Even from her loft Cassandra was not immune to the light that suddenly poured into the room as her Aunt Mabel threw open the curtains below her. She was even less immune to her Aunt's excited holler,
"Rise and shine! Up and at 'em! Time to get up, get out, enjoy the world! Meet new people, make new friends! Live life to the fullest!"
Cassandra groaned.
"Wh-what's for breakfast?" she heard Faith squeak as the nine-year-old rose to full consciousness.
"Blueberry paan-caaakes!" Mabel sang, leading her daughter from the room and leaving the teenagers to drag themselves out of bed.
"You up yet, Cassie?" she heard Ashwin call from his muffled place under some blankets and pillows.
"Workin' on it," she responded, staring blankly at the ceiling and trying to muster up the energy to move. "What time is it?"
She heard some thumps and flumps and general sounds of her cousin struggling to gain a good vantage point for his alarm clock.
"7:45," he finally told her.
She sighed, that was a reasonable hour.
"We don't have to get dressed or anything, right?" she asked, pulling herself into a sitting position, legs hanging over the side of the bed.
"I mean, it's just breakfast," Ashwin said. She could see him getting out of bed from this perspective.
They shuffled out to breakfast together, Ashwin more cheerful through the drowsiness than Cassandra.
"Hey, Cassie, how're you this morning?" her dad asked, ruffling her hair as she walked by.
"Good," she responded, plopping down at the kitchen table, surrounded by a mishmash of chairs to fit all seven of them around the table.
"How did you sleep?" he mom prodded.
"Fine," she assured her.
"Sorry we sprung half the kid-population of Gravity Falls on you last night," her dad added.
"Oh, yeah! Did you guys have fun?" Mabel asked, "Make any new friends?"
"Paul seemed nice," Ashwin mentioned, "And the 'enda's were a lot of fun!"
"What about you, Cassie?" her Aunt prompted.
Cassandra just shrugged.
"She and Elowen hung out a lot," Ashwin mentioned, "You know, Elowen Corduroy? Paul's little sister? You guys were out back for a while, what'd you do?"
Cassandra's mouth went dry for a moment. She remembered the words in the notebook: TRUST NO ONE.
"Just, you know, talked. About life and stuff," Cassandra responded, hoping she sounded more honest than she felt.
"Well! Maybe you'll see her again while you're out today!"
Cassandra wished she wasn't being thrown out into the world today. She wanted nothing more than to sit inside and read those notebooks front to back.
Ashwin unfolded a map, walking down the dirt road towards town.
"So Mom got us this map and she said it should have everything interesting in Gravity Falls on it! Oooh, look! And she wrote some notes on it! Looks like she recommends the mall, since it's the biggest thing in town. Or The Shack, of course. Oh, good! There's a 'we are here' sticker, too. I had no idea where we were!" he admitted through a laugh.
"Is there anywhere with toys? Or animals?" Faith asked, trying to grab the map from her brother.
"Hey, hang on! Mom gave it to me!" Ashwin retorted, holding it over her head as best he could as it kept unfolding out of his grip.
"Hey, Ash?" Cassandra piped up from behind the siblings, "Well, firstly, you're gonna' run into that tree."
Ashwin let out a startled squawk as he stepped out of the way of the trunk at the last moment. She let him get his composure back, building up courage, and gripping Notebook 1 in her hand for reassurance.
"But, secondly: Ash, what if I told you I found some weird stuff in the woods? And The Shack?"
Her seriousness made him stop and turn to face her,
"Already?" he laughed, trying to raise the tone to somewhere a bit lighter, "I mean, what kind of weird?"
"This kind of weird," she clarified, pulling out her phone and pulling up the camera roll with the picture of the weird, hairless monster.
"Yeesh!" Ashwin shuddered, "That thing is ugly!"
"Eeeew!" Faith squealed, "Lemme' see it,"
"Yeah, it's pretty gross and weird," Cassandra agreed, holding the phone closer to Faith's level. "but then it stepped on the vending machine keypad in just the right way, and the vending machine just opened, like a door! That's where I found these," she added, holding up the notebook. "There's two more. I haven't really looked through those, though.
"It looks like some guy and his sister spent their summers here and found some really weird stuff. But this isn't the first weird stuff he found! He talks about 'last summer,' but almost always says he'll 'save that for later' or something. It's really weird. Also please keep this a secret!" she added, remembering the 'TRUST NO ONE' warning, "I'm not sure what our parents would do if they knew about this! I'm not super sure I was supposed to be down in that basement, anyway."
"Safe with me," Ashwin assured her, crossing his heart.
"Pinky swear!" Faith confirmed, holding out her little finger.
Cassandra smiled and locked her pinky in her cousin's.
"Thanks, guys. The only other person who knows about this is Elowen, she was with me when we found all this last night."
"Cool," Ashwin accepted, starting to walk along again. "Let's go to every spot we can, and whatever we don't hit today, we'll hit tomorrow, or the next day! First, let's try the library,"
"Aw, the library is boring!" Faith whined, leaning into her grip on her brother's arm.
"It's not that boring," Cassandra retorted, "besides, we'll just walk in and look around for a second. Then we can go wherever the next place is on the map."
"The History Museum."
Faith groaned.
"OK, we'll skip that one and come back. What's after that?"
"The Cemetery."
"OK, after tha-" moments from tripping on the library steps, Cassandra ran smack into someone rushing from the library instead.
"Watch it!" the boy snapped, snatching up the binder he had dropped.
"S-sorry?" Cassandra offered, righting herself and picking up notebook 1.
Ashwin gasped,
"A person! Our first Gravity Falls resident!"
"Ashwin, like, a quarter of the-town-under-thirty came over to our cabin last night," Cassandra pointed out.
"Well, sure, but Mom sent us out here to meet new people! This is a new people!" he declared, gesturing excitedly at the boy she'd run into. He was a squat little guy, with big glasses perched on his nose and a sort of calculating scowl. "Look! He even has a weird book like you! His binder cover has a shape with a number in it, your notebook has a shape with a number in it, what is happening here?" he prompted, gesturing enthusiastically between the two.
Cassandra sighed. Ashwin was right - if she didn't 'make a new friend' before the day was out her aunt would never forgive her.
"I'm Cassandra Pines," she offered, holding out a hand, "this guy is my cousin Ashwin, and his little sister Faith. We're in town with our family for a while."
"Mervin," the boy responded curtly, giving her hand one shake and practically tossing it away. "I live here."
"Oh, cool. Like, for a long time?" Cassandra prompted, "Do you know the Corduroys or anything?"
"Oh, yeah, I've seen those redheads around, but we've only lived here a year. I-"
"You wear gloves," Faith noticed, hovering around the boy, "why do you wear gloves? Isn't it hot? I mean it's summer,"
"It- I think they're fashionable," Mervin responded.
"What's in your binder?" Ashwin asked, eager to make as much small talk as humanly possible.
"Oh, well," Mervin began, taking on an air of grandeur, "it's old pages of a very mysterious book. They aren't in their original binding, but I do have what I believe to be a copy of the cover," he explained, giving the cousins a better look at his binder cover. It looked like the original book had been a sort of maroon color, a six fingered hand cut out of foil and pasted on the cover, the number 3 written on the hand. Cassandra had to admit to herself it was not entirely unlike the notebooks she had found - there were some thematic similarities.
"What's in it?" Cassandra asked, a part of her wondering if the two books were related in any way.
"Well, a lot of different things," Mervin boasted, "I think it was a journal of one of the earlier settlers in Gravity Falls. It's mostly full of creatures and anomalies and cryptids, that sort of thing. I would say it was part of a large hoax, but there are a lot of stories circulating around here about strange events and creatures," he noted, speaking as a resident expert and master storyteller.
"Have you ever heard of a small, hairless thing with big bug eyes that likes candy?" Cassandra piped up.
Mervin's face fell, contorting into a sort of confused, disgusted look.
"What?"
"No?" Cassandra confirmed, "Never mind. Hey, if you see something cool or weird let me know, though, yeah?" she added, offering an awkward smile and tossing him a wave as she lead her cousins into the library.
"Nice meeting you!" Faith called.
Stepping into the library the trio caught a librarian's eye, and she waved enthusiastically to them.
"You're new in town!" she whispered once they were close enough to the desk, "What can the Gravity Falls Library do for you?"
"Oh, we're just looking around," Cassandra assured her. "we're here with our families for a while."
"Well, it's just lovely to meet you. What did you say your names were?"
"Um, I'm Cassandra, and this is my-"
"I'm Ashwin! We're cousins," he explained, gesturing between himself and Cassandra, "this is my little sister, Faith."
"Hi! I like your llama earrings!" Faith told the nice librarian in one of the louder whispers Cassandra had ever heard.
"Oh! Thank you," the librarian smiled, "I love me a good wooly mammal! I'm Kathy McGucket, by the way, I know just about everything there is to know about this town, so if there's anything I can do for you, just let me know."
"Thanks," Cassandra responded. As she stepped away she thought of something, and turned back, "you would't know why a bunch of people would be having a 30-year reunion, would you?"
Kathy perked up a moment, thought, and responded:
"Well, that's before my time," she admitted, "never mind all that," she concluded, waving it away, "anything else?"
"Not that leaps to mind," Cassandra replied, "thank you, though."
"Anytime," Kathy smiled.
Cassandra was far more interested in the library than either of her cousins, and was quickly dragged from it's walls and back into the town proper.
"Alright, let's do something fun," Ashwin concluded, not willing to suffer through his little sister's whining, "there's a pool, and a mini-golf course! Those have potential!"
"Mini-golf!" Faith cheered.
"Pines!"
Cassandra flinched as someone shouted at her. The cousins turned to see Mervin strutting up,
"Wanna' see something cool?" he asked, standing proudly before them.
"Uh… sure?" Cassandra accepted, glancing at Ashwin, who offered only a shrug.
"But mini-golf!" Faith insisted.
"Will it take long?" Cassandra asked.
"Only if it blows your mind."
"So… is that a yes? Or a no?" she prompted.
"Just- come on," Mervin insisted, turning and gesturing them to follow. They followed him into the nearest patch of woods (never far away in Gravity Falls,) where they all stopped before a tall, old tree.
Pushing his glasses up on his nose Mervin explained himself,
"My research has led me to believe that the trees around here are often inhabited by spirits, unwilling to move onto the afterlife. Now, if I just recite this incantation," he continued, flipping to a page in his binder and reading some maybe-latin words with great gusto. A breeze picked up out of seemingly nowhere, and the tree shuddered. As he finished the incantation the world went still again, and nothing had changed.
"Are you sure that wasn't a wind-summoning, or-" Cassandra offered, looking over his shoulder,
"No! It's meant to summon spirits from the great beyond!" Mervin snapped, slamming the binder shut and starting to turn red in the face, "The whole book must've just been a hoax! An elaborate scheme by the idiots at the Mystery Shack-"
"Hey! Don't you insult the Shack!" Cassandra barked, "Grunkle Soos is no idiot!"
"Well…" Ashwin shrugged.
"Can it, Ash! I'm trying to make a point!"
"Get over yourself, city girl!" Mervin retorted, "You think you're so smart-"
"CITY girl? Who are you to talk?! You said you've only been here a year!"
"That's a year longer than you-!"
"QUIET!" a voice boomed, shaking the ground. All four kids looked up to see the ephemeral form of an old woman drifting from the tree.
"Hah!" Mervin barked, "I did it! See, smarty-pants? A spirit from the great beyond!"
"Who woke me?" the ghost demanded, glaring the children down.
The cousins all pointed to Mervin without hesitation.
"So it was you, was it?" she snarled, almost nose-to-ghostly-nose with Mervin, "Do you go around waking the elderly for fun, Mr.-" she paused, "what's your name?" she demanded.
Mervin simply stared, eyes like saucers.
"Marvin," Cassandra told the ghost.
"Mervin!" he corrected her.
"Mervin," Cassandra repeated, a little apologetically.
"Mervin?" the ghost asked in mocking disbelief, "Lord, what were your parents thinking? Well, alright Mervin, - no, you know what, I'm going to call you Merv - Merv, do you go around waking the elderly from their naps? Hmm?"
"I- I wanted to prove that-"
"Prove? Prove?! You go around waking ghosts just to prove something? Oh heavens, you must have some issues," the spirit decided.
"M-ma'am?" Cassandra asked, "I'm very sorry that we woke you. You look lovely, by the way. Beauty sleep must do wonders. Also please don't curse us."
"Now this one," the ghost continued, pointing a finger at Cassandra, "she has manners. Did anyone ever teach you manners, Merv? This young lady knows how to talk to an old woman who has been rudely awoken by a little snot-nosed brat like yourself. What's your name, dearie?"
"C-Cassandra."
"Well, Cassandra, you I like. You know what you're doing. And then who are these other two?"
"I-I'm Ashwin," Cassandra's cousin offered, "and my little sister's Faith."
"Well you two seem lovely as well. All very well-adjusted children. Unlike Merv over here. I have half a mind to tell your parents about you! If they could see or hear me."
"W-we'll be happy to let you get back to your nap, Ms- Ms- um…" Cassandra trailed off, realizing she probably shouldn't refer to her as 'Ms. Ghost.'
"Sylvia, dear," the ghost responded.
"Well, Ms. Sylvia, it's been a pleasure to meet you, and again, I'm so sorry about Mervin, I don't know why he thought this was a good idea-"
"Oh, don't you worry your little head about it. Go on, have a nice day. And you know, it's very boring in a tree, so just holler if you need an old ghost's thoughts on anything. Exccept you, Merv. You can't call."
"Thank you, Ms. Sylvia," Cassandra respond, feeling compelled to fake-curtsey before running off to get Faith to the mini-golf course.
"You could learn a thing or two from that young lady, Merv," Sylvia noted, before sinking back into the tree trunk.
Mervin was left there to seethe.
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