Grim Falls Ch. 1 "Aren't you lonely too?"
The night was very cold. Dipper Pines was very cold. The metal bleachers that Dipper Pines sat on were very cold. These coldnesses were related. Dipper straightened his hat and his posture, then thrust his hands into the pockets of his dark blue polyester jacket. He felt his journal pressed against his chest beneath his winter coat. He ignored it and turned his attention back to the football game.
Dipper was sure football was a bigger deal down south, but Gravity Falls still took pride in their local teams. This is despite the fact that the Gravity Falls Gremloblins were often, and currently, on the losing side. Dipper didn't really wonder about their losing record, he just wondered how Gremloblins were accepted as the mascot, and why even the more skeptical residents of Gravity Falls and the neighboring towns didn't ever question is. He enjoyed the game despite the cold and the pressing questions. It was helped by the fact that Dipper liked the game more than he liked either team specifically.
He scanned the crowd, enjoying watching the people as much as he enjoyed watching the game. Immediately, he spotted Mabel and her two foam hands. She jumped up and down happily while Candy and Grenda sat next to her cheering in a slightly more subdued fashion. They were all smiling, and they were all clad in green and orange sweaters that mabel had knitted; with the words 'Go Gremloblins" stitched on to them. Dipper smiled too.
The Gremloblins scored a touchdown. Dipper turned his head to the side when he heard a loud shouting from a little ways away. Wendy and her friends stood some ways away, none of them hollering louder than Wendy herself. Dipper felt a warmth in his cheeks as he found himself staring at Wendy's bright red hair.
Dipper was a freshman and only just now sixteen. Wendy would be graduating this year. The age difference became less apparent as Dipper grew older, but perhaps it was the fact that she had known him as a kid that led her to treat him as one of her little brothers, even now. She had always known how he felt. She really would have to be incredibly dense not to see the effect she had on him. She had a long and serious conversation with him when he turned fourteen. His chest ached whenever he thought of the talk they'd had.
He shook his head and scanned the crowd again. His eyes skipped over mabel and he looked to his left. Dipper tapped his feet on the bleachers as he looked for familiar faces. He almost had to turn his head all the way around, but he saw the more sullen members of the class sitting in the uppermost corner of the stands. He saw Robbie and his band sitting at the center of the cluster of hooded teens. Robbie himself nodded in acknowledgement at Dipper's gaze. Dipper almost ducked his head back down out of pure instinct, but he nodded back to Robbie instead. Their relationship still couldn't really be considered friendship, but it had grown far less hostile since Robbie, Wendy, and Dipper had all had several conversations with eachother about the volatile state of their interactions. Dipper liked to think they had come to an understanding, but perhaps it wasn't his imagination that their conversations were always... tense.
Dipper leaned back slightly, being sure not to fall over backwards. He breathed in the crisp night air and watched the football game for a while more. It would be over before too long, and perhaps the Gremloblins could scrape a win out of the night after all. Dipper caught sight of Pacifica Northwest amongst the cheerleaders, crinkling his nose in slight disgust. Though it was by far the least of her crimes, Dipper couldn't help but scowl at the knowledge that her family was the only reason the freshman was allowed to be a cheerleader in the first place.
Dipper shivered against the cold and resumed people watching. He caught sight of a few blood pact scouts lurking amongst the crowd and considered pulling out his journal to check their weaknesses again, but decided to let them go on their way until they started doing anything overtly hostile. He spotted someone who was almost certainly either a zombie or a stack of gnomes (he still had trouble telling the two apart) and he decided to keep an eye on them. The bleachers were packed with people both natural and supernatural and while he didn't know nearly all the names, he knew almost all of the faces.
A face he didn't know stood out to him. Despite the crowding that caused him to be sandwiched between a large man who kept dropping his pizza onto the ground and a family with an oddly familiar set of younger twins, somehow there was still a gap in the crowd. A lone girl in a black hoodie sat in the seat closest to the stairs that led to the parking lot. The rest of the crowd seemed to have parted around her. She was shivering pretty badly, and she leaned over against the chain link fence at the adge of the bleachers. Dipper frowned and looked down at his jacket. He nudged the man next to him, causing the pizza to slilp from his fingers. Dipper winced. "Sorry, man." He then indicated his desire to get out and the man scooted backwards as best he could, a disappointed expression on his face. Dipper patted the guy on the shoulder as he stepped out onto the stairs.
Dipper weaved around people returning from the snack bar and went down the steps. He got about halfway to his goal before he was waylaid. A strong arm grabbed a hold of him and dragged him into the crowd. Dipper felt a surge of panic until he saw mabel come into view. Grenda put him down between her and Mabel and Dipper dusted his jeans off. Mabel's shrieking rose over the sounds of the crowd and the game. "Isn't this game exciting?" she asked. "Yeah, Mabel, it's pretty great," Dipper looked back impatiently, "pretty bad start, but I guess we're pulling ahead now." As if in defiance, the visitor side roared in applause as their team completed a pass and made it to the endzone. "Aw, man..." Mabel groaned. The rest of the crowd groaned too. "Oh." Dipper said. "well." Mabel's shoulders sagged, and she waved her foam fingers half-heartedly. Dipper gave her a half-hug. "Don't worry. We'll score again." Dipper promised. The three girls smiled back at him. Dipper straightened his hat and jabbed his thumb back in the direction he had come from. "I'm gonna... ya' know." he said. Mabel nodded, "Later Smile Dip!" Dipper lowered his eyebrows and frowned at her. He shook his head as she flashed a straight toothed smile.
Dipper crept back to the steps, his way significantly more difficult now that he didn't have Grenda to part the crowd. When he finally emerged, he threw a look back at Mabel and her friends, and they waved at him. He resumed smiling and made his way to the bottom row. He rubbed his hands together and began to unzip his coat. He waggled his fingers and plunged his hand into the inside of his jacket, retrieving a red leather book with a golden hand and a black number four painted on its cover. Dipper rustled the pages and skimmed his writing. He tucked the book under his arm and crossed in front of the crowd to make his way to the solitary girl in the corner. She shivered again in the cold weather. Dipper studied the crowd around her. They didn't seem scared, and yet they seemed completely unaware of the empty space around them.
Dipper slid into a spot next to the girl and immediately felt a profound sense of terror, and a pressure on his ears. He gritted his teeth and the feeling intensified briefly, then subsided entirely as he focused. The girl snapped her head around towards him. Now that he saw he up close, he could see her more clearly. She was short, not overly, but definitely not as tall as he was. She wasn't skinny, not fat, but definitely not as slim as Dipper. Her hair was blonde and cropped close to her head. Her eyes were a deep brown that Dipper couldn't be sure wasn't black. Her black hooded sweatshirt was a bit too big for her, and it was worn and faded in some places. Her hands were wrapped in fingerless gloves and clasped around an Ipod, with large headphones leading from the mp3 player to her hood. Her expression was dark, and cold, and angry, and sad. Dipper raised her eyebrows at her. Her look turned to confusion and she frowned and flicked her eyes from the mp3 player to Dipper, then back again. She lifted delicate unpainted fingers to her hood and slid the headphones down onto her neck.
She looked at Dipper expectantly. "Hey." he said with a smile. he sat 4 down onto the seat beside him and shrugged his coat off. He wore a dark red button-down shirt with long sleeves, and soon it was all that sheltered him from the cold. He reached out his hands and offered her the thick coat. She just became more confused. She scowled at him. "Why?" she snapped. "You look cold." he explained. "And lonely." her expression softened. she reached a hand out and gently tugged on the coat. He released it into her grasp. The girl shivered one last time and threw it on. She zipped it up and sighed. Dipper smiled at her. His smile was met with another suspicious scowl. "Won't... you be cold?" she asked, though he suspected she didn't actually care. "Nope." he answered. "My dad moved me here when I was twelve." he elaborated, "I'm used to this weather." The girl turned her gaze back forwards and was silent.
Dipper tapped his foot on the bleacher and the girl did too. They each stopped when they noticed the other's rhythm, then sat in what would have been an awkward silence if only they were alone. Dipper cleared his throat. She snapped her head back towards him and glared. Dipper lowerd his eyebrows and smiled a 'really?' smile at her. She scoffed and crossed her arms. He extended a cold hand towards her, "I'm Dipper Pines." The girl looked at the hand for a long, long moment. She sighed and slumped her shoulders slightly, shaking her head. She slipped a hand into his own. "Amanda Claire." she grumbled. "So I can call you Amanda?" Dipper asked. "Mandy." she snapped. "Nobody calls me Amanda." Dipper cocked his head. "Fair enough. I don't use my real name either." She lowered her dark eybrows,"Obviously not, Dipper." Dipper shrugged and put his hands into the pockets of his jeans to keep them warm. Mandy looked down at his pockets and unconciously fiddled with the arm of the jacket she had loaned him. "Are... are you sure you're won't be cold..." Her voice was softer than the first time she asked. He waved his hand in dismissal, then quickly put it back where it was had been, so as not to make himself a liar.
"I was." she admits. "Cold I mean. And..." she whispers, "Lonely." Dipper gave her a sad smile. Mandy bit her lip, then opened her mouth to speak, "Dipper, have you..." she trailed off. "Yeah?" Dipper urged. "Have you ever lost someone." her dark eyes were suddenly damp and she turned them to look straight into Dipper's. "And then you just run, and run and you just can't forget and just..." Dipper looked at her with a sadder smile. Her eyes became angry. "No. I guess not." she concluded. "My mom." Dipper said, and she snapped her head towards him. "That's why I moved here. My Dad couldn't stand to be in our house any more after she..." Dipper cleared his throat. "He took us back here so he could be near other family and try to forget." She stared at him for a long time with a suspicious expression. Then she asked a question that kind of caught Dipper off guard. "Is this a good place to forget?" she said. Dipper paused for a while and watched the football game before answering. "Yeah. I guess it is."
Suddenly, Mandy leaned her head against Dipper's shoulder and he froze stiffer than if he had stayed out here all night. "Wha..." Dipper said, baffled. She looked up at him with her large black eyes. "I said I was lonely." Mandy says. "Aren't you lonely too?"