Chapter 3: Twilight and After

Mabel, hard at work in her Pig Tattoo Parlor, was trying to restrain Widdles so she could finish inscribing the bright red Valentine shape on her chest with an unfurled banner reading "Pig O' My Heart." True, she was working with colored markers and not needles, but she wanted her pigs to be trendy.

She needed to add the lettering. She had squinched a jeweler's magnifying loupe between her right cheek and right eye socket and, with her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth, she had a medium-tipped purple marker poised to inscribe the decorative Old English-style "P" of "Pig" when Widdles began to squirm again. "C'mon," Mabel grumbled. "The French say you gotta suffer to be beautiful, so suffer a little for me, OK?"

Then someone touched her on the shoulder, and she jumped, losing the loupe, and Widdles tried to jump away and succeeded in turning over onto her stomach. Dipper had suddenly appeared behind Mabel—her tattoo parlor was located on the back porch of the Shack—and he said in a strangely manic voice, "Mabel! You're just wasting time! We haven't played mini-golf! Yet! This summer! In a long time, in fact! Let's go play a round! Or two!"

Mabel looked at him over her shoulder, her loupeless eye still squinted, and Widdles got her leg free of Mabel's grasp and took advantage to jerk away and leap off the porch. She and her father Waddles ambled away, grunting, Waddles revealing his recently acquired tramp stamp ("Born To Go Wee Wee Wee") as the two pigs made their way across the back lawn to their sty. "Dipper?" Mabel asked. 'Whatchoo up to, Bro?"

Dipper sort of danced around her, his grin nearly frightening in its frozen intensity. "Nothing, Mabel. Hah-hah-hah-hah! I just love to play mini-golf. With you! Because! You're great. And you need! To keep in practice! I'm not good, but I like! Watching you! Hey! We could ride bikes!" He struck a pose and thrust out his right arm, pointing the way. "Let's go! To the mini-golf course!"

"Have you been into the Smile Dip?" Mabel asked suspiciously.

"No!" Dipper blinked and then his whole bearing and posture changed as he said, "Oh, no, no, no, you didn't! Mabes, girl, don't tell me you went back alone to the Dusk-2-Dawn!"

"Me?" Mabel asked, all innocence. "I certainly didn't go back to congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Duskerton on the city deciding not to demolish their convenience store and take them the special ghost sweaters I knitted out of spider webs and afterwards walk out of the store with a carton of Smile Dip hidden in my knitting bag, if that's what you're implying!"

"I got this," Dipper said. "Please."

"I'm just explaining, Broman! 'Cause if you think I got four dozen packets of Smile Dip hidden in my closet, we-he-he-ell! Pfbbbt!" She flapped a hand in dismissal.

"Never mind that!" Dipper said. "I just really, really, really want to go to the mini-golf course! Right now! Please!"

Mabel tilted her head sideways at a fifty-degree angle. "You—want to go back to the Putt Hutt? Really? The Lilliputtians swore they'd destroy us if we ever went back."

Dipper slapped his forehead. "Oh, yeah! I completely forgot the Lilliputtians!"

"Tell you what, Dip, my four o'clock just had to leave. Have a seat and I'll give you one of my nice soothing calmative tatts. How about a relaxing, colorful sunset over the ocean? Right across your chest?"

"No, no, but let's do something! Something active."

"Dipper, you're actin' all cray-cray today! What's the matter with you?"

Dipper paced in a very tight circle, almost spinning in place like a top. "I just need to take my mind off some things. Activity helps. Come on. If you don't want to play golf, let's go to the bowling alley."

Putting on a teasing, nearly flirty tone, Mabel asked, "Will you swing me around and around in the air like an airplane and then let me slide down the lane on my tummy?"

Dipper balled his hands into fists and closed his eyes. "If you'll wear your bike helmet this time!"

She punched his shoulder. "Come on, Brobro! Seeing stars is the whole point of full-body-contact extreme bowling!" She shrugged. "But no, I was just kidding, because I can't. I'm way too busy. Anywho, I have a date tonight, Dipper."

Dipper stopped pacing and again his posture changed. "A date? Who with, girl? C'mon, dish! I didn't say that. That was not me!"

"If you must know," Mabel said, her hands on her hips, "I'm going to the movies with T.K. He asked me if I'd go with him to see Dusklight IV: Lady and the Vamp. I've been wanting to see it, and I knew you wouldn't go."

"Real vampires don't glitter!" Dipper said.

"Which is the exact reason I know you wouldn't want to go!" Mabel shrugged and then sounded just a bit unhappy: "You're always criticizing the movies I like. 'Real vampires can go out in the sun!' 'If he turns into a wolf, where do his clothes go, and how do they come back when he changes into a guy again?' 'What girl would want to French-kiss a guy who's been dead three hundred years?' Man, you ask such illogical questions, Dipper! Why don't you and Wendy do something together?"

"Ah hah, hah! We—can't. My dad won't—Nooo, uh, I mean—Wendy's dad wants her back home—yeah, workin' like a coal miner shovelin' out the mess he and the boys always leave! Stop, please, I got this!"

"Oh," Mabel said, unbending a little. "Poor Dipper. I see what's going on. You've got Wendy on the brain!"

Dipper had the same expression that John Dillinger had on his face when the FBI agents stepped out of the darkness as the mobster and his date left the Biograph Theater, where they had just seen Manhattan Melodrama. The G-men, Tommy guns at the ready, sprang out of ambush, but one of them asked, "Hey, before we start, is the movie worth seeing?" In other words, Dipper looked sort of trapped and startled.

He blurted, "How'd you know?"

With her hands on her hips, Mabel said smugly, "Dipper, Dipper, Dipper! When will you learn that I always know everything? All the time? Hey, you want me to patch things up between you two? I'm not just a matchmaker, I'm a surgeon of love, baby! I'll take chain stitches in your heart!"

Dipper took great deep gulps of air. "Look, Mabel, Wendy's dad came down real hard on her 'cause she was spending so many evenings here. For the next couple of weeks, she has to be home every night except on Fridays and Saturdays, when her dad and her brothers go bowling over in Pascataconagah."

Mabel chuckled. "I love that crazy town's name! Say it five times real fast!"

"Mabel, please." Dipper slumped and then sat on the edge of the porch. "I—I guess—I guess I'm kinda lonely, that's all. Yeah, Mabes, Dip an' I are fine. I mean, Wendy and I are getting along fine. I mean, we're not like Robbie and Tambry, we're not engaged or any—how could you tell her that? It's a secret! I didn't know it was a secret!"

"Wait, what?" Mabel asked. "Robbie and Tambry? He popped the question? How'd you know?"

Dipper twitched. "Look, if you wanna know the whole deal about Robbie and Tambry, go to the gift shop, and I—I mean Wendy—will tell you about it. It's OK, business is kinda dead now and will be until six."

"This isn't over, Dipper," Mabel said. "But yeah, I'll go talk to Wendy. She an' I have such wedding planning to do! I'm seeing a Goth wedding here. Bride and groom both in black, with caboodles of lace. Oooh! Wedding cake with licorice icing! White cobweb gel frosting as decoration! Man, I am on fire!" She walked into the Shack, trailing wedding ideas behind her like a lingering perfume. Waddles and Widdles immediately returned to the porch and ate her entire box of scented markers.

That afternoon Wendy had a hard time driving home, partly because she was doubly distracted: She really wanted to go back to the Shack and snuggle and smooch with Dipper and then, too, suddenly the inside of her head was like a two-way radio. Wendy, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to spill Robbie's secret!

Aloud—she found it easier to shape the thoughts if she spoke them—she said, "'S OK, Dipper. Mabes was bound to find out sooner or later. And you just plucked that outa my thoughts. I mean, it isn't like I told you an' swore you to secrecy, dude!"

Oh, Wendy! This is crazy, this is crazy. I think I'm getting addicted to being inside you. Uh. Not in that way! You know what I mean. My mind in yours and vice-versa.

"Yeah, if it didn't make me feel like one of those old people who shuffle around talking to their invisible friends, it'd be real nice, dude. OK, I'm gonna be over there tomorrow at six in the morning. Six o'clock, remember! Get some sleep if you can!"

I'll try, but I'm all worked up! I mean, I thought maybe playing golf with Mabel might let me get my mind off your—uh, I mean off you. You think she's serious about T.K.?

"Too early to tell, man. Does it matter? T.K.'s a sweet guy, an' he likes her. Step up from Mermando and Gideon and Gabe anyway, right?"

Definitely. And you didn't know him, but she dated a real creep last spring—

"Trey Moulter!" Wendy said, feeling anger—Dipper's, she belatedly realized—rising up inside her. "Man, I'd like to give him a swift kick or three! What a jerk, man!"

Wait, wait—Wendy, I just got a little flash—did some boy HIT you? When did a boy punch you? Who was he? Where can I find him?

"Never mind, Dip, it's nothing serious, really. I'm not gonna think of that. Tell you about that whole mess one day."

OK. We both have things we'd like to keep private. I'll respect that and you won't push me too much when I'm uncomfortable with certain thoughts, OK? Deal?

"Deal, dude. Hey, here's a thought: We can't find a cure, we go to Ford's friend the Professor, the guy who, like, had you an' your family kidnapped last summer when Pacifica's crazy cousin was plotting to kill her or marry her or both. The Prof is, like, a spymaster, right? You an' me, dude, we'd be a hell of a spy team!"

Yeah. Hey, maybe if Gideon Gleeful gets elected President one day, we could run the CIA for him!

"Pfft! Never gonna happen, Dip. I mean, be honest, who'd vote for a Presidential candidate with that kinda ridiculous hair?"

Dipper went running alone that evening, down to the high-school track and then a total of five miles around it, concentrating on exhausting himself and keeping his thoughts on lifting one foot, swinging it forward, putting it down, and then repeating the process with the other. Even so, he got flashes of Wendy cooking venison steaks for her family—though he knew she didn't like the taste of venison and wouldn't eat any herself, it was so unfair! And then they'd get up burping and scratching and go off to the TV, and not one of them would even offer to help with the cleaning up!

He tired himself out on the track and had to drag himself back to the Shack. Stan passed him going the other way in the Stanleymobile, with Sheila in the seat snuggled close beside him and, in the back, T.K. and Mabel, both of whom waved at him as they rolled by.

Instead of Abuelita's pork roast—another reason why Mabel had decided to go on a date with T.K., Dipper thought, because even though they and their dad weren't observant of the dietary rules, as the owner, friend, and protector of Waddles and Widdles Mabel had an aversion to anything in the pork line—he made himself a turkey and cheese sandwich, with a side of walnuts and pretzels and a glass of warm milk, followed by a ripe banana as his dessert.

He'd looked up sleep-inducing foods on the Internet, and every one of those was on the list.

But—as he was getting ready to turn in, he became acutely aware of the moment when, in her own house, miles distant, Wendy Corduroy stepped into the shower and began to wash her long, red hair. Darn it, he could feel the suds sliding over her wet, slippery—over her!

And he got her flick of thought: —Oh my God, Dipper! I totally didn't think! I'll rinse and get out of here as soon's I can, man! Uh—I can kinda feel you gettin'—uh, tense!

He held back, though. Later that night, after he'd tossed in bed and she'd kept sitting up and pounding her pillow as though to force some sleep out of it, they made another discovery, one that unsettled them more than anything else:

Dreams are contagious.