should've stayed."
Pacifica frowned. Her cheeks were flushed, and one could see the clean path of tears that had flowed down her face relentlessly the night before.
"Don't think that," I said. I held out my hand, and she took it gently.
She rested her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. She's had a long night, but so have I.
"Give me your phone," I said.
"Already?"
"It'll only be worse the longer we wait."
"Okay," Pacifica relented, passing me her cracked cell phone. I dialed the emergency number, and I felt the dial tone ring in synch with my pounding heart. I almost hoped foolishly that nobody would pick up.
"I'd like to report a homicide," I said as soon as the operator picked up. There was a brief pause in which one could hear the wires holding the suspension of disbelief waver in the wind. With an obnoxious throat-clearing noise, the man informed me that police would be at my location in an instant.
I thanked him and hung up, passing it back to Pacifica.
I tried to take in everything about her. Her golden, un-brushed hair, her freckled cheeks, the thinness of her fingers wrapped around mine.
After all, I only had an instant left to spend with her. An instant to memorize what she looked like when she was looking back at me. And an instant, I realized, would never be enough.
I smiled and tried my best despite. If anything, I'm glad my instant got to be on a sunny day.
6 MONTHS EARLIER
When my parents came home from a vacation in a bright Nevada city, they brought home three things- a novelty knife, a debt, and the discovery that my father was a gambling addict.
I knew something was wrong the instant they walked through the front door looking rattled and exhausted. That was how someone was supposed to look before a vacation, not after it.
I looked to my mother's tired face and asked her what had happened. I had long defeated the horrible speech impediment called Foreign Accent, but my parents hadn't, and thus, all conversations with them were held strictly in Korean.
My mother told me quietly to go to my room and leave her and dad alone for a moment. I nodded and complied. Though as soon as I got to my room I pressed a cup to the door and listened through it.
I was a natural eavesdropper, and had come up with intricate ways to get information. However, my mother had been less than thrilled when she found my wire taps and thus I'd since been downgraded to solo cups. I didn't really want to spy on my parents, but I figured that if something was wrong, I deserved to know. This was my family too.
As soon as I tuned into their conversation, I cursed and threw the cup across my room. They were speaking in Chinese. Of course they were.
With a Korean mom and a Chinese dad and an American home, you'd probably think I had a pretty extensive understanding of language. And I guess I did- because Korean came to me as easily as English did and vice-versa. But for whatever reason, I never picked up Chinese. And since my parents knew about my history of covert intelligence seeking, I guess it would only be natural for them to speak in the one code I couldn't decipher if they wanted to keep something from me.
So I sat against my door, settled my head in my arms, and waited.
They would only tell me hours later that they had lost more money than the owners of a shabby 'Oriental' restaurant could ever hope to regain. We didn't need a fortune cookie to realize that the loss of our house would be a very real possibility in our future.
On the bright side, they'd found a Swiss Army Knife at a Nevada gas station coming home with my name on it. Literally. Candy was etched into the wooden handle, along with the words 'Now Leaving: Fabulous Las Vegas!'.
I pocketed it out of obligation, and found it hard to sleep that night.
And at roughly the same time, Pacifica Northwest was breaking up with her boyfriend of the past two years, Arden Strazio.
And as petty as her problems may seem in comparison to mine- I swear, they're more related than one might think.
"Oh my god, you look bad today," Pacifica Northwest said as she approached me during our lunch period.
I only shrugged. I was too tired to pick a fight, and I didn't even think she was being particularly mean. The insult might've even been her way of trying to show me some sympathy.
I appreciated it, at very least. Not even my best friend, Grenda, seemed to notice anything different about me.
"You're too kind," I said to her, only managing a small glare.
"Ugh- no, I mean- can I talk to you?" Pacifica stammered, eyes flickering around the cafeteria. It was then I realized that her makeup was just a bit smudged, and that her hair was hardly brushed. She was wearing a Grateful Dead shirt that definitely wasn't hers and a jacket that was three sizes too big.
They both smelt like boy.
"Sure," I said, brows furrowing. "Let me just ask my friends if they'd mind."
This was a joke. Grenda and I had been split up for lunch and study hall, so I was stuck sitting alone on the bench.
The bench was far away from the rest of the tables and right next to the stairwell, so it was pretty well-hidden from the rest of the not-friendless population of students. This, I assume, was so they could spend their lunch period eating in peace instead of feeling bad for the lonely Asian kid (or even worse; feeling obligated to offer said Asian kid a seat at their table).
"You do that," Pacifica said, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm kidding," I assured her. "What do you want?"
Pacifica grimaced and took a seat. She sucked in a deep, shaky breath, and then composed herself.
And then she looked me right in the eyes and stiffened her jaw and Pacifica Northwest said to me, "I want you to date me."
At first I didn't really comprehend what she meant. I mean, I understood each word individually, but when strung together and forced out of Pacifica's mouth, they were like a whole other language.
"Say that again," I prompted, head spinning, "slower, please."
"Don't you speak English? I said I wanted you to date me," Pacifica snapped, drawing out her tone condescendingly. "Look, Chiu. It's not like I like you, and it's not like I'm some kind of dyke so you don't have to get too excited. I'm just trying to make someone jealous."
I frowned, cheeks red. "Who?" I asked, adjusting my cat-rimmed glasses.
"Does it matter?"
"I think it does."
"Ugh. Fine. Do you know Arden Strazio?"
"Your boyfriend," I nodded. It didn't matter if you never talked to Pacifica Northwest once in your life- if you lived in Gravity Falls, you knew that she belonged under Arden's football-throwing arm. It wasn't something to be jealous of- beautiful people just happened to go together.
That's how it was.
Pacifica sighed. "Well, I caught that asshole cheating on me two days ago. Cheating. On me, Pacifica Northwest."
I pursed my lips. "I can't imagine why."
"Oh fuck off, Chiu. God knows you don't get any," Pacifica sneered, glaring at me hard.
I stuck my tongue out at her.
Pacifica drew her lip up in disgust before looking down at her lap. "Anyways, I was wondering what I could do to piss him off. And then I realized that if he saw me with the most pathetic person at this school, it'd show him that he's not so special and that I'd go for anyone."
"Do you really want him to think you're easy?" I asked, raising my eyebrow.
"It's not about me, Candy. It's about making him feel replaceable. Like nothing. Like how I felt watching him feel up Lisa Woods' lumberjack-y, unshaved legs."
I guess if I were Pacifica, I could better understand her twisted logic, but I wasn't, so I could only hope she wasn't totally losing it.
"So you're only talking to me right now because I'm the most pathetic person you know?"
"Wrong. I'm offering this to you because you're the most pathetic person I know who also showers regularly."
I was torn between feeling insulted and complimented. Pacifica wasn't holding me to a very high standard, but at least she held a standard at all. At the same time, this was totally degrading, and I had my standards too.
"Go ask someone else," I snapped, dismissing her with a wave.
"I'll pay you," Pacifica blurted. "Name your price."
My ears perked. As much as I hated the prospect of being the romantic equivalent to a prostitute, the promise of money was a strong one.
"My dad talked to your landlord earlier this week, and he says you need some money or else you're getting evicted. I could pay off the house expenses if you'd do this one little thing for me," Pacifica said, grinning like I imagine a snake might if it could. "And let's be real here, it's not like this could be bad PR for you."
I feel as if someone dug a lit cigarette into my chest. "You only asked because you knew you could do this to me," I glared at her.
"Ugh. No. I picked you out because you're pathetic. Don't you listen? Look, I could bribe anyone in this school, and I chose you."
"I feel blessed," I rolled my eyes.
"So you'll do it?"
I stared at her long and hard and thought about my options. I could lose my house, or I could date a girl who was almost as pretty as she was mean. I never considered myself partial to girls, but you didn't need to be partial to anyone to get that Pacifica Northwest was hot as hell.
Then again, I did have dignity.
I looked down at my shoes and felt my gut wrench. Someone had written I EAT DOGS in permanent marker on them when I fell asleep in study hall a few weeks ago. I'd tried to scratch it out, but it still stuck out like a sore thumb.
So I used to have dignity. Whatever.
I bit my lower lip and held out my hand. Okay," I said, "but I'm doing this for my family. Not you."
"How did I know you'd say something like that?" Pacifica asked, grinning. She looked as if she were going to grab my hand, but then quickly maneuvered her hand to my jaw and tilted my face to the side and kissed my cheek.
I froze, eyes wide and face burning.
"Aw, look at you. See, maybe this won't be so horrible for you after all," Pacifica teased, making a show of wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. She threw her shoulder bag on and winked.
I tried to retort, gritting my teeth and scrambling to bury the redness on my face in my sleeves. All that left my mouth was a half-formed insult and hot air.
"Look, after school tomorrow, let me take you out to dinner," Pacifica said, looking down at me in amusement.
"You're really trying to sell this, aren't you?" I huffed, feeling my cheeks cool down in the same way molten lava might cool down into a blazing fire.
"Arden's not a fucking idiot. If I'm faking, he'll know. We have to develop chemistry, okay? Believe me, I don't want to spend my Friday night with you either," Pacifica said with an exasperated sigh, as if she were suddenly regretting her decision to fake-date someone who might actually question her.
I took in a deep breath. "Okay," I agreed reluctantly.
"Great," Pacifica said, giving me a smile most reserve for toothpaste commercials. "It's a date."
