Chapter 3:

Those next few minutes were tense. Mabel and Dipper paced frantically at the far ends of the school-yard. Mabel's face was one of military determination, and Dipper's one of confusion and doubt, still wiping his face, hoping no one noticed the wet patches. Mabel was without her friends, but that hardly mattered now; she had a match to make.

"Alright," Mabel growled, "Who do you find the most attractive girl at the school?"

"Mabel!" Dipper protested. "You can't just ask things like that!"

"Sure I can! Now tell me, if you wanted any girl to go out with you, who would it be?"

Dipper paused. He knew the answer, and he was almost certain Mabel knew it as well, not that he would have ever told her before, if he ever would. That being said, it was probably the same answer most boys in the year would have given. The girl's name was Natalie Brady, a girl whom he had always associated with freshness and class; this was based off the gorgeous smell of the new clothes she wore every week. She was tall for a girl, taller than Dipper certainly, and whose confident pose held a sense of purpose that he admired and sought to imitate. She had a silvery voice, and used it for everything, no matter what her mood, a consistency that he adored. Her freed hair was a natural, passionate red, to compliment her lively, and outgoing lifestyle. Almost every day went by where he would overhear some new party or event she went to, things that Dipper had long since resigned himself to never being a part of. Maybe that's why he liked her so much; she was a gateway into a world that he envied even more than he loathed. For obvious reasons, he wasn't well acquainted with her, and had no idea if she was already with a boyfriend. It would be more accurate to say, however, he instinctively assumed she did.

Dipper continued to drag his pause, broken only by his sister asking what needed to be asked. "It's Natalie, isn't it?"

"What?! It's not Nat…" he said out of reflex, but he knew he couldn't continue the charade. He stopped mid-sentence, exhaled deeply, and nodded solemnly.

"That's great!" Mabel beamed. "Step one done! Now all we have to do is hook you two up!"

"You must be joking," Dipper squirmed.

"What!? Why not?"

"Mabel! I could give everyone here a million dollars and I still wouldn't be as popular as she is! She's the most beautiful, likeable, incredible girl here! She has to have a boyfriend already!"

"No she doesn't, trust me. Even then, how do you know, if you don't ask?"

Dipper internally cursed that line. There was no way through the point, so he tried to drive around it.

"She'll never accept me. I'm short-"

"Pssht, you're a big guy!"

"For you! She'd never date me because of that."

"How do you know if you don't ask?" Mabel retorted.

He paused. She was good at this game. "I'm too weird-"

"How do you know if you don't ask?"

He stammered. "I-I'm too-"

"How do you know if you don't ask?"

Dipper was losing his mind. "I'm-"

"-Going to ask Natalie out to the dance!" his sister rejoiced. "Come on Dip, you can do this! I know you can! If you could get straight A's in everything all year, how is asking one lousy question so hard?"

Dipper's mind reeled at the enormity of the task before him. This wasn't a bunch of friendly numbers or facts anymore, this was people; the one thing he had never truly understood, and what had never understood him. On any other day, his mind would have told him to give it up again, to accept where he was, regardless of how he felt about it. But today, perhaps because of the rosy belief on his sister's face, he now had a motivation to do something that he never thought he could have done, especially not after the 'Valentine's Day Massacre', as he once called it. If Mabel could believe in him, why couldn't he?

"Alright Mabel," said Dipper, straightening up, and fixing his hat. "I will ask Natalie to the dance today!" he declared, with a resolution he hadn't felt in years.

"Now that's what I want to hear!" his sister roared.

Mabel lost no time in taking out a blank piece of paper. She leaned to her eager brother with a conspiratorial glint. "Alright Dip, I know you like to plan these things out, so here's what we're gonna do, together! We'll go through class as normal, but… you are actually going to write out an amazing love-letter about how beautiful she is! When class is out for lunch, I'll ask Natalie to stay behind, and you'll read your letter. Then…whamo! You ask her out, she swoons, falls madly in love with you, and you two are the talk of school at the dance!" Her voice softened. "Or, well, she could just turn you down."

Dipper glared.

"F-Forget I said that last part."

The next class was under way, and Mabel was bubbling with enthusiasm. She would occasionally turn back to her brother to see how he was getting on. He focused on the blank piece of paper below him as if locked in a staring contest. Natalie, was totally unaware of how, just two seats behind her, a boy was busting his mind trying to come up with the way to talk to her. Despite his being a genius in English, Mabel could read only two, admittedly well-written words: "Dear" and "Natalie." Dipper's pen dangled loosely over the letter, occasionally touching down, and pulled back, as if merely to move it would bring about some inspiration. As time progressed, the ticks on the clock rang louder. About five minutes before deadline, a breakthrough was reached. Dipper was beside himself with glee that he'd managed put one over on the world for once. He put the pen down to write his inspired addition: "You." He drew another blank after that, before his whole mind completely shut down. Each second felt like eternity, but when the bell rang, it still felt like time went by in an instant. Dipper was now up the creek without a paddle.

"Mabel!" he whispered, as loudly as one could with it still be described as a whisper. His eyes locked at the far end of the room, far too terrified to face his sister.

"What?"

"I couldn't think of anything to write!"

"You what!?"

"I blanked out! I don't know what to do! Game over, man! Game over! You've gotta call this whole thing off!"

The class started to get up to leave, Natalie included. Mabel struggled to decide what to do. She had no idea how someone who wrote the best poetry in class could shrivel up like that. She was now faced with her end of the bargain: Was she going to stop Natalie, like they agreed? It was a short, but terrible internal conflict, with both sides making strong cases. It was then that she noticed some hair on her sweater. It was from the dog earlier, which she had completely forgotten about. That's when she remembered that today was supposed to be the best day ever; she liked her chances now.

"I'm calling nothing off," she said defiantly.

To Dipper's horror, Mabel leapt out of her chair, and intercepted Natalie, as the rest of the class streamed out. Dipper shrunk to half his size, curling up in his chair. He grabbed his hat and pulled it down with all his might, as if it could swallow him up and get him out of there, and looked desperately back to his abandoned letter, as if the paper itself would somehow take pity on him, and pull a poem out of the ether to spare him humiliation. He looked back up to see the second last thing he ever wanted to see; Mabel pointing him out to Natalie. This was immediately followed with the very last (and yet somehow the first) thing he wanted to see; Natalie walking towards him. He impulsively jumped out of his chair to stand tall, even on his tip-toes, in a desperate attempt not to look as short as he was. It was hard to put down why, but Natalie looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her before. She was so sure, so confident, and Dipper was stumbling, grunting incomprehensibly, while dashing his eyes back and forth faster than the resetting of a typewriter.

"So," Natalie began, in what would be the first words she ever said to him directly, "Mabel says you have something to tell me?"

Dipper really, really wished he didn't, but knew he did. The problem was that the words were slaughtered every time they tried to leave his throat, his mumbling the ghosts of failed conversation. His hands were buried so deep inside his pockets they were bursting through the other side, and his feet twisted on the floor, like a zombie attempting to dance. The worst thing was Natalie's reaction. She wasn't reacting positively, but most bizarrely, she wasn't even acting negatively. There was nothing for him to go on. He was flying blind in a hurricane, and the plane was doing a mayday.

In one of his eye flashes however, he looked just above Natalie's shoulder, and saw his sister. This was finally enough to get his attention on something. Mabel was calmly standing, smiling supportively, with her thumb raised in triumph. Dipper didn't know how this situation possibly constituted anything other than a defeat more total than Godzilla VS Bambi, but the way his sister looked, as if nothing was wrong, on some deeper level convinced him that he must have been doing something right. He finally breathed in one last time, and spoke:

"Look, Natalie. I know I haven't talked to you much, or maybe ever, but I want you to know you are the prettiest, coolest girl I've ever seen, and I would love it if I could take you to the dance three weeks from now."

Dipper looked to Natalie, and again it was his least favourite reaction, that being none. There was no indication of surprise, disgust, happiness, or anything, just the same puzzled expression she had when she asked what he wanted to talk about. Dipper was so confused, that for a moment he imagined he only said what he did inside his mind to try and get him out of his dilemma. Before he could end up making a bigger fool of himself, Natalie finally broke her silence, her face curling to a smile.

"Oh gosh Dipper, that's so sweet! Oh, how can I possibly turn down an offer like that? Of course I'll go to the dance with you!" She hugged him tightly, and began to walk away. "See you in three weeks!" she smiled, waving from the door. She walked off, leaving the twins alone.

Mabel exploded into ecstasy. "You did it Dipper!" She ran over to her brother to give him a thunderous pat on the back. "I always knew you could!" She focused in on his face. The pupils of his eyes were dilated so totally that all color had vanished. His mouth dangled freely, as he swayed back and forth like a small tree on a windy day. He had not reacted in any way to her praise. Even the slap didn't seem to give any reaction.

Finally, he spoke. "I-I did it…" Suddenly, he grabbed his sister and put her in a suffocating hug. He spun her around as quickly as he could. "I DID IT MABEL!" he cried. Putting his sister down, he ran up and down the room in a circle, imbued with an energy that he had never before had access to, skipping over the chairs, and laughing in delirious joy.

Mabel stood away, and let him have his moment, her hands covering her mouth, trying not to let her smile entirely devour her face. She giggled at how silly her brother was acting, but was still touched, because she knew how important this was for him.

He eventually stopped just beside her. "Thanks Mabel! I could not have done this without you!"

"No Dipper," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder, "This was all you. You were the one who asked Natalie out. Heck, you came up with it on the fly! And not a bad ask if I do say so myself! You were great out there, now we have to get you ready for the dance!"

"Oh, boy," Dipper said, the limitations of his energies now reasserting themselves. "I can't dance, I can't do parties, and I only have three weeks to do everything." His neurotic traits were coming back with a vengeance.

"Oh come on Dipper! Relax," his sister said. "Look, you've already done a lot today. Why don't you go on and have some fun reading your silly monster book?"

Dipper grinned again, and ran back to his desk to catch his already well-thumbed book. "It's not silly! You'll see!" he shouted glowingly back at her, as he ran out the door.

Mabel stood for a second to take in what had just happened. Who knew? Omens were indeed true. She thought that it just meant people would be a little nicer to her, or the teacher wouldn't give as much work, the latter of course, certainly never being the case. Instead, it was something much more precious to her: Her brother had finally learned to truly love himself. That's the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world.

"Match…made!"

WKH ILUH ULVHV…