Quick note: In response to some reviews and pms - Yes, I will be going on vacation, beginning too early next Thursday morning (have to get up for a 5 a.m. flight). I'm hoping to get through this one before then, but forgive me if I have to leave you hanging for a couple of weeks. This note will self-destruct with the next update.

Can You Come Out to Play?

(June 5, 2017)

2: Broke Girl

The shift began at six in the morning and ended at six in the afternoon, five days a week. It wasn't much of a job, but it was all she could do, and Pacifica knew she couldn't do it well. Still—sixty hours a week at ten dollars an hour equaled six hundred dollars, before Federal taxes, insurance, and whatnot had whittled it down to $430.75.

Since five days a week she walked straight home, showered, and went to bed, you'd think that would be more than adequate. She'd lived on an allowance of three hundred a week at home.

But at home, her rent was free, not $200.00 a week. At home, Daddy's credit card bought her gas and clothes and makeup and whatever little trinkets a girl needed. At home, her food was free—or if she wanted to eat out, she had her own credit card (Daddy paid the bills) for that. Now she ate half-price for breakfast and a late lunch at work, which usually added up to about $120.00 a week. The other meal didn't cost her anything, because she never ate it. Weekends she had to eat out—her room didn't come with kitchen privileges—so there went another fifty to a hundred bucks. Mondays when she still had a few dollars in her purse were red-letter days.

Pacifica hated her life. She hated that people who knew her ate in Greasy's all the time, and that she waited tables and hoped they'd tip her. When it all began, she'd tried to disguise herself. She'd bought a home hair-dye kit that made her naturally blonde (despite what people said) hair a dull brown. She'd stopped using makeup, since it had become a luxury she could not afford. She wore a dowdy waitress uniform, complete with apron. She slumped and looked no one in the eyes.

She fooled about as many people as you'd expect.

She'd begun part-timing it after school and all weekends, and that was bad enough, but she got in twenty hours a week and made some money while she burned through her savings account, which Preston had not closed out, since it was in her name. Luckily, she'd found her room and had paid two months' rent in advance. And she'd squeaked by and finished high school.

Luckily, she'd decided to stay with the public school instead of going back to her old posh private school, where all the rich kids knew her. Of course in the public school a lot of people knew her, but she didn't have that many close friends and tried to fade into the background. Her grades weren't the greatest, but her average pulled her through.

When GFH graduated her class, she walked across the stage and got her diploma.

Her mom and dad had gone away for the weekend and did not attend. She received no graduation presents. The next day was a work day. She was trying to save money. She dreaded July 1. That was the day the semi-annual insurance bill for her car came due, and she knew she would not be able to afford it. She would have to sell the car, and she'd be lucky if with the proceeds she could buy a junker from Bud Gleeful's lot.

She missed her two ponies. Twice, when she knew that her dad was away, she'd gone out in the evening to visit Desperado and Molly. The second time, her mom somehow knew she was there and came out to talk to Pacifica, but the eighteen-year-old jumped in her car and drove away. She knew the drill. Preston would forgive her if she'd just . . . .

Knuckle under. Give up. Do as she was told.

Those days were over.

No college for her, though she had been accepted at a prestigious (socially, not educationally) women's college that had only recently gone co-ed. Without Dad, she could not afford the tuition, which over four years would run a bit over a million. No college, no boyfriend (damn Daniel!), no . . . future.

That Monday, she'd come in to work at five-thirty, had eaten her breakfast at half-price, and had suited up for a long, long day on her aching feet. She had half the tables for the breakfast crowd, including Wendy's big dad, Dan (whose name made her think of her rotten boyfriend) and his three sons. They tipped OK, but they ate big. Serving the four of them was like serving two tables of Elks Club members. Back and forth, more coffee, more syrup, some toast, another plate of scrambled, back and forth, and ten other tables to attend to on top of that.

Tad Strange ate all alone, an easy customer, dry toast, plain black coffee, and he always left a tip, although in various strange currencies, here a 5-Quapik piece, there a silver coin with "Zhongguo Renmin Yinhang" on the back, now a 50-pence piece from Alderney, again a 60-centavos coin from East Timor. Strange was in for breakfast every day, and Pacifica had a pickle jar half-full of his tips and no idea how to find a numismatist who might buy them for real money.

For the first month or so, Susan Wentworth had showed her the ropes. Waitressing wasn't hard. It was just soul-killing. By that Monday in June, Pacifica had been full-time for over a week and was starting to doubt if she'd survive until the end of the month.

The one plus, the really big plus, the thing that kept her going was that the twelve-hour shift left her so utterly exhausted that she didn't have to think about Daddy or Daniel or Carmilla, or anything. Just go home, shower off the smell of grease, fall into bed and into oblivion.

The breakfast stampede passed by about ten, and then she didn't have too much to do until eleven-thirty, when the noon rush would begin. She helped in the kitchen, loading the huge dishwasher, getting some things from the big freezer, even dumping the garbage in the bear-proof Dumpmaster out back. Then before the lunch crowd built up, she took her break, went to the employees' bathroom, and tried to unsnarl her hair. It needed cutting and styling, but who could afford that? She tied it back in a ponytail, and she wore a hairnet, and it made her look . . . frumpy. And the bags under her eyes made her look tired. And the sadness in them made her look, well—you know.

"Customer, honey, table one," Susan said as Pacifica came out of the restroom ready for the next grind. It was early for lunch, but whatever.

"Got it," she said, picking up her pen and pad. She stopped in her tracks when she saw who was sitting at the table. Then, clenching her teeth, she went up to the table. "Hi. What'll you have?" she asked.

"Pacifica," said Stan Pines. "You know, I've been here maybe six, eight times since you started, and I didn't recognize you? You changed your hair."

"Yeah, new look," she said brusquely. "What can I bring you, Mr. Pines?"

"Cup of coffee, two sugars, um, Swiss on rye, brown mustard, no chips. Then sit here with me."

"Can't," she said. "I'm on the clock."

"Hon, I talked to Lazy Susan. You can take ten minutes. Please." When she didn't answer, he said gently, "I know you're tough. I remember you in that potato-sack dress you made for yourself. Just talk, that's all."

She didn't say anything, but brought his coffee and sandwich. They moved to the last booth in the back, where she tried to sit low. "What's the matter, Pacifica?" he asked.

"Nothing. Everything's just fine," Pacifica said. "I moved out, got a job, got my own room, everything's just peachy."

"What's up between you and your dad?" he asked. "You can tell me."

She bit her lip and shook her head. "Personal," she whispered.

"Boyfriend trouble, too, I heard," Stan said quietly. "Old girlfriend comes back in the picture. I know the drill, Pacifica."

"I'd better go," Pacifica said.

"Just a minute more. Listen, Mabel and Dipper are back in town. They want to see you. Mabel especially. You won't turn them away, will you?"

"How could I?" she mumbled. "I'm nobody."

"Yeah, I been there, too," Stan said. "Look, I ain't gonna con you or lie to you. Sometimes life stinks. You gotta play the hand you're dealt, and sometimes the cards are lousy. Not much you can do about that—except don't turn away from your friends because you're ashamed. They're not gonna look down on you. They'll accept you just as you are, 'cause they know who you are. Whatever happened may be bad, but it's not the end of the line. Where are you living?"

"Down the street," she muttered. "Maybe just out on the street next. But for right now, I've got a room in Mrs. Ballard's."

Stan winced a little. He knew Dinah Ballard, a quarrelsome old lady whose family home she had turned into a boarding house. A lot of transient loggers put up there when Dan's company had a big job and hired on temps. It wasn't exactly the place he'd pick out for an eighteen-year-old girl.

"Mabel wants to know if she can come by this afternoon at six to pick you up. You can come have a sleepover in the Shack with her. No other gals, just a time to talk. She'll get you back here for your job tomorrow morning."

Pacifica shrugged.

"I'm gonna tell her. Hang in there, kid. You got a few people in your corner, whether you know it or not."

She nodded and then whispered, "I gotta go."

Stan finished his sandwich and coffee—Greasy's coffee wasn't the best, but he liked it—and then went to the register and paid his ticket. "See the kid gets this," he said, adding a fifty. "Don't make a big deal out of it. Just her tip for Table One."

Gunther, at the register, nodded. "She needs it," he confided in a low voice. "I'm glad somebody knows she needs help."

"Whoever's on duty at six, don't let her slip away home," Stan said. "She's got a friend comin' to pick her up."

Mabel had been running down background on Pacifica's predicament. Candy didn't know much—Paz had come back to school after Christmas break, fresh from a New Year's Day break-up with her boyfriend and depressed, but she was still living at home then. It was sometime in late March or early April that she'd left home and started working part-time while she finished high school.

"She was pushing herself, I think," Candy said. "She was tired all the time, and she did not have her sparkle or her arrogance. She did not want to talk to anybody." Over the years, Candy had come to know Pacifica—they were frequent sleepover buddies with Mabel in the summers—but Pacifica firmly rebuffed all of Candy's offers of sympathy and concern. "Finally, I decided it was better to leave her alone," Candy said. "I hoped she would get better, but she has not, I think."

Grenda similarly worried about Paz. Despite her imposing demeanor, Grenda had a strong maternal streak. "When she yelled at me that she didn't want to tell me about it, I wanted to pound her," Grenda said maternally. "But I saw she was pounding herself." Wrapped up in her own last weeks of high school and in the ever-morphing concerns of wedding preparations, Grenda had lost touch with Pacifica, more or less.

Stan's light lunch had been Mabel's idea. She waited for him at his house, and when he came in at eleven and told her how Paz wasn't looking too great and how he thought the problem wasn't boyfriend trouble so much—that had shaken her up, but Pacifica had been through boyfriends before and had bounced back—but something that had happened between her and her dad.

"But what was it?" Mabel asked. "I don't wanna go into this sleepover with her without some facts. Being forewarned is like having four arms."

"Sweetie, I dunno." Stan sighed. "You know, when your bright idea got Preston's company back on its feet, I thought he'd changed his attitude toward his daughter. But, well, he's—" he hooked his fingers into air-quotes—"growin' his brand and he's kinda back into that money-is-everything attitude."

Mabel gave him a look.

"Come on," he said. "Sure, I'm greedy, but I'm greedy with a big old soft spot, and you know it. If Preston's got a soft spot, I think it's in his head, not in his heart. He's into politics these days and into spreadin' his brand globally—he cooked up some great big deal with either the Japanese or the Chinese, don't know which, but he raked in a lot of cash. McGucket says he offered to buy back the mansion, only Fiddleford don't want to sell it 'cause he's got his lab all set up there and his wife likes the house, and his son and daughter-in-law are gonna live in the east wing and all. So he turned down the offer, but Preston got huffy and said, fine, we don't need it, I'll build a grander place, yada."

"All Pacifica needs is a little love and encouragement," Mabel said softly. "She's such a cool girl if she just has that. Why can parents be so dumb?"

"Never had kids, so I don't know," Stan said. "But as a son myself, yeah, parents can drive ya nuts. You and Dip—well, there's been times when Wanda and Alex kinda drove you guys halfway up the wall, and vice-versa, but you guys coped and have a pretty fair relationship. Not every kid is so lucky. Remember that when you talk to Pacifica, OK?"

"Sure," Mabel said. "But I still want to know more—I think I might be able to talk to Mrs. Northwest?"

"I hardly know her to see her," Stan admitted. "The Northwests and I don't run laps in the same social circle, you know."

"I think I can talk to her," Mabel said. Stanley didn't know the whole story of the time Mabel and Pacifica had done a little body-swapping with the electron carpet—Mabel, in Pacifica's body, had spent time with the Northwests, had learned that Pacifica's mother Priscilla had a sweet side—though a bit embittered by maybe too much wealth and too much idleness—and loved her daughter.

"Ya gonna try to talk to her today?" Stanley asked.

"I don't know if it would be a, you know, good time," Mabel murmured, worried.

"Might be the best time you can get," Stan told her. "Preston's off in Toronto or someplace working out an investment scheme with some Canadians. He won't be back until mid-week, so the coast is clear."

"All right," Mabel said. "I'll try it."

"You need to contact a social secretary first?" Stan asked.

Mabel gave him a big Pines grin. "Nope. I'm Mabel Pines!" she said.

"Looks great," Dipper told Wendy.

"Thanks, dude," Wendy said. "I tried to make it homey. Only thing, I really don't like the stained-glass window all that much, you know? And Soos offered to replace it, but, strange thing, we can't find it on the outside."

"Huh?" Dipper asked.

"Straight up, man. The window's kind of high in the wall, but this room's the same level as the parlor, so it should be about the same height as that window—you remember we could just turn round and look inside that time we worked the admissions for Stan's big party he threw, where somebody stole Robbie's bike?"

"Um, yeah," Dipper said, swallowing hard. "Did, uh, did that bike ever get recovered?"

"Nope. Robbie's parents were mad as heck, too, because it was nearly new. He shoulda chained it, though—Dipper? What's wrong?"

"You're gonna know it anyway," Dipper said. "Now I won't be able to stop thinking about it, and the next time we touch—it was my fault that his bike got stolen," he said. And he confessed everything—the ten Dipper clones, plus poor Paper Jam Dipper, the scheme to ask Wendy to dance with him, the bike theft as a means of pulling Robbie away, the whole schmear.

"Oh, man!" Wendy said. "Dipper, you were like a little maniac!"

"Yeah, incredibly dumb," he admitted. "I know it doesn't mean much, but I'm sorry."

She punched his shoulder. "You realize what you did there with me and Robbie, don't you?"

"I shouldn't have," Dipper said. "But I was twelve, he was almost sixteen, and I wasn't used to how weird Gravity Falls could be, and—I had—had this incredible crush on you. Already."

"Yeah, well. I wish you hadn't done that, man. 'Cause if you hadn't, Robbie and I would probably have broken up a lot sooner than we did. I'd kinda known him since fifth grade, and we'd hung out in the gang, but once I started dating him and found out what a liar he was—that would've happened sooner. And I wouldn't have been mad at you for breaking us up and then right away asking me to go bowling!"

"I'm so sorry."

She hugged him, laughing. "Water under the bridge. Now Tambry's happy with Robbie, he's happy with her, they've finished a year of college, they're recording songs—it's OK, man, really. 'Specially since we've got each other." She pulled him down so they sat on her bed together. "So that's where the two Dippers came from that time in the cave," she said.

"Yeah. They were the last two surviving copies. It's a wonder they lasted as long as they did—copy-machine clones dissolve in water or any other liquid."

"Well, they gave up their lives to save Mabel. I'd say they kinda redeemed themselves. Anyhow—any ideas about this crazy window that exists inside but doesn't outside?"

"I think the Shack's alive," Dipper said.

"Get out of town."

"Well—maybe not alive, exactly, but more like—enchanted? Grunkle Ford once told me that when your dad built it, he used some wood that Ford specially imported from England. It's the kind that police call boxes used to be built from. Ford hinted that the wood was special, and he said he thinks that's why the Shack seems bigger inside than outside."

"Oh, OK, that explains it, then," Wendy said, deadpan. "Just like Hogwarts, huh? It grows a room of requirement whenever you need extra space?"

"I guess," Dipper said. ""Somehow it warps space, I suppose. You can go out this window—it tilts open—and you fall to the ground not far from the parlor."

"But we could look in the parlor windows and see the dance," Wendy said. "You can't even find this window outside to try to look through it."

"Warped space, like I said. Tell you what—let me try something, OK?"

"Go ahead, Dip."

Raising his voice, Dipper said, "Room, Wendy likes you a lot, but she'd like it even more if the window was just clear glass, not stained. And maybe a little lower?"

Wendy nodded.

"Maybe a little lower, like a normal window. If you can't do it, fine, but if you can, she'd appreciate it. Thank you."

Wendy was laughing. "If this works, dude, I may ask for a lot of things!"

"Let's see if it works first. Give it a week."

Meanwhile, though, Dipper had to admire the way Wendy had made the room her own. Ford had taken all of his belongings out—and the electron carpet was still in storage—and Wendy had moved in an eclectic mix of furniture, picked up at estate and garage sales for the most part: a queen-sized bed (larger than her one in the Corduroy house), a four-poster with a handsome but slightly chipped oak headboard, took up a fair bit of floor space. She'd bought a chest of drawers that served double duty as a TV stand—she had brought her old TV from her house—and she also had a study corner, where a desk that almost matched the bed stood against the wall, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase beside it.

Dipper couldn't remember the room having a closet, but a closet it had, and a walk-in, too. Not very big, to be sure, about four feet by five, but you could definitely walk in, turn around, and walk back out. The FALLOUT SHELTER sign that Wendy had ripped off from the bunker hung on the wall beside the bed, some of her posters added a homey touch, and she'd put up curtains over the window for privacy—though she'd about decided that anything gazing in from the outside would likely be a being from another dimension, not a resident of the Falls.

Wendy lay back across the bed, and Dipper reclined next to her. "So what do you think?"

Dipper glanced at her profile. "About the room? I think it's great. The Shack's better off for your living here."

"Thanks, Dip. And how about Mabel and Pacifica?"

"Well, you know—we'll see. I'm sorry about Pacifica's boy trouble."

"Right. But think about it. Daniel was a vampire for a long, long time. When he started to age again like a normal guy, maybe it scared him and made him want to go back to the way he'd been. Or maybe that vampire girl was, like, his first love or some deal."

"Know anything about her?" asked Dipper

"Not much. Her name's all. Carmilla."

Dipper sat up.

"What?" she asked.

"That's a famous vampire name!" Dipper said. "I wonder if—no, probably not. Like Daniel's great-uncle Vlad wasn't really Dracula. I'll talk to Ford, though, and see—"

"Dude," Wendy said, "didn't Vlad, like, have a talk with Preston?"

"I think he did," Dipper said.

"And Stan hung out with him some. Maybe Stan can give him a call—"

"Brilliant," Dipper said. "That's why I love you!"

"Aw, I thought it was my awesome bod."

Dipper lay across the bed beside her again. "Your mind."

"You sure?"

"Well," Dipper whispered, kicking off his shoes, "let me do a little comparison shopping."