5: Girl to Girl

(June 25, 2017)

The rain—big, heavy plops—started to fall when they were still a few miles north of the road into the Valley. "Shoot," Mabel complained, switching on the wipers. "It could've waited until we got home."

Tripper, though very smart, was dog enough to be mesmerized by the whap-whap of the windshield wipers. About every sixth stroke, one of them squeaked, and he always barked to make it stop. That got a little monotonous. "Better slow down, Sis," Dipper advised. "This is getting heavier, and you know how the highway gets covered in runoff."

"No backseat driving!" Mabel snapped, but she did slow the car. By then she leaned forward, frowning into the gray curtains of driving rain. A bolt of lightning sizzled overhead, and the car rocked with the thunder. Tripper whined and cringed.

"It's OK, boy," Dipper said from the back.

"Explain to him how the tires insulate the car," Mabel said irritably.

"That's not what happens," Dipper said. "The car frame acts like a Faraday cage. It's not the tires. But being in a car is safer than being outside in a storm."

"Got the nerd talk?" Mabel asked. By now the Carino crept along at twenty miles an hour, unheard of for her unless she was in a parking garage.

"What's wrong, Mabes?" Wendy asked.

"I'm . . . a little bit scared," Mabel confessed.

"Want me to drive?"

"No, I'm good. I'm good. There's the turn-off."

"Dipper said, "Be sure the headlights are on—"

"They're on, they're on!" Mabel said. She started the turn, but Wendy unbuckled her seatbelt, lunged forward in the gap between the front seats, got her hand on the wheel, and turned hard right.

An instant later, a heavy truck, its horn blaring, roared past only inches from Helen Wheels, sending a foamy wash of water up over the windshield.

"Now turn, quick," Wendy said, falling back into place.

Mabel turned, but she drove onto the shoulder and sat shaking. "I nearly killed us all, didn't I?"

Tripper yipped "Yep!"

Swallowing hard, Mabel said, "Uh, Wendy-?"

"Let's trade places on three," Wendy said. "We'll get wet, but can't help that. One, two, three!"

Both girls opened their doors, jumped out, dodged each other, and clambered back into the car. Mabel's hair was plastered down, and she swiped it out of her eyes. "Sorry, Brobro."

"It's OK," Dipper said, having finally regained the ability to speak. "The semi was going way too fast for conditions."

"I didn't even see it!"

Wendy said, "I just caught the headlights, comin' on fast. Sorry if I scared you."

"You saved my life, I think," Mabel said. "Thanks."

Wendy put the car in gear and drove ahead. They passed through the gap in the cliffs and into the Valley. If anything, the rain intensified. "This wasn't in the forecast," Wendy muttered.

"You predicted it, though, when we were running this morning," Dipper said.

"Yeah, rain. Didn't think we'd get a storm this bad."

They started to hear sharp pong! sounds and sudden, startling cracks! "Now what?" Mabel asked.

"Hail. Hang on, I'll get us out of it and we'll wait until it slacks." Wendy turned off the highway at a roadside picnic spot. Three canopied sites sheltered two tables. The third was just a concrete pad, no table, but it did have a canopy over it. Wendy crept the car under the cover, and suddenly it was quieter. Oh, the rush of rain outside sounded like the Falls when the snowpack was melting, but at least the car was out of the drumming of rain and pounding of hail.

"How come you knew about this?" Mabel asked.

"Dad got the contract to build these shelters. I knew this one didn't have the table or benches installed yet. Dad's crew will do that this week—but not in a storm like this."

Though the rain poured and ice, in the form of hail, littered the ground, the inside of the car grew stuffy. Mabel opened the door and got out.

"Careful," Dipper said. "This place isn't protected from lightning."

"It's not as bad as it was," Mabel yelled back. "I need some fresh air."

Wendy rolled down the windows. "Better, Dip?"

"It's OK," he said.

Mabel came around and let Tripper out of the passenger seat. "He may need to go potty," she said. "OK, boy, if you have to go, go under the shelter. I'll clean up after you."

Tripper did, directing his little contribution to the puddles off the edge of the concrete pad. Wendy, watching, said, "That is really a smart dog."

"I worry about that sometimes," Dipper said.

Mabel heard. "You worry about everything!"

"Hail's stopped," Wendy said. "And the rain's lighter. Want to try for the Shack?"

"You drive," Mabel said. She opened Dipper's door. "Broseph, you go ride shotgun and let Tripper ride back here with me."

Dipper had no objection. Wendy carefully reversed from under the shelter and turned back onto the highway. Though the rain was definitely lighter, cascades of runoff flowed like shallow creeks across the road, sweeping leaves and twigs with them, and the tires rumbled now and then as they hit pine cones or even rocks that had been washed out onto the asphalt. Very little traffic in town—people who were shopping had probably battened down in the stores, waiting out the weather.

The upslope toward the Shack was almost a problem in navigation. The runoff was three or four inches deep, and once Wendy had to edge around the top of a pine that had fallen, mostly in the woods but partly across the right lane of the highway. However, she got them to the Shack, parked as close as she could to the gift-shop entrance, and the three young people and the dog made a dash for the dry porch.

Dipper got his feet wet, along with his head and shoulders, and so did the girls. Tripper went as far away from them as he could on the narrow porch and gave Mabel an apologetic glance.

"Just wait a minute," she said, unlocking the door. "Everybody in. OK, Tripper, shake it off!"

Tripper shook his whole body, sending a spray of water flying. He was a short-haired dog, very little undercoat or shedding, and he wouldn't stay wet for long. He carefully wiped all four feet on the mat, came inside, settled over beside the check-out counter, and began to lick himself.

"I need a towel," Wendy said.

"I'll go with you," Mabel told her. Dipper went upstairs, dried his hair as best he could with a face towel, and donned a dry tee shirt. He started down again, but Mabel stood on the landing. "Um, Brobro? Little favor?"

"What?" he asked suspiciously. "I already bought gas for you today."

"Yeah, thanks for that," she said. "Only—well, I want to have some girl talk with Wendy. Is it OK if we sit in her room for a little while? Hour or so?"

"Sure," Dipper said. "You don't have to ask my permission."

"I know, but you'd start wondering where Wendy was, and then you'd start looking, and then you'd find us talking, and you'd be all 'Are you guys talking about me?' and it would be embarrassing, so this is a pre-emptive request. It's just—well, she's a little bit older, and I have some things to talk to her about, the kind I can't really talk about with Teek or even you, but—I'm messing up, aren't I?"

"No, it's fine," Dipper said, smiling. "I'm reading a good book, so—I'll just lay down on my bed and read for an hour. Go have your talk."

To his surprise, she hugged him—a sibling hug, but not very awkward—and said, "Thanks, I owe you one!"

When she had gone, Dipper spent about two minutes wondering what she had to talk about that seemed so important to her, but, heck, he'd probably learn everything the next time he and Wendy held hands. And the book was a pretty interesting one, The Many-Worlds Theory and Psychic Phenomena, by Dr. Dixon Ticonderoga—Dipper's Great-Uncle Stanford had mentioned him as a brilliant theorist and a gifted writer.

Though the book admittedly consisted of much speculation, the material seemed so well-reasoned and informed that Dipper thought most of the points were pretty accurate. Besides, he knew some of the bits had to be true because of his own experiences.

Right at the moment, he was deep in a chapter about the "thinness of boundaries," in which Ticonderoga hypothesized that no two neighboring dimensions were exactly alike, though they overlapped in a vast majority of ways.

"If a visitor could move over one dimension, metaphorically speaking," the book suggested, "he or she might have difficulty realizing that the transfer had even occurred. Sooner or later, however, the dimension shifter would run up against some element that would strike him or her as bizarre beyond comprehension—something the natives would take for granted, but which the visitor would find startling and strange."

"Like pinky fingers," Dipper murmured. He recalled the time he, Mabel, and Wendy had visited a bizarre world much like their own—but the inhabitants seemed strange. Indeed, because their bodies had adapted to the new dimension, the three visitors from Gravity Falls looked strange to themselves—smaller heads, oddly heavier bodies, and, most bizarre of all, the people in the other dimension were practically all born with five fingers.

By contrast, in Dipper's world most normal people were born with four and the fifth grew in sometime between the ages of twelve and twenty, though a few people, like Stanford and Gideon, got a really early start. Heck, Stanford said he had been born with six fingers on each hand, so he got a head start!

With the rain rattling on the roof, but dry and warm himself, Dipper leaned back against the wall, a pillow behind him, as he delved into this very interesting—to him, anyway—chapter.

Wendy had decorated her bedroom in the Shack much like her old room in the Corduroy house—same bed, some of the same posters, even the FALLOUT SHELTER sign that she had liberated from Ford's bunker. She had two chairs, one for her makeup table, one for reading, and she gave the latter, which was upholstered and more comfortable, to Mabel. She took the other one. For a few moments they sat in silence, the rain tapping on the window and running down in wriggly trails. Then Wendy asked, "What's up, Mabes?"

Mabel had changed into one of her trademark sweaters. The Shack's AC wasn't cranked high, but it was cool enough inside for her not to sweat from the wool. "It's kind of awkward," she admitted. "But nearly getting hit by that truck on the highway—well, I've been wanting to talk to you, but that kinda made me think it's urgent."

"You can tell me anything you want," Wendy said. "If it's trouble, I'll help if I can."

"Look, don't tell Dipper, OK? Because it concerns him. Uh, can you keep a secret? I mean, you guys can read each other's minds—"

"We worked it out so we can keep some things private," Wendy said. She smiled. "You know, if I want to give Dip a surprise birthday or Christmas present, we had to have some way of hiding the thought. So, yeah, if I kinda set my mental switch to 'private,' I can keep your secret."

"OK," Mabel said. "I've been thinking about this since you two got, you know, very serious and all. It's just—I don't know. I don't always deal with change so good. And I'm real excited for you, and I want your wedding to be the best ever and all, but—it's hard to believe it's coming on so fast. So I kind of put off bringing up the subject, but now, you know."

"No, and I won't unless you tell me," Wendy said with a kind, lopsided grin. "Come on, girl. This isn't like you."

"Yeah, yeah, old goofy Mabel, I know. But—well, if that truck had hit us right, I could have been killed, you know? And if that happened—look, Dipper and I have always been close. Well, twins."

"Sure," Wendy said. "He loves you a lot, Mabel. He's closer to you than to anybody else in the family, even Ford. Even me, I think."

"That's what bugs me," Mabel said. "I—if something happened to me, or if I, you know, moved far away and got married or some deal—I'm not sure Dipper could adjust. He holds things in, Wendy. He's afraid to let his feelings show."

"He's learning," Wendy said. "I think high school helped him. That's kinda refreshing. It messes up a lot of people. But, you know, he learned the guitar, he even writes songs, he writes his books—that's helping him open up."

"Yeah, and that's good, but—well, if he didn't worry all the time, he wouldn't be Dipper, right?"

"He does worry."

"Yeah. So, here's the deal—get him to express himself more. I mean more than in the songs and the writing and all. Get him to open up. You know I'm Grunkle Stan's favorite? I think that hurts Dipper." Mabel hugged herself. "That time when Grunkle Stan had opened the Portal, and I could have shut it down, but I trusted my Grunkle—it took a long time for Dipper to forgive me."

"Come on," Wendy said. "That was how you two got your Grunkle Stanford back! It was a good thing, not a bad one."

"That's not the point, though," Mabel said. "See, Dipper was yelling to me: 'Shut it down, shut it down!' And Grunkle Stan was all like, 'Look into my eyes, Mabel. Do you really think I'm a bad guy?' And—I turned loose and said, 'Grunkle Stan, I trust you.' And Dipper screamed at me—and the whole world just went a way for a little bit. After that, Dipper was still upset with me, not so much 'cause I didn't shut the thing down, but because I trusted Stan and not him."

"I think I get it," Wendy said. "You're worrying that when Dip and I get married, he'll resent me, or resent you, because I'll be taking your place? Is that it?"

"I don't know," Mabel admitted. "I guess so. I just don't want to see Dipper get all crazy messed-up. Don't let him hide his feelings. Even if they sometimes hurt you."

"That's very insightful of you, Mabel," Wendy said. "OK. I promise. But a sister is one thing, a wife is another. I'll never take your place, or vice-versa. I think you got a touch of the Pines worrywart gene in you too."

"I suppose I have," Mabel said. "Yeah, I do. I'm so looking forward to the wedding. You and me will be sisters! And that's exciting, but then, you know—college. And that crummy dorm room, and Tripper will have to stay up here, and he won't understand why I went off and deserted him, and I don't think I'll be as good as the other art students—and Teek off in Georgia at that dumb movie school. It's all coming at me like a freight train."

"We won't be far away," Wendy reminded her. "You can go see Tripper pretty often. And Dipper's already thinking we could get together every day for breakfast or dinner or something. It won't be so bad for you. And don't talk crazy about not being as good as the other students. You're gifted!"

"I don't feel like I am," she said.

Wendy nodded. "Uh-huh. Pines genes. Dip still frets about not measuring up. When he's chasing some ghost or something and he makes one little wrong guess, he beats himself up over it so bad. Listen, Mabel, I swear I'll get Dipper to open up about how he feels and about stuff that bothers him. One condition, though."

"What?" Mabel asked.

"You open up to me about junk that bugs you, too."

Mabel smiled but looked down. "You don't want that. I'd be calling you every day."

"Call me, then," Wendy said encouragingly. "We're besties, right? Sisters! Come on, I can take it. I'm a Corduroy!"

At last Mabel smiled and met Wendy's gaze, though her eyes were a little teary. "Thanks," she said. "Dipper's lucky you two got together. And so am I. Thanks—big sister!"

The two girls hugged, and it was almost like a sibling hug. Anyway, it made Mabel feel a lot better.

And outside, the rain began to taper off for real. It seemed that the storm had passed.