"Dipper! What's the notebook doing in our room? Did you bring it up here last night? Did you read it? Tell me all its juicy gossip!"
Dipper opened his eyes once, twice, thrice, before deciding it was too early to deal with being awake after only a few hours' sleep. He mumbled a vague response and pulled his sheets over his head.
"Come on, bro-bro, the sooner you get up, the sooner we can start looking out for the owner!"
That was true. And tempting. "How long is it 'til the Mystery Shack opens?"
"Ten minutes."
"What?!" He groaned and got up into a sitting position. At least that gave him an excuse not to shower this morning. "Okay, I'll be down in a minute. You go and keep lookout for people suspiciously wanting to get in early."
"Aye-aye, cap'n!" she said, giving him a salute and bouncing down the stairs.
When Dipper was presentable enough to be seen in public, he caught up with Mabel and asked her how it was going. "Nothing to report yet, sir!"
"Okay." She raised an eyebrow. "Uh...at ease?" That seemed like the answer she wanted: she smiled and hopped onto the counter, saying a greeting to Grunkle Stan as he came in.
He looked down at what Dipper was holding in his hands. "What's that? You taking notes on me or something? 'Cause I'll have you know, in a court of law―"
"Oh! No, this is something that was left here yesterday. We're waiting for someone to come and collect it."
There was a short pause. "Right. Do what you want. Hey, maybe you could ask for a fee, you know, for looking after it for this guy..."
The twins looked at each other.
"Ah! Money-givers!" Stan said, moving away to attend to the first customers of the day.
"So what was in the notebook?"
Dipper gave her a quick rundown, which excluded most of the personal stuff and emphasised most of the supernatural stuff. Because it wasn't like he was interested in finding out about his family or friends, like what Greg was like in person and how the writer and Sara were getting on in marching band, it was just...all the...monsters. Yeah.
"I'm gonna my Mabel-powers to find out who it is!" she declared, putting her fingertips on her temples and squinting her eyes.
"How do they work?"
"Dipper! My powers are too incredible to be confined by the limits of mere language!"
As it turned out, 'Mabel-powers' included guessing that every customer they saw was the writer of the notebook. No one asked for it all morning, so the twins, and sometimes Wendy, amused themselves by coming up with ludicrous explanations for why Mabel really was right about this customer.
When a tall, skinny boy walked in pulling along a younger boy, Dipper perked up from their current analysis of why the guy with the Free Pizza shirt was definitely the one who had seen all the town's paranormal secrets. The older boy was looking around the shop, while the younger boy was flying a toy bluebird through the air. "Hey, Mabel, wait. This might be him."
Mabel gasped. "I was right! It is a cute boy!"
Dipper pulled a face. If Mabel was really going to do her crush thing yet again at the expense of his search for answers then—
"Look at his little bluebird toy! He's adorable. Though, he's probably not the one writing all the poetry and stuff." She gave him a sideways glance. "What, you thought I was talking about the other guy? He's sooo not my type. Come on, it's like you hardly know me!" Mabel punctuated her last thought with a hard poke to his shoulder.
Dipper smacked her arm away, and then she flicked him back, and he was ready to pay her back for that when the boy spoke―to Wendy. At the counter. Dipper realised he didn't look like the pinnacle of responsibility at that moment.
"Uh, hi. I'm looking for something I think I left here yesterday, a black notebook? Do you―do you have it? It's fine if you don't. I'm, I'm just asking to make sure."
"Yeah, my two friends here have been talking about it all morning." she said, gesturing to the twins. "I think you totally need to spend some time with my main man Dipper. I'm betting the universe implodes in on itself from too much dorkiness, and that's something I'd like to see."
"Wh―hey! I'm not…never mind. Greg, stop playing with the...pig." He looked at the twins. "You have a pig?"
Wendy laughed, then turned her focus to the woman standing in front of the counter with a collection of souvenirs.
Dipper swallowed. Okay, so, he was meeting the guy whose life he'd been obsessing over all night, and he already knew that Dipper acted childishly with his sister, had been talking about the notebook all morning and that they had a weird pet. This was not going well so far.
"His name is Waddles! And he likes being played with, no need to stop, little guy," Mabel said, and went over to join Greg―the Greg that he'd read so much about―and Waddles, leaving Dipper on his own.
He took in the older boy's appearance, with his big ears and pointed nose and grandad-ish clothes, feeling kind of...starstruck. That was weird. He just wrote some words, but Dipper felt like it was a real privilege to be able to actually speak with him―except about anything that was contained in the notebook. Otherwise he would know. And he'd leave. And Mabel would feel sad that she couldn't play with Greg anymore. And he couldn't have that.
Flustered, Dipper thrust up the notebook to the other's eyeline. "What was your name again? My name's Dipper―wait, you already know that. Dipper Pines. The girl trying to make her pig do a backflip is my sister Mabel." He kept eye contact with the older boy for a few moments, face slowly heating up in his embarrassment. It felt like he was trying to ask Wendy to dance again, and he didn't even have a plan. This was traumatising.
"I'm Wirt. He's Greg, as you probably heard, and he's my brother, as you...probably guessed."
If only he knew that Dipper had no need for guessing.
"Thanks," he said, plucking the book out of Dipper's hands. Those long fingers were probably good for his clarinet playing. Okay, that was a really creepy thought. This was so bad. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you have a pet pig when we have a pet frog. Greg would probably be trying to make them play together if Jason Thunderburker wasn't back in California."
"Wait, really? That's where we live! We're just staying here for the summer. Usually, we're in Piedmont." Wow. Okay, so when Wirt wrote about 'the Unknown', it must have been from when he first visited the town, right?
Wirt raised his eyebrows. "I think that's not far from us? I don't know, my geographical knowledge isn't perfect—because why learn about the world around you when you can, when you can learn about dead artists, right? Ahaha—but, well, we live in Novato. What a funny coincidence. As is the fact that our siblings seem to get along as well as the bee with the spring flower, a collusion of saccharine colour and energy, encapsulating the season of creation and renewal…"
Oh, gosh. Poetry. He was saying poetical stuff right in front of Dipper.
"Hahaha! Yeah!" he said too forcefully to sound right.
Wirt smiled a little at him and continued, "We can leave them to have fun together for a while. Our parents are visiting the lake, and I said I wanted to come back for this, so... Did you, uh―why were you talking about my notebook? Did you..."
"No! No, no, I wasn't... We made a game out of it. Guess who the notebook belongs to whilst knowing nothing about the contents of the notebook whatsoever. Hey! So, uh, gnomes, right?" That would have been done so much more smoothly if only he'd had a plan.
"BEATRICE, NO!" Mabel shouted, the bluebird lying on the floor underneath Waddles as he rolled around. "Greg, quick! Use the ancient technique of Aoshima, lightening hands of death!"
"Lightening hands!" Greg repeated, running his fingers up and down the pig's big belly. Waddles squealed and flailed his little legs around until he scrambled onto his trotters and away from the kids.
"You did it! You conquered the hog and saved your friend! Hooray!" Mabel said, scooping up Greg into her arms and doing a victory dance with him and Beatrice.
Wirt and Dipper looked at each other with a sigh and a smile. Maybe Dipper had gotten away with that moment of awkwardness.
"You know, I was a gnome for Halloween last year. I guess. I don't know, it was just some stupid costume, and―yeah, it, it made me look like a gnome."
Wow, he hadn't gotten away with it, but Wirt seemed pretty cool with his weird outburst anyway. He was just getting better and better. "Regular Halloween, huh? Not Gravity Falls' summer Halloween. Maybe that's a good thing; some pretty weird stuff happened at Summerween..." Weird stuff happened all the time, but regardless, Dipper thought this was a good segue into talking about the town's secrets.
"Haha, tell me about it. We had a policeman try to break up our group―well, it wasn't really my group, I mean, not at the time, but, uh, he thought they were having a 'witches' gathering'."
Well. Here goes. "And your friends...aren't witches? I heard that there was this one witch who collected hands living in the Gravity Falls mountains. Not that she'd be one of your friends! I'm just, witches, magic, you know? So...strange. And most probably not real. And the pumpkins! Imagine a creature with a pumpkin head. Trying to eat you. That would be very Halloween-y."
Wirt stared at him for a few long moments, scratching the back of his head.
The silence was too much; he had to say something. "Ireallylikedyourpoetry!" Dipper whispered. Wirt narrowed his eyes and Dipper started blushing. He really should have learnt from Wendy that doing things like that could only end in disaster.
"Sorry, did I hear you say―did you read this?"
"Uh..."
He flicked through the pages of his book and started tapping his fingers against the binding. "If you read it, it's―I mean, I've been told my secrets are perfectly normal, but I wasn't talking about my family then, and that's―um... Well, you're just a kid, the curiosity is understandable. And we, we don't really know each other. Maybe…if we go our separate ways, it would...be...okay." He looked away and made an expression of displeasure. No, no, no, he didn't want Wirt to just leave without telling him what he knew!
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! But before you go and forget about me, I really wanted to talk to you about the stuff that no one else knows happens in Gravity Falls. All the stuff you call the Unknown. The Summerween Trickster and the robot sea creature in the lake―and the gnomes! You said yourself you dressed up as one for Halloween. They tried to marry my sister."
Wirt's brow furrowed. He looked like he was working through his confusion and considering his words. "Dipper...this is the first time I've been to Gravity Falls. The Unknown was...something else. I mean, it was nothing. Greg and I went back over the cemetery wall and there was nothing there out of the ordinary. I don't know anything about those things you were talking about."
A quiet "oh" left Dipper's mouth. He'd been so sure―everything seemed to fit together so perfectly, and none of it had happened in Gravity Falls? Then he'd read the notebook for nothing, he didn't have any developments to the mysteries he'd been solving, he couldn't even convince Wirt that what he saw was real, because it turned out Dipper didn't know anything he thought he knew. 'The Unknown' seemed like a good name for it right now―whatever 'it' was.
"Wirt! Wirt! Can we stay here forever? Waddles is my best friend now and Mabel is my bestest best friend and we can live off of the food in the vending machine!"
"No, Greg, we can't stay here forever. In fact, I'm slightly worried the owner's gonna come kick us out for loitering."
"But I haven't dropped anything, I promise! Look," he said, showing Wirt his palms.
"What? No—no, loitering, not littering. Standing around wasting time. You know, what you do every day?" His teasing tone made Dipper see it as friendly rather than snide.
"Oh. If we buy food from the vending machine, we won't be loitering, will we?"
"He's got a point," Mabel said with a grin.
Wirt laid his hand on Greg's shoulder and pulled him closer. "Don't you want to go back to Mom and Dad? Dipper tells me there's a robot in the lake they're looking at. That sounds...exciting," he said in an unsure tone.
"Actually, it got broken down into scrap metal after we found out who built it."
"Whaaat?" Greg said, pouting.
Wirt looked at Dipper, opening his mouth and closing it again a couple of times before he spoke. "Maybe I was wrong to think that we should go our separate ways. I think there's a lot we have in common to talk about, Dipper. We're only in town for a few more days―yes, Greg, even though you want to stay forever―but I can come by again sometime if you don't, uh...think I'm too bad a person from the things you read."
"No, I didn't think that at all! You're totally different to the person who started writing that notebook. And you write amazing things and, okay, maybe you don't know about Gravity Falls, but you don't think I'm crazy, do you? Not to mention, you don't think I'm a bad person for going through your personal belongings. I'll tell you all about myself to make up for it though, like, um," he stopped to glance around a couple of times before lifting up his bangs to show his birthmark. "Why I got the nickname Dipper. Just―stay in touch?"
Wendy slapped a hand on Wirt and Dipper's shoulders, finally getting to enjoy her 3 hour-long break. "See, I knew you'd make the best of friends. Trust me, dude, Dipper's a great guy, even if he is a bit younger. And the universe hasn't imploded yet, so it seems like you're good on that front too."
"Uh, thank you"―his eyes flickered down to her name tag―"Wendy. There's certainly a number of fortunate coincidences and comparisons between us. Perhaps it was meant to be, as a pebble's journey along a river is destined to settle in the sea."
"Ooh, I like him. Dipper: take notes."
"So, about staying in touch—would you ever send me letters, or is that too much to ask for when emails and phones exist?"
Dipper beamed. "Of course! Letters are good. Great. And we'll spend some more time together while you're here?"
"Yeah." He smiled down at the younger boy. "And maybe when you two are back in California, too. As for, say, a couple of days from now…you could show us some of those things you were talking about. Greg and I are pretty adept at dealing with the supernatural, I think. And you can explain the entire story behind gnomes wanting to marry your sister?"
The kids shared a laugh, and, as if on cue, Stan walked in demanding they got back to work. Wirt wrote down something on the last page of his notebook and tore it out, handing it to Dipper.
The Mystery Shack crew waved goodbye to Wirt and Greg, the latter of whom was telling Wirt a bunch of 'facts' about pigs. When they were out of sight, Dipper marvelled at the little piece of the notebook, the little piece of Wirt's life, that he could keep forever. On it was written his email, address, phone number―wow, he was thorough. And, finally, a promise: We'll help each other uncover our mysteries. I'm looking forward to it.
Thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. This was really fun to write and I'd like to do more with this universe, so feel free to leave me a message saying what sort of things you'd like to see. It might not come for a while as I ignored ALL my schoolwork for 'Over The Gravity Falls' and I need to catch up, but rest assured I'm not done with it yet!