Off the Deep End

A few days later it was 110 degrees, the hottest day of the summer. Lebam was baking in her tiny attic closet. When she finally sneaked out, she found that everyone else had left.

"Mabel!" she said, and was instantly in a red swim suit with a yellow star on the chest. Mabel had gone to the swimming pool and forgotten her. Lebam tried cooling herself off in the bathtub by filling it with ice water, but the ice quickly melted and the water turned hot. There was no air conditioning.

Mabel finally returned, all bubbly with joy over a merman she had met, named Mermando. Lebam pretended to feel happy for her but inside she only felt jealousy.

"I'm going to go back to the pool tonight and see him again," said Mabel. "Maybe get my first kiss."

Lebam got to the Mystery Cart that evening before Mabel did. She headed to the pool with an expression more grimly determined than happy, and broke in by reaching the skimmer net with her left arm, stepping on it roughly enough to bend it. She climbed the fence and called to Mermando, ready with scrapbooks to show him some of Mabel's life, to convince him that was who she was.

"Look! Here's a scrapbook of human stuff," said Lebam. "Here's me standing with my legs. And here I am kicking Dipper in his legs. He couldn't move his legs after that! Can you imagine? Not having legs?"

"Let's skip this book," said Mermando with a touch of anger in his voice.

She was doing something wrong, but she didn't know what.

"And here's my whole family kickboxing!"

Mermando sighed, turned his back, and swam to the middle of the pool. It just wasn't going well.

"What's wrong?" Lebam asked, wading over to him.

Mermando tried to strum a chord on his guitar, but it was filled with water.

"I too, used to have a family once. back in the ocean. How I miss them," he said, showing a family photograph from the shell around his neck.

Lebam touched his shoulder with her left hand. "Mermando, why don't you just leave the pool?"

Mermando described his bold and daring plan that ended up with him attacked by woodpeckers and wolves.

"No, I'm glad that I'm here, 'cause I met you," said Mermando.

A falling star shot through the air.

"This is it, 'Mabel'. First kiss moment, here we come! Just go for it!" thought Lebam. She puckered and closed her eyes.

"What are you doing with your mouth?" asked Mermando.

"Me? Nothing. This? I was eating some sour candy. So my lips were doing that. The candy was so sour," said Lebam.

"Can I have some candy?" asked Mermando.

"No," said Lebam. Her eyes rolled back and forth suspiciously.

"What is wrong?" said Mermando.

"Me. I'm wrong," said Lebam said with a sigh.

"What do you mean, Mabel?" asked Mermando.

"That's just it. I'm not Mabel. I'm Lebam, her mirror doppelganger," said Lebam. "There's no chemistry because I know I'm doing wrong."

"Why did you lie?" asked Mermando.

"I was jealous of Mabel. She has a life. She got to come here openly, cool off in the pool all day, and meet a wonderful guy, while I sweated in a hot house all alone. I was tempted: I wanted to meet you, too."

"I understand your feelings, and I appreciate your honesty, Lebam," said Mermando.

"I'm going back now to bring you the real Mabel," said Lebam. "And I'll work with her on a way to get you home."

"Thank you, Lebam. Know this: sixteen of my hearts are for Mabel. But you may have one, Lebam," said Mermando.

When Lebam got back to the house, Mabel was standing there in the yard, furious.

"Lebam! What did you do!?"

"I went to see Mermando for myself," said Lebam. "I pretended to be you."

"You tried to steal my first kiss!" said Mabel.

"Nothing happened. He's too homesick to want to get into a romance. I saved you some embarrassment, is all," said Lebam.

"But you tried. I'm red-hot mad at you, boyfriend kisser," said Mabel.

"I was angry at being left to bake in a hot house all day," said Lebam. "While you got to cool off in the pool and meet a great guy."

"I'm not sure I want you in the same house with me anymore," said Mabel.

"Well, I hear the gnomes in these parts need a new queen," said Lebam.

"Eeew! Don't do that," said Mabel.

"Better the gnomes than going back to Gideon," said Lebam. "At least they'd love me."

"You're trying to gross me out to make me less mad, aren't you?" asked Mabel.

"Yeah," said Lebam.

"It's sort of working. I mean... I know you don't have anywhere else to go," said Mabel.

"I can't go into foster care with the same fingerprints as you," said Lebam. "You were fingerprinted as part of that child safety thing."

"Nothing really happened... so... I think I just need time to cool down," said Mabel. "I'll spend more time with my new friends, Grenda and Candy, for the next few days."

"All right," said Lebam.

"Now I'm going to see Mermando," said Mabel.

"He really needs help to get home," said Lebam.

"I'll take care of it," said Mabel, a bit stiffly.

Late the next afternoon, Mabel was drawing up a plan to make Mermando some legs out of fish sticks and a diving helmet out of a goldfish bowl.

"Hey Mabel, how's it goin'?" asked Grunkle Stan, coming up to her.

"Fine, not doing anything in particular," said Mabel quickly, turning the paper over.

"Listen, I've got a favor to ask you, kid," said Stan. "Could you drive me over to the pool tonight in the Mystery Cart, and then drive it back here? I can't use Soos because he's going off on some crazy scheme of his own, something about liberating pool ducks."

"Why do you need someone to drive you?" asked Mabel.

"I need to get a head start on that little monster, Gideon, for the best deck chair at the pool," said Stan. "But I don't want my vehicle suspiciously parked there when Poolcheck arrives to open the pool in the morning. He might put me in Pool Jail and I'd lose the chair."

"I think I get it," said Mabel. "But won't he be suspicious anyway, with you already there in the chair?"

"I can pretend I don't know about the hole in the fence I'll make, breaking in there. He can't prove I didn't just wander by, see, and walk in through what I thought was a new open gate."

"Okay," said Mabel. "It sounds like the kind of mischief I love... but, one condition."

"Yeah, what's that?" asked Stan.

"You make the hole big enough so I can back the cart in, and then don't look for a few minutes, no questions asked."

"No problem, I'll hide out in the lady's room for a while," said Stan.

"Good idea," said Mabel. "Dipper is going to be on guard there, so don't get caught."

"Don't you get caught, either," said Stan.

"Grunkle Stan, I'm not doing anything. Just helping you get a nice chair at the pool," said Mabel.

Mabel did get caught taking pool equipment by Dipper. She had to reveal the truth about Mermando, but she persuaded Dipper to help her free the merman, and she got her first kiss. Lebam was happy for her when she heard about it. They were friends and sisters again.

Later, they both received notes sealed in bottles. 'Mabel' was printed on one side of the rolled notes. On many of the notes, 'Lebam' was printed on the other side of the roll. When the bottle flipped over in the water one might see one name or the other. They shared the notes, except the ones labeled with just one name.