o
o
book two:
new summer season
reindeer games
The wooden floorboards are cool beneath Pacifica's feet as she stands on her toes and pushes against the stained-glass window at the top of the wall. With a squeak, it opens out and upwards, allowing the pine-scented air of the night inside.
It's either very late or very early; she isn't sure without checking her phone. She can't sleep. Her new bed is stiffer than her old one (though even her 'old' one is new) and the creaking of the Shack as it settles is unfamiliar and sometimes startling.
But it's more than that.
The night sky is clear. With the moon shining down, she can see the tree line across the ragged lawn, only the first few rows of trunks visible before the shadows darken and blot out any detail. She remembers standing at her window in the manor, looking out from another angle at the same dark woods. It's a memory that drags with it less defined phantoms, including the wispy traces of who that girl was, seeing through different glass in a different time at the same Oregon pines. Past shades of Pacifica, blurred by time and intent and built of all the pieces of herself she's tried to leave behind.
Who she was, who she is, and who she's trying to be. Like a puzzle with a million pieces. She can't help but think she's missing some. She doesn't like the way Gravity Falls makes her feel. Everything she was in this place is everything she wants to leave in Malibu.
But Dipper and Mabel are so happy here. She can see it as clear as day, even in the brief few hours between arrival and bedtime. And this is where she started to turn it around, isn't it? The girl who came to the Mystery Shack looking for help with a ghost problem became a ghost herself. Perhaps it was before that; a humbling at the hands of old documents, frights and friendship at a miniature golf course.
Maybe she's just afraid that she'll trip over all the fragments of that other Pacifica still strewn around this town.
Or maybe, the more hopeful side of her thinks, Dipper and Mabel will hold her up.
An owl hoots in the distance. A breeze sends the pines shuddering, whispering their secrets in the wake of its passing. Pacifica goes back to her bed and closes her eyes. Whatever happens next, it won't be what happened before. It surprises her how easy it is to believe that, but it makes sense.
Everything is different now.
Pacifica's eyes snap open in time to a wooden thud, loud and unfamiliar. She pushes herself into a sitting position, squinting against the morning light. It's far from the first occasion she's awoken to unaccustomed surroundings, though this time she isn't greeted with Mabel's garish sense of interior décor or the bland accoutrements of a motel.
She's beneath a slanted wooden ceiling surmounting a room that is a bit different from the rest of the Shack. She's fine with that. She doesn't have any desire to wake up encircled by horrifying taxidermy. According to what she's been told, her room has been through several variations in the last year before she came to stay in it: Ford's old bedroom became Dipper's, became Soos' breakroom, became Ford's bedroom again, became Soos and Melody's bedroom, became Soos' breakroom again, and now becomes her guest room (and still Soos' breakroom). Soos has removed most of his personal items, but there are tools on the walls and a keyboard laid across a row of filing cabinets and an extremely odd corner-mounted flag of a dinosaur backed by dayglo colors.
Pacifica doesn't know what woke her, but a moment later the door to her room opens slightly and Mabel's beaming visage pokes through at an odd angle.
"You're already awake!" Mabel exclaims, throwing the door wide open. "How'd you like Grunkle Ford's old room? I guess he's sleeping down in the lab, like a mole person." She makes a weird whiskery motion in front of her mouth that Pacifica assumes is meant to signify mole people.
"It was fine," Pacifica says neutrally. She glances to her left, where the window is still open. Her thoughts from the previous night seem distant and strange, far removed from the light of the day. Then she's struck by another thought. "There aren't actually any mole people, are there?"
"WHO KNOWS?!" Mabel's sheer volume is clear indication that she's in full-blown Manic Mabel Mode, high on life and probably half a box of sugary cereal. "It's our first day back! Get dressed, Pacifica, 'cause this is the best day EVER absolutely for all timeeeeeeeeee—"
She disappears into the hallway, sweater sleeves flailing joyfully. Pacifica sits in bed, feeling a pressure in her chest that no amount of Mabel's exultations can dispel. The other girl might be eager to see the town and its people, but what is that going to mean for Pacifica? She knows how Gravity Falls remembers her. It's the same way she remembers herself.
Well, that's not fair, she thinks as she goes into the small unadorned bathroom and brushes her teeth. She was there for Weirdmageddon. She'd helped build the robot, sort of, reluctantly, and she'd opened the gate and let the whole town party! She is the party girl! That has to count for something, right? Don't they remember her freeing them from Bill's morbid throne?
Maybe they don't want to remember… Okay, fine, but she is still the party girl. That party had been legendary.
She finishes putting on her outfit for the day and sighs. This is all in her head. She hasn't even seen anyone in Gravity Falls, never mind gauged their reactions. Besides, who knows how the day is going to go. Dipper and Mabel just got back to the Shack, after all. They might want to spend the day with their great-uncles.
Pacifica wanders out of her room and follows the sounds of other people through the confusing wooden hallways. It seems like there are doors everywhere, half of them obstructed by old tourist attractions, piled junk, and memorabilia. Eventually she comes across the living room, where she finds Mabel halfway through a jubilant and highly kinetic reunion with her two friends whose names Pacifica still can't remember. She turns around and walks the other way, not wanting to intrude and figuring she isn't welcome, even if Mabel would pretend she is.
There's a staircase by the front door so she goes up with the vague thought that she'll find Dipper. But the door to the twins' attic room is ajar and there's no one inside. Feeling more lost by the minute, she once again retraces her steps. Finding herself back in the hall outside her own room, she goes the other way and ends up in the gift shop.
There's a disappointing lack of Dipper. In fact, there's no one there at all; the Shack must not be open yet. Then she remembers that there's a strange hidden basement somewhere down below. She looks over at the vending machine and sees that it's slightly open, yawning away from the wall.
She starts to approach but hesitates. Isn't it supposed to be a secret or something? But half the town knows anyway, so it probably doesn't matter. She descends the stairs and enters the elevator.
When elevator doors open, she's nearly deafened by the ugly squealing of metal scraping across concrete. There's a room ahead full of consoles and equipment, reminiscent of all the junk that Ford had piled into the back of the moving truck. To the right it opens up into a much larger space than she expected. There are huge hunks of metal stacked on top of each other, along with what she thinks is much of the science stuff from the truck. Dipper and Ford are dragging a console to one side, pushing it against the wall.
"Good enough for now," Ford says, letting his hands drop. "With the portal dismantled, I'll have more space than I need."
"Until the next big project," Dipper says, sounding hopeful.
"True. At least my power demands will be modest for the time being. Still, I'm considering adapting the power source from the Quantum Destabilizer to supply the Shack. It will take some work, but I think it's feasible."
"Is that something I could work on?" Dipper askes eagerly.
Ford scratches his chin thoughtfully. "I don't see why not… save for the risk of molecular disintegration. With a little training and some practice on a few of my less daunting generators, there's no reason you couldn't be of help."
Dipper's smile can't get any wider. Then he glances down at his watch and his eyes widen too. "Oh, man, I promised Mabel we'd go exploring today. You know, first day back and everything…"
"Ah, when I was your age, I had an equal enthusiasm for field study! Still do, come to think of it…" Ford muses. "Go on, spend some time with your sister, get some fresh air. No point in staying cooped up in this dusty old lab when there's a whole weird world out there!"
"I'll be back this evening, okay?" Dipper says, beginning to leave.
"Don't worry about me, Dipper, I've got an entire workspace to rearrange. Go have fun—and be sure to record any interesting observations. Now, where did I put that crowbar…"
Dipper is heading for the elevator when he spots Pacifica loitering in the antechamber. His face lights up. "Hey!"
She's just as glad to see him. Or she was, until she found out he's running off with Mabel. "You're, what, adventuring? With Mabel?"
"Yeah! Yeah, she wants to go out and see the woods again."
"But… I thought you wanted to see your uncles and, like, all your friends from town," she says, nonplussed.
"We did see Grunkle Stan and Great-Uncle Ford. Besides, they're still busy unpacking right now. We spent most of last summer with just the two of us, running around the woods or hanging out here. I just… I want to get back out there," he says, a glint in his eye. "I need to. I guess that probably sounds weird."
"Duh. You are weird," she says, but she sort of understands where he and Mabel are coming from. He's good at this. They both are. She resigns herself to an afternoon of crummy TV. "When will you get back?"
Dipper blinks. "Aren't you coming…?" He immediately misinterprets her surprise. "I mean, you don't have to, I know it's the woods and you don't like getting dirty—"
"Shut up," she tells him. His mouth snaps shut, and he looks a little wounded before she steps closer and puts her hands on his shoulders. Their eyes lock and he swallows whatever he was going to say next. "It just depends who I'm getting dirty with," she says with a pert purse of her lips.
She thinks that's a pretty clever thing to say right up until his eyes widen. Hers do, too, when she realizes the other connotations.
She jumps back from him like he's just scalded her. "Okay, wait, no, I— that was not, no, I didn't mean it like— you shut up!"
He doesn't stop laughing. "Finally!" he crows. "Finally, it's someone else!"
"Don't you flipping dare tell Mabel about this!" she commands.
About an hour later, she's eaten breakfast (it's really more of a brunch at this point) and is outside on a beautiful windy day. What she had initially thought was going to be a twins-only outing has turned out to be quite the excursion. Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica have been joined by Wendy, Soos, Grenda (Mabel's big friend), and Candy (Mabel's small friend; Pacifica will remember this time). The group is excited, to say the least, a furor of overlapping greetings and exclamations of eagerness. Soos and Mabel, especially, are beside themselves.
"Okay, guys. Guys!" Dipper shouts, gaining everyone's attention. "Alright, so, I have a plan." He extracts his journal from his vest and flips it open. "Last summer I found a really cool cave not too far from here, but I never had the time to check it out. I propose that we go back and see if we can find anything anomalous. All in favor?"
"Wooooooooo, caving!" Mabel cheers at the top of her lungs.
"It's called 'spelunking,'" Candy says, eyes bright.
"WOOOOOOOO, SPELUNKING!" Grenda bellows.
"We should have, like, a codeword or something in case there's another shapeshifter," Soos recommends. "I want mine to be 'straight blanchin'.'"
"What if one of us is already the shapeshifter?" Wendy counters.
Soos pales slightly. "Dude, Mabel: If I was a shapeshifter, I would know it, right?"
"Let's test," Mabel says before jabbing him repeatedly in the stomach. "Beep bop!"
Soos snorts with laughter and doubles over, arms going down to protect his midsection.
"He checks out," Wendy confirms.
Pacifica stays close to Dipper while all this is happening, not sure how she feels about it. She is painfully aware of how she would have reacted a year ago and doesn't want that, but she's also not sure how to join in or if she even wants to. Dipper is grinning at the antics of his friends, and she has to admit, it is kind of funny. They're a bunch of chaotic weirdos, yeah, but… they all like each other and they're having fun.
Maybe she should, too. This is what she wants. Maybe not just like them, not exactly what they have, but her own thing. With Dipper, and Mabel, and even the rest of them.
"If you get us lost, I'm voting we eat you first," she tells Dipper with a haughty raise of her nose.
He laughs and grins down at her (he's getting so tall). "Come on, I'm super stringy!"
"That's how it goes in the sticks, Dip," Wendy tells him.
"I won't eat you, Dipper," Soos pledges. "I could never eat a Pterodactyl Bro."
"We aren't getting lost!" Dipper holds out his journal again. "See, I made a map. Totally accurate."
And wouldn't you know it, he's right. They find the cave pretty much exactly where he said it would be. It's another outing into a dark and decidedly grody venue, but at least this time her flashlight works. She still sticks close to Dipper, though.
For the first twenty minutes or so it seems like a regular old cave, or so she assumes. Not like she knows much about caves. It's damp and gross, though not quite as gross as she'd been expecting. Once they get deeper, things become more interesting. There are stalactites and stalagmites and she doesn't know which is which, but she's too proud to ask.
"This is a strange formation," Candy says, pointing out one such cone of rock.
"I got a dollar for the first person who licks it," Mabel tells everyone.
"I'm gonna make out with it!" Grenda wraps her arms around the rock but is stopped by Dipper.
"This is strange," he says, looking at it more closely. "It's almost like it's… manmade."
"Uh, Dipper?" Wendy is a bit ahead of the rest of the group, flashlight pointing down at something on the floor. "Is this another of Ford's hideouts or whatever?"
She's standing over the scattered pieces of a crude wooden ladder. There are a few other signs of habitation: an old iron bucket and a pickaxe that looks like it came right out of the Gravity Falls Museum of History.
Dipper looks disappointed for a second, but his expression becomes interested once he examines the objects more closely. "This doesn't look like Ford's stuff."
"It's not science-y enough," Mabel opines.
"Did you guys hear that?" Soos asks.
"HEAR WHAT?" Grenda says, the echoes of her voice resounding through the small space. Everyone else winces.
When silence finally returns, they all remain quiet, listening. Pacifica doesn't know if she's imagining it, but it sure sounds like something is rhythmically scraping down below. It's a soft, steady sound. Someone… digging?
"It's coming from down there!" Wendy whispers, pointing at a smaller tunnel that descends to the left.
Dipper hoists his flashlight and heads for the tunnel, only to stop when Pacifica catches his arm. "Wait."
"Yeah?" he says.
"If there's, like, a big disgusting monster down there, I want you to promise you won't try to talk to it," she says, poking him sharply in the chest.
Mabel laughs somewhere behind him. "She's got your number, bro-bro!"
"Whipped, dude," Wendy jeers.
Dipper flushes. "I wouldn't try to… Well, what if it talks first?"
A deep rumble from below interrupts them. The vibration buzzes against the bottoms of Pacifica's shoes and she catches Dipper's shoulder to steady herself.
"That is a very scary sound," Candy says with wide eyes.
Dipper straightens his hat, his stance and expression such a clear echo of a similar moment in Malibu that it's almost like they're all back there, about to go down and face the Boss-Lobster.
"Ready?" he asks Pacifica.
She's not sure she can be, but she's going to try. She feels a familiar excitement build up, an intoxicating cocktail of tension and terror. She understands this now. The adventure is its own reward.
"I'm ready," she says, tightening her grip on her flashlight.
Soos picks up the mining pick and brandishes it. "Let's do this, dudes."
The tunnel goes down a long way, sloping into the darkness. The air is cold and dry, and Pacifica is shivering in her light summer ensemble. She wishes she had been told they'd be underground before she got ready.
Up ahead, Dipper suddenly stops.
"What is it?" Wendy whispers from just behind Pacifica.
"I thought I heard something," Dipper says. "I—"
There's a deep crack from below and the floor vanishes.
Luckily, they don't fall very far. Pacifica manages to land on her feet, though she loses her balance and hits the uneven floor. Dipper lands next to her, his flashlight skittering across the stone. Dust hisses and rocks clack all over; then everything is still.
Dipper coughs. "Is everyone okay?"
There's a variety of disgruntled groans and grumblings, but everyone seems to be in one piece. Pacifica pushes herself to her feet and bends down to grab her flashlight.
"Thanks, Dipper," Soos says.
Dipper, in the middle of dusting off his clothes, looks up at Soos. "What, Soos?"
"For kicking over my flashlight," Soos says, waving it.
"I didn't kick your flashlight over…" Dipper says slowly.
"Oh. Heh, well, somebody did," Soos says with a shrug. He turns his flashlight in that direction and the beam lands on something huge and hairy.
Pacifica is pretty sure her heart literally stops for a second.
As one, they all point their flashlights that way. There are at least three hulking hairy things with big, gross pink wrinkly paws and huge beady black eyes and long yellow front teeth and they aren't human, but they aren't quite animals, either. There's a long, stunned moment where both parties just stare at each other.
Mabel's arm comes up and points at them. "Oh my gosh MOLE PEOPLE!" she shrieks.
It's pandemonium. All the humans are screaming and the mole people are screaming and Pacifica finds herself running up the rubble pile into the tunnel above in an instinctual attempt to get the high ground. She turns back around and is ready to… something, she doesn't know, maybe whack a mole person with her flashlight if she has to, but by then it's over. Dipper is turning in a circle, tracing the room with his light. The mole people are gone.
"Well," Wendy says, breathing hard, "I guess they were scared of us, too."
"Dude; it's like, we're the real monsters," Soos says.
Mabel is standing back to back in a defensive triangle with Candy and Grenda. She looks up at the collapsed ceiling. "We did wreck their roof…"
Dipper, of course, is scribbling frantically in his journal. "Mole people! I can't wait to tell Great-Uncle Ford."
Pacifica decides if no one else is going to say it, then she will. "Okay, that's great and all that maybe we're the monsters or whatever, but we should go."
"Yeah, we don't want to be around if they decide to get angry about all their nice rocks," Wendy agrees.
Dipper is clearly reluctant to leave, but he acquiesces to reason. They make the trek back up to the surface and soon enough the sunlight is stabbing their eyes. They all stumble out, blinking, into the woods. The sun is still high on the horizon and for a moment everything that just happened seems like a dream.
"Goodbye, mole people!" Mabel yells into the cave. "Heh. That's a fun word to say. Mole. Moley-moley-mole-mole."
"Let's get celebration milkshakes at the diner!" Grenda declares.
"Milkshakes! Milkshakes! Milkshakes!" Mabel chants, getting Soos and Candy to join her.
"I could go for a milkshake," Wendy says.
As a chattering crowd, they move off back towards town. Pacifica sits down on a fallen log for a second, her legs shaky as the adrenaline fades. The forest is warm and somehow more real after the sensory deprivation of the cave. The air feels humid on her skin and the breeze blows past in waving ripples of green. Dipper finishes writing in his journal and snaps it shut, tucking it away in his vest.
"Just give me a second," she says, assuming he's about to follow the others.
"We don't have to go," he says.
She looks up at him. "What?"
He sits down next to her, hands rubbing awkwardly on his knees. "I mean, if you want, we can just stay here. If you're tired or whatever… I know you don't want to go to town yet. We don't have to, we can go to the Shack or just… stay here. Just you and me?" he says, voice cracking slightly.
For a boy who just took her into a terrifying confrontation with previously unknown mole people, he's really thoughtful sometimes. She wants to take him up on his offer, to spend time with just him; but she also wants to be a part of the group, since, for the first time, it seems like a possibility.
"For a minute," she says, taking his hand. "But I do want a milkshake."
"There's nothing as sweet as a survival shake," he says, smiling.
A few minutes later they hurry forward to catch up with the others. Dipper's hand is in hers and even though the town is just ahead, it's hard to be afraid. What's a little possible scorn compared to mole people? Besides, she doesn't know. She doesn't know how the rest of summer is going to turn out
But she's had one heck of a first day.
i mean, if you want, we can just stay here
oso oso – reindeer games