Robbing the Memory Bank
(June 2015)
2: Down the Trail
"We can't watch this," Dipper said, holding the memory tube. "It wouldn't be right. Pacifica—well, she's a private kind of person, you know."
"Yeah," Wendy agreed. "Whatever it is could be embarrassing or even criminal." She switched off the viewer, and they were left in the dark basement room with only one weak bulb, the one over the exit door, giving them any illumination.
Dipper looked at her shadowy face. "Criminal?"
"Abuse, man," Wendy said, carefully taking the tube from him. "Pacifica's told me about how her dad, like, conditioned her so that when he rang this little bell she had to obey him. I mean, she had no will of her own, just kinda went into a trance and had to do what she was told. It was like that dumb CD that Robbie gave me that one time. Brainwashing, Dipper."
"Oh, man, oh man," Dipper moaned. "We shouldn't watch this without her permission. But what if we let Pacifica see this, and it told her something about her family or herself that she just couldn't stand?"
"We have to think about this," Wendy said. She checked her phone. "We said we'd be out by eleven, Dip. One minute to go."
"Let's leave this until we can decide," Dipper said. He took the tube back and carefully placed it apart from the others, and then they picked up their popcorn bag and the soft-drink cans and left the secret room. Ripper greeted them up on the main floor, still wriggling his butt, and Dipper gave the Doberman the last chunk of steak.
They left through the storage room and the rear door of the Museum, stepping out into the darkness and pausing to discard their trash in the bin beside the back door. Something big flew over them, but it didn't seem to notice the two black-clad teens. "Ninjas!" Wendy whispered.
But a troubled Dipper didn't respond.
From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Wednesday, nearly midnight, and I've just now gone to bed: Why is it that when I try to do something good for people I always mess up? Wendy and I thought that it would be best to get rid of those stored-up bad memories, or else, if it looked like something the victims of the Blind Eye Society could deal with, to let them see the images and recover their memories.
But it gets a whole lot more complicated when you realize you're fooling around not only with people's memories, but with their lives. I mean, what are our lives but a collection of memories, good and bad?
Luckily, there's nothing in the pile of tubes with Wendy's name on it, or Grunkle Stan's, Mabel's, or mine. There was only one real brief stolen memory for Soos, and he took it like a big joke. I guess you could say he Soosed the whole thing.
And now I'm starting to feel terrible because Wendy and I sat there and ate popcorn and laughed at what we saw, as if it was just a bad movie. I mean, a woman being chased around by animated underwear IS pretty goofy-looking, and the guy whose car got eaten by some kind of wood giant did have a hilarious panic attack. He sounded like somebody recorded at one speed and played back three times as fast.
But you know what? They were real people, not actors. That lady really WAS scared, and the poor guy who lost his car also looked like he was losing his mind. These things that look funny now, especially to somebody who knows what Gravity Falls can be like, well, they were more than hurtful at the time to the people who experienced them.
I hate to say it, but I'm starting to realize why Fiddleford created the memory-erasing gun.
But Mabel says it's never good to try to repress bad memories. "Face 'em, file 'em, but don't forget 'em," she told me after our first visit to the lair of the Society.
"Mabel," I asked her, "don't you have any regrets?"
"Nope!" she told me. "I regret nothing!"
Mabel. No matter what happens, she always tends to look on the bright side.
Me. Not so much.
Now we've got this whole thing with Pacifica. I've got to talk to Mabel about that. She's friends with Paz, more than I am, and if anybody knows Paz and can advise me on the best thing to do, it's Mabel.
Dipper didn't get to sleep until well after midnight, and Thursday morning, like clockwork, his phone beeped an early alarm, he got up, got into running shorts, shirt, and shoes, and, still half-asleep, went down to meet Wendy. They had exercises and stretches to do before their ritual morning run.
"It's—ugh—no fair! You—ugh!—you're wide awake!"
"Less yacking, more crunching!" Wendy ordered. She was kneeling on the grass, holding down Dipper's ankles, as he did modified sit-ups, twisting to touch his right knee with his left elbow, then on the next one reversing.
He finished the set and they traded places, Dipper kneeling and holding Wendy's ankles down. She didn't struggle at all and breezed through three reps.
"You can let go of my legs any time now, dude," she said with a grin.
Dipper had been lost in musing. He let go his grip on her ankles—she was wearing white socks, not her usual yellow-and-orange ones—and muttered, "Sorry."
They stood up and she said, "OK, let's stretch out and get started. Which way you want to run this morning?"
"Nature trail, I guess."
"Cool! Haven't done that in a while. Ready to stretch? OK, go!"
They started with ten lunges, followed those with hip flexors and side stretches, calf raises—when they'd first started running, these used to hurt like crazy, or at least hurt Dipper, but now that he was running track, they seemed easy. As for Wendy, she'd never had a problem with them.
Then stork stretches, standing on one leg and reaching behind to pull the other foot up until the heels touched their butts. And finally, they turned and faced each other. "Your favorite one, dude," Wendy said with a grin.
These were hip circles. Watching Wendy in her tank top and shorts, with her hands on her hips and her elbows bent, pivot and rotate her hips as if she were spinning a hula hoop, did make him smile.
She teased him: "You enjoy this so much! How about me? Turn around and do some so I can look at your butt, man!"
"What IS it with girls and butts?" Dipper asked. It was a question he'd asked before, and sometimes the answers he got made his face turn red. He did understand, sort of. He would have happily watched if Wendy had turned her back on him and started to gyrate her hips.
Didn't happen that morning, though. They started off loping down the Mystery Trail, past the pig pen, past the Bottomless Pit, past the Outhouse of Peril, and past the bonfire glade, and then they turned off onto a track they wore in the tall grasses every summer.
It was exhilarating on a cool, clear morning to run that way beneath a bright blue sky, through thickets of young pines, the clean scent sharp in their noses, and across meadows rioting with wildflowers. Dipper could recognize them all, a skill he had gained from the special telepathic bond he and Wendy shared when they touched. They always opened their special knowledge to each other, and Wendy knew every tree and every plant. Now he did, too.
He recognized the sun-yellow arnicas, the spiky-scarlet Indian paintbrushes, the pink Oregon checker-mallows, and all the rest. And in the rolling meadows, with the tall grass brushing as high as their knees, they always saw more than trees and flowers.
That morning they spooked a small group of jackrabbits, four or five of them, which went bounding along in front of them before realizing the humans were, apparently, in hot pursuit. Then they veered off the trail and vanished in the rustling grass. A moment later a Gnome burst out, running after the rabbits and yelling, "Come back, Judy! I love you!"
"Gnome furries, man!" Wendy said.
They were running at just the right speed, which meant they could talk, but it was a little difficult, and Dipper had broken into a sweat. They gave Moon Trap Pond a wide berth—they'd sort of promised the owner they wouldn't fool with it—and then rounded the standing stone, which Dipper still wanted to investigate one of these days. Then they were heading back the way they'd come.
Wendy had measured the route with a pedometer, and they knew they had run for four miles when they came to the place they called Possum Tree, a gnarly California black oak. Once they had glimpsed three sleek opossums hanging upside-down from a limb by their pink prehensile tails, like bizarre furry fruit. Only later did Dipper learn that possums don't do that—anywhere else but in Gravity Falls Valley, at any rate.
Inside the valley, all bets were off. Here possums could do almost anything but talk, and who knew about that? Some animals won't talk to anyone but their own species. Dipper was almost certain he'd once spotted an opossum taking a pocket watch out of her pouch and checking the time. And once he and Mabel had trapped in an attic closet an animal that intruded in their bedroom. Mabel had bet him five dollars that it was a possum.
It turned out to be not-a-possum, but they never did manage to identify it, and, come to think of it, Mabel still owed him five dollars.
Wendy and Dipper started walking at the Possum Tree to cool down, holding hands. Instantly Dipper caught Wendy's thought: You're really worried about Pacifica huh?
—Yeah. It's a lot of responsibility, and we don't know what's in that memory. What if it's something that will really bother her?
Gotcha, man. She's been through some rough times, don't want to upset her. OK, what about this? She's supposed to come over for a sleepover on Friday—
—Oh, great. That means I'm gonna be chased out of my bedroom! Guess I'd better hide anything I don't want Grenda to bust.
Yeah, that girl loves to break things. But I was sayin', that's our movie night anyway, so what if I fix it with Dad so I can sleep over, too? Maybe get a few minutes alone with Pacifica. I can sort of sound her out about maybe wanting to see—or not see—her old memory.
—OK, but be careful. I get the feeling she's really down this summer for some reason. The one time I saw her, she just didn't want to talk about anything.
Probably guy trouble. You boys are such a pain, I don't know why we girls even put up with you.
They had reached the bonfire glade. Aloud, Dipper said, "We've got a few minutes before we have to shower and have breakfast and get ready for work. Why don't we sit here, and I'll explain to you why you girls put up with us guys?"
"Oh, smooth, Dip!" Wendy said, chuckling. "Yeah, let's rest a little bit."
They sat on the log, their arms around each other. And kissed.
"Hey," Wendy said, rubbing his chest, "you gotta hide stuff before the sleepover? What do you have in your room that I don't know about, man?"
"Oh, my porn stash, my bong—"
She pushed him off the log, laughing. "You dork!"
He climbed back up, grinning. "Yeah, I know." He paused and then confessed, "Actually, I used to have a collection of pictures of you. To look at when you're here and I'm in California and I miss you so bad it hurts."
"Used to? What happened to them?"
"Mabel found them. I had them hidden in a drawer, but you can't hide stuff from my sister." He shrugged. "I think she thought I'd look at them and, uh, you know."
"Um—did your collection include that bikini photo?"
He took her hand and opened his mind to her, so she'd be absolutely sure he was telling the truth. —I got rid of that. Much as I loved looking at it, I knew it embarrassed you, and I got rid of it.
Tambry thought it was so funny, sending it to you. But she apologized. Wonder how she and Robbie are makin' out down there in California.
—You haven't heard from her?
Not since they first got there. I guess even Tambry can't do constant status updates when she's on her honeymoon. But I know she and Robbie were working on some songs they want to record, if the producer guy likes them.
—Hey, Wendy, what do you think of Teek's wearing Robbie's old hoodie?
Surprised me when I saw it, but it doesn't bother me. I can sense it bothers you.
—Well, Teek doesn't LOOK like Robbie, and he's no musician, but, you know—I guess from that summer when I was twelve, Robbie really got to me. He was always so surly and just pointlessly mean.
Yeah, dude sort of took teen rebellion too seriously. I mean, he WORKED at it!
—But—I don't know. From the second I first saw Teek in that hoodie, it's like my paranormal sense started tingling, and I don't know why.
Cursed hoodie?
Dipper had to laugh at that. Aloud, he said, "No, I don't think that's it. But I just don't know. It's not a strong enough premonition for me to bother Grunkle Ford about it. Anyway, he's working on something secret himself. He told me he thinks there may be some threat forming, but he won't talk about it until he knows more."
"Gravity Falls," Wendy said. "Well, we better head in."
"Just one more," Dipper said, leaning in. He kissed her, then traced her jaw and throat with his lips. "Mm, salty girl," he murmured. "I like the taste!"
"Just sweat, dude," she said. "Let me try." She kissed his chin, then licked his neck. "Is kinda tasty, though. OK, let's go. Oh, Dip, I didn't cause that, did I?"
"It's all right," he told her, standing up with some awkwardness. "It'll go away. I'll walk it off."