The Jelly Bean Revelation

By William Easley

(August 2012)


From the Journals of Dipper Pines:

This has been such a fun, terror-filled, exciting, depressing, tragic, and enjoyable summer. I really hope Mom and Dad will let Mabel and me come back to Gravity Falls at some point. Really, next summer would be ideal. I know that once we're back home in Piedmont, I'll really, really miss the Shack, and Soos, and Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford (the Author!), and even Pacifica.

And my best friend, but I have to keep that sort of secret, Wendy.

Anyway, in a few days Mabel and I will turn thirteen and then the next day—on the bus back to Piedmont. Eighteen long, long hours. This time, though, nobody will pack us sandwiches, because Grunkle Stan has already given Mabel and me one hundred dollars! All in fives and singles, but still. And he told me to keep it and use it for food and stuff on the way.

Mabel doesn't know about the gift, and maybe it's better that way. I'd rather eat regular food at the bus stops than have her blow the whole hundred dollars on a ton of candy. But what I want to write about is what Grunkle Ford showed me a few days back, before the worst happened. That's over and now he's looking tired but happy, because he has been staying up late every night reminding Grunkle Stan of his life story. Grunkle Stan's I mean. He is still getting over the effects of the memory eraser gun.

OK, first—the three Journals. Grunkle Ford has what I think are the originals in his keeping again. He's destroyed all his Bill Cipher memorabilia from the lab , and he is thinking about burning the Journals. I've been trying to talk him out of that, because, well, I haven't had enough time to read them all!

But what I haven't told Grunkle Ford, or anybody, is that as of yesterday I have copies of all the Journals. Blendin Blandin showed up and gave them to me, on what he called "An an-an-tique," by which he means a flash memory drive, a USB device. It's the first one I've owned!

I checked on the Shack computer and on my laptop, and it works on both. The images of the Journal pages are all high-definition and even enlargeable. It has an 8 gigabyte capacity and the three Journals (really four) take up almost no space on it. I could even print out hard copies of my own!

Blendin said that in the future Mabel and he and I have will find a way to save Time Baby from Bill and retrieve the Journals from the past and have them all reprinted. Anyway, that's in my future, but right now the flash drive is a way to hang on to the hard-earned knowledge the books contain. I scrolled through them all, and the version on the flash drive even has pages that Grunkle Ford cut out of Journal 3. Oh, and there are two versions of Journal 3, one normal and one showing all the invisible ink! How cool is that?

The Journals are going home with me, right in my pocket. But anyhow, this morning, as I started to write, Grunkle Ford stopped by to chat. He said that Stan's memory is coming along. "I don't know if he'll ever fully recall the times when we weren't together as kids, like between the moment I vanished into the Portal and the time you and Mabel came to stay with him. Possibly he will. In memory recovery, the more one recovers, the easier it is to recall yet others," he said. "Remember, Mason, what I told you about the beans."

For a few seconds I didn't know what he meant. Then I remembered the first time he had mentioned beans. That was a short time before Weirdmageddon. He had borrowed Grunkle Stan's car, without Grunkle Stan knowing it, and we drove to the town limits. There we parked on the shoulder, got out, and walked around.

"Dipper," Grunkle Ford said, "I've spoken before of how this town is a mystery magnet. I want to show you something." He reached in his pocket and took out a bag of jelly beans. Then as we walked to the bottom of a hill, he said, "Someone, never mind who, once told me that the weirdness in Gravity Falls simply leaked through from another dimension. The . . . walls of reality are thin here. I've come to realize that was wholly or partly a lie. There are other reasons."

He knelt on the hillside and opened the bag of jelly beans. I started to ask him not to tell Mabel we were sneaking snacks, but he laughed at that. "No," he said. "I have a scientific demonstration to show you." He opened the packet of jelly beans and sorted through them until he found one different from the others. "Tell me what you make of this," he said, holding it on his open palm.

"Well, this one's different," I told him. "I mean, all the others are regular jelly-bean shape, and they're normal jelly-bean colors like red, green, yellow, orange, and black."

"I hate the licorice-flavored ones," he confided.

"Me, too," I told him. The only people I know who really like the licorice-flavored ones are Mabel and Gompers. Even Waddles will refuse one. But I continued: "The one you're holding is odd-shaped, like the machine making them almost made two beans but wound up with one weird-shaped one. And the color's wrong—it's sort of orange but with red and green splotches on it."

"Very good," Grunkle Ford said. "Watch." He turned the bag upside-down and poured the jelly beans out in a heap on the grass. Then he dropped the misshapen one into the pile.

The jelly beans had already started to roll downhill, all but the odd one. It started to roll backwards, uphill. And it rolled right to the sign that said on one side "Welcome to Gravity Falls" and on the other "Now Leaving Gravity Falls." It stopped beneath the sign, spun around, and then wobbled.

"What made that one roll up the hill?" I asked.

"It's different," he told me. "The weird one in the bunch. Weirdness is mysteriously attracted to this place, unusual or unique things like Gnomes and fairies and dinosaurs that don't exist in ordinary spots."

"And crazy ex-presidents and clones?" I asked.

"Very likely. And also boys with strange birthmarks And me, of course." He held up both hands, showing his twelve fingers. "Twelve toes, too," he added. "I have to have my shoes specially made! I believe that what brought me to this town, and brought you, too, was this weirdness attractor. It's no accident that we both came here, or that we met." He smiled. "You and I are two of the strangest beans this town has ever seen, Dipper."

"Mason," I blurted. And then I winced because I've tried so hard to hide that name. At school, I've always asked the teachers ahead of time to call me by my nickname. Ford raised his eyebrows, and I mumbled, "My real name's Mason. Dipper's just nickname, because of, you know, the birthmark. Everyone calls me that, even Mom and Dad. It's too late to tell people the truth, and anyhow, it's kind of a dumb name. Please never let anyone know."

He reached out to tousle my hair and smile at me. "Your secret is safe with me, Mason. It's a great name. The Masons are a famous secret society, and your name shows that you're a builder, someone who makes the world better."

"Thanks," I said.

On the way back to the Shack, I thought over what he had meant. He and I are a couple of rare beans. But really, I think, Grunkle Ford was telling me that being different is OK. It also means being somehow special. I don't feel special. Mabel is. She's proud of her differences and she has the sunniest outlook of anybody. Me, I'm . . . different.

And so is Grunkle Ford.

But maybe, I started to think, that's a good thing. At that moment I realized how proud I was of both Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford. Right then I felt as happy as I had ever felt.

That didn't last very long. Before I knew it, the Rift containment unit developed a crack, and Grunkle Ford took me to the UFO, which may have started the whole weirdness bit, or may have just been pulled in by it.

Everything happened so fast. Unicorns and that mind-reading helmet and Mabel's mood crash at the thought of going home again. And then came Weirdmageddon . . ..

Too much to write about now. We only have a couple of days left here, and I want to enjoy every second. A few minutes ago, Grunkle Ford told me he's thinking of a project that he and Stan might do together, and that if Stan agrees, it will take them away from town for maybe months. "But," he added, "I'm confident that the weirdness magnet will inevitably pull us back one day, probably before New Year's."

"Do, uh, you think it might pull me back, too?" I asked him. "Me and Mabel?"

He knelt so we were eye to eye. "Mason," he said, his hand on my shoulder, "I would say there is an excellent probability."


The End