our first taste of escape
Pacifica walks over to the motel steps with as much dignity as she can muster. She's a mess and she knows it, totally unprepared to appear in public. Dipper is one thing; he hasn't seen her before this point, but after all those phone calls and everything she had admitted he couldn't have been expecting her at her best.
She peeks over the edge of the railing. There isn't a crowd, thank goodness. There also isn't anyone who hasn't already seen her wearing a potato sack, but that doesn't actually make her feel any better.
Mabel had been unexpected, but not necessarily unwelcome; Pacifica wants to sprint to the nearest salon when she sees the Pines' servant (Seuss? Is that right? Wait, he runs the Shack now, doesn't he?) in the parking lot, along with that tall, gawky Corduroy girl (who should really layer some foundation over those freckles). So now there are two more witnesses to Pacifica Northwest's disgrace, in addition to the two there already are, thus doubling her disgrace. How wonderful.
Dipper notices her pause at the top of the stairs. He divines the reason quickly enough, following her line of sight. "Hey, at least it's just Soos and Wendy," he says. "They were there too. They're cool."
Pacifica supposes that beggars can't be choosers. She's just not accustomed to being a beggar. "They'd better not tell anyone about this," she says.
Dipper sighs. "Pacifica, you're going to have to trust us eventually."
"I trust you just fine!" she fires back.
Dipper looks surprised by her admission. "You trusted them once before," he points out.
Yeah, when they were all about to fight together no matter what and she didn't have a choice. Which serves to remind her that she also doesn't have a choice now, not unless she wants to try crawling back to her parents. She shuts her mouth grimly and holds her head high as she goes down the rest of the stairs. Dipper rolls his eyes at her attempt to salvage her pride and she almost abandons it to kick him in the shins.
Whatever poise she might have maintained is shattered anyway when Mabel runs up to grab her hands and pull her eagerly towards the truck. "Road dog reinforcements!" she shouts nonsensically.
Pacifica has no idea what's going on. "What?"
Wendy is looking critically at Mabel. "Maybe you should lay off the Pitt for a while, Mabel."
Mabel laughs like Wendy just told a joke. "Yeah, okay, Wendy! I'll just stop drinking delicious soda."
Soos opens the door of the truck. "You dudes all ready to go?" he asks.
Wendy points to the driver's seat. "Hey, you don't want to switch out?"
"Nah, I'm good," Soos tells her.
"Cool with me. You can tag out later if you want; I'm gonna dominate some snacks. Shotgun!" Wendy calls out as she rounds the front of the truck.
"Co-shotgun!" Mabel says immediately.
Pacifica doesn't know what's happening, but she's grateful that Soos, Wendy, and Mabel have seemingly decided to not directly address her situation. None of them offer any condolences or try to pry—instead, they're all really into the road trip her life-turned-disaster has prompted. She follows Dipper to the back of the truck; when she climbs in Mabel gives her a big smile and Wendy shoots a quick thumbs up in her direction. Pacifica takes a deep breath and hopes no one can see how shaky she is and just how much their kindness and discretion is affecting her.
She's immensely grateful when Dipper settles into the seat next to her and she can focus on him again. She actually understands her relationship with him. Mostly. Partly. Some of the time.
Her late-night realization is muddying the waters. It doesn't have to mean anything. She can be logical about it. She's getting older and her hormones are kicking in and have apparently decided to betray her in a deep and unforgivable manner by making her drawn to the biggest dork in the universe. It doesn't make any sense. Sure, he's somehow become her best friend, but the emphasis is supposed to be on 'friend.' Her brain knows that, but the rest of her isn't getting the message (and her brain isn't all that convinced). It is, of course, entirely his fault for having warm brown eyes and soft curly hair and limbs that have been getting leaner and longer and a jaw that gets just a bit sharper every time she sees him. All his fault.
It's also his fault for being there for her in a way no one else ever has. She can't examine the exact nature of how it makes her feel that he launched a 'rescue mission,' without any real plan, just to make sure she is okay, because if she turns inward too much she's afraid she's going to hug him, right in front of everyone (or, even worse, break down again). And she doesn't have any money to give them so they'll pretend it never happened.
The truck shudders when Soos puts it in reverse. Pacifica watches as the motel slides away from her perspective. It was her port in the storm. She has no attachment to it, though; her real shelter is sitting next to her.
"Hey, Soos, let's get some grub," Wendy says. "A girl can't live on fruit rollups alone."
"Says you!" Mabel retorts, her cheeks stuffed with the gummy substance.
"Let's go for variety. What've we had so far?" Soos says. He reaches up and moves some of the garbage on the dash around. "Burger bag, chicken bucket…"
"We definitely had tacos, because I just found one." Dipper holds up his prize.
"Yoink!" Wendy says, plucking it from his grasp.
"Hey!" he protests.
"Sorry, Dipper. Tacos before bros," Wendy tells him, taking a crunchy bite.
Pacifica observes them with a sense of bemusement. It's not unlike the ride home from the mini golf ordeal. She is an island in a sea she doesn't understand, where people around her laugh without restraint and tease each other without decorum and enjoy the company without ulterior motives. She remembers getting home that night and, still shaken from her near-death at the hands of horrid little living golf balls, telling her parents that she'd won and nothing more. They never asked how she got home. At the time that hadn't seemed important, compared to the trauma. Now she knows that if it had been Dipper waiting for her, he would have asked. No—he would have been there to get her in the first place.
"Pacifica, what do you want to eat?" Dipper asks, breaking her from her thoughts.
"I'm not hungry," she says automatically. Even as the words leave her mouth, she realizes she is actually ravenous.
Dipper doesn't look like he believes her, but Wendy is talking again, and he turns to listen. "Soos, I need pancakes. Like, all the pancakes," Wendy says.
Soos passes her the GPS. "Lead us to these promised pancakes."
"I want waffles with extra whipped cream and hold the waffles," Mabel says as she 'helps' Wendy by poking randomly at the touch screen.
"Mabel, if you keep eating sugar I'm gonna strap you to the roof," Wendy says, fending off Mabel with her elbow.
"Eh, I tried that one time with my cousin Reggie," Soos says, face contemplative. "It didn't— uh, didn't go so well."
Wendy isn't letting it go at just that. "Dude, spill."
Soos begins relating a tale involving some kind of bet and his grandmother's car, but Pacifica is distracted when Dipper nudges her elbow. "You really aren't hungry?" he says.
"I'm not supposed to take handouts," she says without thinking.
Dipper's expression turns wry. "I feel like we've been over this…"
She crosses her arms and looks down at the trash-strewn floor. Can she not just admit that she's hungry? Everyone else in the truck is so close and it's so effortless for them; she's on the edge of the group, wanting to join, not knowing how. She's still not sure she can admit how she really feels about anything, no matter what Dipper tells her or what she's already said. Shouldn't it be getting easier? It's supposed to be easier. It makes her want to scream, all the walls she runs into inside her own head.
"I like pancakes," she finally admits.
Dipper smiles at her, warm and knowing. She knows she's supposed to reject his familiarity, but she wants it. She wants him to know her.
Later, she finds herself in a booth at the sort of restaurant her parents wouldn't be caught dead in. The vinyl seats are sticky, and the tabletop is a tacky speckled linoleum that's scratched and stained. There's ketchup on the table in a cheap red plastic bottle and almost nothing on the menu is more than ten dollars. When their slightly haggard waiter takes their orders, Pacifica gets the pancakes because she already said she liked them, and she doesn't trust the staff with meat or eggs.
Soos, Wendy, and Mabel are across the table from her. They're all attempting to solve the same maze on their place mats, making a race of it. Mabel wins and celebrates by eating a packet of jelly. They're pretty loud about it, joking and teasing and laughing; that must have been anticipated because they've been seated in the far corner of the place, away from what few other patrons there are. They had probably looked like a rowdy group coming in, which likely had a lot to do with the way Mabel had been on Soos' back, ordering him to 'mush!'
Pacifica knows she needs to be thinking about what comes next, considering her options, deducing some way out of her current mess. But all she can think about is how her hand is resting on the plush of the booth seat and Dipper's hand is an inch away. If she stretches out her pinky, she will touch him. And that's such a dumb thing to obsess over, she is fully aware. But she's been lying to herself less and less lately, about a lot of things. About her parents, about her life, about who she is (or was, hopefully). She must face one particularly unpleasant fact along with all the others: She is starting to crush hard on Dipper Pines.
And that's what it is. A crush. A stupid word for a stupid phenomenon. There's a part of her that is utterly appalled she can feel anything but a grudging respect, if she must grant him something beyond disdain. She's known much better-looking boys. Boys with perfect smiles and good breeding and summer homes in the south of France. Boys who can offer her a future of travel and fine dining and continued access to the upper echelons of society. Boys that Mother and Father approve of; boys who would be welcomed into the Northwest fold as equals.
Boys who represent a continuation of the lies Pacifica can no longer tolerate.
None of them ever drove six hours just to make sure she was okay. None of them ever fought a ghost or a Boss-Lobster or survived an apocalypse with her. None of them ever looked at her with warm brown eyes and just listened. And maybe her crush is just all of that—she doesn't think she can trust herself to separate his physical appearance from the way she feels about him.
But he's taller, and his shoulders are a bit broader, and his smile isn't completely perfect in the way that only money can provide but it's so nice and genuine and often directed at her. There's a fledgling lankiness about him that is appealing; his fine jaw and his cute nose, lips the mirror image of Mabel's but somehow just as attractive on a boy—and it's not fair for his eyelashes to naturally be that long. Something about the way his hair curls over his forehead makes her want to run her fingers through it…
She wants to touch him. She doesn't know exactly why or even exactly how, she just… wants.
Pacifica is very used to getting what she wants.
She reaches over and places her hand on Dipper's.