"Attention, Pines family." Ford stepped into the room like he owned the place.

He did own the place… He stepped into the room like he owned a much nicer place. As it was, Mabel was lying on the mustard shag rug, poking the pig in the nose every few seconds to no response. The flyers she'd been working on since yesterday were in disarray around her, and only three were finished. His brother hadn't reached any new lows, but he certainly wasn't trying in his patented boxer-shorts and wife beater combination. Dipper leaned against the side of Stan's chair, perched on some prehistoric skull surrounded by soda cans in varying states of crushed and empty. He was sure he looked just as inspiring as the others, tired from the day's work and a particularly nasty tourist who seemed to get a kick out of making sure everyone was having a bad time and him particularly. Watching Grunkle Stan chase her out of the gift shop with a broom to the applause of the rest of the tour group had been entertaining though.

Since everyone looked up, it probably had enough of the effect Ford intended. He announced, "You are now looking at the new summer school teacher for the local high school."

Mabel cheered. Dipper made some noncommittal noise of accord. Stan said, "Sweet Moses."

Fortunately for everyone, Ford included, Mabel was incorrigible. She leaped up, to Waddles' apparent disappointment, and ran over to Ford. "Congratulations, Mr. Pines! Will they call you Mr. Pines? I guess Grunkle Stan is Mr. Mystery around here, so nobody will be confused…"

"Nobody would be confused either way…" Dipper muttered.

"Thanks, Dipper." Stan sounded genuinely gratified.

"It's Doctor Pines, actually," Ford said. He shifted his attention to Dipper and Stan as though they had personally taken his dreams, thrown them in a mud puddle, and stomped on them until they were dead. "Frankly, I expected a little more enthusiasm."

"I think it's a great idea." Dipper shrugged, averting his eyes.

He was thirteen, so technically a teenager. But he'd gotten just close enough to notice that high school was going to be the worst. He'd learned one thing so far: he looked for all the world like a target. It worked for interdimensional demons and fifteen-year-old thugs with nothing better to do. He idly rubbed at his itchy elbow and tried not to look at anything.

Ford wasn't likely to have that experience, anyway. He was, for one thing, an adult. For another thing, awesome.

"Not that I'm prone to agreeing with the nerd over here," Stan was saying, "but Dipper's right. I don't know if you remember, what with the brain surgery and everything—"

"Skull surgery. And you're one to talk about remembering things."

"Your theory I'm too narcissistic to forget myself at work. The point is that teenagers have two speeds: hormone-induced rage, and crippling existential apathy." Stan settled further back into his chair and scratched at his exposed belly. "Unless they're like—I don't know." He waved in Dipper and Ford's direction absently. "You two."

"Come on." Mabel spun on the two nay-sayers with a look of near-murder sparkling in her eyes. "He's the only person I know who can make science sound fun. I'd love to have you as my teacher back home, Grunkle Ford."

Dipper brightened and looked up from the skull. "That's true. You'll be a great teacher."

"They thought so, too. They were quite impressed with my credentials, very eager to get me on board." Ford beamed, and suddenly seemed to think better of it. "Of course, they were also impressed by the fact I'm apparently the only one in town who was willing to do it."

Stan chuckled. "There it is. Two speeds, Poindexter. Two speeds."

"If I can survive scores other dimensions, I'm sure I can survive high school." Ford looked across the table at Mabel, who seemed to be hanging on his every word more than either Dipper or Stan. He started laying out the class schedule and the fact that he started on Monday, just on the other side of the weekend. Didn't leave a lot of time to plan.

Dipper slid off the skull and crept around behind the chair. He made it outside without any interference, and sank into the far corner of the couch. It had been a long day, following Grunkle Stan through the building five times on tours. Last year, Dipper could give tours on his own after just a few weeks. Pretty good at it, too… Considering the displays changed every few weeks anyway, Dipper's wild imagination would serve him more than observing his uncle.

It had to be good for something, anyway. That dark winged creature that never left its perch spread a shadow and remained cold and silent. Most of the time he could ignore it, even though its presence was always obvious. The horrors of the past year dissolved into infrequent nightmares that his parent attributed to watching too many scary movies.

Mabel didn't correctly attribute it, either. She spent three days in a paradise. Granted, the most horrifying paradise Dipper could imagine, but she ignored it. It was probably what she intended to do until the world conformed to what she thought it was… Since that was never going to happen, she could be blissfully unaware until someone dragged her off to the locker room and shoved her under an ice-cold shower fully dressed and with most of her books in her backpack. That had been one of the better days.

Did girls do that? It didn't sound like something that would ever happen to her. For the best. He couldn't do anything about it anyway. Where Dipper didn't fit into elementary school, things didn't improve in junior high. Mabel was, mercifully, still cute, bubbly, positive, and popular. If he could manage to maneuver himself into her shadow, he might make it out alive. Of course, he couldn't avoid the nickname that came with the name he'd been going by since before names had meaning to him. He was surprised Grunkle Stan hadn't tried it for fun, except that he clearly tried very hard to avoid "swears" around him and Mabel. Maybe school was different when he was a kid…

He had to wonder what these bigger, sometimes older kids were missing in their lives that making him the punchline made it any better. It certainly didn't do him any favors…

Dipper pulled his journal out of his vest and opened it on his knees. He'd already filled in a few pages with the creatures he remembered reading about from last year. Some of the pages were direct copies, the words and pictures branded onto his mind. Like a cow, he belonged to this ranch for the rest of his life.

He clicked his pencil and looked around into the woods. There had to be something out there that would be interesting enough to make lots of money, but not weird enough to get tourists carted off to the nearest psychiatric ward. Then Grunkle Ford could stay home. They could fill the summer with as much DD&MD as they had graph paper, maybe do a little exploring of alien spaceships.

With a sniff, he turned the page and started a list of ideas. Gnomes were out of the question…

"Dipper?"

Dipper looked up from his seat, sideways and leaning against the back of the couch. "Yeah?"

Grunkle Ford sat on the armrest of the disgusting yellow couch, looking out at the twilight woods beginning to hum with crickets. "Do you have any plans for tomorrow?"

"No." Dipper closed the book and watched with more intensity than the topic probably required.

"Good." Ford nodded. "I don't want you to think that just because I have work to do on the weekdays that you get out of our plans for this summer." He pulled out a little notebook in his inside coat pocket as he said, "There are some materials I thought we could scavenge tomorrow. I want to finish my current project up this weekend so we can get started this week."

"What are we finishing?"

Ford looked at him sideways, then leaned to one side to look into the building. Apparently satisfied that they were alone, he slid off the armrest, closer to Dipper, and whispered, "A birthday present for Stanley."

Dipper couldn't help his smile, which Ford returned. He didn't have as many smiling wrinkles as Stan did, but maybe his time roaming the dimensions hadn't been all terrible. "Really? When's your birthday?"

Ford consulted his watch, and coughed. "Uh. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!"

Ford shot him a glare and Dipper covered his mouth.

After a moment, he repeated between his hands in a whisper, "Tomorrow?" as if that would erase his outburst.

"Yes. The fifteenth of June," Ford said.

"Who's older?" Dipper asked. He knew it didn't matter that he was five minutes younger than Mabel, but it sure came up a lot for not making any difference. Interesting trivia. It was one of his favorite things.

"I'm older." Ford considered, like he couldn't remember. He smiled fondly. "By a whole ten or fifteen minutes. I remember it meaning a lot when we were your age." He paused. "Of course, back then I think who was older was the only reason we argued."

There was an uncomfortable silence. Dipper remembered that time for himself and Mabel, too… Not that they argued a lot, and certainly not compared to their great-uncles… "Mabel!" Dipper said. "I need to tell Mabel! Do you know how disappointed she'll be if she doesn't get to make you guys a present?"

"At our age, I think…" Ford paused, apparently searching for a word he couldn't find. "Age is a touchy subject. It might be best to keep it quiet."

"What if it has glitter on it?" Dipper asked, pointing two finger guns in his direction. "Come on, it's a universal constant that Grunkle Stan can't be mad at Mabel. We have a whole summer of support for it."

Ford chuckled. "Alright. But keep it quiet. I don't want him to know that I'm up to something."

Dipper jumped off the couch and ran inside, leaving Ford on the couch outside.

#

"I'm telling you, there's something wrong with that kid."

Ford looked at his brother for a moment. The skillet from this morning was finally clean, but that was a "discussion" they'd had no less than five times already. At some point Ford stopped counting. If Ford wasn't going to do something, he wasn't allowed to complain that something wasn't getting done. Sometimes he did wash dishes. He just forgot… most of the time.

Ford considered the more domestic parts of home ownership something to which Stanley was more suited. Especially considering when it was just Ford's house, it looked nothing like what most people would call a house. With Stanley, at least there were the requisite pieces of furniture and a sometimes-stocked fridge.

Shaking off his wandering thoughts, Ford watched the rubber gloves fold over the edge of the sink almost neatly. "What?"

"Dipper," Stan said, glancing at Ford before taking a longer look. "What? You don't think so?"

Ford shrugged. "He seems fine to me."

Stan grunted as he took a step back to look at the rest of the room. Ford glanced around, too. It was in no worse a state of disarray than usual, but it was ready for breakfast in the morning.

Ford went back to his notebook. He'd carefully left the plans for Stan's gift in the notebook downstairs. If Stan noticed he started using a new one before the old one was filled, then he didn't say anything. And if Stan hadn't taken notice of that, why should he have noticed something amiss about Dipper?

On the other hand, Ford wasn't one to say he was the most emotionally intelligent between the two. He didn't know how much better—if better was, indeed, the right word—Stan was, and the bar was low. He wasn't precious about superiority in that arena, and didn't rightly know what it would look like if he were.

"You busy tomorrow?" Stan asked.

"Hm…? Oh, yes. Dipper and I are going scavenging." He glanced up. "Why, do you need something?"

Stan shook his head, shrugging at the same time. "Someone needs to go grocery shopping. I'll take Mabel."

"Good plan."

Stan headed for the hallway, pausing just a moment in front of the TV before, apparently, deciding against it. Instead, climbed the two stairs before turning back. "I'd put money on it."

Ford frowned, unsure which snappy comeback to go with. He missed the opportunity to sound clever by taking too long. "On what and with what are you gambling?"

"Ha," Stan said. "On Dipper acting real weird." He looked around, then reached for the hall table that Ford couldn't see but knew was within Stan's reach. "And with this." It was half a roll of quarters.

"Far be it from me to go in against a professional gambler." Ford sighed and looked back at his page of equations. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"You can keep an eye on Dipper tomorrow and tell me I'm wrong."

"One of my favorite pastimes, according to you, if I'm not mistaken."

"I was being sarcastic, Poindexter."

"I know."

With a chuckle, Stan disappeared behind the wall on the way to his bedroom. Only his voice remained. "Good night, Sixer."

Ford smiled. "Good night, Stanley."

Happy New Year everyone!