Wow, guys! I'm overwhelmed with the reviews on this story, and I loved hearing your reactions to the previous chapter. I know that it wasn't exactly a popular move to break up Dipper and Alexis, but thank you all for being so respectful and encouraging through your tears. :)
I'd love to tell you that this chapter is totes happier, but uh, it's not. But I promise, after this chapter things get better. Really. I just couldn't resist delving a little more into the psychology of Mabel. This girl is as complex as she is fabulous. And she's quite fabulous.
Dipper and Mabel are 16, almost 17, and finishing up their junior year.
Dipper and Mabel don't exactly realize the social implications of the break-up until it is too late.
Mabel has English first thing on Monday morning, after prom. She approaches the usual group of girls who are gathered around Alexis in the back of the classroom, listening to her whispered story with both horrified and angry expressions. The conversation dies when Mabel takes a seat among them. She hesitates, not enjoying being the center of attention for once.
"Listen, if there's anything I can do…"
"I don't want him back, okay!" Alexis says abruptly, eyes wet and flaming.
"Well, I mean- I can't…" And Mabel is struck once again by the fact that she can't.
Alexis hurries out of the room, crying into her hands. Katelyn and Isabelle follow her down the hall, cooing like mother hens.
"I don't have to take sides or anything, do I?" Mabel asks Shannon, who remains behind.
"Of course not," Shannon reassures her. "She just probably needs some time. You guys were all so close."
But Mabel sees the dirty looks they all give Dipper in the hall, whispering behind their hands. She wants to tell the group that Alexis isn't the only one to cry herself to sleep over the 'incident', but Dipper's keeping his chin up at school, so she'll take his secrets to the grave, too. She abandons herself to the fact that she'll never be able to listen to the ex-boyfriend hate at their sleepovers again. They know it, too, and instinctively shut up about the break-up when she comes around. They shut up about everything, in fact.
In the lunchroom Mabel pauses with her tray, torn between the sisterhood she's sworn on her grandmother's grave to love and cherish forever, and the deathly quiet brother who has stuck his nose in an SAT prep book and thrown away his sandwich. She drags Aaron over and they sit with him in silence.
Every.
Single.
Day.
Dipper has always claimed that twin telepathy is a lie, but Mabel knows she isn't feeling a regular amount of empathy. Mabel hates seeing her friends suffer. She's always been able to sense the sadness sort of radiating off them. Sometimes she can even feel the signals coming from perfect strangers, and sometimes they are so strong and so scrambled that she feels like she'll go crazy if she doesn't blare some music or stick her fingers in her ears or fix it somehow.
But Mabel doesn't even have to be in the room with Dipper to feel his misery in the pit of her stomach. She'll just be sitting in Algebra 2, minding her own business, and she'll feel him hurting from across the hall and there isn't anything she can do about it. Having a depressed twin is something like having an oozing bullet wound in your side. Messy, exquisitely exhausting, and impossible to ignore.
"Open wide for the airplane," she says in the lunchroom, the week before the school year ends. Dipper knocks the sandwich out of her hands.
"Let me help you," Mabel pleads. "Just let me help you eat the sandwich."
Dipper pries her palms from his cheeks, avoiding her pitying gaze. "For the last time, will you calm the heck down? I need this time to study."
But he says he's fine, so she's just supposed to ignore it.
Summer comes, none of the girls call her, and Mabel learns that werewolves have migratory patterns.
"We run through the Rocky Mountains and up into Canada. Have to re-mark some of the clan territory, it's a yearly thing. Not re-mark… like that. Okay, yeah, re-mark like that. Look, I know it's awful, but it's only for like a month," Aaron says, holding her hand in the back of his pick-up truck. "Will- will you wait for me?"
Mabel shoves him playfully. "No, silly, I've got a long line of other guys waiting to date me, so that's not an option."
Aaron bites his lip. "Are you- I think you're being sarcastic, but that's probably actually really true."
This is the part in her epic supernatural romance where Mabel is supposed to fling herself at him and promise to wait a thousand lifetimes if she has to.
"Well, other guys are stupid, and there's nobody else I like, so, no, I'm not gonna date anybody else." This is the nearest Mabel can manage. It's just that Dipper and Alexis, they made a lot of promises to each other. So many promises.
"I just need you to promise me one thing, Aaron, and I mean this. Promise to pee my name on everything. Every tree, every rock, every bush. From sea to shining sea."
"I'll do my best," Aaron says, crossing his heart. He touches her cheek. "Mabel, I know we're young and everything, and it's sort of crazy, but I just need to tell you that I love-"
She puts a finger over his lips and smiles softly. "I'll miss you, too."
"It's only temporary," he reassures her, after they kiss a little.
"I know."
The only problem is that these days, everything feels temporary to Mabel.
Dipper and Mabel turn seventeen. They don't have a party.
Dipper spends the night studying feverishly for the SAT, because if nothing else he can still beat Alexis's scores, maybe. If he has nothing else, he still has that.
Mabel works the late shift at the Barbeque Taco. It's a slow night, and she spends it leaning against the counter and scrolling through Instagram photos of get-togethers she might have been invited to, before all this.
She cuddles Waddles by the light of the full moon. The only voicemail she gets contains nothing but howling that is vaguely reminiscent of the Happy Birthday tune. It still makes her smile up at her ceiling in the dark.
The week before senior year slams into action, the Internet informs Mabel that Alexis is dating somebody new. As much as she resolves to hate this unknown fellow, a local college student, she can't help feeling a warm glow when the texts from her old friends start pouring back in. This can still work. It's just that the sleepovers can never be at her house again, and that's okay.
Mabel dances around the room and down the hall, but her stomach drops ominously when she passes Dipper's door. She can't stand that feeling. Reluctantly, she pushes open the door and waits for Dipper to pull out his earbuds. He's reading over his SAT scores. They are good, fantastically good, but now he is realizing that he'll never know if they are better than Alexis's scores because he'll probably never talk to her again.
"Soooooooooo, I'm going to the mall with Shannon and Melissa and everybody," Mabel says casually.
"Okay," Dipper says without looking up.
"And Alexis is gonna be there."
"Okay."
"And I know that might be sort of weird for you. That I'm hanging out with them again."
"It's fine. Have fun." His tone is completely dismissive.
"And I don't wanna hurt your feelings, bro, but I need more friends than just you."
His fingers tighten on the page. "I get that."
"They just, they invited me and they haven't been inviting me to do anything lately, and I know they didn't mean anything by it, but it wasn't fair because I didn't break up with anybody!"
"Am I stopping you?" Dippers snaps, finally cutting his eyes from the book long enough to glare at Mabel.
"No," she says. She hurries from the room, slamming the door so he won't see her eyes fill up with tears.
Dipper stares at the score sheet unseeingly for several long minutes, because he doesn't getit. He's never really needed more than one friend before.
In the car with Shannon and Alexis, laughing and singing along off-key to the radio, Mabel finds that the ache in her stomach is easy enough to push to the back of her mind. If he needs his space, she can give it to him.
Without Mabel constantly yanking open the blinds, Dipper starts to forget what the sunshine looks like. And so he stops missing it.
They never really mean to stop talking to each other. But it's easier that way.
What's this I hear? You're tired of angst? Need more fluff? You want Dipper and Mabel to return to Gravity Falls? You'd like to see more canon characters? Then stay tuned for the FOLLOWING CHAPTERS! :D :D
I'm gonna go ahead and tell you now that Mabel and Aaron are NOT over, just in case anybody freaks out over that. :) I just needed to migrate him temporarily, you understand.
Sorry if updates are slowing down a bit. I'm still on break from school, and I'm challenging myself to write 1,000 words per day on an original novel I'm working on. Which is totally fun, but I'm trying not to let this story fall by the wayside either. Thanks for reading!