Lazy Susan was locking up. She sang to herself as she swept the room. "Ta dum, locking up." The sound of an opossum roused her from her thoughts. She glared at the creature sitting in her sink and told it, "Shoo, possum, shoo." With a chitter, the two of them—was there always two of them?—ran away.
She spotted something else. "Git, McGucket, git!" she shouted, smacking under the table and causing the crazy old man to run away bewilderedly. She shook her head after him. Crazy old hillbilly! She could see that much, even with her one eye.
She followed him and locked the door, continuing her song. "Ta dum, ta dum. Good night, diner. Good night, trees." They were always so happy in the morning. "Good night, tiny men stealing my pie."
It took her a second to realize what she just said.
"Wait. What?!" She spun around and lifted her bad eyelid to look at them. Four small, bearded men, stacked on top of each other and reaching for her freshly baked pie. She didn't remember seeing any of these in the nature documentaries!
"Lift with your knees," one of them said, the one with the brown beard. "No, your knees. If I go one more hour without eating, I'm gonna resort to cannibalism." She stood there in shock, staring down at the little men. Beardy tipped his little red hat to her. "Ma'am."
She finally let loose the shriek building in her throat. "Little magic men. What does it mean? What do I do?" She tore out her hair as she backed up. What was going on?! Little tiny people wanting pie and cannibalism, right there in front of her! She backed up into a phone booth and hastily dialed it. "Yes, hi. I'd like to report something." She nervously drummed her fingers on the boxy thing. "I'm at Greasy's Diner. You won't believe what I've witnessed. It's unbelievable. It's indescribable. It's—"
The world fell to darkness. She shrieked again as a bag was put over her head and she was dragged backwards, into the woods and darkness. Shadow men! Tiny men and shadow men in one night!
Through her screams, she barely made out the words, "It is unseen."
Camo watched as Dipper added stuff to his Who is the Author? board, biting her nails to make herself not say anything. She knew much more than he did—scuff, she was wearing his/her glasses right now! She unhappily shifted them on her nose. They felt weird, though it always felt weird to change glasses. Still, maybe it was the fact she was wearing a maybe-dead-guy's glasses.
"All right, Author, who are you?" Dipper asked, stepping back. He was biting one of his pens again. "Who are . . ." It broke in his mouth and she exploded into laughter. He looked like he'd eaten a Smurf. "Not again." He threw it over to a little box of broken pens.
"Maybe you should use a pencil," she suggested.
He shook his head. "Those have to be sharpened. Anyway, back to the Author. Who—"
He was cut off by Mabel, who ran in, happily shouting, "Hey, bro-bro, Camo, look what I got." She held up a green bottle with a message in it.
"Yay, a filthy green bottle," he cheered half-heartedly.
"It's a bottle message from Mermando, remember? He was part fish, part shirtless guy." Camo shuddered slightly at the thought that that was what Mabel's mind went to. The younger girl gasped. "What if he wants to get back together?"
Dipper said dubiously, "I wouldn't get your hopes up, Mabel."
"Too late. Hopes are way, way up!"
As Mabel opened her message, Camo inspected Dipper's board. A six-fingered hand. Well, either the Author took it from someone else or he actually had six fingers. Suspicious townsfolk. As far as she knew, all of them had five fingers (well, ten total), but McGucket was on there too. She absently thought of his bandaged-up hands, and she was stricken with an idea. That could hide a possible amputation of a sixth finger.
But, no, that wouldn't line up with the facts she already had. Stan would be nicer to McGucket if he knew he was the Author. So, not McGucket. But who?
"Dear Mabel," Mabel was reading. She looked up. "So far so good. It is with a heavy heart . . . so far so good." Camo frowned. Did she not know what heavy heart meant? "That I must inform you, I'm getting married?!"
"And there it is," Dipper said.
"In order to prevent an undersea civil war, arranged wedding, Queen of the Manatees . . . and she's so beautiful. This can't be happening." She started crying, and both of the other two looked at her sympathetically.
Dipper said, "Oh, Mabel, you'll get over him eventually."
"Yeah . . . he took the time to tell you, so he definitely cares about you," Camo added. "He just has to do it for his people."
Mabel forlornly said, "You don't understand, guys. On my first day here, I made this page for summer romances. Look at my luck." Camo peered over the top of the book, as she was sitting on the floor. "Turned out to be gnomes"—Norman—"child psycho"—Gideon—"made out with his own hands." Gabe. "And now . . ." She taped the picture of an unhappy Mermando with a manatee in a dress to the page. "I wish I could just forget about them forever."
Camo sadly watched as she wrote failed above summer romances.
"Hey, if it's any consolation, my summer mission isn't a huge success either. I'm still trying to find the Author of this Journal." Camo hadn't done hers, either. She hadn't stopped any chaos, whatever that meant. "With his laptop smashed, I've lost any lead in finding him."
Mabel peered at it through her bottle. "Wait a minute. Dipper, look!"
"Through your bottle?"
"Just do it."
He did so, and Camo got up on her knees to try and see what it said. Thankfully, he read it out loud. "McGucket Labs. Wait. Old Man McGucket?"
"Dipper, you don't think . . ."
"Couldn't be."
"Well, I certainly don't think," Camo said crossly, plopping back down on the floor. "Nothing else lines up. Like the six-fingered hand."
He turned to her, shock in his eyes. "His bandages! What if—" He rearranged everything so it fit and it made sense. "Old Man McGucket wrote the Journal?!" They looked up with drastically different expressions: Dipper wore disbelief mixed with extreme shock, and Camo wore a dubious one.
It can't be. Right? Ford. Stan knew a Ford. She'd assumed that was a Stanford, but . . . Fiddleford . . . the bandages, he was old enough, and no one really knew where he came from. For all they knew, he could've owned the Shack before Stan. She gaped at the revelation.
Was—was Dipper right?!
They ran downstairs. "Wendy, Soos, we need to go see Old Man McGucket," Dipper shouted, the words pouring out of his mouth at very high speeds.
"We'll explain on the way!"
Mabel grabbed Wendy on the way out, and they passed Stan. She debated stopping to ask him, but then he might think she was prying, and also she'd never be able to catch up to the twins. "Hey, what about work? Kids!" She wasn't sure how she made it out, but she thought she heard him say, "Why is Soos eating his own pants?"
They went to the scrapyard, catcalling for the old man. Camo was running the thoughts through her head as fast as she could, and . . . she couldn't actually see anything wrong with the theory . . . except that Stan had said he was Stanley and he knew a Stanford. She was sure she'd seen the name Stanford Pines on one of the science papers in her room, so he must exist. Stanford Pines . . . maybe a cousin to Stan? Brother?
She felt close. So close. Disturbingly close.
The only question was, where was this Stanford now?
They found him after a couple teenagers spray-painted MC SUCK-IT! on the side of his shed. It was actually pretty well set up, and he didn't have to pay for rent. "McSuckit," he was saying sadly. "They got me good." He turned around and dropped his stick upon seeing them. "Visitors! Come, come. Pull up some rusty metal. You're just in time for my hourly turf war with the hillbilly what lives in my mirror." He looked at the mirror and shouted at himself.
Hm. Was he actually crazy at this point or was he pretending? His shed was actually really well set-up.
"You can drop the act, McGucket," Dipper said. Well, she knew what he thought. "I know you're the Author. You studied the mysteries of this town and wrote this book."
"Dude, you're the genius Dipper's been searching for all summer," Wendy said, pulling the broken laptop out of Soos's bag.
"Uh, genius?" He looked up at them, and then he sadly looked back down. "I'm no genius. I never done nothin' worthwhile in my life. Everyone knows I'm no good to nobody. I can't remember what I used to be, but I must've been a big failure to end up lie this."
Wow. That was some garbage self-esteem.
"But the laptop has your name on it," Soos pointed out.
"What about this book? Are you sure you didn't write it?" He started flipping through pages.
McGucket said, not unkindly, "I told you, I don't recall. Everything before 1982 is just a blur." 1982. Thirty years ago. It just kept on coming back to that.
Thirty years ago. That date had something to do with the Author. Both Stan, the shapeshifter, and the calendar confirmed it. Now McGucket. She was increasingly sure he wasn't the Author, but he had known, possibly worked with, the Author.
Property of F. Not Fiddleford. Maybe Stanford went by Ford? That would make sense, if he was cousin/brother to Stan. The pieces continued to click into place, though real life brought her back.
"Just a hazy . . ." McGucket was saying, though he cut off as he looked at one of the pages. He shrieked. "The Blind Eye!" He stumbled back frantically, falling to the ground. "Robes. The men. My mind. They did something!"
"Who did?"
"I . . . oh, I don't recall." He looked really upset at his own amnesia.
Mabel pouted, "Oh, you poor old man. No wonder your mind's all . . ." She blew a raspberry to emphasize her point. "You've been through something intense."
"What if McGucket learned something he wasn't supposed to know, and someone, or something, messed with his mind?" Dipper theorized. Camo, meanwhile, crept up close to McGucket. Would this count as violating her deal with Stan?
"Do you know the name Stanford Pines? Not Stan the Mystery Shack guy, maybe went by Ford?"
There was fear in his eyes. Why was he afraid?
Before he could answer, though, Wendy was asking him, "Think, dude. What is the earliest thing you can remember?"
"Uh, this is, I think." He pulled a newspaper article off of the wall. Disoriented man found at museum.
"The history museum!"
Dipper grinned. "Then that's where we're going."
Well, in the car, Wendy broke Soos's disc, but nothing else interesting happened. The museum was kind of creepy when no one else was there. She wandered around, trying to squeeze in more details, but she was missing something else for her theory. Everyone kind of branched off, until Soos noticed a robed guy. Naturally, they chased after him/her.
They ended up in a room with a lot of eyeballs. "Well, kettle my corn," McGucket said. "He vanish-ified."
"It doesn't make sense," Dipper said, furrowing his brows. "Where did he go?"
McGucket grunted nervously. "I feel like all these eyeballs are a-watchin' me." Camo and Dipper looked over at the same time and exchanged a surprised glance.
"They are," Dipper said, a moderate level of surprise in his tone. "Move aside." McGucket did, revealing a symbol of an eye that could've counted as the symbol of the Blind Eye. The boy pressed on it, and the fireplace slid aside to reveal a staircase. She gaped down at it.
Everyone had their own little reactions. "We'll have to be stealthy," McGucket said. "I'll hambone a message if there's trouble." He demonstrated, and everyone just kind of stared at him.
"I have no idea what that means," Dipper said frankly.
"I second that," Camo agreed, creeping down the passageway. Dipper knocked her out of the way, though, wanting to be the hero. Whatever. She had more time to think when she wasn't leading, anyway. The further down they got, the more the suspicious sound of chanting could be heard. Dipper cracked open the door to reveal six people in robes chanting in a circle.
One of them stepped forward. "Who is the subject of our meeting?"
"This woman," the others chorused, and Lazy Susan was brought into a weird chair in the large chamber.
"What is it that you have seen?" Leader Guy asked her.
"SPEAK!"
When she spoke, she stuttered. "Uh, well, uh, I was leaving the diner. and a saw these, these little bearded doo-dads, and I was like 'whaaaa?'"
"There, there," Leader Guy said, going into the chest ominously placed in the room. "You won't be 'like whaaaa' for much longer." He pulled something out, though she couldn't make out what it was.
"What is that gizmo?" Lazy Susan asked, which was a valid question. "It looks like a hair dryer. Are you guys barbers?" He suddenly shot the gun thing at her face, creating a blast of pale blue light. Susan screamed.
When it was done, Leader Guy asked, "Lazy Susan, what do you know of little bearded men?"
"My mind is clear, thanks to the Society of the Blind Eye." Her voice was robotic.
The whole cult chorused, "It is unseen."
Everyone gaped at how they erased her mind, and Camo was surprised at how easily she accepted that as fact now. They were expecting something to have erased McGucket's mind—was a cult doing it such a new revelation?
Or maybe she was just going crazy. That was a very real possibility, too.
"Guys, are you seeing this?" Dipper whispered. "They just wiped Lazy Susan's memory."
Soos chuckled. "They should've wiped off that awful mascara."
All three girls got mad at that, Camo on behalf of Jason, who would've been horrified by that comment.
"I think you looks beautiful!" Mabel shouted.
"She's doing the best she can, Soos," Wendy said angrily.
"Make-up is for anyone who cares enough to do it themselves," Camo frowned at him. "If you care so much, do it for her."
He immediately backed up. "Whoa, touched a nerve there."
Leader Guy was talking again. "Lazy Susan, how do you feel?"
"I feel great!" She got up from the chair. "I can't even remember what was wrong, or what I'm doing here, or if I'm a man or a woman." The cultists carried her away as she was talking, and Camo winced. So, the memory gun had some side effects. Noted.
"Your memories will be safe with us," Leader Guy said, removing something from the gun, "buried in the Hall of the Forgotten."
The others chanted, "Into the Hall of the Forgotten. Into the Hall of the Forgotten."
As Leader Guy placed the memory in the tube, he said, "Good chanting, boys. Have you been practicing?" The tube went up across the roof and through their hidey hole. With a gasp, Mabel pulled the tarp shut. "Meeting adjourned."
The cultists must've left, because there was a lot of "Unsee you later" and the sounds of feet. However, Camo wasn't paying attention to that. She was thinking about how they could've discovered these guys before but forgotten it.
Dipper signaled for them to leave, so they filed out into the spacious room. Wait, no. Spacious implied comfort. Maybe cavernous was a better word. They filed out into the cavernous room. Yeah, that was much better.
"Amazing," Dipper said, grabbing the memory gun. "A secret society of evil mind erasers."
"Well, I'd think they're more of a cult than a society," Camo commented, and he nodded in recognition of the idea.
He turned to McGucket. "I'll bet they erased your memory a long time ago. If we could find where your memories have been hidden, it could be the key to unlocking all the mysteries of Gravity Falls."
Agreed, Camo thought, though not for the reason you think.
"All right, Mabel, Wendy, and Camo, you three stay here and make sure those robe guys don't come back."
Wendy cheered and ruffled Mabel's hair. "Whoo! Girls' club."
"Soos, you, me, and McGucket are gonna go find the Hall of the Forgotten." All of a sudden, the tube by Soos's head acted up and sucked up his hat. "Follow that hat!"
The boys ran off, and Camo watched them do so, pleased to not be in the group doing all the running. Then she plopped herself against the wall to think.
Stanford Pines. Awfully close to Stanley Pines . . . why would they name two kids of the same family such similar names? Unless . . . twins, maybe. Mabel had told her Dipper's real name was Mason, and those were similar. She wouldn't put it past the Pines family to name an earlier set of twins similar names. Plus, Stan had to look pretty similar to Ford to be counted as him.
That would make sense. So, Stanford Pines was (probably) twin brother to Stan, and (most likely) the Author, who (may have) owned the Shack before Stan did. She'd figured a lot out, she knew it, she could feel it in her bones, but several questions remained unanswered. Where was he? What else was he doing in Gravity Falls? How come the twins' family didn't know about Stan being Stanley and not Stanford?
Ugh, she'd thought the name Stan too many times. It was starting to lose meaning.
Mabel was talking. She now had Wendy's hat on her head, and she was laying on the ground. "I just don't get it, Wendy. I hug a lot, I can burp the alphabet, I have scratch-and-sniff clothing. Why does every boy leave me?"
"Pfft, who cares?" Wendy asked. "Boys are the worst. You shouldn't get hung up, man."
"Yeah, maybe you just haven't found the one yet, y'know?" Camo interjected. "Maybe you're screwing up with the wrong guys so you can be with your soulmate. You wouldn't want to be stuck with Gabe for life, would you?"
But Mabel ignored her. "Maybe I come on too strong, you know?"
"Well, what's your opener?" Wendy grabbed her hat off Mabel's head. "Pretend I'm a boy." She tucked her hair up in her hat and pulled one red strand across her face like a moustache. "Mm, testosterone." She spat off to the side.
Camo burst into laughter, rolling around on the probably-filthy ground.
Mabel very loudly said, "HI. I'M MABEL! I'M TWELVE AND OWN A PIG! WANNA GET MARRIED?!"
Wendy laughed. "Honestly? That was perfect. You should just forget about guys, man." She put her hair back to normal.
"Yeah, that was definitely Mabel-esque. You'll find your one."
Camo could practically see the lightbulb go off in Mabel's head. "Wendy, that's it. Forget about guys." She ran into the memory wipe chair. "I just need to type summer romances into this thing, and I won't feel bad about them anymore."
"Whoa, hold up, Mabel. We don't even know what that thing does," Wendy said. "You could accidently erase, like, learning to read or breathe or . . ."
"Or one of those terrible summer songs you can't get out of your head?"
Wendy looked far too excited by that prospect.
"Uh, no," Camo said, stepping between them and grabbing the gun. "Your memories are the foundation of who you are. Every relationship you have tells you about how to go forward." Her parents had told her that. "Plus, what if you accidently erased Dipper, or Stan, o-or . . . me? What would you do then? Poof, everything you've worked hard to get would just be gone.
"Yeah, memories can hurt sometimes. A lot of the time. But what would you do if you erased one of the good ones you cling to? Chances are, you'll have another failed romance at some point during the rest of your life, and if you erase your past experiences now, you'll have to blindly go through that pain again." She sighed and handed Mabel the memory gun. "Just . . . think about the consequences first, okay?"
Well, she at least looked a little more hesitant.
But, it wasn't enough.
"I don't know, Mabel. Are you really sure this is a good idea?" Wendy asked. "Camo was making a lot of sense . . ."
"All ideas are good ideas," the younger girl declared. She aimed it at herself, and Camo braced for it. However, there was a loud beeping and a flashing red light overhead. Flashing red lights were always a bad sign.
"Well, scuff," she muttered as hands grabbed her and pulled her into the darkness.
She woke to chanting and ropes pressed up against her skin. She groaned and thrashed as violently as she could muster, which, admittedly, wasn't a ton. Leader Guy's voice broke through her efforts, saying, "You shouldn't have come here. We do not give up our secrets lightly."
"Who are you bathrobe-wearing freaks?" Wendy asked, which was fair.
"Why are you doing this?" Dipper asked, which was also fair.
"And what's with your creepy British accent?" Mabel asked, which was less fair.
Camo scoffed and fought, dragging at the ropes.
"Well, I suppose we are going to erase your minds anyway." He phrased it like they were going to forget everything, not just the cult. Various people started pulling off their hoods. Among the lineup was Toby Determined, Bud Gleeful, the head-chin guy, the farmer guy, and the guy who married a woodpecker.
Leader Guy said, "And you've never met me before. And if you had, you wouldn't remember." He was bald, with weird tattoos on his head. An X over one of his eyes, and a whole bunch of spots on his head labeled things like knowledge, stress, fear, time, and esteem. "I am Blind Ivan, and we are the Society of the Blind Eye. Formed many years ago by our founder . . . our founder . . . does anyone remember who he was?"
No one did. Bud said, "We've been usin' that ray on our own brains an awful lot."
"But why would you do this? What do you have to gain?" Dipper asked.
"As you have no doubt discovered, Gravity Falls is a town plagued with supernatural strangeness. No one knew how to stop the things that went bump in the night, so our founder invented the next best thing—a way for us to forget. We took it upon ourselves to help the troubled townsfolk by erasing the memories of the strange things they've seen. Now the people of Gravity Falls go about their lives ignorant and happy, thanks to us. And as a perk, we help ourselves forget things that trouble us. Everyone has something they'd rather forget. In fact, your own sister was about to use that ray on herself. Isn't that right?"
"Mabel? Seriously?" Dipper sounded betrayed, and honestly, she couldn't blame him. "Don't you see? This is ruining lives. What about Old Man McGucket? He lives in a hut and talks to animals, thanks to you. Don't you feel bad about that?"
"Mm, maybe a little," Blind Ivan said, but he shot the memory gun at his head. "But not anymore."
Kind of as a joke, Camo said, "Old Man McGucket lives in a hut and talks to animals thanks to you. You should feel bad about that," which led to him doing it again. She snickered slightly.
"You won't be telling anyone else what you've learned here. Say good-bye to your summer."
Everything froze. Fear filled Camo, and all attempts at humor were lost. She could lose all of this. All her work on the mystery of the Author would be pointless. She'd forget Dipper and Mabel and Stan and they'd never even know she was from the future.
"Guys, if we're gonna forget everything, I got some stuff I wanna get off my chest. Mabel, for half the summer, I thought your name was Maple, like the syrup. No one corrected me." That was Soos.
Mabel said, "I only love some of my stuffed animals, and the guilt is killing me!"
"Sometimes I use big words and I don't actually know what they mean," Dipper admitted. "I mean, I'm supposed to be the smart guy. If I'm not the smart guy, who am I?"
"Okay, I'm not actually laid back," Wendy said frantically. "I'm stressed, like, 24/7. Have you met my family?!"
Camo blurted out, "I'm actually from a couple years in the future and I still don't know why I was sent here."
Everyone was talking all at once, and her admission didn't actually seem to surprise anyone. Was she that obvious, or was everyone freaking out too much to think about it just then? "Oh, stop being a bunch of babies," Blind Ivan said crossly, but a pan came out of nowhere and slammed into the hand holding the gun. "Owie!"
Old Man McGucket ran up and sliced right through the ropes holding them. "I raided the mining display for weapons. Now fight like a hillbilly, fellers." Everyone grabbed something. Wendy grabbed a banjo. Dipper grabbed a stuffed raccoon. Soos grabbed a dysentery sign. Camo grabbed the ropes that were holding them and prepared to strangle some cultists.
"They know too much!" Blind Ivan shouted. "Don't let them escape!"
There was a large, confusing fight scene. Cultists ran, McGucket's memory tube was flying around, passing through hands. Camo made someone pass out from asphyxiation, though thankfully she didn't kill anyone. However, it ended up with the memory tube in Blind Ivan's hands and the memory gun pointed at all of them.
"End of the line," he said. "By tomorrow, this will all seem like a bad dream. Say good-bye to your precious memories."
He pulled the trigger.
Light blasted her eyes shut.
She braced for impact . . . but it never came. She opened her eyes and gaped at the sight of McGucket standing in front of them and protecting them. "McGucket," Dipper breathed, "you took a bullet for me." It shot him again. "Oh, my gosh! Are you okay?"
"Okay as I'll ever be!" the old man said with a laugh. He walked forwards, towards Blind Ivan.
"What?!"
The cultist seemed just as surprised. "Why . . . isn't . . . this . . . working?" he asked, firing shots between each word.
"Hit me with your best shot, baldy. My mind's been gone for 30-odd years. You can't break what's already broken." He reached Blind Ivan and smacked the memory gun out of his hand. "Say good night, Sally." He headbutted the cultist and the memory tube rolled over to Dipper's feet. The boy grinned.
A little bit later, they'd rounded up all the members of the Society of the Blind Eye and tied them up. "Isn't so fun being tied up, is it?" Mabel asked. "Hey, wanna draw on their faces?" Camo excitedly grabbed a marker and started drawing, though not on Blind Ivan. No, she drew on Bud, writing, lavender is the worst color and I hate pastel blue, since she knew those were his favorite colors. She also switched around the head-chin tattoos on head-chin guy, so he had chin written on his forehead and head written on his chin.
She saw that Mabel had crossed out Ivan's knowledge tattoo and replaced it with butts, and everyone was laughing.
"We'll have our revenge," Blind Ivan said. "We'll never forget what you've done."
"Oh, I think you just might." Dipper set the memory gun to 'The Society of the Blind Eye'. "Say cheese." He shot them, and before she knew it, they were all filing out, back in their usual clothes. Blind Ivan had forgotten who he was entirely, though, but Mabel convinced him his name was Toot-Toot McBumbersnazzle, a traveling banjo minstrel.
Then they went to go view McGucket's memories. It was really sad, since he erased his own mind. Also, she got proof that he worked with the Author, Ford, because he explicitly stated in the video that he was working with someone documenting his findings in a series of Journals.
After a moment of silence, save for the TV snow, Mabel said, "Oh, McGucket. I'm so sorry."
He walked up and grabbed the tube. "Aw, hush. You kids helped me get my memories back, just like you said."
"But did you want those memories back?"
"After all these years, I finally know who I am," he said, and he had a sweet, if mostly empty due to his lack of teeth, smile. "Maybe I messed up in the past, but now that I seen what happened, I can begin to put myself together again." He hamboned a message no one understood, though it must've been nice, if his gentle eyes were any indication.
Dipper just said, "Still don't know what that means. So, wait, you weren't the Author, but you worked with him. Do you remember who he was?"
"It's beginning to come back, but I need more time. And reading glasses. Heck!" He put a pair of glasses on, though the lenses were green and one of them fell out. He spat. "I got some rememberin' to do."
Wendy pulled out the memory gun. "So, Mabel, you still wanna erase those failed summer romances?"
"You know, no one likes having bad memories, but maybe it's better to remember the bad things and learn from them than to go all denial crazy trying to forget."
Camo exploded. "That's exactly what I've been saying!" she shouted. She shook the younger girl roughly by her shoulders. "Did you not hear a single word I told you?!"
Everyone laughed, sans Camo, who huffed and went off to pout in some corner as everyone vandalized the picture of Gabe.
She knew who the Author was. The only question was . . . where was he?