Heartbreaker
(Winter 2009)
6. The Unusual Suspects
Mabel's playground investigations—Dipper was too embarrassed by the whole thing to be her Watson—stalled out quite soon.
He was sitting on the sidelines when Mabel and Susan Tyler came up to him. "Tell him," Mabel said.
Susan scuffed the toe of her sneaker on the ground and stared down at the arc she made. "Dipper, I gave you a Valentine card," she said. "It was a picture of a rocket in outer space, with stars all around, and it said, "I'd be out of this world if you'd be my Valentine. I'm sorry you didn't get it."
"That's OK," he said wearily. "Mom says it's the thought that counts."
"It was outer space, you know, because of the Big Dipper." The mousy-haired girl looked stricken at her own words. She covered her face with her hands and ran away.
"She likes you," Mabel explained. "I'm going to ask her to sit at our table with us at lunch every day."
"Not a good idea," Dipper said. "Have you noticed how we always sit all by ourselves? We're outcasts, Mabel. Don't make her one, too."
"Hah! If we get enough outcasts, we become incasts, Dipper!"
"Um—okay."
Two other girls came over and muttered that they, too, had dropped cards in his bag. He thanked them. They didn't specify, or maybe even remember, what their cards had looked like.
Kurt, surprisingly, came over without Mabel prompting him. "Hey, Pines," he said, "want to toss the ball around?"
"Don't feel like it," Dipper said.
"Uh, hey, I'm sorry for making that crack about your cards. That was uncool." He turned a little red. "I shouldna done it, but I was feelin' bad 'cause I got hardly any myself. Anyhow, sorry, man."
"All right," Dipper said dully. "I'm not mad at you."
"I shouldna done it," Kurt said again. "It was me, not you. Anyhow. I hear cards was stole outa your bag. That was mean, man. I know I'd feel bad if that happened to me, so—sorry, Dipper.
Right after that, clumps of students, mostly girls, started giggling when they looked Dipper's way. He was grateful when the bell ended recess and everybody trooped inside.
While they waited on the sidewalk after school for Mrs. Pines to pick them up, Mabel said, "OK, I have a list of six girls that dropped a card in your box," she said. "Not counting me. That's seven. Boys wouldn't talk about it."
"Yeah, I think guys don't really like to talk about giving cards to each other," Dipper said.
Mabel didn't seem to be paying attention. She said, "And the teacher put one in, so we know that eight cards in all got stolen. Well, anyhow, now we have nineteen suspects. Unless you think Miss Wright's in the gang."
"What? No! That's silly."
"Never overlook a suspect," Mabel said. "If television has taught me anything, it's that the guest star of the week's episode is always the one who did it."
"We . . . don't have guest stars in our classroom," Dipper pointed out.
"And that's why the state school system is so bad!"
That evening, at Mabel's insistence and just to keep her quiet, Dipper sat down with her. She'd saved her class list, names checked off with small hearts to show she'd given them all Valentine cards, and they went through it name by name.
"I think we can eliminate everybody who told me they'd put a card in your bag," Mabel said. "I mean, I know for sure that Susan did, 'cause I saw her, and when I started questioning the others, they acted like giving you a card would make them puke and laughed at me. So the other five girls told they DID give you one, even though the other girls were making fun of them for doing it. I think they were telling the truth."
Well, that made Dipper feel about a foot tall. But he said, "Cross Kurt Thigben off, too. He apologized to me about yelling to the class that I didn't get any cards."
"Maybe that's him just pretending to like you to avoid suspicion."
Dipper shook his head. "He didn't pretend to LIKE me. He just said he was feeling bad because hardly anybody gave him a card. When it looked like I was a bigger loser, he told everybody, not so much to put me down, but to make himself feel better, I think. He said he would've felt bad if somebody had taken his cards, and he knows how bad I must have felt."
"I hate to cross off somebody I don't like," Mabel said. "But if you're sure . . .."
"Yeah, cross him off. Mabel, you know what? You can cross off everybody else, too. I—I don't think finding out somebody hates me enough to pull a trick like that will make me feel any better."
"Here comes Mom. Let's finish this at home."
Mom stopped, they climbed in, and then they all drove home. Mabel asked, "Hey, OK if we go swing for a while?"
"Put away your school things first, and change to your play shoes."
Play shoes were sneakers that had worn or been stained beyond school use. Mabel tried, but she called down the stairs, "Mom! These ones are really too little now!"
"Wear your school sneakers then, but don't get them dirty."
"Thanks!"
Dipper and Mabel went into the backyard and sat on the swings, but didn't swing. This was where they always came to have personal talks. Sometimes sitting there, side by side with his sibling, gave Dipper a fleeting sense of déjà vu, as if they had done a this before somewhere and somewhen.
"I have a serious question," Mabel said. "I know that's not like me, but can I ask it?"
"Sure, Sis," Dipper said. He gave her a fleeting smile. "I appreciate your Valentine card. Even more the one you put together from the ones you got."
Mabel waved that away. "I'm just glad we found out that a bunch of people—"
"Not a big bunch," Dipper said.
Doggedly, Mabel continued—"that a group of people, anyhow, left cards for you. I understand you're still all woe-is-me-nobody-likes-me, but you know that's wrong. Don't you?"
"I guess a few people like me," Dipper said.
"Yeah, so if you say it's OK with you, I'm gonna pursue this case."
"Meaning?" Dipper asked.
"I'm gonna see if I can't find whoever it was who dumped your bag into the waste-paper can."
"What?" Dipper asked.
"You're slow today, Dipper. Figure it out. One, we know that Susan and I put cards in your bag. Two, unless they were fibbing, we know five other girls put cards in the bag. That all happened before lunch. Three, then the class went to lunch. Four, we came back to the room and before recess everybody who hadn't already dropped their cards in the bags did that, but nobody had any left to drop. Five, we came back from recess, and after that, nobody would have been able to dump your cards out. Six, because someone would have seen that happen. I mean, the trash can was right there beside Mrs. Wright's desk. See?"
"No," Dipper said.
With an elaborate sigh, Mabel said, "OK, six—did I do six?" Dipper nodded. "Seven? Seven then: Mr. Peavy found the cards in the trash when he was making his rounds after school. He noticed the cards and pulled one out. Mine to you. Maybe, I don't know, because it was the biggest or something. Anyway, he saved that one but the rest got put in the bag and taken to the recycling place or whatever."
"I see what you're saying," Dipper said. "Since Mr. Peavy got your card from our class wastebasket, then the others were there too. He didn't count, but he says he noticed other cards. So somebody had to dump the cards out before we opened the bags when the end of the day bell rang."
"Since our class didn't have a guest star, I'm saying it had to be somebody in the class. Mrs. Wright wouldn't do it. I'm pretty sure Susan or the other girls who say they gave you cards didn't do it. I didn't do it. You didn't do it—did you?"
Dipper just shook his head.
Mabel reached over to pat his hand. "Nah, I know you didn't. Because it really broke you up a little there. I'd still suspect Kurt, but maybe he's innocent. Who else in class fights with you?"
"Nobody," Dipper said. "Not really fights. You know, a few kids make fun of me once in a while. When we went on our field trip, nobody on the bus would let me sit next to them, so I had to go all the way to the back, and somebody tripped me, but I didn't see who it was."
"I remember that," Mabel said. "I'd just gotten into the last empty seat and when I turned around, you went down like a bag of something that falls over easy. Who tripped you?"
"I don't know," Dipper insisted. "Phil helped me get back up, though, and you helped me into the seat."
"Phil Abbot," Mabel said. "He's a nice guy." Phil was in one of the other fourth-grade classes, Mrs. Dannen's.
"He is," Dipper agreed. "But anyway, he didn't trip me, because he was a seat ahead. I mean I took a spill and he was in front of me and reached out to sort of break my fall."
"Your knee was scraped." Mabel sighed. "But anyway, don't you want to find out who's got it in for you?"
"No," Dipper said. "I really don't. It just—you know—your making that big card for me and then Mr. Peavy finding the one you'd meant for me—that kind of makes up for it."
"My curiosity is not satisfied!" Mabel said. "OK, you can drop out of the investigation now. I'm gonna see it through! So help me Mabel!"
"Do what you want," Dipper said. "I think I'm kind of over it."
Easier said than done. Mabel, unlike Dipper, was not the patient kind. She had a different kind of stubborn from her twin. And her attention span was shorter.
However, she was true to her word. She took the trouble to make up a timeline for everything that had happened on that fateful Friday. She bugged the kids in class and reviewed the events of the day—primarily the setting up of the card bags, in alphabetical order, on top of the bookcases around the room, from Aberna to Wiltkins. She sketched out a map of the classroom, very simplified, with cats representing the students. As she did that, she noticed something that had escaped her notice before: the bags from MABEL PINES to ANDY WILTKINS were on the bookcase nearest the teacher's desk. In fact, the wastepaper bin stood only a couple of feet from M. DIPPER PINES (nobody, including the teacher, used Dipper's real first name, though it placed him alphabetically after Mabel) to Kurt Thigben to Susan Tyler to David Underhill to Andy Wiltkins.
Of those, no one had seen the culprit dump Dipper's bag. Or they said they had not noticed.
Mabel reasoned that the dumping had to take place either right before or right after lunch. She and Susan had dropped their cards into Dipper's bag before lunch, and they had been part of the last group of eight students to make the delivery rounds. Only a couple of minutes after that, everyone went to the restrooms to use the bathroom and/or, hopefully, wash their hands before lining up along the wall.
The classroom was empty and unlocked during the lunch period.
But who would sneak into the room just to dump Dipper's collection of cards? It did not make sense. Her brobro was not, let's face it, popular enough to be widely known in the school, let alone widely disliked. The one long-time bully who might have a grudge against Dipper was in sixth grade, on a whole different hall.
Over a week Mabel drew diagrams and sketched arrows showing which cat/student went which way (as nearly as she could remember) on that Friday.
She waited for a brainstorm.
Meanwhen or meanwhere or down the current in the timestream . . . .
"This was the stupidest mission you ever sent me on," complained Ahnhold, the youngest recruit to the Time Anomaly Removal Crew. "What was the point?"
"Th-the point comes much late-later in the time-flow," Squad Leader Blandin told the younger man.
"But I had to wade through all that yucky garbage!" Ahnhold complained. "And then you only took one, and then you sent me back to the future alone, and we're not supposed to do that when we're trainees."
"It's a special case," Blendin said.
"Why?" the recruit asked.
Blendin sniffed. "Take-take a time shower.
"I took two already!"
"Take two-two more." Blendin suddenly looked angry, rare with him. "Recruit, look-look at this!" He pointed to his head. "What do you see th-there?"
"Uh, pretty hair?" Ahnhold guessed.
"Ri-right! And I had-had it and then lo-lost it, and a gi-girl who had no re-reason to do it gave it ba-back to me!"
"When will that did happen?"
Blendin shrugged. "You know how hard it is to judge ti-time! But ye-years ago. Now, let me ask you th-this: Do you wa-want Time Baby to die for re-real?"
"No! Uh, wait, isn't he hibernating or—"
"He is not will always be hibernating! And th-thanks to that sa-same girl and her bro-brother, he will not have will be cranky and murderous when-when he wakes up."
"OK," Ahnhold said. "But a lousy stinking card—"
Blendin sighed. "In, in the time-line for those twins, the ma-main one, I mean, the im-important one, a time will come when both of them are were will have been needed to sa-save the world. Some-someone stole the bro-brother's cards. If the sis-sister does not have found just one card from the stolen ones, if she would not will have pasted her ca-cards together to give her bro-brother, they will not recon-recon-recon-make up after a bad quarrel and if they don't reconcile—hah! Nu-nailed it that time—they will not be-be able to sa-save their universe. And you will never exist, and I will never have joined the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squad. But we are, therefore this has to have been done. Get it?"
"Not yet," the recruit said.
"Put-put it this way. At a cru-crucial time when the universe needs both Ma-Mabel and Dipper, if they don't ha-have this memory to re-remind them how much they mean to each other, then-then the wor-worst happens."
"But why did I have to rake through the garbage by myself—"
"Because I was busy stopping the ja-janitor on a pretext long enough for you to find the ca-cards," Blendin said. "And I wa-wanted him to fi-find the right card, the one from Mabel, on his de-desk. I ran the simulations, and he-he was the one per-person who would give it to Ma-Mabel, who then gave it to Di-Dipper, and that sealed the me-memory for both of them."
"How did you have time to—"
"Think! When you gave me the card, you came ba-back to the fu-future. I stayed in the pa-past and went back another half-hour and ma-materialized in the ja-janitor's office and left the envelope on his de-desk. And ca-carved my initials there."
"It isn't logical for you to put the card on his desk when I hadn't found it yet," the recruit objected.
"Lo-logic and time-travel don't go-go together," Blendin said. "And now you want to know why I carved my initials."
"No. Well, yes."
"Ki-kid," Blendin said, "always leave little anchor points when you vi-visit somewhen you haven't will be have been be-before. There's a whole we-web of graffiti I've left from the Old-Old Wu-West to this morning. If I have to un-undo something, I can fuh-find the time and pl-place to not do something I've already do-done. Get it? Any other questions?"
The recruit thought hard. "Can I take my time-shower now?"
"No time like the present," Blendin Blandin said.
Which, like many things in the TPAES time stream was both true and not true at the same time.
When he was alone again, Blendin had a simultaneous cup of no tea and tea and hoped he had done the right thing.
Time, as they say, will tell.
Time may be the biggest blabbermouth in the universe.
While, of course, being as silent as the Sphinx.
