Robbing the Memory Bank
(June 2015)
9: Behind the Counter
Dipper was up to his ears in customers that Saturday morning. Everyone and his sister wanted to buy genuine imitation fake paranormal junk, and between counting cash and running credit cards, he started to feel a little panicked and frantic.
When the snack room closed for business at 2:00, Soos had Wendy come over. "Dude, let's start two lines. You can work this one, and I'll use the register outside the snack bar."
Dipper nodded, grateful for the help. Wendy called out, "Folks, we'll take care of all your purchases. I'm opening register two, right over here!"
The flood divided into two streams, and the pressure fell off. Finally, at four, the bulk of the customers had come, bought, and gone. The bus traffic had ended, except for one late bus that would pull in around five p.m. Now they just had to deal with routine car traffic, and the gift shop began to look like Dipper remembered it from his first summer there—clumps of three and four tourists, not people jammed in wall to wall.
Mabel toured the floor, straightening and tidying up, removing the inevitable broken merchandise, and Teek helped her. At four-thirty, during a real lull, Soos came over with a cute blonde girl in tow. Dipper guessed she was about fifteen. "Hey, dawg," Soos said, "I couldn't help noticing that you, like, need help. This here is Traci with an 'I.' Traci, um, don't tell me, Gilroy."
"Niederland," she corrected with a smile.
"Almost had it, girl dude! Traci Niederland, and her family, like, moved into town not long ago, and she's looking for a summer job or some junk? And she's worked retail before in a record store—"
"Shoe store," she corrected. "I know how to work a cash register."
"Shoe store, dude," Soos said, as if the mistake had been Dipper's. "Remember that. Traci Niederland, worked in a shoe store for her cousin—"
"Uncle," she said.
"—yeah, and so I'm gonna hire her. What I'm thinking, we'll get another register and put it at the other end of the counter, right there? We'll move the eyeball jar, maybe put it up on a shelf there behind the counter—the eyeballs aren't a big seller, girl dude—and, where was I?"
"We'll have two check-out lines," Dipper said.
"That's a great idea!" Soos said, smiling in his buck-toothed way. "Um, OK, Traci, so I told you about the salary, and, um, oh, yeah, if you want to eat in the snack bar, it's like, free, up to ten dollars a day, and, OK, you've signed all the papers and junk, and I just need your folks's signature on the form I gave you—did I give it to you?"
"I've got it in my purse," Traci said. "I'll have my mom sign it and bring it in on Tuesday."
"Good!" Soos said. "Then, um, Dipper, I guess you ought to show Traci the ropes and everything. Oh, and introduce the rest of the staff. And I got to go on the last Mystery Tour now."
"Well," Dipper said to Traci. "Welcome aboard, I guess."
The last tourists went out with Soos to the tram—this trip would be a lean one, the tram only half full—and Dipper called out, "Hey, guys, come and meet Traci!"
Mabel and Teek had been straightening out the book rack. Wendy came in from a bathroom break. Dipper said, "Gang, this is Traci Niederland. She's new in town and Soos is hiring her to run another register. We'll have two sales lines, beginning Tuesday."
"Cool!" Wendy said.
"Traci, this is Wendy Corduroy. She's the Assistant Manager and the coolest person in Gravity Falls. If you have any questions, just ask her, and she'll help you out."
"Thanks," Traci said, smiling shyly. Like Wendy, she had a little spatter of freckles across her nose and cheeks, but she didn't look as outdoorsy as Dipper's Lumberjack Girl.
"No prob."
Dipper said, "And this is my twin sister, Mabel. Oh, I didn't tell you, but our last name is Pines, and our great-uncles sort of own the Mystery Shack."
"Oh, that's cool!" Traci said. "Twins—I can see the family resemblance."
"Yeah," Mabel said, "except we're not identical twins."
Teek said, "You couldn't be, because—"
"Because I got the awesome gene!" Mabel pronounced. "My brobro Dipper here wound up with the dork genes."
"Hey!" Dipper said.
"It's true!" Mabel insisted. She poked Dipper's face repeatedly, chanting, "Dork! Dork! Dork!"
"Stop it," Dipper said.
"Um," Teek said, "I'm Ticknor O'Grady, but—"
"Bwahhh!" Mabel laughed. "Everybody calls him 'Teek,' Traci."
"Yeah," Teek said with a one-shouldered shrug. "Just call me Teek."
"Teek," Traci said. She turned and asked, "Um, and is Dipper your real—"
"Nope!" Mabel said. "His real name's Ma—"
"My real name," Dipper said, overriding her, "isn't important. I've been called Dipper ever since I was little. I prefer that."
Traci smiled shyly. "Okay, Dipper."
"Heads up, guys," Wendy said. "Family of six approaching the Shack. I gotta go do the museum tour. Dip, why don't you let Traci handle the register if they want souvenirs? Show her how we do things."
"Sure," Dipper said.
"I'll help, too!" Mabel announced. "Hey, we're fifteen, except for Teek—he's sixteen—and Wendy, who's so old—"
"Not funny!" Dipper said. "Wendy's a senior in high school."
"So," Mabel said, "how old are you?"
"I turned fifteen in April," Traci said.
"When did you move to the Falls?"
"Mabel," Dipper complained.
"Come on, I'm interested!" Mabel insisted.
Traci said, "I don't mind, Dipper. We moved in about two weeks ago. Our house is on Gopher Circle."
"Oh," Teek said. "Just down the street about a mile."
She nodded. "We have that house with the green roof? The second one on the left?"
"The Morgensens used to live there," Teek said. "He worked for the Northwest Company, but I think he retired."
"We heard they moved to Florida," Traci told him. "Anyway, there's my dad, he's a photographer, and my mom, she's a nutritionist, and my little brother Sandy, he's five years old—"
"He sounds adorable!" Mabel gushed.
"Not so much when you get to know him," Traci replied with a grimace. "Anyway, I'm going to get my learner's permit, and Dad told me if I could save up five hundred dollars, he'll get me a car when I turn sixteen, so—summer job!"
"You'll like it here," Mabel assured her. "Gravity Falls is a small town and kinda, what's the word I'm looking for here—"
"Eccentric," Teek suggested.
"One of a kind," Dipper offered.
"Freakin' weird!" Mabel finished. "Listen, you're gonna hear all kinds of strange rumors. I'll tell you up front, they're all true. There really are some paranormal creatures around—but they're all harmless, right, Dip?"
"Um—the Gremloblin, the spider people, the—"
"Mostly harmless!" Mabel corrected.
"Forty-two," Teek murmured.
They all looked at him. "Never mind," he said.
Mabel leaned toward Traci and said, "And confidentially, there's a lot of h-o-t guys in town! But I got dibs on Teek, and Dip's been spoken for, too. No worries, I can fix you up! I'm like the Ninja of match-makers!"
"Mabel," Dipper said, "maybe Traci would like to make friends herself, without your help."
"Too late!" Mabel crowed. "Now, next Friday we're gonna have a sleepover, my bffs and me, right here in the Shack. You're invited. There'll be about five of us—hey, Wendy, you up for an overnight next Friday?"
"Count me out, Mabes!" Wendy said as she led the group in from the museum. "I gotta get some sleep if Saturday's gonna be anything like today!"
"Four of us, anyway," Mabel said. "Five with you. You in?"
"Let me think about it," Traci said. "I don't know if—"
"Mabel!" Dipper said. "If Traci doesn't want to come, she doesn't have to!"
"Wrong! It's mandatory!" Mabel proclaimed.
Traci said, "All right, but, um, right now I think we've got customers."
"OK," Dipper said, slipping off the stool. "You'll get a name tag and all next week. Now, the credit card reader's a little bit slow. This register look familiar?"
"Sure," Traci said.
"Right. Here's the bar-code scanner. If an item doesn't have a bar code, just ring it up the way you probably know how to do. Are you new to Oregon?"
Traci nodded. "We used to live in Idaho."
"OK, good news, Oregon doesn't have a sales tax, so that simplifies the job a lot."
"Yeah," Wendy, who was leaning on the counter, said, "but the state income tax is murder! Here comes your first customer. Oops, got more pulling in. Let me run and sell museum tickets!"
The kid who came up to the counter had picked out a Mr. Mystery Money Machine, a trinket manufactured in China. Essentially, you rolled a rectangle of newsprint cut to the size of a bill in on one side, and it appeared to come out the other as a twenty-dollar bill. Dipper genially warned him, "It doesn't really print money, you know. It's a trick."
"Yeah, but I'll fool the kids at school," the boy said with a gap-toothed grin.
Traci scanned the toy in—five dollars even—and the boy handed her a ten. She made change, bagged the toy and put the receipt in, and said, "Thank you, and visit us again."
"And here," Mabel said, popping up so suddenly she startled the little boy, "is a set of Mystery Shack stickers! For free! That's the Mabel difference!" She popped the sheet of peel-off stickers into his bag—a miniature What Is the Mystery Shack? bumper sticker, the Sascrotch, the Jackalope, and other exhibits, a dozen in all.
"Thanks!" the boy's mom said. "Jerome, have you picked out anything yet? Jeffrey? Jeannie?"
The three kids ranged from about twelve down to maybe six. Each one of them bought a souvenir, though they spread the purchasing process over about fifteen minutes, and Traci handled all the sales. "I think you got it," Dipper said.
"Yeah," Mabel told her, "but it gets bonkers crazy in the mornings! Hey, by the way, my man Teek is the cook! If you like burgers—do you like burgers?"
"Sure," Traci said.
"Then you'll love the Shackburgers! Teek would make you one right now, but he and I are going to the movies tonight. Inside Out! An intense psychological study of a dangerously deranged child!"
"Um—I'm pretty sure it's an animated family comedy," Teek said.
Mabel's eyes narrowed. "That's what they want you to think! Hey, Traci, want me to find a date for you? We can double-date!"
"Not tonight, thanks," Traci said. "Maybe some other time."
"Then come on, Teek! We'll get something to eat, then hit the movies for the 5:15 Late Matinee! We'll save a dollar and a half each!"
After they had left—Dipper heard Teek's car start up and crunch out of the parking lot—he said to Traci, "My sister gets a little intense."
"She seems like fun," Traci said. "OK, now I saw you marking something down when we made the sales, so what's that?"
"Inventory sheets," Dipper said. "Let me show you the system."
Wendy and Dipper dropped Traci off at her house when the Shack closed at six. "She's a pretty girl," Wendy said.
"I'd call her more cute," Dipper told her.
"Just your age, too. I'm gonna have to keep an eye on the two of you, I can tell!" Wendy teased.
"Don't worry," Dipper told her. "Mabel will have her hooked up and engaged to somebody by the end of next week. She's suddenly back into full-tilt matchmaker mode again."
"You don't mind eatin' with my family tonight?" Wendy asked.
"No, but I hope your brothers don't challenge me to races every five minutes." Wendy's two younger brothers were convinced they could run a hundred-meter sprint faster than Dipper, who had once won a state high-school championship in that sport. No matter how many times he beat them, they clung to the belief.
"I'll call 'em off," she assured him.
Manly Dan was getting around fine again, his broken leg completely healed. He and his crew were working hard on the houses they were building for Ford and Stan—though Dan was grumbling that a key supplier had gone bankrupt, throwing them way off schedule, so what with untangling the resulting legal mess, he already knew they were going to miss the fall date he'd estimated as the construction deadline.
That didn't matter. Ford and Lorena, Stan and Sheila were comfortable in their wing of the McGucket mansion, and Fiddleford and Mayellen were in no hurry for them to move out. "Trouble is," Dan growled at dinner—steaks, roasted potatoes, garlic-braised green beans, and a gigantic chocolate-iced chocolate cake—"can't do nothin' much until the court proceedings end, probably along in October! The winter's gonna close in. Won't be able to do all the plumbing 'cause the pipes would freeze, and that's gonna throw us into late spring next year."
"Grunkle Stan says a good house is worth waiting for," Dipper assured him, astounded at how a sixteen-ounce sirloin made three bites for the big lumberjack.
"He's a good man," Dan said. "Hey, did I ever tell you that I built the Mystery Shack for your uncle Stanford? 'Course for years I thought Stanley was Stanford. Shoulda known, 'cause of the finger thing—you know your uncle Stanford has twelve fingers?"
"I've noticed that," Dipper said, trying to hide a smile.
"Yeah, he's a natural wonder," Dan said. He cut a slab of cake as big as Dipper's head. "Hurry up and finish, boys. We got some bowlin' to do!" To Dipper, he said, "Father-son tournament in Eugene! Booyah!"
"Good luck," Dipper said.
After the Corduroy males had rumbled away in Dan's pickup, Dipper and Wendy cleaned up the table and put the meager leftovers—with Dan, leftovers rarely got left over—in the fridge. He helped her vacuum and tidy up, and by eight they had the Corduroy house in good order.
"Whoosh!" Wendy said, putting the vacuum cleaner away. "I'm glad the boys are finally picking up after themselves. Makes maintaining Casa Catastrophe just a little easier. Hey, time for the bargain-basement movie!"
Since Dan was not there to object, they went into Wendy's room to watch it. This night's epic was Gatornado, about a freak tornado that swept up a swamp full of alligators and, and as the pre-movie teaser scenes made clear, deposited them in inopportune places, like an amusement park, a raucous teen pool party, an outdoor wedding, and a movie theater showing Gatornado. "Now," Dipper said, "this is meta!"
Dipper didn't drink at all, and Wendy only very occasionally snuck about a half-can of beer—usually when her family was making her especially insane. The two teens didn't have or want a drinking game.
Instead they lately had decided on kissing games. "OK, dude," Wendy said after the opening credits started to roll, "Every time a gator chomps somebody, we kiss."
Dipper rubbed his hands together, imitating Stan. In a fake rumbly voice, he said, "I like those odds!"
Immediately after the title credits ended, a hapless actor dressed as a park ranger and riding in an airboat took out a walkie-talkie—"Dude, don't you have a cell phone?" Wendy asked—and said into it, "Headquarters? This is Ranger Ricky. Listen, the weather's turning bad fast. Think I should herd Old Snatcher into a holding pen?"
Headquarters said yes, he approached an obviously fake alligator the size of a dump truck, and just as the ranger leaned out of the boat and with a long pole started to prod the unresponsive reptile, a lighting streak flashed in the sky, thunder boomed, and the startled animal (it looked like they had switched to footage of a live alligator) reacted in the only possible way that made sense—it grabbed the ranger (or maybe a Ken doll dressed up like him) and swallowed him head-first.
"Yay! Wendy cheered. "Go, gator! Pucker up, Dipper!"
"Dipper smooch!" Dipper pronounced in a Hulk voice.
They kissed, and their touch-telepathy let them feel each other's emotions.
Wendy licked her lips. "Well," she said, raising her eyebrows. "That was extra-nice. Now I know that cute little blonde stranger hasn't turned your head."
"Shh," Dipper said. "I think that gator's gonna chomp the fat man."