One Week of Wonder


3. Life's No Picnic . . . Except When It Is

(August 24, 2015)

Dipper and Wendy did their run on Monday morning—but they didn't try for a record. Dipper still hadn't recovered from lost sleep, and Wendy seemed apologetic about the trick the girls had played on him after the sleepover, so she took it easy. They finished the run, showered, and had breakfast before anyone else was up.

"We meant it as a joke," Wendy said out of nowhere as they sat at the table. "I hope I would have had better sense than to go through with it if we'd had any sleep."

"It's OK," Dipper told her with a shrug. He had finished his shower first and had made them an omelet big enough to share: four eggs, cheese, chopped onions and peppers, some of Abuelita's home-made salsa, plus thick sourdough toast. "It's just . . . well, embarrassing. Mabel knew that."

"She loves teasing you."

"Oh, yeah, I know," Dipper said. "She still goes on and on about her extra millimeter! How's the omelet?"

"Good," Wendy said. "Really tasty, man. You're picking up some cooking chops!"

"And I don't get to show them off until summer's nearly over," Dipper said. "Wendy, I'm sorry we didn't have more fun this year."

"Well, we had an insane dude trying to kill us," Wendy said. "We'll make up for it. I'll dream up all kinds of crazy things we can do next time. You just better come prepared for me! Lots of vitamins, and build yourself up! Anything in particular you'd like to do with me, besides . . . that?"

He didn't ask her what "that" meant, because he had a pretty good idea already. He said, "Well, for one thing, I really hope we can go camping next summer," Dipper said. "Guess it's too late this time around."

"Yeah," Wendy said with a sigh. "Unless we could go a week from today—my day off. But that's the day before the big party."

"That's the trouble," Dipper said. "You know Mabel and parties. Lots of preparation. If we tried to get in a camping trip, we'd have to rush it. I don't want to do that."

Wendy nodded. "Gotcha. Hey, how about this—do you have anything planned with Mabel, by the way? For today, I mean?"

"No. She and Teek are going off somewhere." He chuckled. "Somewhere within walking distance. Teek's still grounded from driving, except to work and back!"

Wendy smiled. "Well, at least his mom and dad aren't trying to bust them up. That never works. I mean, Tambry's parents, when they found out about her and Robbie, they all but threatened to put her in a convent! And she still snuck around to see him. Now her mom's all 'Playing music and making records and going to college is well and good, but what about grandchildren?'" She laughed.

"Maybe I should get Mom to forbid me to see you," Dipper teased. "Then we could get married sooner."

"Nah," Wendy said, grinning. "She'd just tell you that you couldn't come up to Gravity Falls again, and I can't afford to come down and stay close to you, what with California rents, so I guess we'd have to run away to Mexico or some deal."

They both chuckled. Then, as they washed dishes, Wendy said, "OK, so if you don't have anything you have to do today with Stan or Ford or anybody, why don't we pack a picnic and take off for the hills? We could at least spend the day together. It's a little like camping, but without feral Gnomes raiding the food supply."

"I'd love that," Dipper said.

They waited until everyone was up—and after her breakfast Mabel had bummed a ride to Teek's house with Soos, who had to run into town for a few things—until they told Melody their plans. "May be hard to get us on our phones," Wendy warned. "Reception's spotty west of town. But we'll be OK. We'll be back by dinner."

They packed a medium cooler with sodas, sandwiches, and a few odds and ends, Dipper changed to more outdoorsy clothes—a flannel shirt, like Wendy's, but a light blue, jeans, and some hiking boots he'd bought but had rarely worn. He also packed his guitar. Wendy drove them in her '73 Dodge Dart, taking back roads that Dipper hadn't even known about until they were in the hilly country past her house. However, Dipper did suspect he knew where they were heading, and he was right.

Wendy parked off the road, on a rare level spot, and they climbed a long, thickly-wooded slope up to the grassy crest of a rounded hill. "You've been here lately," Dipper said, looking around.

They emerged next to a small private cemetery. It had recently been weeded and tended. "Yep," Wendy agreed, tossing down the plaid picnic blanket. "Four times a year we clean it up. Not too weird for you, is it?"

"No. I like this spot," Dipper said. "It's beautiful."

It was the place where Wendy's mom and a few of her relatives lay buried, inside the small space fenced in with black curlicues of wrought iron. Not far outside the fence a simple uncarved stone and a low grass-covered mound marked the resting place of Russ, a fox-boy who had once loved Mabel and who had given his life to save hers. Dipper noticed that when the Corduroy family had tided up the family cemetery, they had also trimmed the grass on his grave. A thick cluster of wildflowers, spikes nearly three feet tall, grew near the stone. They were past their prime, but tall, thin cones of pink-to-lavender bell-shaped flowers still clung to the central stems. "What are those?" Dipper asked.

Wendy glanced over and smiled. "Foxgloves. Not native here, but I thought they were appropriate, so I planted 'em. They're really pretty in mid-summer."

"Foxgloves," Dipper said. "I'm glad you thought of that."

"Next year," Wendy said, "when everything's green and beautiful, we'll bring Mabel up here. This summer things were too hectic. And—well, you know it'll make her a little sad. This summer I didn't think she needed that."

They sat on the hillside near the wrought-iron fence, looking toward Gravity Falls. The tallest hill in the valley, the one beneath which a crashed UFO rested, stood ahead of them and just off to the right. Past it they could see the distant town, in miniature, and even past that the shattered bluffs with their UFO-shaped overhangs that marked the boundary of Gravity Falls Valley.

At this distance the old mining trestle was barely visible—there was talk in town about dismantling it, since it was rusting to pieces and would crash down one day. Dipper hoped the town would consider not demolishing but replacing it. Maybe not with a real trestle—nobody took the mining train any longer—but with something, a symbolic span.

"I'm as bad as Mabel," he said. "I hate to see things change."

"Life is change," Wendy said, leaning back, her shoulder touching his. "For bad, for good, for in-between."

"Some things won't ever change, though," Dipper said. He coughed. "Uh, I've, uh, I've been kind of working on another song for you. Would you want, you know—want to hear it?"

"Sure," Wendy said. Her voice took on a warning tone: "Wait a minute, though. It doesn't have explicit lyrics, does it?"

"Huh?" Dipper squeaked. "What? No! I—" He relaxed. "You're kidding."

"Yeah, kinda," she admitted with a grin. "But I wouldn't want to shock Mom or anything. Yeah, Dip. Play the song for me."

"I have to sing it, too," Dipper said. "I wish I had a better voice."

"I don't," Wendy said. "Go on and sing it, Dipper. I like to hear you sing."

He took his guitar out of the case, tuned it—he had decided to take the plunge and buy a new guitar that fall, a better acoustic model, since this was still his beginner's version and stayed in tune for only about half a minute at a time—and then strummed the opening chords. "OK, I wrote this over the last couple of weeks, thinking about change and about you and me. I hope I can get through it."

He played the opening stanza, a slow, sweet, and sad tune. Then, satisfied the guitar was sounding right, he murmured, "It's called 'Summer's Ending.'" Softly, with his voice quivering a little bit, he sang the lyrics for Wendy:


Here we stand, my darling Wendy,

As another summer ends,

Time has changed us, oh so quickly

Since we said we'd just be friends.

.

Soon the miles and tears will part us

Until we can meet again.

When another summer's over,

Leaving brings me so much pain.

.

Now my wounded heart is grieving,

Darling, kiss me one last time,

For too soon I must be leaving,

Tell me once more you'll be mine.

.

Oh, I wish I could be clever,

Wrap my love into a rhyme,

But my heart is yours forever,

Though it's yearning all the time.

.

So farewell, my darling lover,

Now I promise to be true—

For I can never love another,

And my heart belongs to you.

Oh, I can never ever love another,

For my heart belongs to you.


He added the ending grace notes. "That's it," he said, feeling butterflies in his stomach.

Wendy told him how much she liked it. Not by speaking, but by gently taking the guitar from him, setting it aside, and wrapping him warm in her arms.