Chapter 9: Looking Forward
(November 10, 2015)
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
Dipper, who had read Nicholas Nickleby for extra credit in English—he was still too young to realize that the students who performed heroic tasks like reading a huge Victorian novel when they didn't have to were exactly the students who did not need extra credit—had been struck by that line and had jotted it down in his latest journal.
He felt that the statement was true. He had been parted from Wendy for over two months now, and he missed her every second of every minute of every hour of every day—you know how it is.
Oh, sure, being parted in the 21st century wasn't very much like being parted in Charles Dickens's day. In 2015 two people in love and yet apart could face-time and text and talk on the phone, could do everything but touch and kiss and so on. Back in 1825, or whenever Nicholas Nickleby was set, the most the lovers could do was to write long, anguished letters and wait maybe two weeks or a month for a long, anguished reply.
But, 19th century or 21st, feelings are feelings, and easier communication didn't really make being separated by hundred of miles feel any cheerier or blunt the pain of not being together. Instead of brooding on that, Dipper concentrated on the future, not the past or present.
He'd asked his dad about the airline tickets, and Alex had replied, "As it happens, I found out online that Coast Connections Airline is having a sale for twelve hours on Friday. It'll be about 25% cheaper if we get in and score the tickets then. Sale starts at nine A.M., so I'll order them from my desk at work first thing. Got my phone app set to remind me."
Well, there was that. Dipper had really rather spend the money and be sure of the tickets, but 25% was a decent savings. And then when the tickets had been bought, there would be one more long week after Friday, and by evening of the next Friday—together again!
"Can't wait," he told Wendy when they face-timed that evening.
"Same here," she said. She was lying in bed, her red hair tousled on the pillows that propped her up. "Oh, hey, would you believe we've sold, like, four dozen copies of your book in the Shack?"
"No!" Dipper said.
"Yeah, man! Soos has another four dozen boxed up in the stockroom for when we run low. Where's it on the best-seller list now?"
"Um . . . number one," Dipper confessed, blushing a little. "Still."
"I figured. Yeah, I think we're keeping it there ourselves," Wendy told him. "Word's got around that Granite Rapids is really based on Gravity Falls, and people here are playing 'Guess Who That Is' while they read the book! Don't worry, though. Everybody's about ninety-nine per cent sure that Stanford wrote it."
"He's OK with that?" Dipper asked.
"Mm, well, when people ask, he just shrugs and looks modest," Wendy said. "Keeps his lip zipped."
"Good thing they don't think it was Grunkle Stan," Dipper said with a chuckle.
Wendy laughed out loud. "I know, right? He'd be, like, showing up for autograph sessions and doing interviews on the talk shows and all!"
Dipper did a gravel-voiced impression: "Here, lemme sign that for ya. Ten—fifteen—no, twenty bucks! For another twenty, I'll personalize it!"
"You nailed him," Wendy said. "Hey, Dip, are you ever gonna do a big reveal?"
"Maybe someday," Dipper said. "Right now, just people who need to know. I did include a copy of my book contract when I sent in my college-application dossiers. I just blanked out the publisher, my agent's name, and the title, that's all. Oh, and the pseudonym, too. But they'll know I've got a published book."
"Nice," Wendy said. "You're already applying to college, man?"
"Well—pre-applications. A few colleges and universities accept pending applications, and I want to cover my bases."
Wendy looked thoughtful. "Huh. Did not know that. Our counselor hasn't sat me down to talk about college yet, 'cause I told her I was putting it off for a year. We're gonna do that in the next week or two, though. Maybe I ought to pre-apply for the same ones you're doing."
"You won't have any trouble getting in anywhere," Dipper said. "You'll have like a year of credits already. Unless you'd rather go to college next fall, instead of—"
"Nope. I'll get a full year in at the community college after I graduate from high school. Not a full load, but a full year. With the credits I already have, that'll let me enter real college as a sophomore. Gonna go with you, man. We've got to be together. And if you get in and I don't, I'm gonna go work in the university kitchen or something."
"Don't say that!" Dipper laughed. "Magic Girl, if you don't get in, I'm not going there, either. We'll just find a school that'll take us. Even if we have to go to Backupsmore University in New Jersey!"
Wendy looked skeptical that there even was such a place. "Never heard of it."
"It's Grunkle Ford's alma mater," Dipper said. "Their motto is 'We Take Anybody!'"
She laughed again. "Sounds so classy."
"Grunkle Ford found out it is what you make it. I checked it out online. It's bigger than it was in his day, and higher up on the rankings. It even took over the campus when CWTI went under in Sacramento."
"California Western Tech?" Wendy guessed.
"Yeah, it had some kind of administrative scandal back in the nineties and folded that campus. Backupsmore West took it over in 1997 and re-opened it. It's a tad more selective than the Jersey branch, and it's a lot more slanted toward STEM. Oh, that's—"
"Science, technology, engineering, and math," Wendy said. "I'm lazy, not dumb!"
"I'll be so glad to see you," Dipper said.
On his phone screen, she gave her endearing lop-sided smile. "I'm buying all the peppermint candy off the shelves," she confided in a husky whisper.
"Can't wait to taste it," Dipper said.
They went on talking, though it was nearly eleven.
Across the landing, in her room, Mabel was tapping away on her laptop, designing the big party. She figured a dozen trifold displays, some with photos of Dipper—both embarrassing and adorable, she wasn't prejudiced—and some with, oh, the dust jacket of Bride of the Zombie, the preliminary art for the cover of the scheduled second book, It Lurked in the Lake (the cartoony Alexis and Alexa Palms, in a small boat and flanking the conical shape of Hoss, the handyman, all gazing down into the water as, unseen behind them, the monstrous form of the lake monster Wobblegonker loomed).
And three of the displays would hold clippings of the rave reviews for Bride of the Zombie. She'd briefly considered adding a Trifold of Shame for the lukewarm and bad reviews (only two of the latter, literally the only ones she could find), but then thought, "The heck with them. Go with the people who know what they're talking about," so the least positive review she planned to display was one that began, "This new novel is an imaginative and fun fantasy."
She'd wait to select the photos of her brother until the prints came back—she started humming "Some Day My Prints Will Come"—but she considered adding other photos, just for variety. She had copies of the pictures that Dipper had taken of the Woodpecker Trap Tree, and copies of the cover of the science journal that had printed some of them. She had some of the photos he'd taken of the Valley, including one lovely shot looking out over the town toward the cliffs, where a red sun was setting.
Oh, and Dipper did have one photograph of the Gobblewonker, the real-life model for the Wobblegonker (see what he did there?), the one he'd snapped in the cave just before the rocks crushed McGucket's robot's head. It was a little difficult to make out—the light in the cave hadn't been the best—and, after some consideration, she decided against it.
First, the people in Gravity Falls, let alone her parents, were not ready to learn there had been a real something in the lake back in 2012. Second, she didn't want to re-expose Dr. McGucket, now as sane as a gunnysack full of eels and squirrels (as he said himself) to the ridicule he'd suffered as Old Man McGucket, the town kook. And third, over the past summers, she and Dipper had heard six or seven times that people in Gravity Falls still claimed to have sighted the Gobblewonker recently. Whatever they were seeing couldn't be the robot, which McGucket had told them he'd salvaged for parts.
In fact, that possible lake monster was still on Dipper's list of anomalies to investigate, only just not very high up on the list.
"Party games," Mabel mused. "What would be good party games?" Finding her inner Dipperness, she made a list: Heads Up, where someone holds up a card with the name of a celebrity on it—not being able to see it, it's pressed to their forehead—and the others give the card holder one-word clues until time runs out or the cardholder guesses whose name is on the card. Telephone, where someone writes a description of something—Frodo Baggins fighting a giant spider, for example—on the first page, passes it to the next person who reads and flips the description, then draws the scene on the next page, passes it to the next person, who studies the picture and then writes his or her interpretation down—"Someone giving a stick to a bear"—and passing it to the next player, who draws another picture, and on goes the game. Hilarity ensues. Six or seven others.
"This party," Mabel murmured with glee, "is gonna be—what did Wendy use to say? Off the chain!"
And in their bedroom, Mrs. Pines was saying, "I still think we should have Stanley and Stanford and their wives come here for Thanksgiving."
"You'll give them a great Christmas dinner," Alex Pines said, yawning. "That's enough. Come on, Wanda. Dipper and Mabel love Gravity Falls. Let them have this."
"Yes, and then they'll want to go back up there after Christmas, but Stanley and Stanford will be off on vacations."
"They have other friends," Alex pointed out. "The McGuckets are really nice people, and they say the kids can stay there any time they want to. Soos and Melody would always welcome them—their kids love Mabel."
"I don't understand why Dipper can't make close friends here, the way he's done way up there," Wanda fretted. "I worry about him."
"Honey," Alex said, "being away from home let him get a fresh start. He's always been shy. Kind of timid about making friends. Best thing that ever happened to him, that summer we first sent them up. He blossomed."
"I know," she said. "And I don't begrudge him the music lessons or the track team or even his writing the books. I have to admit, it's a fun read. I see why kids like it. But—he used to be so serious about everything. Now he's more like Mabel."
"Good for him," Alex, who—if we're being truthful—had always favored Mabel, said. "I remember when I worried because Mason was so paranoid. I mean, seriously. He got bullied so much in elementary school, he started to look on everybody as a threat. If you ask me, he took things way too seriously back then. I wouldn't say he's laid back even now, but at least he's not as high-strung and anxious as he was."
"I suppose that's good," she agreed. She sighed. "Am I a bad mother?"
"No," Alex said, pulling her close and kissing her. "You're just trying to avoid the mistakes your mother made. I do the same thing. My dad was sort of like Uncle Ford, very earnest and without much humor. I loved him, but, you know, he was all business-like. Now that I'm a father, I want to be more fun with my kids. I go too far sometimes, I know that. And so do you, honey."
"I guess I do," Wanda said. "I'm trying to be more supportive of Dipper, though. And more tolerant of Mabel." After moments of silence, she added quietly, "I do love them."
"I know you do," Alex told her. He kissed her again.
And that led to more demonstrations of affection.
