Camo sat on the attic floor. Mabel had come down and woken up, even before she woke Dipper up, so that she could be there for the big reveal, which wasn't much of a reveal, since she literally just looked at the calendar and spoiled it for herself.
Mabel had glued googly-eyes on her chin and was now standing over Dipper's bed. He woke up with a scream, and she just said in a goofy voice, "Morning, Dipper. Guess who."
"Oh, what joy," he said sarcastically, though it did seem good-natured. "If it isn't Mr. Upsidedownington. How long has it been? Third grade maybe?"
"That's right, and I'm here to deliver you an Upsidedownington-tastic message!" Mabel said in the same goofy voice.
Dipper half-glared at his sister. "Is it the message that we're getting too old for this sort of thing?" His glare turned into a smile.
Mabel stood up, touching one of the eyes on her chin. "Um, kinda, actually." She jumped off his bed and ran towards her calendar. "It's that we're exactly one week away from our 13th birthday!" She pointed to where she'd taped their faces on adult bodies next to the day.
Dipper sat up quickly. "Whoa! Our birthday's coming up already?" He gasped. "Soon we're gonna be actual teenagers!"
"Finally, I can stop reading preteen magazines, and start reading post-preteen magazines!" Mabel exclaimed.
"PG-13 movies, here I come," Dipper declared.
Camo, who had been watching the proceedings with a little confused smile, just laughed. "I've been watching those since I was, like, five," she admitted. Though, since, in her normal time, she was only three, did that mean she wouldn't watch a PG-13 movie for another two years? "Also, I won't be able to think of you guys as the preteen anymore!" She did a dramatic pose.
"And just one more year until high school," Mabel said in awe, completely ignoring Camo, as usual. "High school, Dipper! Where girls become women, and they teach us stuff about . . ." They turned away conspiratorially, and Camo flopped on the floor to get closer. ". . . you know what."
"Trigonometry?" Dipper asked with a grin.
"Oh, yeah, baby."
Stan and Soos burst through the door. "That's not the only good news coming up. In one week, my senior citizen ponytail kit is coming in the mail." He held up the ad, declaring he'd "look only 40!" Camo looked at Stan's face dubiously. "I'm . . . I'm kinda going through some things."
"In one week, my grandma is finally letting me eat crackers on my bed," Soos said. "The future is coming for us all, dudes."
"The future."
"The future."
"The future!"
Dipper laughed at his sister. "I'm sorry, I can't take you seriously with that face on your chin."
In her Mr. Upsidedownington voice, she asked, "What face, Dipper?"
"You're doing the voice, so you obviously know what I'm talking about."
"I don't know what you're talking about!" At least, Camo was pretty sure that was what the preteen (still allowed to call her that) said. It was hard to translate through the voice.
They both laughed and left the room. "There is something wrong with you," Dipper said.
"There's something wrong with both of us," Mabel countered.
Camo sobered up, and when she next spoke, she could hear the quaver in her own voice. "Seriously though, next week is the end of the summer. The time wish only sent me here for the summer, so I don't know what'll happen next." She looked away, biting her lip.
Don't think about that.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and there was Mabel. "Hey, it'll be okay. You want some party chocolate, to help cheer you up?"
Chocolate! "Yes. Yes, I do."
They all stood in front of the little neon model Mabel had made. "All right, party planners," Mabel said. "In one week, we become teenagers, and our summer vacation winds to an end"—don't think about that right now—"so we need to throw the greatest party of all time!" She had a sombrero, those party slit sunglasses, and a birthday sweater, so obviously she knew what she was talking about.
Camo was wearing her sweater, today, too, which made her feel like they were matching. "I'm talkin' pinatas with tinier pinatas inside," Mabel continued. She pointed at Soos, who was fulfilling the order.
"Boom, dreams comin' true," the handyman said.
"I'm talkin' inviting everyone in town." She grabbed the Stan-pen and pad of paper from Dipper and looked at it. "Let's see. Where do we stand with the gnomes?"
Stan's voice interrupted their planning, though. "Not so fast, Goofus and Girl Goofus." He walked in, holding a baseball bat. "After that zombie incident, no one's throwing another party at my house. I keep finding little bits of the undead in the couch cushions." He lifted up the seat of the armchair, revealing the zombie hand in there. He tossed his baseball bat to Dipper, and Camo grabbed it, softly smacking the preteen on the chin.
He rubbed it, disgruntled, as she said, "Can't blame you there. We've had two parties here: one led to Dipper being attacked by his own paper clones, and the other led to a mini apockalypse." She was ignored, obviously.
"But Grunkle Stan, we need some roof to raise," Mabel complained.
"Dude, you can rent out the Gravity Falls high school gym, and have your party there," Soos suggested, holding the dream pinata. Camo looked at the baseball bat in her hand and grinned devilishly at the pinata. Dipper, the only one paying attention to her at this point, just held up a hand to stop her. "That place is empty all summer long."
Mabel was very excited by that prospect. "The gym's a great idea, Soos. To the high school!"
This time, their interruption was from a big bang and Ford shouting, "Dipper, Camo, my face is on fire!"
"We'll just be a second," Dipper said, and the two kids ran into the other room, one of them significantly more annoyed than the other. "Great Uncle Ford, are you okay?"
He looked at them, his face smoking. "Oh, yes, I'm fine. I just said that to make sure you'd come in here quickly." Camo glared at him for that.
"But your face is on fire," Dipper pointed out.
"Yes. It's much faster than shaving. Now, listen, you two. I have a very important mission, and you are the only ones who can help me." He knelt down and put a hand on each of their shoulders. "Remember the rift in dimensional space-time I showed you?"
Camo deadpanned, "How could I forget?"
"It's cracking." The scientist pointed at the growing, spiderwebby lines. "This is what Bill has been waiting for. If it breaks, it will cause reality as we know it to completely unravel. The hypothetical and catastrophic event I told you about, Weirdmaggedon." He showed them the chalkboard. Dipper stared up at it in horror, and Camo gulped. "Bill is out there, and he'd use any trick from deception to outright possession to make this happen. But for the sake of humanity, we mustn't let him."
"What do we do?" Dipper asked.
Ford swiftly answered, "We patch the rift. I'll explain on the way." He put the rift in a special case with protective foam.
"Wait. What about Mabel?"
Mabel, like an awesome sister, was standing at the door with three bags. "It's okay, guys. You should totally go with Grunkle Ford to save the world or whatever."
"Are you sure?" Again, that was Dipper. Camo was just thinking.
"We're gonna be doing birthday junk all week. Plus, I packed those walkie-talkies. Here's one for my party mission, and two for you guys' smarty mission. Camo, you don't have one, since we didn't have an extra," Mabel apologized, looking at the bag in question.
They laughed, and Camo said, "You know what? I'll stick with you today." She sidestepped so she was standing next to Mabel, and she looked up at Ford. "Excuse me if I'm wrong, but you two can handle yourselves without me tagging along, and I'd rather spend the day with Mabel." She slung her arm around the younger girl's shoulder and hopefully looked up at the scientist.
He nodded curtly. "You're right. Dipper, I guess it's just you and me today." Dipper beamed up at his uncle, and Camo smiled gratefully. She hadn't spent enough time recently with Mabel, and she was glad for the chance. "I did mention the fate of the universe was at stake, didn't I? Hurry. We haven't much time."
Ford rushed out. Dipper muttered to himself a little before following, and Camo, unfortunately, was far enough away that she couldn't eavesdrop. However, she could see him running into the wall on his way out, and him crashing into the hallway as well.
The girls exchanged a look. "To the high school?" Camo suggested, and Mabel grinned.
Camo would by lying if she said she wasn't already freaking out.
Not about the party planning. That was about as low-stress as it got, which was part of why she chose to stick with Mabel. No, she was freaking out because she'd decided to take the path that involved not helping save the world and stopping Weirdmaggedon.
She wasn't sure what she'd do if the apocalypse and she failed because she decided to hang out with a friend today. So, the whole ride to the high school, she was biting her fist and trying to look like she wasn't freaking out as much as she totally was.
They went in, passing Lee and Nate knocking off the letters on the sign, and pushed open the doors. "Whoa," Mabel remarked, "Soos, I thought you said this place was empty." They looked at the crowd off teens, ranging from bored to depressed.
A familiar red-headed one waved. "My dogs, what up?" Wendy asked.
"Wendy, what are you doing here?" Mabel asked, running up. Camo followed at a more sedate pace.
"Ugh. High school registration," Wendy groaned, rolling her eyes.
Mabel looked excited. "Oh! You know, I'm only a year away from high school myself. Would you say your experience is more rom-com or wacky romp?"
"More like teen horror movie," the teen replied, waggling her fingers spookily. "High school is the worst. Classes get super hard, your body just flat-out turns against you, and worst of all, everybody hates you."
Camo rolled her eyes. "What do their opinions matter?" she asked uncaringly. Still, she looked around at the people glaring at each other, at Thompson rocking on the ground fearfully, at Robbie punching the list of classes angrily. She sighed and turned to Mabel, who was looking increasingly distraught. "Look, it's just life. Life sucks. This is only four years of it. And you're a great kid, you'll get some awesome friends to help you out."
Wendy just shook her head. "You're only saying that because you've never been. I'm telling you, it's awful."
"I've dealt with all three of those things before," she deadpanned to the older teen. "Middle school is almost as bad. Plus, after high school comes college, and the chance to actually do something important."
"TV taught me that high school was like some sort of musical," Mabel said dubiously.
Wendy grabbed her shoulders, and Camo jumped at the sudden movement, startled. "TV lied, man. If you can avoid growing up, do it. I'd give anything to be twelve again." She looked away moodily. "Anyway, what are you guys doing here?" Her tone shifted so drastically that it was almost as startling as her movement.
"Just looking for a place to have my 13th birthday party," Mabel said with a nervous chuckle. She hugged her fliers to her chest, and Camo put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.
"Wendy Borduroy?" the registration guy asked. "I mean, Corduroy." Everyone laughed mockingly, and Wendy went red, stalking up to the counter.
Mabel looked even more scared. Camo bit her lip. Her approach to that kind of thing was to just laugh it off, but . . . not everybody could muster that.
Not even her, sometimes.
The two of them walked out onto the steps and sat down. Mabel pulled out her walkie-talkie. "Master Mabel to Dippity Dog," she said. "We can have our party at the gym, but we gotta talk about high school. I'm starting to think it might not be the awesome future we were expecting. Over."
Static. "I'm going through a bad patch, Mabel," Dipper's voice came from the other side, somewhat broken. "We'll talk when I get back . . ." It cut off with another bit of static.
"You could talk about it with me, if you want," Camo offered hesitantly.
Mabel shook her head. "I . . . I need Dipper for that conversation." The older girl nodded, understanding, and sat by her friend, lost in thought and trying not to think about the oncoming future.
Soos came over and sat with them. "Hey, I know what will make you feel better. Let's deliver some invites to your friends, huh?"
"Yeah!"
They hopped back into the car (Camo reluctantly sat in the backseat, having wanted to sit up front), but not before Mabel's eyes caught on something that dampened her expression. Interested, Camo followed her gaze to the sign Lee and Nate had been messing with earlier. They'd changed the message.
NO ESCAPE.
Before long, they arrived at Grenda's house. Mabel knocked on the door, and the big girl answered almost immediately. "Oh, hi, Mabel. You're just in time for our one o'clock boy talk." She and Candy walked out, and Jason leaned on the doorframe just in time. That was a kind of Camo-ish thing to do. She smiled slightly at the thought he was picking up some of her mannerisms.
"If you think that's good, boom!" Mabel whipped out the invites. "Me and Dipper's 13th Birthday Jam!"
They read the invite. Camo amusedly noticed the lizard sitting on Grenda's shoulder almost seemed to read it too. "Oh, man, your birthday's on the last day of summer. I'm not gonna be here."
Mabel's eyes widened in horror. "What?"
"Marius is flying me out to Austria to hang out at his castle, or whatever, that week. He's so clingy!"
"You're gonna be out of town for my birthday?" Mabel asked, looking like she was about to cry. "But at least you two can come, right? Candy, Jason?" She turned to the other two. Camo desperately wished Jason could be there, since it would also probably be her last day in Gravity Falls, and she wanted her boyfriend to see her go.
Her heart just about broke when he shook his head. "No," he admitted. "My dad managed to score me a spot for up-and-coming fashion design. He says my designs are really good, and I might be able to make a career with it. I . . . I can't pass this up."
Did he know? Did he know how much that hurt?
"Sorry, Mabel," Candy apologized, "my parents send me to Music Camp this time of year. There is no escape from Music Camp."
"So none of you are gonna be at my birthday party?" Mabel asked, looking between the three of them, distraught. "And you won't be able to wish me goodbye at the end of the summer?"
Everyone else hugged her tightly, at least until Marius tried to call Grenda. The big girl walked away to take the call, and Mabel made her way back to the car, probably using the walkie-talkie to try and talk to Dipper. Camo looked at Jason sadly.
"Um . . ." she said awkwardly, feeling tears starting to prick at her eyes. "W-when do you leave?"
"In a couple days," he answered softly, looking away. She did the same. "So . . . you're . . . heading back to the future, huh? At the end of the summer?"
She nodded, shoving the knot of emotion further down.
Don't think about that.
He hugged her, and she returned it, squeezing him tightly. Maybe there was dust in the air, or something, because a small tear escaped and wetted his shoulder. She didn't want to leave him. To leave any of her friends. Soon she'd have to leave Stan, and the twins, and Jason, and . . . well, she didn't have that many important ties, but it still hurt.
Nope. Nope. She wasn't going to think about that right now. She wasn't going to cry. Nope.
Camo sat with Mabel in the attic. She was reading, and the other girl was looking through her photo album sadly. Or, well, she was pretending to read. Really, she was just sitting there, too overwhelmed to do anything but panic. She was going back to the future at the end of the summer, and Jason wouldn't be there to see her go, and she'd have to leave everyone, basically all her friends, since she wasn't the most social of people.
What was she going to do?
Since she was asking her slew of questions, she was brought to an old one that had remained unanswered. Why her? Why had she been chosen to stop Weirdmaggedon, when she was a kid with no physical benefits and a tendency to not follow on the adventures? What was the point of it?
The door opened, and it was Stan. "Hey, everything all right, pumpkin?" Of course, he asked Mabel first. She was his niece, after all.
Camo tried not to feel salty about that.
"I just can't believe the summer's almost over," Mabel replied, looking at her album. Camo set her book off to the side and tried not to feel awkward. "And now that I know how awful high school is going to be, I'm in no hurry to start that train wreck."
Stan wrapped an arm around his niece's shoulder. "Ah, nobody likes gettin' older. But just because you're growing up doesn't mean you have to grow up, y'know? I mean, look at me. I'm pushing 70"—wasn't he only 63? Maybe he'd overstated it for effect—"and I still eat ice cream for dinner."
"But I don't want to say goodbye to Gravity Falls," Mabel countered unhappily, leaning against Stan. Camo sat with her back to Dipper's bedframe and wished for attention of her own, but Mabel came first. That's how it should be. She was Stan's family, after all.
"Hey, at least whatever happens after this summer, you'll still have your brother along with you through thick and thing," Stan pointed out. "Not everyone can say that, y'know."
Mabel smiled up at him, and he rubbed her head before leaving. Camo shoved down the now-bigger knot of emotion again. She could talk about it later, though the selfish part of her wanted someone else to notice without her having to say anything. People had their own problems, though.
"Yeah. At least when I go home I always have Dipper," Mabel was saying, and Camo got the impression it was to herself. Good ol', reliable ol' . . ."
The radio picked something up.
"Are you okay?" Dipper's broken voice came through the static. "Let's get you out of there."
Both girls looked at it, confused. And, little by little, the horrible truth spilled out.
Dipper was staying in Gravity Falls.
Camo left the attic before Dipper came up. She didn't want to deal with that confrontation. She didn't think she could handle that much tension right now, so she retreated to her/Ford's room. She sat on her bed, curled up, with her knees to her chest, and she squeezed herself tight.
She knew, logically, that she'd just return to her normal life. She knew, logically, that it wasn't going to be as bad as she expected. She knew, logically, that she was being illogical at the moment, and she wasn't losing everything.
But what if logic wasn't logical?
She wasn't just leaving Gravity Falls. She was going back to the future, by ten years, even. So everyone she knew would be significantly older than her, even Gideon. All her friends would've either forgotten her or had no way to contact her. It would be awkward even if they did. She was leaving all her friends, which was kind of a new concept to her. She'd moved before, but this was worse, and not just because she'd set down roots.
She heard people shouting for Mabel, so, reluctantly, she got off her bed and rejoined society, trying to hide the fact she'd cried a little. Hopefully, they'd get the message that she wasn't going to talk about it, and hopefully nobody would bring it up.
Stan was sitting at the table. She sat down next to him and grabbed an unopened soda for herself. When he opened his mouth to say something, she glanced away, trying to avoid a conversation. (Though she did wonder why she sat down next to a person if she didn't want to talk to him.)
Something caught her eye outside.
Frowning, she got up and walked over to the window. An expression of alarm filled her face. What was wrong with the sky?! The wind had picked up really forcefully, making the trees bend nearly horizontally, and there was a swath of bright, chaotic colors in the sky. Dipper and Ford rushed past her, outside, and Stan joined her by the window.
Before her very eyes, the swath—almost like a rip—widened. Rocks were flying towards it, and everything was darker than it should've been. A familiar shape rose into the sky, and she felt her tears begin again, this time ones of horror and shock. Her eyes remained wide open.
The end of the world.
Weirdmaggedon.
She had failed.
This was her fault.
I hurt Camo too much. :(
Also, sorry for the lapse. I had a day camp this week which was a ton of fun, and in my spare time I was binge-watching Star Vs. The Forces of Evil. I finally finished it, though, just in time for Weirdmaggedon, ha ha.
(It could be worse, though. I could've gotten this chapter out and made you wait anyway.)
LET THE CHAOS BEGIN!