Dipper and Mabel both stood there, blinking. It seemed as though every resident of Gravity Falls had crammed themselves into the living room.

"Dudes! You're here!"

The next thing the twins knew, they had both been picked up off of the ground and had their faces squashed into the large body of Jesus "Soos" Ramirez, the former handyman/now current owner of the Mystery Shack.

"Soos, I know you're excited, but put them down, already. "came a familiar voice.

"Oh, yeah—sorry, dudes." Soos said, putting the twins down.

Both Dipper and Mabel drew deep breaths. "Hey, Soos! How have things been?" Dipper asked, looking up at his friend.

"Pretty good, dude, pretty good."

Mabel looked up to see the person who had told Soos to put them down. "Melody!"

Dipper looked up to see the young lady they'd met at the mall when they were trying to get Soos a date the summer before—and who had witnessed/helped them fight an obsessed computer program from a dating computer game.

"Hi, guys." Melody said with a smile that accentuated her full cheeks.

"I thought you moved back to Portland!" Mabel said, hugging Melody's leg.

"I did, but things weren't as great as I thought they'd be, and then when Soos and I were video chatting and he told me Mr. Pines had given him the Mystery Shack, well, I had to come back here and help. "

"Mabel!"

"Hey, girl!"

Both Dipper and Mabel looked to see two girls: one a stocky-built girl with her hair in ponytails and whose gravelly voice had called out, "Mabel!" and the other a smaller Asian girl with glasses and long dark hair.

Mabel's face lit up. "Grenda! Candy!"

Dipper watched his sister run over to her friends and smiled, albeit a bit sadly. Mabel had always been better at making friends than he had, and the summer before he hadn't made any good friends his age.

"Well, well, if it isn't the deserter. "

Dipper turned around. A lanky girl in a green flannel shirt and jeans wearing a blue and white cap with a blue pine tree covering her long red hair smiled down at him.

"Wendy!"

He unzipped his backpack and pulled out the bomber hat that he had exchanged with Wendy the summer before.

The sixteen-year old smiled. "Hey, you kept it."

Dipper could feel himself blushing. "Of—of course."

Wendy took the pine tree hat off and placed it on Dipper's head, then took the bomber hat back and placed it on her own. "There. We won't need things to remember each other by when we're in the same place. "

Dipper smiled. The summer before he had had a huge crush on Wendy, but had finally had to convince himself that it could never be.

"Hey, Wen-dy!"

Wendy looked over her shoulder at a group of teenagers at the door. "Just a sec, Lee!"

She got on her knee and pointed to an older gentleman in a suit sitting alone by the wall. "Dip, there's someone who'd really like to talk to you."

Dipper blinked. "Wendy, do I know—"

"Later, dude. Glad to have you back. "

Wendy ran to the door to join her friends.

For a moment, Dipper looked in the direction she'd gone, then back to the older gentleman she'd pointed out. Sighing, he made his way over.

As he came closer, Dipper took in the man's features. He was clean shaven, with thinning white hair and spectacles perched on his nose. He looked kind of familiar, but…

"Um, excuse me, sir—do I know—"

The man turned and looked at him, and Dipper saw his gentle blue eyes. There wasn't the crazy "spark" that used to be in them, but…

"Old Man McGucket?"

"Hey, there, son—how've you been? "

"I—I—you—" Dipper was amazed. Even though he, his sister, Wendy and Soos had helped the "local kook" known to townsfolk as "Old Man McGucket" begin to get his self-erased memory back the summer before, the boy couldn't believe the transformation. The man before him had been living in a shack in the local junkyard, usually wearing nothing but a pair of overalls and a hat that he'd stolen off of a scarecrow.

The old gentleman patted the seat beside him. "Come over and set a spell son—if'n you don't mind. "

"N-not at all, sir. " Dipper found himself saying, hurrying over and sitting down next to him.

"So you've had a good year?"

"Yes, sir. It was hard going back to – well, kind of boring life back home – but things've been good. How are you? Great Uncle Ford sent me a copy of the newspaper article that said you'd made millions selling patents to the U.S. government!"

McGucket chuckled. "Eh, it's just money, son. I do have that nice Northwest house to live in, now—it's a sight better than the junkyard. Better 'n' the house, though, is that my son lives with me, now. "

Dipper smiled. After losing his mind, his memory, his wife, and for a time a relationship with his son, McGucket deserved some happiness. "So, sir—"

"Eh, enough of that, son." McGucket said, waving a hand. "I don't deserve t' have anyone call me 'sir'. "

Dipper looked into his lap, then back up at the elderly man. "You went to school with Grunkle Ford, right? He said you were brilliant—you have a doctorate, don't you? "

"Yes, son-" McGucket said, blushing. "—a couple. Certainly not as many as your great uncle."

Dipper grinned, realizing that when he'd blurted the question out, he should have thought beforehand if McGucket would have remembered that. He was happy to hear that he evidently did. "Well then, if not 'sir', at the very least Doctor McGucket. "

The old man shook his head. "Well, if it makes you happy, son. "

For a moment, the elderly gentleman's eyes looked as if his mind was somewhere far away. "Before your uncles went on their trip, Stanford and I spent a lot of time together. He helped me remember a lot of things—some things I'd rather not've remembered—but I couldn't be a coward any more. I had to face up to things."

He smiled when he saw the concerned look on Dipper's face. "Aw, don't you worry none, Dipper. We're all made up of things we've done and experiences we've had—good an' bad. We just have to learn to grow from the bad things instead of wallowin' in 'em—or—buildin' crazy memory erasin' guns an' shootin' ourselves in the head with 'em. "