Engagement Rings and Hot-Tub Flings

(July 2016)

4: Shrooms for One More

Ticknor Keevan O'Grady had been nicknamed "Tick" when his family first moved to Gravity Falls and he had entered school. Those had been miserable months. Coming new into a school, being tallish but extremely skinny, he had fallen victim to the outsider syndrome. The regular kids took one look at him and thought, "Punching bag!"

Ticknor was in many ways a talented kid—he knew how to cook, he was great with a camera, he wrote little plays that adapted favorite stories of his—Treasure Island had been one of the first—although he never tried to get anyone to perform them. Heck, he never even showed them to anybody.

But he dreamed of one day making movies.

Still, he lacked certain social skills. He did not have the knack of bullying weak kids. Though he had moved to Gravity Falls when still a pre-teen, he had no gift for sarcasm and never got the knack of making younger kids cry. When someone kidded him harshly, he didn't get mad, but just smiled weakly. He was a little too awkward and clumsy for most sports and too insecure to learn a skill like dancing. He was, face it, a loner.

And then the next summer, he'd met Mabel Pines. He'd told her that he preferred to be called "T.K." She ignored that and promptly christened him "Teek." And . . . he liked that. Over a period of time he developed a small crush on Mabel. The period lasted about five hours, leaving him yearning for her company. Come on, Mabel was, as she kept insisting, irresistible, and five hours is a period of time. Time is relative, you know.

So Teek had a secret crush. He never expected to act on it—she was outgoing and funny, and he was shy and quiet.

But then . . . a boy Mabel really liked, a strange other-worldly kid named Russ, turned out to be not a human, but something called a foxen, kind of a werefox, except he could change to either a boy or an animal at any time and did not have to wait around for the moon to transform.

And the boy, Russ . . . had died.

Mabel saw him die. He charged to head off a weird and terrifying monster that was intent on destroying Mabel and all her family, and Russ couldn't stop it, but he diverted it and saved Mabel's life, but he—he really and truly died. And the death shattered Mabel.

Moved by sympathy (Teek's own family had pulled through the wrenching, unexpected death of one of their own) more than by love, Teek had offered her an arm to support her and a shoulder to cry on. That first summer, they had become friends, and maybe a little bit more. And now—he felt sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

Except for college. He had an offer of a scholarship too good to refuse, but it would take him all the way across the country for four years, and he and Mabel couldn't be together, because she had her heart equally set on a prestigious arts college in California. That introduced a note of uncertainty, and oddly, random, ever-optimistic Mabel did not react well to uncertainty.

They'd had their first quarrels. Both of them regretted the disagreements, but neither knew quite how to get past them.

However, Teek was working hard to heal the rift. He was tempted to pull back, give in, and try to go to college closer to Mabel, but—well, he wasn't rich, and this was too great an opportunity to decline.

Then, too, he had earned his chance. In a national high-school competition, his short student film, A Maze, a dreamlike fantasy of a teen girl trapped in a weird labyrinth, had won first place. He was proud of that, though not so proud that he had ever shown the film to Mabel or her brother Dipper—they'd recognize the source. But most of all, Teek had the feeling that if he caved and turned down the scholarship, Mabel would lose respect for him. So there he was, trapped in a maze of his own, the walls made of doubts, hopes, and fears.

He had spoken with Jeff, the Prime Minister of the Gravity Falls Gnomes (or at least of that portion of them who lived above ground and considered themselves civilized), and quite early on the morning of Saturday, July 9, he drove to the Mystery Shack, where no one was yet awake, and in the dawn twilight walked down the Mystery Trail, through pearly waist-high curling ground fog, to the bonfire clearing.

He carried a bag of mushrooms.

In the bonfire clearing, he started to sit on the log, but felt it and it was too wet. He stood with the bag cradled in the crook of one arm, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was not an outdoorsman. Until his family had moved to Gravity Falls, he'd never been out in the woods at night, or in the early morning. Being alone made him nervous. Things lived in these woods, not only Gnomes, but killbillies, manotaurs, and gremloblins, oh my.

About five minutes passed, and then he heard Jeff's voice: "There you are! Did you bring the goods?"

"Yeah," Teek said, getting over his initial involuntary start at the voice coming from down around knee level. The pointed red cap moved toward him through the low fog the way a shark fin cuts through seawater.

"Got 'em both," Jeff said. "We had to do a little trading. You can't find stuff like that around here. The blue one comes all the way from North Carolina, wherever that is, and the green one from Arizona."

"How'd they get here?" Teek asked.

"Well, we have relatives in other parts of the country. Some of them don't call themselves Gnomes any longer—the North Carolina branch are, let me see if I can say this right, Nunehi. They're still mostly miners. And they put us in touch with their Western cousins, the Eluchi-i, who have the longest tunnels of any Gnomes. They love to collect glittering stones of all kinds, and they traded with us."

"How much did you give them?" Teek asked uneasily. He was saving for college, but—well, his family wasn't well-off.

"Oh, we gave them some of our best stories," Jeff said. He climbed up onto the log. "There you are! Hard to see through the ground cloud."

Teek held out the bag of mushrooms. "Is this enough?"

"Wow. Uh, yes, it's sufficient."

Teek yipped. "Something touched my leg!"

Scowling, Jeff said, "Down, your Majesty! Sorry, I have to walk the Queen every morning. She won't hurt you. I've got her leash here."

Teek couldn't see what kind of creature was sniffing around his feet, but he could hear it. "Uh, could I have the stones, please"

"Sure." Jeff took off his hat and stretched up to hand Teek a little leather bag. "I hope these are big enough."

Very carefully, Teek shook the two tiny rocks into his hand. They were almost of a size, not very large, to be sure—between a sixteenth and an eighth of an inch in diameter. Both were round, and both had already been cut into facets. "These are great," he said. "Thanks."

"Thank you! It's a pleasure doing business with you. The Privy Council will feast tonight! Hey, Steve, Bella, come and help me carry the goods!"

Two more Gnome caps came through the mist and joined Jeff up on the log. A male and female Gnome—you could tell because one had no beard—took the bag, grunting with either effort or appetite. Teek very carefully put the sapphire and the peridot into the leather bag and the bag into his pocket and said his farewells.

The Gnomes vanished into the fog, taking their badger with them. When Teek got to the Shack, he discovered that her Majesty had peed on the cuff of his jeans. He had to borrow a pair from Dipper and toss his own into the wash. Badger wee has a lingering and very strong scent.

Oddly, when Mabel bopped into the dining room, she first hugged Teek and then sniffed. "New aftershave? Very manly. Mabel like!"

Teek's cover story was that he'd come over early because Soos anticipated another jam-packed tourist day. Dipper and Wendy were taking their usual break from their run, but she showed up in time to drink coffee while Teek, Mabel, and Dipper had their breakfast with Soos, Abuelita, and the kids, Harmony and Little Soos.

"Man," Wendy, who had little stress lines under her eyes that morning, said, "I hope the crowd today doesn't get as loud and pushy! I'm still a little big hoarse from yelling at kids to put stuff down."

"Soos wants us to restock the shelves first thing," Dipper said. "We're real low on a few things. Tourist maps, bumper stickers, uh, my books."

Soos made a point of stocking Dipper's two published novels, Bride of the Zombie (available in both hardcover and paperback) and the new one, It Lurked in the Lake. Dipper pre-signed them all as "Stan X. Mason," his pen name, and they were among the top sellers.

The day before, they had sold eighteen of the first one (hardcovers still sold, but the paperbacks were a little more popular) and twenty-two of the second, so they broke open a new carton of the lake-monster book and restocked, twenty-four copies of it on the end-cap shelf, plus twelve hardcovers and a dozen paperbacks of Bride.

"Is the lake one still on the best-seller list?" Teek asked.

Dipper nodded. "It was last week. This week's list should come out today. Uh, my agent keeps hinting around about some deal she's got cooking, but she won't tell me what it is."

"Movie!" Mabel said. "Movie deal! Come on, movie deal!"

"I . . . don't know about that," Dipper said. "A couple of studios have expressed interest, but nothing ever comes of it. I'm not gonna hold my breath."

They put the usual trinkets, tee-shirts, and souvenirs on the shelves, and Soos displayed some one-of-a-kind goodies in the locked case he had put in—a tooth from a real Manotaur (knocked out during some playful wrestling), mounted inside a little glass dome, a luck-stone from the fairies (a polished round gleaming semi-precious mineral about the size of a robin's egg) which did not bring you luck, but predicted luck—if you asked it, "Am I going to get a raise?" and it turned dark purple, the answer was "Odds are against you," but if it turned a golden yellow, your chances looked good. Dipper said it was the fairies' version of a Magic Eight Ball.

Special items like those, or special lucky horse shoes, or chips of the Blarney Stone, cost up into the hundreds of dollars, but every now and then some well-heeled tourist sprang for one. And with the horde of visitors they anticipated, you never could tell.

By eight-forty, the crew were as ready as possible. Stan was back in Mr. Mystery garb, fez at a rakish angle, the golf cart was charged up, the tram was gassed and ready to roll, and the volunteers (Lorena and Sheila) had taken their places. Wendy would, as usual, take charge of the gift shop, Soos would drive the tram, and Grunkle Stan would conduct museum tours. Ford—would go downstairs and putter around in his labs. Just as well. He couldn't resist informing a tourist, "That's a bogus relic, you know."

Wendy looked out the window. "Here we go! Two tour buses pullin' in, gang, and cars are lined up behind them. We ready?"

Mabel gave her a thumbs-up from her perch behind the newer of the two cash registers. "Let the fleecing begin!"

Teek, in the snack bar way ahead of time, had everything prepared for lunch and had baked trays of chocolate-chip cookies and brewed urns of coffee, caffeinated and de-. "Guess we can let them in," he called. Sheila would work at the snack-bar register.

"It's show time!" Stan said. He opened the gift-shop door and crossed the lawn to meet the crowds spilling out of the buses. Even from inside, Dipper could hear his raucous greeting: "Ladies, gentlemen, and kiddies! Welcome to the Mystery Shack, the home of baffling befuddlement! I'm Mr. Mystery! Prepare to be mystified, amazed, and amused!"

Dipper glanced out. Tourists were posing with Stan, getting their pictures snapped.

He cracked his knuckles. In a few minutes he'd be playing the keys of the register the way Marc-André Hamelin played the piano. And the keynote would be the sales bell.

The fully-loaded tram rumbled off for its first tour of the Mystery Trail. Stan led a huge group around to the museum entrance, where Lorena collected the admissions. A dozen tourists came straight into the gift shop and began to browse.

Dipper couldn't help grinning. He'd been thinking that things changed and that change was always unsettling.

"Don't touch that!" Wendy warned an eight-year-old kid, who was yelling like a brat about wanting that one, whatever it was.

Dipper couldn't see, but the way Wendy corralled the kid and directed him to something else seemed so familiar.

It was a relief that some things never changed.