Chapter 2: Always on My Mind

The hours from 9:00 to 6:00 made up the business day for the Shack, and also Assistant Manager Wendy's stretch of working hours (except for two fifteen-minute breaks and an hour for lunch). That day these were hard on Dipper, but harder still on Wendy. At least Dipper could go up to his attic room and try to think of some way to deal with whatever the strange pool had done to the two of them. And chew on a few pens as he did so, his usual method of stimulating thought.

Trouble was, down in the gift shop Wendy kept having his thoughts run through her head, a constant distraction from what she was being paid to do. Conversely, her making change, answering questions, and dealing with problems ran through Dipper's head. And sometimes the two trains of though threatened to collide—especially when Dipper, exhausted from the mental effort, started to drift toward sleep and to daydream of a redheaded beauty frolicking in the water, with and without a red swimsuit. At one point, in fact, Melody asked Wendy, "Are you sick, dear? Your face is so flushed, you look like you have a fever."

"Um—it's just hot in here. Real hot," Wendy said. "I mean, you know—I'm feeling hot. Temperature-wise." Melody gave her a strange look.

Up in his room, Dipper lay back on his bed with his eyes closed, murmuring, "Man, Wendy is so hot!" Then he got a quick flash: —Stop thinking that! You're getting me all turned on—I mean you're distracting me!

He began doing trig problems in his head. However, he immediately realized that he didn't want to think about triangles, not with Wendy listening in, and so he switched to algebra. Meanwhile, down in the gift shop, Wendy said brightly to a customer, "Let X represent the price of the limited-edition snow globe you're buying and Y will be the three twenty-dollar bills you have there. Y-X will equal your change, which is $10.01. Solve for X. Thank you!"

The customer quickly fled with her purchase clutched to her chest.

Dipper, feeling giddy and disoriented, came clumping downstairs in time for Wendy's lunch break. Usually she either ate in the snack bar or, when the Corduroys had leftovers, packed a lunch, but that Tuesday she asked T.K. O'Grady, the Shack's short-order cook, to make her a sandwich to go. "Two sandwiches, I mean," she heard herself say. "One roast beef on white, onions, lettuce, no tomato, mayo, and then one ham and cheese on whole wheat, with the works."

T.K. made the sandwiches, wrapped them in waxed paper, and packed them both in a paper bag with the Mystery Shack question mark logo printed on it (Soos had toyed with the slogan "Our Sandwiches Feature Mystery Meat!" but Melody had finally talked him out of that), and Dipper met Wendy on the back porch of the Shack. He had already bought two Pitt Colas from the vending machine, and from the snack machine a couple of bags of chips, one barbecue flavored, one plain. "The bonfire glade," they said in unison.

They didn't talk as they walked past the Bottomless Pit—Gompers the goat came flying out of it as they walked by, landed, and then sauntered casually off on some goat business—but both of them thought simultaneously, Gompers is doing that a lot lately. He must have found out that he can eat a lot of the junk that never comes back but I saw just endlessly circulating down there.

As it happened, Wendy herself had never been in the Bottomless Pit, but Dipper had, and they took some time to untangle that.

They reached the bonfire clearing and sat on the log to eat their lunches. "Roast beef, no tomato," Wendy said, peeking at one of the wrapped sandwiches.

"Mine."

She handed it over. "I know, dude. Hey, barbecue chips, cool, how'd you know that I liked—oh, right."

"Yeah."

They unwrapped the sandwiches, opened the bags of chips, and popped the sodas in silence. Then Wendy began to speak—at the same moment that Dipper did:

"This is—sorry. You first."

"This is—sorry. You first."

Wendy stopped and clamped her hand over Dipper's mouth. "This isn't gonna work, dude! We gotta take turns, OK?"

Dipper nodded. When she took her hand from his mouth, he said, "It's so hard!"

"I know, dude, I know!"

With a sigh, Dipper said, "Let's eat first, then we'll talk." Wendy clenched her jaw to keep from saying the exact same thing and settled for nodding. They sat on the log in the clearing, munched their sandwiches, drank their colas—Dipper noticed that they took bites in unison, swallowed them together, and sipped from their cans at the same time, though he didn't comment on that, but Wendy said wearily, as though answering his unspoken observation, "Yeah, I know, man, I just caught that myself."

They finished their meals. Then it took about six false starts, but finally they could control the impulse to speak over each other reasonably well—enough to talk, anyway. "Man," Wendy said, "this is, like, the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me, and I'm including wrestling myself and bein' turned into a freakin' banner!"

Dipper nodded. "I know, right? I never knew—well, much of anything, really, about how, you know, uh, how—"

"Girls think, yeah," Wendy said. "Same here with boys, but I guess I've had a little more experience understanding boys because—"

"You have three brothers. Sorry, didn't mean to break in on you. Uh—did you really, that one time that I just accidentally glimpsed in your memory, accidentally walk in on Junior when he was, uh—"

"Yeah," she said. "God, that was so embarrassing! Made Junior real mad an' scared me silly. I was, I guess, about eight, Junior twelve or thirteen, and Dad hadn't had the talk with me—he never did really, it was one of my aunts eventually—anyhow, I didn't even know boys did that. I mean, Junior never locked his door, so when I walked in that time I saw, like, everything. Hey, Dip, until we get outa each other's heads—"

"Yeah, I won't do that," Dipper promised. "'Cause if I start—"

"You'll get me started. Yeah, dude, girls do that too! Don't be so shocked. It's, like, normal. Why am I suddenly thinking about a Gnome in a bathtub full of squirrels? Sheesh! I never talked about this kinda stuff before to anybody—"

"Except Tambry, yeah, I know. Uh, so girls learn how to kiss boys by practice-kissing each other?"

"Yeah, it's not unusual. I mean, we do it a lot. Dipper, stop thinking that, please, 'cause it is not hot! Wow, your on button is like on a hair trigger, man!" She snickered. "And I'll tell you, dude, kissing—"

"The back of my two fingers is not anything like kissing a real girl," Dipper said. "I know that—now."

They impulsively leaned together and kissed, a long and deep one. "Was that you or me?" Wendy asked as they pulled apart, her breath warm in his face and fragrant with the aromas of ham and cheese.

"I think maybe both of us at the same time?" Dipper said.

She hugged him and rubbed her hand up and down his back. "Man, we have got to control this, or we're gonna get ourselves in such serious trouble! I mean, right now I'm so keyed up I could just rip off my—no we can't do that! Stop thinking about it!"

Dipper squirmed. "I wasn't! That was you!"

"Oh. Yeah, guess it was. Sorry, dude." She sighed. "I hafta say, Dip, I didn't realize you guys thought about, you know, doin' it, like, about once every five minutes!"

Dipper shook his head. "I normally don't! But it just seems you and me are so close all the time now, because of this thing we have—"

"Yeah, an' I hafta say it's real sweet, the way you think about me, about us, I guess I mean. But don't put me on a pedestal, Big Dipper. I guess you realize now—"

"Girls think about guys that way pretty often, too. Yeah," Dipper said. "But, you know—I'm not handsome, I'm not athletic, really, 'cept for the runnin', dude, an', well, you, like, seem to sort of, I dunno, idolize me. Oh, man, saying that makes me seem, you know, so shallow! Am I picking up your speech pattern, girl?"

"Actually, you sort of are," she said. "Maybe it's the result of propinquity—just being close like this, with nobody else around. Kind of disturbing. Although I have to admit, being alone together with you is really nice!"

"Yeah," Dipper said. "See, now you're sorta soundin' like me, I think. Or Sixer. Fordsy, I mean. Darn it, I mean Grunkle Ford!"

"Whoa!" she said, her green eyes opening wide. "I just got a mental flash of Bill Cipher there!"

"You're gonna find out anyway," Dipper said in a reluctant way. "You know he's real small and hangin' around his stone effigy, but there's something else I haven't been exactly clear about. So I might's well tell you straight up, I got a tiny little bit of Bill in my body. He, I guess, saved my life? I mean, it wasn't exactly a selfless act on his part, because if he hadn't done it, he'd've been microscopic and trapped in the Mindscape forever."

"I understand," she said. "Just got the whole memory in one flash. It was when the Magick Shop showed up last year, and that interdimensional dude, the Horroracle, tried to stop time and end the world. Wow. Just three or four little molecules of Bill got your heart started when it stopped, and they're still inside you somewhere. Does he bother you?"

"Now an' again," Dipper said. "In dreams sometimes, but usually just little flashes. The most annoying thing is—"

"When he makes you slip an' call me Red!" Wendy said. "Wow. That explains so much! But—you, what, like, civilized Bill or some biz? You—he—he got some of your molecules to replace the ones that got your heart started! OMG. I mean, I get the feeling that because of those, he's not near as dangerous as he was during, you know, Weirdmageddon."

"He claims that the little bit of me he has in him is making him, what, kinder and gentler, I guess? Supposedly when he grows close to his full size—that may take a century or more—he'll leave our reality forever. That's what he promised me he'd do, anyway. I don't know how much to trust him, though!"

"This is so bizarre," Wendy said. "Half the time I hear you talkin' and it's me! And sometimes I just start to sound like you! What're we gonna do, Dip? "

"It started with Moon Trap Pond," Dipper said. "So we have to—"

"—go back to the pond together, and bring some pennies—"

"—right, and maybe it has to be the one who made the wish to unwish it—"

"—gotcha, and maybe it's like just one per customer, so maybe you'll have to toss the penny this time—"

"—yeah." Dipper paused. "Except—I don't know, Wendy. I—somehow or other, I mean this is scary and all and I feel like I'm kinda losing myself, you know, girl? But then—I—"

"—kinda like the feeling, weird as it is. In a way you'd hate to lose it. Me, too," Wendy said. "I mean, I've never felt so close to anybody in my whole life! But, Dip, this thinking each other's thoughts all the time would eventually drive us nuts!"

"I know. So we have to undo it one way or another, but—"

"—now we know for sure that we're right for each other, at least."

They kissed again. Then Wendy tensed. "Dude! You packed your suitcase to leave Gravity Falls!"

Dipper jerked like someone who'd just touched a live electric wire. "I didn't want to think of that! Yeah, I did, but I'm not going! See, I was worried—"

Wendy touched his cheek and smiled, though tears stood in her eyes. "Aw, Dipper! Man, I understand! I told you I did! It was that parasite thingy, not you! But you were gonna go off an' leave me because you're scared you're not—"

"—good enough for you."

She gave his shoulder a friendly little shove. "Get over it, Dip! If you went home, I swear I would come after you an' camp out on your lawn an' lay in wait to capture you an' drag you back if I had to!"

"I know that now!"

She frowned. "Dude, are we fighting? Or are we warming up for some action—"

"—that, I think, the second thing, that. So we'd better get back to the Shack—"

"—yeah, before we do something we're not ready for. Only I feel so totally ready, dude!"

Dipper forced his feelings down and made himself say, "Me, too, but I'm still just fourteen!"

"Man!" Wendy sounded as frustrated as Dipper felt.

"Well," Dipper said mournfully, "at least when the payoff finally comes, it'll be sweet."

"Dipper Pines," Wendy said, "will you marry me?"

"Eventually!" he yelped. But he thought, Oh, my gosh, I think she's serious! Then when she grinned, he laughed. "Oh, Wendy! Let's say we're engaged—"

She took his hand in hers. "—to be engaged. Cool, Big Dipper. But for my sake, try not to think so much about—you know."

"I'll try! But, Wendy, if I wake up in the middle of the night—"

"—do what you have to, Dip. Only you know we're prob'ly gonna sorta feel what the other one's doin'. Man, I wish I could stay after work to try to wind this all up! Look, we don't have our run tomorrow, but—"

"—nobody knows that, so we can meet really early—"

"—an' go back to Moon Trap Pond."

Dipper hesitated. "That's pretty far away from everyone else. Do you think we can be alone together and not—"

"—dunno, Dip, but if I tear off all my clothes an', like, jump in the water, man you better come in after me!"

Groaning, Dipper said, "Now that picture's in my head!"

Wendy glanced down at the front of her shirt. "They're not as big as you're imagining, Dipper! But I guess they're big enough—Whoa, I can't talk about stuff like that! Man!"

Dipper writhed. "Please don't! Remember, you don't want me to, uh, wake up in the middle of the night!"

"Let's go back to the Shack," Wendy said, standing. "This is gonna drive me crazy! OK, Dip, at least try not to think about—it, at least until closin' time!"

"I'll try," Dipper said. It was the most he could hope to do—just try.