Calamity Crossroads

(Jurn 16, 2012—wait, what?)

1-Weird Awakening

Who knew when it happened, when it began, and most important, when it would end? Who knew the why of these and the how of these and the where of anything?

Nobody, that's who. At least nobody in the whole wide world . . ..

It began with Dipper waking in the attic, feeling that somehow things just weren't right. Here he was, twelve years old—

Wait, why did he have hair on his chest? And such big hands? And why were his heels hanging off the very foot of the bed? He tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes and on the way his palm scraped stubble on his cheeks.

Dipper got out of bed and discovered that he was too tall. Across the room, Mabel lay with her back to him, snoring away. Blinking, he stumbled to the bathroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror—he looked eighteen!

He was wearing only his shorts—not his normal camping shorts, but undershorts, tighty-whities. No tee shirt. He never slept like that. And then he discovered the clothes that lay scattered on the floor in the bedroom were all his size, his now size, and not his twelve-year-old size. And the clean clothes in his drawer and hanging in the closet were also sized for an older teen.

Don't panic, don't panic, Dipper told himself in a panicky inner voice. It's Gravity Falls. Something weird's going on, that's all. Let's . . . shower and get dressed and maybe then it will be better and if it doesn't, at least I'll be cleaner.

He was cleaner after the shower, but not better. As he got dressed, the bathroom door opened and Mabel said, "Whoops! Caught you in your boy panties, heh!"

Hastily Dipper pulled on his cargo khakis, regular pants and not shorts, and said, "Wait, wait, Mabel!"

"Huh? Yeah?" She opened the door again and looked up at him as he walked barefoot into the hall.

"Don't I look different to you?" he asked.

She didn't look different to him—his twelve-year-old twin sister, looking twelve, same as the day before, sported her goofy smile, braces, hairband, the whole Mabel thing. "Um," she said, "you haven't shaved yet?"

"Shaved? How old am I?" he asked.

"Eighteen, Bigbro!"

He looked back into the mirror at his stubble-chinned reflection. "How can that be?"

"Um—because you were born exactly six years to the days before I was?"

"But we're twins!" he exclaimed.

"Birthday twins, but not twin twins! Not really," Mabel said. "Is something going clickety-click in your head, Bigbro?"

"Something really odd's going on," Dipper said. "Inside, I'm twelve, and we're twins!"

"Yeah, hold that joke Bigbro, I gotta use the john."

He pulled his shoes on—size nine? Since when did he wear size nine sneakers? In his panicky haste, he nearly fell running down the stairs of the Mystery Shack. Wait, wait, why were there two flights of stairs? Just one, wasn't there? He paused at the landing and from behind the door opening off it to the left, he heard the unmistakable sound of Grunkle Stan's snores.

He hurried down the last flight and looked on the porch. There lay the Gravity Falls Gatherer—wait, that wasn't the name of the paper, it was supposed to be the Gossiper! But he snatched it up, unrolled it, and held it spread out, reading in the early morning light the masthead:

The Gravity Falls Gatherer

"All the News that Falls to Print"

Durbsday, Jurn 16, 2012

"This has to be wrong," Dipper said. OK, so the Gossiper routinely ran with typos, but Durbsday? Jurn? That should be boilerplate. He ran to the parlor, turned on the TV, and found the morning news show.

Shandra Jimenez, right, she looked the same as always, sat at the desk, finishing a news article: ". . .and the police are baffled. Meanwhile, the flying terror continues to rip off automobile roofs by night. In other news, local tycoon Prestol Southeast intends to make a public offering, allowing stockholders to purchase shares in his—"

"Prestol? Southeast? A terror that flew by night? Well, that sounded like the pterodactyl he and Soos were currently stalking, but the rest—"No," Dipper said. "No, no, no, this can't be happening!"

He dashed into the gift shop—

Whoa. Completely changed! Sofas and armchairs, scattered floor lamps, and a couple of coffee tables and small bookcases stocked with magazines—and instead of a counter, a reception area had been partitioned off with a glass guard over a counter that held a computer. And instead of fantastic geegaws and bizarre pictures and posters, the walls held notices about controlling high blood pressure, symptoms of diabetes—why did it look like a doctor's waiting room?

He heard someone moving in the kitchen and hurried there. Grunkle Stanley, in tee-shirt and boxer shorts, stood there looking grumpy and brewing coffee. "Grunkle Stan!" Dipper yelled, aware that he sounded frantic. "What day's today?"

"Not so loud, young man," Stan said sternly. "It's the sixteenth of Jurn, isn't it? Right, my birthday was yesterday. What's wrong with you?"

"Not me! Everything else wrong!" Dipper said. "The Shack looks like a doctor's office—"

"Please. It isn't a shack. It's the Gravity Falls Community Clinic."

"The what?"

"You feel all right, kid? Come to my office."

Stan led him to what should have been the Museum. Now part of it was partitioned off into an office, with a diploma on the wall:

KNOW ALL YE BY THESE PRESENTS

The Degree of

Venefica Doctoris Medicinae

Is this day conferred upon

Filbrick Staneley Pines

XI Mayo 1982

HEXAM SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

With his mouth hanging open, Dipper read and re-read the weird document. His grunkle's first name was Filbrick? Eleventh of . . . mayonnaise? Huh?

"I don't understand any of this—whoa! Why—why—what?"

Stan had donned a strange archaic mask, roughly shield-shaped, green with red zig-zag lines on the forehead and cheeks, a painted-on gaping mouth with shark fangs and a lolling red tongue. "I gotta do a quick examination!" Stan barked from behind the mask. "Now stand still. Hiyah hiyah heehah hoo . . .."

Dipper stood as if frozen in place. Stan sort of shuffled-danced around him, shaking two dried-gourd rattles around Dipper's head. "What are you doing?"

"Shh! OK, let's see how the tests come out . . . normal, normal, normal, higher nerd count than I'd like. Nothin' that says you can't do your job, so grab the broom, the mop, and the sterilizing stuff and clean out this place and the exam room. And then you can have breakfast! I gotta have a bagel and coffee and then get shaved and dressed. Go!"

Well, that was something he was sort of used to. The cleaning supplies were in their normal spots, and he swept the . . . gift shop, he still thought of it that way, including the counter and the staff-only room behind it, and Stan's, uh, new office, and then what was the museum and now was a room with an examination table, white cabinets, a sink, and shelves containing stuff like a jar of what looked like pickled frogs, bunches of extremely weird-looking dried plants, an array of small-animal bones, and a row of shrunken human heads.

At least that looked normal. For the Shack.

He'd found a bottle of mopping compound labeled "D-Z's Away," the fine pint guaranteeing that a quarter-cup of the stuff in a gallon of water would eliminate "All Ill Humours, Demonic Influences, Miasmas, and Other Causes of Distempers and Maladies."

It smelled like lemons, and he mopped the office and exam room floors. Then he started out onto the Museum porch, except there was no door where there should be a door, so instead, he hauled the bucket out onto the used-to-be-gift-shop door and tipped the water into the grass—

"Hiya, Dipper!"

"Wendy?"

She was coming in from the parking lot, dressed in, uh—

Scrubs? One of those hospital-type uniforms, pale green, making her sort of shapeless—

"You're fifteen!" he said.

She kissed him on his unshaven cheek. "Yeah, I know. I keep telling you you're not too old for me, man! Gotta go get my station set up. You're rockin' the scruff look, Dipper." She winked at him and went inside.

Dipper stood there with his dripping bucket. This is crazy, this is so crazy—

"Mister?"

It was a small, weak, pleading voice. Dipper looked behind him.

She stood on the lowest step, her shoulders drooping, her hair shaggy and straggly, her clothes a stained white blouse and a dirty-looking short skirt. Her feet were bare, her legs streaked with old scratches. "Could you give me something to eat?" she asked, not meeting his gaze.

"Pacifica?"

"Please," she whispered. "I haven't had food for—" she started to cry.

"Uh, come in," he said. "Don't cry. I'll—I'll make breakfast for you."

They went through the reception room, where Wendy now stood behind the counter, talking to Stan. He was rumbling, "Now, remember, anybody asks you, you're how old?"

"Eighteen," she said. "I got this, Dr. Pines."

Neither of them noticed Dipper and Pacifica passing through. "You sit there at the table," Dipper said. "I'll put this cleaning stuff away and then—"

"Could—could I use your bathroom?" she whispered.

He showed her where the public restroom was—still in the same place he remembered—and stowed the mop, bucket, and broom in the janitor's closet between the two public bathrooms. He washed his hands and returned to the kitchen. He found bread, eggs, and bacon and a gallon jug of milk that was still half-full. By the time Pacifica came back, the eggs and bacon were sizzling, the toast stood ready to be popped down, and he had poured her a glass of milk.

"Th-thank you," she whispered. She picked up the glass and hesitated.

"You can start with that if you want," Dipper said. "There's more."

She gulped the whole glassful down in two long drinks. "I'm so hungry," she said.

He set a plate with two fried eggs and three slices of bacon down for her and in a moment when the toast popped up, he buttered it and put it on a bread plate. When he turned—

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Pacifica said mournfully. Her plate was empty. "I was starving."

"Here," he said. "Couple more eggs and more bacon?"

"Please?"

"Hey, hey, don't cry."

"I can't help it. Nobody wants to help me. Thanks, Mister."

"You know who I am. Call me Dipper."

"But—you're so old!"

"You know I should be twelve?"

"Huh? Yeah, a little younger than I am—"

"Pacifica!" Mabel's voice. It didn't sound pleasant. "How come you're here? And why are you dressed like that? Hey, Bigbro, two scrambled and four pieces of bacon for me and three toasts! And orange juice!"

"What—what did you call me?" Pacifica asked.

"Pacifica!" Mabel said. "Girl, you're a mess—"

"That's not my name! I'm Elise Northwest! Only when I went home, there was another girl there and they threw me out!"

"You are so mixed up!" Mabel said. "You're Pacifica Southeast, you rich-girl dum-dum! Dipper, I said scrambled!"

"I'll work on yours. This is for Pacifica. Guests first."

"How come you're eating in our hovel?" Mabel asked.

Pacifica, her chin trembling, looked down into her lap. Tears dripped.

"Mabel!" Dipper said. "Let her eat. She's very hungry."

"Sorry, Bigbro," Mabel said, her voice a little petulant. "It's just she's usually so lah-dee-dah. Go ahead and eat, I won't bite you."

"No OJ," Dipper announced. "Milk?"

"Oh, man," Mabel moaned, flopping down and putting her forehead on the table. "Nobody has it worse than me!"

"How about hot chocolate?" asked Dipper, who had just discovered a packet of chocolate-milk mixes.

"Now you're talking."

Dipper served Mabel's food and warmed up her milk before stirring in the cocoa mix. He satisfied himself with just a piece of toast. Voices came from the adjoining doorway into the waiting room.

Both girls shoveled the food in, Mabel the way she normally did, Pacifica like someone who'd been starving. At last Mabel burped and pushed back. "Pretty good, Bigbro! Put orange juice on the shopping list. Off to another day of nonstop fun—"

"Not so fast," Dipper said. "You wash and dry the dishes."

"Wha-a-at?"

"Am I the big brother?"

"Aw, man, you always pull rank on me. OK, OK. Tell Wattles I'll be out soon to feed him—"

"Who?" Dipper asked.

"My pet turkey, you big old dork!"

"OK, you take care of the dishes. Pacifica, come with me."

He took her upstairs and looked through Mabel's clothes. She and Pacifica were about the same size. He found underwear, a pair of lavender shorts, and a souvenir tee-shirt she almost never wore advertising Confusion Mountain and a pale green that, to his eye, looked OK with lavender. Oh, and one of the six pairs of ballet flats Mabel always wore, and socks.

"Here," he said, handing the clothes and a folded towel and washcloth. He led her to the upstairs bathroom. "Have a shower, and then you can borrow these clothes. And after that—we have to talk."

Pacifica took the bundle and looked at him with wide blue eyes. She mouthed "Thank you."

Dipper stood guard as she closed the door. A moment later, he heard the shower running.

He waited and hoped that somehow—he didn't know how—Pacifica could help him figure out just what the heck was going on.