let me keep this memory
Pacifica wakes up and has no idea where she is.
It's an explosion of pink, purple, and teal: posters, glitter, stuffed animals, glitter, bulletin board photographs, glitter, a massive variety of stickers, bezazzled everything, and glitter. She wonders if she's dreaming. Her parents wouldn't allow her to even look at a room this tacky, never mind sleep in it. It's like an explosion in a crayon factory.
She slowly pushes herself up, still tired. Light is coming through the window; from where she's sitting, she can't see anything but an overcast sky. She feels kind of hot and looks down at herself. She's underneath a heavy comforter, but beneath that she's wearing her coat and her shoes are still on.
The previous night suddenly comes flooding back to her. The flight, the drive, and the agonizing waiting on the sidewalk, feeling like she'd made a huge mistake but still needing something she couldn't define. Shame spreads through her. A Northwest is supposed to be stronger than this.
But this thought brings immediate anger, at war with the regret. She doesn't want to be what a Northwest is supposed to be. Did she ever? She's not sure now. She's not sure of anything. At least she finally reached out to someone. This is progress, right? This is the sort of thing she should be doing.
And all it took for her to want to make a connection is the total collapse of her life.
She buries her face in her hands and groans softly. The things she told Dipper… she is never going to live any of it down. He'll be holding it over her head forever. She has to get out of here. She has to make herself go back home.
She isn't sure she can.
The door to the room swings open, startling her. She hugs the comforter to herself automatically, which she just as quickly realizes is dumb because she's completely dressed. It's Mabel, shouldering her way in with a plate in each hand.
Mabel pauses when she sees Pacifica looking at her. Her mouth quickly spreads in a bright grin. "You're awake!" she says, bumping the door closed with her hip. "And just in time for Pizza Saturday!"
Mabel places one of the plates on the bed next to Pacifica. The pizza is covered with mini pepperonis that have been arranged to form a crude smiley face. It looks very greasy and possibly homemade. Pacifica edges away from it.
"Am I in your room?" Pacifica asks, ignoring the food for the time being.
"How'd you know? Hah, just kidding! You knew because it's fabulous. Stuffed animal?" Mabel offers, holding out a floppy cat as if she's offering a drink or a napkin.
"How am I in your room?" Pacifica says, refusing to be distracted from the point.
"Me and Dipper carried you in here like a hammock baby," Mabel explains. "You must have been really tired."
She had been, and she still is. "Why, what time is it?"
"Pizza time!" Mabel reiterates. "Don't you want yours?"
It actually smells delicious; Pacifica's stomach rumbles. Her previous experiences with pizza had little in common with what's on the plate next to her. She doesn't see any avocado and the bread doesn't look like pita.
She knows she shouldn't touch it. "I'm not supposed to eat food for fat people."
"Pizza is miracle food for everyone," Mabel corrects. "Come on, aren't you hungry?"
Is she ever. Reluctantly, she picks up the plate. "Where's the knife and fork?"
Mabel laughs as if Pacifica just told an excellent joke. "Shovel it in, sister!" She adds emphasis with an enormous bite of her own.
Pacifica cringes a little, but delicately puts her fingers under the crust and lifts the slice. She takes a tentative bite of the very tip. It's absolutely amazing, the perfect combination of bread, cheese, meat, sauce, and copious amounts of grease. She imagines her arteries clogging like a California freeway even as she takes another bite. No wonder regular pizza is such a big deal—it's fantastic.
"This is pretty good," Mabel comments as she decimates her own slice. "Mom gets them unfrozen at the grocery store because they're cheap. Sometimes we get real restaurant pizza for Saturday. Oh well. You'll just have to come back again!"
Pacifica swallows, squinting at Mabel in disbelief. "It gets better than this?"
"Oh yeah. There's crunchy pizza and deep pizza and pizza with that garlicky white sauce, and my personal favorite: dessert pizza! I put gummy worms on mine. It really brings out the flavor," Mabel explains.
"How are you not, like, morbidly obese?"
Mabel rolls her eyes but it's more playful than mean. "You can eat bad things sometimes, Pacifica. Eating should be fun!"
That's not what Pacifica's always been taught. But she's already broken so many rules at this point, what's one more? Besides, she hasn't been eating much of anything lately. She can afford the grease, at least for now. That's what she tells herself as she decimates her slice and is still hungry for more.
"Looks like someone's ready for seconds," Mabel teases. "Now who's the chubby one?"
Pacifica's hands fly to her stomach as if she's developed a gut from her single serving. "Shut up, I am not!"
"Not yet! Let's get some more pizza before Dipper eats it all."
"No. I'm finished," Pacifica says shortly.
Mabel doesn't look convinced. She puts her hands on her hips and peers closely at the other girl. "Is Pacifica finished, or is perfect Pacifica Elise Northwest finished?" she says.
That's very incisive for someone so goofy. Pacifica suddenly feels like her mother's hand is running up her spine and has been controlling her mouth. "Get me another."
"Get me another…?"
"…Slice of pizza? Now?"
Mabel purses her lips. "Please."
Etiquette lessons again; except instead of learning what fork to use and who it's acceptable to offend she's learning how to be a tolerable human being and her teacher is a brace-face in a ridiculous sweater. Her opinion on the matter is mixed, to say the least. "May I please have another pizza, Mabel," she mumbles.
Mabel's smile returns full force. "You can have all the pizza you want! Unless Dipper's got into it. Come on, I'll hold him down and you can take it from him!"
That sounds pretty fun. Pacifica stands up woozily, unsteady on her feet. Then she remembers where she is. "Wait, aren't your parents here?"
"Nope, just us and my bro. Mom and Dad are out for the evening." Mabel looks sympathetic. "We didn't tell them you were here."
Pacifica has no basis for this kind of situation. "What would happen if they knew?"
"Probably nothing," Mabel assures her. "You're our friend from Gravity Falls. We made all kinds of friends over the summer, they know that, sort of…" Mabel's voice loses its certainty for a second.
"They don't know?" Pacifica says, surprised.
Mabel's expression crumples. "We didn't tell them. How can we? You know how crazy it sounds, it was super bonkers bananas!" she says, pleading for understanding.
"You don't have to justify it. My parents won't accept it and they were there," Pacifica says.
"Dipper said things weren't good. Do you… want to talk about it?" Mabel says, sounding almost hopeful.
And of course she does, because this is probably just the sort of sappy nonsense she trades in with her other weird friends. Pacifica Northwest and Mabel Pines: Total Besties. Open and honest with their pathetic problems and gross feelings. Bonding like poor people because they don't have anything else to do and would rather whine about it than earn their way in the world. There's a part of Pacifica that violently rejects every single thing about where she is and what is happening.
But there's another, larger, newer and braver part of her that wants what Mabel is offering more than she had ever wanted all the expensive clothes and accoutrements she hadn't even had to ask for. And it's that part that keeps her moving forward deeper into this strange new paradigm, and it's that part which fights the phantom touch of her parents' fingers at her shoulders.
Still, she's pretty sure she's already said more than enough. She opens her mouth to tell Mabel that and instead what comes out is, "I know I said my parents were bad and didn't deserve to be stone, but sometimes I wish we'd left them there."
Pacifica takes a kind of sick pride in how shocked Mabel looks.
"Pacifica…" Mabel says, eyes wide.
Pacifica sits back on the bed. "I hate this," she says, and feels like she hasn't slept at all.
Mabel sits next to her. "Tell me what happened."
And so the whole story comes out of Pacifica again, pouring from her gut like she's a broken decanter. It's different with Mabel than it was with Dipper. Mabel gasps and tears up and makes noises of disbelief or righteous anger at all the appropriate moments, and it's both gratifying and too much all at the same time. Pacifica never feels that Mabel is anything less than completely genuine, but that authenticity and openness is almost overwhelming, a feedback loop of emotion. Pacifica grows lighter again, but she doesn't think she could have this talk with Mabel if she hadn't talked to Dipper first. Somehow his combination of awkward reassurances and (equally awkward) stoicism had given her the space she needed to release the tide without drowning in the drama.
And that was why she had texted him in the first place, wasn't it? That hand on her shoulder in a dusty room, surrounded by the records of her family's failings. She'd needed that hand again.
She falls silent when she can't think of anything she hasn't already phrased. She feels hollow, but it's not a bad sensation. Not like a coffin, but like a rising balloon. Or something else more poetic. She doesn't know how to think like this. Self-reflection is not prized among the Northwests.
She freezes in surprise when Mabel's arms wrap around her. With Mabel's fluffy sweater, it's like getting hugged by a pillow. "Pacifica, I'm so sorry you were alone," Mabel says.
Pacifica doesn't know if she's going to return the hug or not, though it's a moot point because Mabel has pinned her arms to her sides.
Mabel pulls back and looks very serious. "You did the right thing coming here."
Pacifica still isn't sure. "Really?"
"Heck yes! I would have taken the express to crazy town if I didn't talk to anyone else who was there!" Mabel exclaims. "We all need each other, Pacifica. We're not the same anymore, Dipper told me that. I didn't want him to be right, but he is. We have to stick together." Mabel reaches down and pulls out a phone that is so covered in plastic ornamentation that Pacifica isn't sure how it fits into a pocket. "Give me your number and all your accounts so I can follow you."
"Social media is for the uncultured," Pacifica says automatically.
"No, social media is so people can be friends no matter where they are," Mabel corrects.
Pacifica doesn't care for being corrected, even if it's over something she's not sure she believes anymore. "Fine, but I don't have any of that. You can have my number."
At that point some sort of time lapse must happen in conjunction with the passing of one of those madness bubbles, because the next thing Pacifica knows she's sitting on a beanbag chair with a piece of pizza on a paper plate, trying to eat and play a video game (which are for ugly nerds with no friends) at the same time. Dipper is on her right and Mabel is on her left and she doesn't know how she feels about being in such close proximity to them. She's torn between cozy and uncomfortable. Then Dipper's shoulder brushes hers, warm and solid, and she must be nuts because she wants to lean into it, which is stupid, and she won't do it.
She's doing terribly at the game, according to the scoring system, but there's still something almost sinisterly compelling about the way her little character drives in whatever direction she pushes the joystick. It's… fun. She goes over a ramp and releases a projectile that sends the cart in front of her spinning off the road.
"Take that!" she says involuntarily, exulting in the agony of her cartoon enemy.
"You know if you like this, I've got some more games on my PC," Dipper says as he struggles to maintain his lead.
"Pacifica, say no!" Mabel warns. She's playing upside down with her feet in the air, and still doing surprisingly well. "It's nerdy quicksand! All his games are like Dungeons, Dungeons & More Dungeons except everyone wants to talk all the time."
"Hey, those games are as well-written as any novel and have compelling characters and interesting mechanics! Not everyone wants to play nothing but easy games on the consoles, some of us appreciate complexity."
"Great, now he's going to rant about Fellout or whatever," Mabel sighs loudly.
Dipper stumbles over his words in his outrage. "Fellout 1 and 2 are some of the best games ever made and Fellout 3 just completely went the wrong direction and had horrible writing! Betrezda only knows how to make one kind of game and they just took an amazing franchise and did their same lame schtick with a misinterpretation of a great setting—"
"I don't know what you're talking about, but you sound like a total dork," Pacifica interrupts him.
"Hah! Nailed it!" Mabel says.
Dipper slumps lower in his beanbag. "You guys just don't understand good games."
"I understand you're about to get shelled," Mabel tells him as she releases her weapon and knocks him clear off the track. "Boom!"
Dipper drops his controller in his lap, disgusted. "Hurry up and win so we can do the next round."
"Someone's a sore loser," Mabel stage whispers to Pacifica.
Pacifica eyes her. "How are you even doing this upside down?"
"The blood in my head makes me better," Mabel says, her face red and her eyes slightly crossed.
They play, they eat, they drink entirely too much Pitt cola. And it feels too soon, but Pacifica finds herself in a cab with the Pines' house fading in the rearview mirror and nothing in front of her worth contemplating.
Then it's the next day. Pacifica is four hundred miles and twenty-four hours away from the Pines and she's staring at the ceiling over her bed, wondering if she has finally lost her mind completely and it was all just a dream of a release she won't ever allow herself.
Her phone buzzes on her mattress. She picks it up and looks at the screen.
Mabel: so I just used Dipper's toothbrush because it was on the other side of the sink at the shack and I think I have bro cooties :X
Pacifica laughs, and it's the sound of an at last loosened chain slipping from her heart.
the sound of an at last loosened chain
U137 – let me keep this memory