Beach Blanket Buff

(August 12-15, 2015)


2: Saturday Morning Car Tunes

It was almost like when he was eight and Christmas was the next morning. That night Dipper had a hard time getting to sleep, and when he woke up wondering why his alarm hadn't gone off and how late he was, he saw it was only 2:44 A.M.

"Man," he mumbled, "I hate this!"

He punched his pillow as if trying to beat it into submission. He tossed and turned and tried to force himself to sleep, which never works. After a few minutes of this—he thought an hour had gone by, but his phone said the time was 3:01—and getting desperate, he began deep-breathing and relaxation imagery.

That would let him go to sleep, but on the way, he had to pass through the Mindscape.

And somebody lived, for a certain definition of "living," in the Mindscape.

Dipper expected to hear the hearty, high-pitched voice, and Bill didn't disappoint him: "Pine Tree! Hiya, kid, what's shaking? I hear rumors that you and I are going for a long ride and a private swim with Red." The voice became sly and insinuating: "I hope you're up for it!"

"Let me just get past this and sleep," Dipper groaned.

"Ah ha ha ha!" That same annoying laugh. "Oh, you lazy meat bags! So adorable! I never could understand why you spend a third of your limited life spans unconscious. What does it get you, aside from in a hurry to make it to the bathroom the next morning? Speaking of which, did you tinkle when you woke up? You know you should! Always go before you leave, kid."

"Please," Dipper groaned. In his mind's eye, he still lay in his attic bedroom, though in grays and blacks and whites it looked oddly distorted, as though it had become the size of a cathedral. The triangular window soared impossibly high and looked to be the size and roughly the shape of a Saturn rocket. His narrow bed seemed to have swelled until it was as big as a tennis court. Bill himself was small, though, thumbnail-sized, and hovering like a patient mosquito, if a mosquito wore a stovepipe hat and carried a cane.

But the voice was full-sized Bill's: "OK, OK, kid! Seriously, though, be sure to hit the can before you hit the road. Red would be amused if you had to pull off somewhere and go off and water the rhododendrons."

Not a good subject of conversation at that or any moment. Irritably, Dipper said, "Bill, do you know it's three o'clock in the morning?"

And the little triangle guy suddenly held a minute violin, which he began scraping as he sang: "It's three o'clock in the morning, / You've danced with Red in your dreams, / it's three o'clock in the morning, / Nothing is quite what it seems—"

Dipper snapped, "That's not what I meant, and you know it!"

"Gee, Captain Buzzkill, take it down a notch! Don't insult the musicians. I don't usually do requests, you know. OK, OK, I'll do you a favor. I'm gonna let you sleep, but I'm also gonna give you a warning. Two warnings, in fact. First, when you go for your spin with Red, remember to be careful when you think you're alone, because you're not."

Dipper ached to get out of this lucid dream, if that's what it was. "Got it. Let me go to sleep."

"No, no, wait a second. Second warning in the morning. You ready?"

"Go ahead."

The violin morphed into a guitar, and Bill began to shred and wail: "Well, don't you step on my blue suede shoes—"

"Gah!" The poor Elvis impersonation woke Dipper up all the way, and he realized he did need to visit the john. Which he did. Blessedly, when he returned to bed—3:11 now—he fell asleep before his head touched the pillow, and he stayed that way, maybe dreaming, maybe not, until six-thirty, when his phone chimed.

He jumped up, showered in five minutes, dressed in tee shirt, vest, and cargo shorts—seems like old times, he thought—and picked up his already-packed backpack. After double-checking it—towel, trunks, sunscreen, snacks—he went quietly downstairs. He had just about memorized where Soos had deliberately left in the creaky boards, and he avoided the worst of them. At the bottom of the stair, very quietly, he let himself out. It was still ten minutes to seven.

The sun was up, and the sky straight overhead had that pale blue light that promised a hot, clear summer day. A thin mist clung to everything. Shouldering his pack, Dipper walked across the parking lot—later it would be crammed, because Soos made cheap parking available to Woodstick visitors, though he did throw in for free tram rides to the site and back.

But now only the company cars stood parked there, Melody's sedan, Soos's Jeep and pickup truck, and the golf cart. Two Gnomes were fooling around in it, pretending to drive. Dipper guessed they were kids. Hard to tell, because though Gnome babies started out the size of mice, they grew to nearly their full size in three months, and by four months they had developed beards.

Dipper waved, and they waved back but didn't speak, except to say, "Vrooom!" That was a joke—the golf cart wouldn't vroom if you put four million volts through it. He crunched his way down the drive, spotting a deer and two placid fawns browsing. A huge owl, returning home after his night's work, flew silently overhead.

Dipper reached the bottom of the drive and saw that the rhododendrons they had planted around the new sign had really taken hold. The peak blooming time had ended in June, but the plants were a deep, vivid green and healthy, and the sign Mabel had painted looked classy, welcoming unsuspecting tourists to the trap that was the Mystery Shack.

After just a couple of minutes he heard and recognized the sound of Wendy's 1973 Dodge Dart, and a moment later he saw the forest-green car round the curve and pull over. Wendy parked on the broad shoulder and got out, grinning. Dipper gulped. She was wearing cut-off jeans, and she had tied the tails of her flannel shirt over her sternum, leaving her tummy bare. Even in her trapper's hat and lumberjack boots, she looked sexy. He knew that she knew she was making an impression on him. "Hiya, Dip. Hey, you want to drive?"

"Uh—" Dipper said. He and Mabel had their California learners' permits, and over the summer they had logged almost enough supervised driving time with Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford to be eligible for their licenses right after their birthdays, but—"You're not old enough," he told her. "I mean, you couldn't certify my time because—"

"Meh, so what?" Wendy asked, grinning.

He couldn't help smiling back at her. "Uh, well—it's also illegal for me to drive unless there's an adult 21 or older in the front seat with me."

"Yeah, that's a point," Wendy agreed. "Except this is Gravity Falls!" She tossed him the keys and said, "Try not to hit any pedestrians!"

He smiled. "You remembered."

"Dude, if you remember it, I do." She climbed in the passenger seat and buckled up. "C'mon, man, I wanna see you do a three-point turn."

He did it flawlessly, because she had previously sent him everything she knew about driving—and there was very little about driving that she didn't know—telepathically. They shared memories and thoughts, but also skills and information.

"Think you can choke down a breakfast burrito?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess so. Los Hermanos Brothers?"

"Yeah, drive-thru opens at seven. I brought a thermos of coffee, so we don't need their recycled motor oil."

They reached the restaurant, and Dipper pulled around to the speaker. First time I've ever done this, he thought. Well, he'd be sixteen soon. There were bound to be a lot of first times ahead.

Wendy wanted a scrambled-egg-cheese-bacon burrito, so Dipper ordered two, plus hash brown potato nuggets. He pulled through. The kid working the serving window didn't seem to recognize either Dipper or Wendy but took Dipper's ten-dollar bill and gave him his change, making a mistake of a dollar in Dipper's favor.

Unlike his Grunkle Stan, Dipper handed the extra buck back with a smile and said, "Have a good day."

As they pulled off, Wendy said, "Now they'll remember us, Dip. Gravity Falls, man. Finders keepers is the law."

"For everything?" Dipper asked. "Man, I'm so glad we found each other."

"La-a-ame!" Wendy said. But she was laughing.


They pulled off the road about twenty minutes later, on Keeter's Ridge. They got out and sat at a roadside picnic table, watching the morning sun rising higher over the arched cliffs that resembled a flying saucer—for a good reason. The tallest hill in the valley happened to be heaped over the ancient crashed saucer that had carved out the silhouette in the cliffs.

"Cool morning," Wendy said, pouring two cups of coffee and offering Dipper a little bottle of cream. "Gonna heat up, though. Weatherman says high of ninety-six."

"I remember this one time when it was a hundred and five," Dipper said, doctoring his coffee. "That was the day Grunkle Stan made Mabel and me re-shingle the roof."

"Ouch!" Wendy said, wincing. She handed Dipper one of the burritos. "I like this view. The river looks like silver."

Dipper, munching his burrito, hummed.

"What's that?" Wendy asked. "Tune, I mean."

"Nothing," Dipper said. I just—sometimes lines for songs come to me. 'The river looks like silver' would be a good line for a song. Just one problem."

"What's that?"

"Find me a rhyme for 'silver,'" Dipper said.

"Hmmm."

They were on the road again in ten minutes. Wendy said, "You're kidding me, right? No rhyme for 'silver'?"

"Well, not unless you cheat. You know, "The river looks like silver, / The summer day will ver- / Y soon be hot. . .."

"Oog. Now, that really is lame."

"Yeah, that's why I'd have to find another way to work the line into a song. Silver is a toughie. Lots of words in English don't have rhymes, you know. Orange. Month. Purple. Um . . . pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis."

"Get out of town!"

Behind the wheel, Dipper grinned. "OK, I'm not sure about that one, but it's the longest word I can spell."

"Oh!" Wendy said, lapsing back into the breathless tone she had used when she and Dipper had acted out a seduction scene to trap some time-traveling spies, "My gallant nerd! Your dorkiness has won my heart! Don't hit the squirrel."

Dipper slowed the car, and ahead of them, a squirrel, with two empty lanes open to it, panicked and ran from side to side until Dipper had to practically stop before the squirrel finally chose a side and dashed off into the undergrowth. "I hear their brains work on one AAA battery," he told Wendy.

She didn't respond to that, but after a minute, she said softly, "Dude, sing me our song, OK? I'll join in."

Dipper's heart felt so full that for a moment he couldn't do it, but then he cleared his throat and started to sing softly:


I will always believe in fairy tales,

And I'll wish on a shooting star.

I'll always keep searching for Wonderland,

'Cause that is where you are.

Oh, Wendy, you're my Magic Girl,

You're my every dream come true,

And if I owned the whole wide world,

I would give it all to you,

I would give it all to you.


Wendy sang along, and when she touched his arm and established their physical telepathy, they harmonized—not professionally, but beautifully.

"I love that song," Wendy said.

"It took me months to write it," Dipper told her. "So, your dad's not gonna wonder where you are today?"

"Nah. Sev'ral Timez is playing the festival, and he's a big fan, so he's at Woodstick. Except, get this, he doesn't think the boys should be exposed to some of the metal music, so he's sent them up to Aunt Sallie's for the weekend!"

"Oh, OK."

"My house is totally empty, Dip," Wendy said. "In case you don't want to visit the cave. . .."

"Uh—no, we promised each other. I think we ought to carry on with the original plan," Dipper said.

"Good man," Wendy said quietly. "You passed the test. Proud of you, Dip." She reached over and caressed his neck.

They sang a couple more songs, and Dipper felt so happy that five miles along, he almost hated to follow Wendy's direction and make a left turn down a logging road. "Where to?" he asked.

"Oh, dude, the first stop on our special tour," Wendy said. "I don't think even Ford knows about this one. Hardly anybody does, and the ones who do don't talk about it. It's called the Goofer Hole."

"And what's so great about it?" Dipper said, a little uneasily. He remembered the Pain Hole. Not his favorite memory.

"Kinda goofs you up, I guess," Wendy said. "But it's harmless."

"OK," Dipper said. "I trust you."

Not far down the logging road, she had him stop at a wide place and they got out. "'Bout a half-mile hike, but it's not bad," she said. "Come on. Let's get a little goofy."

She led the way, and Dipper followed, and as he watched her long strides and the play of her hips in those cut-offs, he thought to himself, I'm feeling kinda goofy already.

What the heck. I like it!