This is officially the longest chapter yet! It's also officially the chapter to give me the most problems! I wrote it and then realized that I meant to include in a bunch of other stuff. Now it's a mess of things happening and hasn't been properly proofread, because it's finals week so I just wanted to update before things got too crazy.
Also, I meant to include more of Aaron in previous chapters, but he got pushed to the wayside by Dipper and Mabel. But he's back now. And cooler than ever! :) JK, he's Dipper's friend.
Enjoy the mess that is chapter 10!
"Welcome to Barbeque Taco, home of the Barbeque Taco," Dipper drones into the headset for the thousandth time that afternoon. He wonders if one summer shy of sixteen is too young to have a mid-life crisis.
"Do you want fries with that?" Mabel hollers her favorite fast-food phrase into the microphone for also about the hundredth time as she walks by with a tray. He shoves her into the drink machine.
So this summer hasn't been as thrilling as summers past. Big whoop. Part of adulthood is mindlessly passing out honey barbeque enchiladas and soft drinks when you'd rather be gallivanting around the woods beating monsters with a crowbar. And this is especially true now that Alexis has turned sixteen and gotten a car for her birthday. She's started wearing contacts and signed up to take several college courses over the summer break. Dipper is fifteen until the end of the summer, and maybe skipping a grade was a terrible idea because if he doesn't do something about the car situation fast she will be taking him on dates.
"You just had to end up with an older woman after all, didn't you, tiger?!"
Mabel, as usual, has been largely unhelpful in his predicament.
So it was super cool of Aaron to get them jobs at the local fast-food joint his uncle owned, even if the cuisine is sort of subpar, the customers are rude, and Mabel has entirely too much fun. She's currently busy flicking grease at Aaron, who is deep frying some meat of indeterminate origin.
It's amazing how much she's gotten Aaron to come out of his shell just since they started working together. Dipper and Aaron are going on two years of solid best friendship, but it's always been the quiet sort of camaraderie- eating sandwiches at lunch together, working on geometry homework for long hours, competing at video games. It's not that they don't talk, but Aaron's pretty reserved about his personal life and ignores his phone and his friends for long hours at a time. Dipper has about all the conversation that he can handle with Mabel, anyway. Aaron's like the breaks on your bicycle- boring and reliable enough that you don't ever wonder about them until they start making funny noises. Like taking orders in Pig Latin at the drive-through, to Mabel's extreme amusement.
"…ies-fray ith-way at-thay?" Aaron finishes, stroking his scraggly attempt at a beard mischievously.
"Someone is going to think you're speaking in tongues," Dippers warns.
Mabel wipes her eyes and tries to contain her mirth. "Up-hay op-tay!" she says, smacking his hand in a high-five. "You are seriously the coolest person in the world! LET'S GO MAKE SECRET MESSAGES WITH THE SAUCE PACKETS!"
Other than potentially getting them fired and costing him the car he's saving for, Dipper can't help but enjoy watching their friendship unfold. Mabel's unique brand of crazy loosened Alexis up when he thought nothing ever could. Anyone who can cope with her has the potential of being a friend for life.
Mr. Pines genuinely thinks he is teaching his children how to drive. For many weeks, they let him believe it.
The truth was that the summer they were thirteen, the last time they saw Gravity Falls (had it really been two years ago?), Wendy rolled up to the Mystery Shack in a used-to-be-blue rust bucket and Dipper almost drooled with envy. The freedom was unimaginable.
She climbed out of the driver's seat and tossed her hair over a shoulder and said, "You wanna take her for a spin?" At Dipper's startled expression, she added, "Just around the shack, I won't let you get arrested or anything."
Wendy held the keys out to Dipper and, after a moment's pause, he took them.
He still thinks about that moment a lot, actually. Sometimes when he is walking to the front of the class to give an oral presentation or to the end of the diving board or over to Alexis's lunch table to finally speak his feelings, he remembers how his heart lurched, but he took a deep breath and grabbed the keys anyway and then had one of the best days of his entire life. Within minutes she had pointed out all the controls and urged him to push the accelerator a little harder and they were rolling down the dirt road with the windows down and the wind in their hair and everything was perfect.
Then when they looped back around she had given Mabel a turn, and that was a whole different level of terrifying.
"Oh, right, I forgot what yellow means again," Mabel says, slapping her forehead after whizzing through an intersection on a morning when it's her turn to drive to work. Mr. Pines grips his seat tight and stifles a swear word. Mabel winks at Dipper in the rearview mirror.
He thinks she's a little too convincing.
After a month of work at Barbeque Taco, the skin on Dipper's face seems to be absorbing the grease right out of the air like a sponge. He cancels two dates with Alexis before he realizes that the massive, face-rending breakouts aren't going away anytime soon, and he will have to face her eventually. But not yet.
"Why isn't this happening to you?" Dipper moans, checking his reflection in the window of the booth they're sitting at on their break.
"Alpha twin plus superior hygiene," Mabel says. "It's not a big deal. You've just got more constellations on your face than usual. Look, there's Orion's belt on your chin."
"I appreciate your sensitivity."
"Pop it! Pop it!" Mabel chants, pumping her fists.
He pushes up a shock of hair that didn't used to be so greasy to inspect the damage to his forehead.
"Hey, what happened to your birthmark?" Mabel asks. "Dipper, oh my gosh! It's going away!"
And sure enough, the dots and lines of that mark are fading only to be covered with a patchwork pattern of acne. He'll never be able to escape looking like a freak, in some capacity or another.
Mabel's scream, Dipper decides, could curdle milk if she stood too close to cows.
In the cold light of dawn, wearing a panicked lack of shirt and socks, he runs down the hall to find her standing in front of the bathroom mirror, her shrieks dissolving into whimpers and moans as she sticks out her chin, stroking it gently.
"It's monstrous!" Mabel wails, gesturing to a pimple on her chin about the size of a pinhead.
Dipper shares a moment of sympathetic eye contact with himself in the mirror. He turns to leave.
"I can't go out like this! Puberty has finally claimed my youthful beauty as its prize! Dippperrrrrrr."
"It's your own personal North Star," Dipper says with a smirk.
Mabel's bottom lip starts to quiver. Dipper immediately feels like the cruelest person alive, and how in the heck is that fair? He's not about to apologize, though, not after the world of teasing she's put him through.
"It's like my face lost its virginity," Mabel mutters.
"It's not even remotely like that."
"I feel terrible."
Dipper coughs uncomfortably. "You look fine, really. Just put some make-up on it. We're gonna be late."
"I'll give you five bucks to tell Mabel she looks nice today."
Aaron frowns. "What, is it a prank or something?"
"No." Dipper rolls his eyes. "She just needs to get over herself and she won't listen to me about it."
"Uh, okay." Never one to turn down easy money, Aaron takes the bill Dipper slips him and waltzes over to the ice cream machine where Mabel is humming while she works.
"Hey there," he says. He waves the money, and across the room Dipper facepalms in fear that his socially awkward friend is about to come clean about their deal. "I've got five bucks here that says a Fiesta Meal will make that pretty smile of yours even bigger."
Mabel's eyebrows shoot up. "With a toy pig?" she asks.
He pulls the plastic-wrapped toy out of his pocket. "Is there any other option?"
Her sass melts away as she stares into its little plastic pig eyes. "You're an angel from heaven," she whispers, enveloping him in a hug.
He glances back to make sure Dipper is occupied before he hugs her back.
"Sooooooo, random question…. Do you ever get to know somebody and their personality is so wonderful that their body odor actually starts to smell good to you?" Mabel asks Dipper as he's working the register.
"No. Ew, Mabel, no, that's disgusting," Dipper says.
"Me, neither." Mabel leans against the ice cream machine and stares at nothing, sighing dreamily.
The bell over the door dings and a group of college students walk in, freshly exhausted. Dipper almost chokes when he sees Alexis among their ranks, in the high heels and little skirt she wore to class. She spots him before he can hiss to Mabel to cover for him.
"Well, fancy meeting you here," she says evenly. Alexis doesn't have her glasses to push up anymore at uncomfortable moments, and he wonders if she misses them.
Dipper laughs, trying to pull his visor down over his speckled forehead. He hasn't felt so prickly and young in front of a girl since… oh gosh.
"What can I get for you?" he asks quietly.
Alexis grabs Dipper's collar and kisses him across the counter, long and hard, in front of the whole group. They laugh and whistle because she seemed sort of shy, and they didn't know she had the guts.
Dipper's heart explodes. He loves her. He always knew that but now he knows.
"Would you like fries with that?" Mabel screams behind them.
Dipper starts to get suspicious at their Sweet Sixteen party.
First Aaron calls him (something Aaron never does) to say that he can't make it because his family will be out of town. Then he calls again to say he can make it. Then he arrives an hour late, when the party is in full swing. Mabel begs him to come out on the dance floor they've set up in the backyard, but he shakes his head.
"Sorry, I've got to get on the road." He casts an anxious look at the setting sun. "Or my family will kill me. But I had to bring by your presents."
He gives Mabel light up shoes. She can't get back to the dance floor to test them fast enough. She drags Alexis out to watch the demonstration.
"Growing up sucks," Dipper comments to his friend. "I never thought you'd have a life outside of us."
"Yeah. It's just… yeah." Aaron seems distracted by something. Dipper follows his line of sight out to where Mabel is shaking her rear end in a wild celebratory dance.
"Sorry." Aaron immediately flushes and looks down.
"For what?"
"Nothing." He swallows and walks back to his pickup truck to leave.
Yup, something suspicious is happening. Plain old vanilla bike breaks Aaron has something he doesn't want to share with his best friend. And he's got a pretty good idea what that is.
Dipper thumbs through Journal #3 by the light of a full moon.
I'm just realizing that I've now written a fanfic in which Dipper and Mabel work at a (semi-)Mexican restaurant. Don't be that person. Don't leave that comment. Just resist. ;)
This is also the halfway point! I have twenty chapters planned that I'll publish soon if you leave REVIEWS... just kidding, I'll share them anyway because I'm writing this for my own entertainment as much as anything. :) :) :) But reviews still make me feel nice.