Apparition
(October 25-31, 2014)
7 Convergence
Dipper stopped to watch the trolleys on the next block. He'd never seen any in practical use—just the San Francisco cable cars that were towed along by steel cables running in grooves beneath the pavement. The Greentown trolleys were the real deal, operating from overhead power lines like huge electric trains, the contacts buzzing and snapping, bright sparks sizzling and drifting down from the trolley-wheel on the end of its pole.
Two of the trolleys passed each other over on the next street, one stopping at the corner to let three or four riders off. Then the vehicle rumbled away again, the electrical flashes bright even in the afternoon sunlight. Dipper turned to head back to the Flannigan house and nearly ran into the grown-up Mabel, who stood with her hands on her hips, looking irritable. "There you are! Where did you go, Dipper?"
"Um—" it was so weird seeing her as she would look at thirty! "I, uh, you—my sister—my Mabel, I mean, told me to go away for a while. I just walked down to the library—"
She didn't seem to be paying attention, but was glancing around. She led him to an empty house with a FOR SALE sign staked in the yard and then around behind the house, its weedy back yard screened by a line of tall redcedar trees, trimmed to teardrop shapes. Mabel II stopped there and said, "Well, you're throwing us off schedule. Here, take this."
Dipper couldn't help laughing.
"What?" she asked, still holding out a key with a round brown pressboard fob attached.
"Nothing," he said, "except the idea of you having a schedule in the first place! I'm the one who plans everything to the min—umph!"
His grown-up sister had grabbed him and held him tight in a hug. She had more than a millimeter on him now—she was three inches taller, and surprisingly strong. Her voice cracking, she said, "Oh, Dipper! I've missed you so much!"
He awkwardly hugged her, right there in the back yard of a suburban house. Nervously, he asked, "Uh—why? Do I turn out to be a jerk or something?"
She let go of him. "No, nothing like that. Here. Hold onto this key. At the dance tonight, look around for a squinting boy. He won't be well-dressed. His hair's parted right in the middle, it's about our shade of brown, and he's taller than you are. His name is Chazz."
"Uh, yeah, I noticed him in class today," Dipper said. "Quiet guy."
"You've got two jobs. One is to watch Angelique. If she tries to slip out of the gym, you go after her and stop her. Your other job is to get her and Chazz together. Try to persuade him to ask Angelique to dance. He may or may not go for it—he's shy around her. If the worst happens, drag him with you out to the parking lot."
"The, uh—the worst? What's that?" Dipper asked, liking this less and less.
"You'll know it if it happens. Watch out for an older guy, though, seventeen but still just a sophomore in high school. Reddish hair, tall, sneers a lot. He'll probably be wearing baggy pants held up by suspenders and a shirt without a collar. Maybe a leather jacket over that. His name's Oswald, but everybody calls him Butch. He'll probably have two guys as wingmen. Keep Angelique away from him!"
"What, uh, what happens if—if I can't?"
"You have to. Look, I can't explain, Dipper, but believe me on this. Things are coming together fast. Major Blandin and Pacifica and I know we're going to have just one chance to fix things in this time line. It will also fix things in yours—I mean, because of a million variables, Angelique's trouble didn't impact you in your time line, but if we repair this one, the reverberations will—it's too complicated! We have one shot and it has to work, OK?"
"Mabel, I—I'm not sure I can pull this off. I mean, look, why didn't you bring your Dipper? Because he'd be old enough to—"
Mabel swallowed hard. "Never mind! Now, the key. Take it! The car this starts is a Ford T-Model. Chazz will know what that is, even if you don't. It's already parked in the last slot toward the street on the right of the exit, backed into the slot, ready to peel out and turn onto the street. Chazz can drive it. I hope you won't have to use it—it's not even Plan B, more like Plan D—but just in case, keep the key with you. You'll know if you have to use the car. Wish us luck."
"Ah, y-yeah, sure. And when this is over, Mabel and me—I mean my Mabel—she and I can go, uh, home, I guess? Back to our own time?"
"The very second after you left. Unless things really go off the track. But get Chazz to ask Angelique to dance! That's very important! And remember—watch out for a big guy, two years older than you, named Butch Elgrin."
"Mabel, you sure grow up to be scary!"
"I don't mean to be. It's just we've worked on this so long, and it's so important."
"So—how do I grow up?" Dipper asked.
After a moment of silence, Mabel II responded quietly: "That remains to be seen."
The Flannigans' cook prepared a nice dinner, which they ate a little early. Then Mrs. Flannigan said, "Well, if the young people are going to the dance, they'd better get dressed."
Mabel's dress was silvery-gray, with rows of glittery silver tassels, a silver headband with a poofy little burst of white feathers, and long white beads. Her shoes were black, with just a suggestion of heels—she rarely wore heels, never high ones, and the thoughtfulness of the costumers impressed her.
She met Angelique, who was in a white beaded satin dress with a scoop neck and scalloped hemline. She wasn't wearing a headband, but did have a white feather boa draped around her neck and shoulders.
"You look nice!" Mabel told her when they met in the hallway.
"Here," Angelique said, handing her an oversized handbag. "I'm borrowing this from my mother. You carry it so she won't insist on looking through it!"
"What's . . . in there?" Mabel asked.
"You know."
Oh, of course. The red dress.
Mabel took the handbag. Angelique knocked on Dipper's door, and he opened it. "I'm not so sure about this," he said.
He was wearing gray cuffed trousers, a white shirt—he had finally figured out how to attach the celluloid collar to a button at the back of his neck—and an awning-striped sports jacket in maroon, teal, and pale gold. He held a tie in his hand.
"You look fine," Angelique said. "Put on your tie and let's go."
"I can't tie a bow tie!" Dipper said.
"Let me." Mabel stepped up, looped the tie beneath the celluloid collar—"This is a kind of good idea," she murmured—and in five seconds had made a perfect butterfly bow beneath his chin. "There! Doesn't my brother look good, Angelique?"
"He's the berries!" Angelique said, and since she winked suggestively, Dipper supposed that meant something good. Then she added, "Come on, we're going to ask Davies to drive us—I don't want my dad taking us!"
They went down the back stairs. Dipper wondered what Angelique had against her father, who seemed a perfectly nice, stodgy, kindly man. They found Davies, who turned out to be a chauffeur/yard man/butler sort of fellow, and he agreed to drive them. "I'll pull the Doozy around," he said, shrugging into a blue coat.
Angelique went to say goodbye to her mother, and the moment they were alone, Dipper asked, "What did you find out?"
"Not a lot," Mabel admitted. "Angelique's always felt sort of second-place to her older sister. I think Angelique wasn't p-l-a-n-n-e-d—"
"You don't have to spell it out!" Dipper complained.
"Well, she spelled it out to me. Anyway, as long as Marci was here—Marceline, that's her name—things were sort of OK. But Marci looked out for Angie, you know, the way I do for you. Why did you snort? Never mind. Anyway, Marci went off to Vassar—I think that was the school—and Angie thinks it's like she's dead to her folks now. They don't, I don't know, engage her? Aren't interested in her thoughts and feelings? Just want her to toe the line and not cause any trouble. She's lonely, Dipper. She's awfully lonely, and the other kids at her school are sort of leery of her because she's richer than anybody else there. That's why she started hanging around Butch Elgrin."
"That's the guy we've got to keep her away from—" Dipper started, but then Angelique came hurrying in again and opened the back door.
"Come on, let's go before Dad gets curious," she said. "Mabel, have you got the handbag?"
"Right here," Mabel said.
They went outside. The garage was slightly behind and to the left of the house, and Mr. Davies had pulled out a long, boxy cream-white touring car. Davies opened the passenger door. "Young ladies."
"Uh—could I ride in front?" Dipper asked.
"Well—I don't mind, young gentleman," Davies told him.
Dipper got in, reached for the seat belts, remembered there were no seat belts, and pretended to be adjusting his collar and jacket instead. As Davies slipped behind the wheel, Dipper asked, "What, uh, what kind of car is this?"
Davies glanced at him in surprise. "It's a 1926 Duesenberg sedan, sir," he said.
"I've, uh, never seen one," Dipper told him. "It's nice."
"We don't have them in California," Mabel added helpfully from the back seat.
"Indeed? Very surprising," Davies said as he put key in the ignition, turned it, and stepped on something on the floorboard that evidently started the car.
Dipper slipped his hand in his right jacket pocket to make sure he hadn't forgotten. No, here was the car key that the older version of Mabel had given him, right where he'd tucked it.
OK, he probably wouldn't need it. It was only Plan D, after all. A, B, and C would all have to fail before it would be needed. He stared out the window at the passing fall scenery. The trees would be all bare in a matter of days, he could tell, black branches clutching at the sky.
They passed houses with carved pumpkins on the doorsteps, grinning and gleaming from candles inside. A dime store had a window display of cut-out witches and black cats and Jack O' Lanterns. It was still daylight—though the sun was sinking—and Dipper glimpsed a few roving bands of young pointy-hatted clowns and wizards, little girls with bat-wing cloaks and one dressed, improbably, as a yellow chick hatching from an egg—her legs stuck through the bottom curve of it, and the shell hung from her shoulders on suspenders.
It looked bizarre, utterly alien, and at the same time familiar, reminding Dipper of past Halloweens when he and Mabel had been a pair of matching kitty-cats, or salt and pepper, and once a devil and an angel. He had been the angel.
"Have fun, kids," he murmured. He felt a little pang, because he and Mabel had always been especially close when out trick-or-treating. Too soon the time passed, too quickly the kids walked down the block, turned the corner, and left the October country behind them.
If we—no. WHEN we get out of this, Mabel and I are going to have a good Halloween together.
He settled back in his seat. He could hear Angelique and Mabel behind him, talking together in that confidential, nearly whispering way that girls did, but he couldn't understand a word.
Hang in there, he told himself. Stay on your toes. Be ready for anything.
He clutched the key in his pocket. And hope it doesn't come down to Plan D.