There was never any need to set an alarm clock in the Ramirez house. Alba Rosa Ramirez was up before the roosters, the sun, and, somehow, Old Man McGucket. She had been an early riser since the summers she had spent as a young girl helping her aunt and uncle on their farm. There were no cows to milk or eggs to gather here, but there was still tea to put on and bacon to fry.

So, at five thirty am, Alba rose from her bed, bones creaking in protest. She grabbed a long, lumpy pillow from her bed and pulled a rosary from a crude pocket in the middle. Soos had made her a kneeler in his Home Economics class last year. She had waved him off, telling him that she didn't need anything so luxurious, her knees could handle the linoleum floor just fine, but she liked it all the same. Alba placed it on the floor in front of her and knelt for her morning prayers.

"Please, Maria, look after my Soos. He is good. Do not let him get into trouble. Do not let others step on him or use his kindness wrongly," she started off, wrapping the beads around her hands. She counted off her prayers, beads passing through her fingers one after another. "Amen."

She pulled herself up some twenty minutes later. Quietly, she remade her bed and then left the room.

She was still trying to figure out the perfect time to wake Soos up for his work. Alba was not sure how, but Soos had left the house with a screwdriver and one shoe falling off of his foot and had come back with a job.

She put the kettle on the stove, humming to herself. The oven clock read 6:00 AM. She got him up around this time for school, so it would not be unreasonable to start calling for him now. She'd wait for a few minutes between each call and in twenty minutes or so she'd knock on his door and make him eat something for breakfast.

"Soos!" Alba called, as she settled at the table with a plate of toast and a chipped royal doulton teacup.

"Abuela, I'm ready! When are we going?" Soos was at the table a record fifteen minutes early. He ran around the room in a flurry, hurrying over to the the fridge and pulling out the apple juice.

"Have some of toast." She peeled off the second paper plate that was stuck to her own and handed it to him.

"Thanks!" Soos smiled, then went straight to work.

"Calm down, Soos," Alba snapped. She continued, trying to soothe his nerves and make sure he didn't think she was mad. "Mr. Pines isn't going to move away while we eat breakfast."

"Okie dookie!"

She took a sip of tea and smiled. Mornings were so lovely.


Soos had pretended to calm down when Abuelita had asked him to, but he simply could not. The world was buzzing and he was a round little bee humming along to the summer's song. And the summer's song was fast and golden and wonderful. He had gotten up at five thirty am but he didn't tell Abuelita because she would have told him to go back to bed.

His Mystery Shack staff shirt was hung over his bed and it wasn't the first thing he saw (the ceiling) or the second (the cards on his wall), but it felt like the first real thing that had ever existed. He had put it on, imagining a chorus of angels singing and a heavenly beam of light falling on him from an open window nestled in the ceiling that was not there.

In actuality, the room had been silent except for the occasional woodpecker call that floated in through the open window.

Abuelita sat across the table from him, drinking her tea and handing him pieces of toast. He slathered them with strawberry jam and tried to eat as slowly as possible. In his head, he was flying out the door, over the treetops, to his first day of work at the most magical place in the known and unknown universe, the Mystery Shack.


Soos flew out of the car like a pinball pushed by one of those pinball pushing things and Alba waved until he was out of her sight. She shook her head, her lips falling back into a contemplative frown. She turned the truck around and drove away.

Back at home, she wandered the hallway, vacuum in hand. It would be much easier to clean up Soos' room without Soos around. She hovered in front of his door, staring down the scraps of paper taped to the wood. There were new pictures, ones he must have put up in the past two or three days. One picture was of the two kids who had been nice enough to give Soos candy on his birthday. She squinted at the picture, frustrated at her inability to place them. They must have been tourists. Another was of Mr. Pines walking on telephone wires and entertaining a large and fairly elaborately illustrated crowd of locals. There were several rough crayon drawings of that broken down shack and the awful shyster running it.

She prayed that the man would not let Soos down, but it seemed inevitable. He was rude, conniving, and absolutely disgusting. Yet some strange force had possessed him to hire her sweet grandson and she almost dared to wonder if it was kindness. She snorted at the thought and pushed open the door, the vacuum dragging behind her.

She would certainly have a word with that Stan Pines.


"Good morning, Mr. Pines!" Soos chirped as the screen door snapped shut behind him.

"Oh! Uh, 'morning, kid," Mr. Pines grumbled from behind the cash register. His jacket was flung on the chair behind him, his fez was askew, and his eyepatch was dangling from his left hand. He stared up at Soos blankly for a moment, mouth hanging open. He quickly realigned his fez and tossed his jacket on. The elastic in his eyepatch made a snapping sound as it fell over his right eye. "Show time."

"What am I doing today?" Soos chanced, fiddling with the hem of his shirt.

"Well, the cart needs looking at and there's a leak in the kitchen… sweep until Snake Tattoo Guy gets here. And by sweep I mean… well, I, uh, I mean sweep but also watch the shop. I need to get ready." With that Mr. Pines waltzed off through a curtain marked Employees Only, a book tucked under his arm.

"Roger that, Mr. Pines!"

Soos was just finishing up his first-ever work assignment when a large man covered in snake tattoos entered the front door.

"Good morning!" He called out to him. Snake Tattoo Guy nodded and sat behind the register without a word.

"Weather's nice, right?" The man remained silent.

"I hear that thirty percent of Gravity Falls' cow population are actually aliens, what do you think?" A snort- that was encouraging. Soos paused, digging for something else to say. "What do aliens want with those cows anyway? Are they making cosmic milkshakes? Do they need it to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwiches? Or mayonnaise?"

"You don't make mayonnaise with milk," the man suddenly spoke, his voice surprisingly soft.

"What?"

"You make it with like… oil an' eggs, I think," he tapped his chin as he spoke.

"Oh, okay. Then they better start going after the chickens at the petting zoo, too!"

Snake Tattoo Guy laughed, then added, "They can take all o' those demons, if they want. I won' miss 'em."

"Aw, but what about mayonnaise, sir?"

Snake Tattoo Guy was once again without words and remained as such for the rest of the day. Soos didn't take offense to this; talking could be really hard sometimes. He smiled at the man every time he entered the gift shop. More often than not, the man smiled back.

Soos didn't know how to fix anything yet, so he mostly looked at the things Mr. Pines told him to look at. The pipe under the sink leaked and Soos watched. The golf cart made a strange, sickly gargling roar and Soos listened.

He wrapped the pipe in electrical wire and thought about the puffy dinosaur journal on his desk. He supposed he wouldn't be ruining Auntie Carolina's gift if he wrote notes on how to fix things in it. Soos decided that he would be going to the library later to take out a couple books about plumbing and mechanics.

There was no way he was going to mess up and lose this job. If something needed fixing, then Soos was going to fix it.

He just needed to know how first.


Alba had not made a list of all of the things she expected Soos to say to her when he got in the truck, but if she had "Could you please, please take me to the library, Abuela?" would not be anywhere on it.

She paused a moment, her eyebrows shooting up into her perm. However, all she said was "Alright, mijo" and headed straight to the library.

"Thanks!" Soos chirped. He turned away from her and rolled the window down.

"Don't put your head out there," she chided, not even glancing in his direction but simply knowing what he was up to.

"Noted." The sound of the window being cranked up filled the silence. There was no heavy thud, so he had not entirely closed the window. The wind made a whip-whistling sound as it passed through the crack. "Are you gonna come in too?"

"No, I have something else," she said, a smirk pulling at the corners of her mouth.

"Oh, alright. Are you gonna look for me or do I get to walk home? Is that a yes I'm hearing about walking home? It's totally a yes."

"If that's what you want, mijo."

"Sweet!" A pudgy fist was thrust into the air.

"Well, you stay as long as you like but be home at six, understand?"

"Okay!" Soos was out of the car in no time and Alba was grinning at the little crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror. The Lord had handed her the perfect opportunity to give Stan Pines a stern talking to and she was not about to waste it.


Giant, and possibly angry, towers of knowledge loomed over Soos and he had the audacity to return their stare. Or at least he squinted up at one book with an eye adorning its spine in what he considered to be a threatening manner. Still the stacks would not yield their knowledge unto him. He frowned, running a hand along the spines and picking out a book with the rather promising title If You Can't Fix the Sink Then How Can You Be Expected to Fix Your Own Life. He glanced over the table of contents, already feeling in over his head. He imagined the faucet in the Mystery Shack bursting open and flooding the kitchen. He tried to fight it, fruitlessly whipping a mop around and swallowing dirty water…

"We don't read books here!" A hand was placed on Soos' shoulder. He jumped, dropping the book and turning to face whoever was trying to talk to him.

"Old Man McGucket!" he gasped, reaching down to pick up his book.

"Ya won't find true knowledge there- no, ya won't!" The man slapped the book out of his hands. "Can't get nothing from book learnin' that ya can't get with yer own hands."

"Do you know anything about fixing sinks and golf carts?" Soos asked, finding himself strangely calm. Sure, Abuelita said to stay away from Old Man McGucket and he had just made him drop the book he'd been looking at twice, but he didn't see any harm in asking.

"O' course! An' I can make 'em better too!" Old Man McGucket flashed him a toothy grin and started running down the aisle. "Come on over here and I'll learn ya well."

"Why not?" Soos shrugged, following him through the stacks.


Stanford Pines wiped the sweat off his brow with a dirty jacket sleeve. He scanned the gift shop- the last tour scheduled for the day was over, the kid was long gone, and Snake Tattoo Guy had just headed out. There was absolutely no reason for him to believe that he would be anything other than completely alone until the next day. He locked the front door.

His gaze shifted from the vending machine to the living room, deliberating. He began to hobble across the room, leaning much more heavily on his cane then he would if anyone could see him. As he placed his hand on the keys of the vending machine, there was a knock at the door. He froze. If it was one of those damn government men, he swore to God he was going to-

"Yes, hello, Mr. Pines. I must talk with you."

Unless the government had started using old ladies to do their dirty work (those monsters!), he was safe for now. He let out a gust of air and walked to the door.

"H-hello, m'am," he managed. It was not as suave as he would have liked, but it was something. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I'm Soos' grandmother and I just wanted to talk to you."

"Alright, what's up?" Stanford Pines could handle one tiny granny. This situation was totally- and suddenly he found himself being pulled forward by his lapels. "H-hey!"

"Look. Soos is a good, sweet child. Do not hurt him or disappoint him or suddenly pack up your awful business one day without a word." She pushed him away.

He brushed off his suit, absolutely bewildered. He knew he didn't have the best reputation, but he didn't think he deserved to be threatened in his own home.

"You don't make him feel bad, okay?" The woman raised a fist. "Understood?"

"Crystal clear," he sputtered.

Soos' grandmother slammed his own door in his face. He stood in the doorway for a moment, mouth agape, before retreating to the living room.

He was going to need to think this one over for a bit.