One Week of Wonder
7. Mabel's In a Jam
(August 24, 2015)
Part 4: Strong Bad
Mabel ran Teek almost the whole way back to the Shack, with Teek clinging to her and repeating, "Really, I can walk."
"No problem!" she said. She took wonderful long-legged strides, thinking This must be how Dipper and Wendy feel when they run—what do they call it? A runner's high! No wonder! I could get used to this!
She felt amazing. As though her body were super-charged, as if she could run all the way around the world if she wanted to and could find dry footing for the whole distance, which she probably couldn't. She exulted in her strength and boundless energy.
But all at once, maybe a hundred yards from their goal, Mabel began to feel Teek's weight in her arms—as though she were carrying a giant balloon that was filling with water. The change started slowly, but someone turned the tap on until it was at full blast, and within a minute, Teek became too heavy for her.
Mabel's pace slowed, she staggered, and she gasped, "Wait, I have to put you down!"
It was a hard landing, and they both fell. "Oof!" Teek hit the ground and rolled a couple of feet. Fortunately, they were on the grassy edge of the Mystery Shack lawn, in the unmown strip between yard and woods, and the grass cushioned his fall. He pushed up to his knees. "Mabel, what got into you—no, wait, I know. The Gnome jam!"
Mabel had collapsed to sit on the grass, her arms braced on the ground and her shoulders drooping, as she breathed hard. Sweat popped out on her face. Her head bobbed, because the world was spinning around and around in a big green and blue blur. As it finally wobbled to rest, she took a deep breath. "It—it wore off! And now I feel all weak and blarrrgggh!" Her voice came out thin and panicky.
Teek stood up and brushed himself off. "It'll be OK. I'll take care of you. Here, I'll help you up." He stretched his arm toward her.
"Thanks." Mabel took his hand. He pulled her up, but her legs turned rubbery, and she couldn't even stand unaided. He held her up with an arm around her waist, and she clung to his shirt, wailing, "What's wrong with me?"
"I think you overdid it," Teek said. "The jam made you push yourself too hard, maybe. Can you walk if I help?"
She tried, but her left foot crossed over her right and almost tangled her up and tripped her. "Don't think so! I feel so weird!"
Teek sounded as if he were scared but trying hard to conceal that: "Here, it's OK. Just sit back down. I'll run over and get the golf cart. You just wait here."
"Sit down? Wait? What else can I do?" she moaned. He eased her back down. She could just barely manage to sit upright, bracing her hands on the earth again, though her arms felt shaky. At least her dizziness was gone, but now she felt seasick, about to throw up. And not in a fun way, either. Teek ran to the Shack and turned the corner, heading for the place where Soos parked the golf cart.
Mabel suddenly didn't want him to go. Didn't want him to leave her. Something else was happening, too: Mabel's mood crashed.
No fair, she thought, her throat clenching and tears blurring her eyes. Just a minute ago I felt great, and now I feel like I'm about to bust out crying!
Everything weighed in on her—the knowledge that she had scared Teek, most of all, but also the sense that the summer was coming to an end, that most of what was supposed to be a teenage girl's best year, her sweet sixteen, would be spent not here with him, but six hundred miles away in boring old Piedmont, and shame that she had taken so much of the jam when she'd been warned—everything. It was her fault.
Mabel felt as if she was losing it.
Well—not losing everything, because she still had the jam. She fished out the one tagged with the red string. "Just enough so I can get inside and rest in bed," she murmured. "Maybe I'll be OK in a few hours. But I don't want Teek and Soos to have to carry me inside!" Not after her amazing strength and the supreme confidence it had given her. This would be better.
She couldn't at the moment locate the tiny little wooden spoon, but she dipped her forefinger into the jam pot, got a good coating of the stuff, probably even more than she'd taken to begin with, and licked it off. Still not much taste.
"Just have to wait," she muttered as she re-stoppered and put away the pot. She heard the purr of the golf cart, and Teek at the wheel came rolling toward her, his face taut with concern.
The sight of him driving the cart made Mabel flash back to her very first encounter with the Gnomes. They'd come, five of them, disguised in the classic standing-on-shoulders-and-draped-with-a-coat way as her first summer crush ever, the mysterious, moody Norman, and in that guise the five had even dated her.
But then things turned bad—after she'd declined Jeff's offer of marriage and the Queenship of all the civilized Gnomes, the little guys had kidnapped her and tied her down to the ground like Gulliver in Lilliput, intending to force her into marrying them all and serving as their Queen.
Fortunately for Mabel, Dipper had borrowed the golf cart from Wendy and had come to his sister's rescue, piloting the small vehicle as the two of them fled from an all-out assault by the infuriated Gnomes, whose unsuspected talent was assembling themselves into a patchwork giant—though getting rid of her unwanted suitors with the leaf blower was Mabel's own idea.
"Ha! That was fun!" she murmured, feeling confidence flooding back into her. She jumped up, feeling full of energy—yes! Mabel was back, baby! Ha!
"You OK?" Teek asked, parking the golf cart close to her. "You shouldn't stand up without someone to lean on. Let me help—"
"Ha, ha! I don't need help! Watch this!" Mabel sprang past Teek, who stood blinking in alarm, and with almost no effort, she lifted the golf cart over her head. "Does this look like I need help?"
"You ate more jam?" Teek asked, his expression appalled. "That's not good for you!"
"Wrong!" Mabel said, setting the golf cart down so it jounced with the impact. "It's great for me! I feel wonderful! Hey, I know what! Let's go visit Grenda. I want to challenge her to arm-wrestle! Just for fun!"
Teek held up his hands, cautioning her. "Mabel, you'd better calm down. You're going to crash again—"
"Never! I have a whole jar! And before it runs out, I'll round up every mushroom in the forest and trade the Gnomes for more!" Mabel didn't know how wild her eyes were looking, how manic her grin. "From now on, the kids in high school bow to me! Mabel the Great! I'll own every clique! I'll kick all the bullies and jerks out! I'll sit in the principal's office and rule! Bwah-ha-ha! Hey, I could even force my mom and dad to let me stay here with you!"
"I hope you're kidding," Teek said.
"Does this look like I'm kidding?" Mabel grabbed him, slung him over her shoulder as easily as if he were a rolled-up blanket, and took off running toward town. On the highway she caught up with and passed a car doing about forty miles per hour. Behind them, it swerved and wound up in a ditch, though the driver faintly yelled behind them, "I'm OK!"
Teek, who bounced with her strides as she ran, his stomach jolting against her shoulder, kept pleading with her to stop. She didn't. They reached Grenda's house, and she finally set Teek down. Mabel, shifting from foot to foot as if she couldn't contain the energy inside her, rang the doorbell. "Coming!" Grenda called from inside.
The husky girl came out, and Mabel said, "Hey, Grenda! Want to arm-wrestle? I bet I can beat you!"
In her unusually low voice, Grenda said, "Aw, Mabel, no. You're my best friend! I don't want to humiliate you!"
"Don't do it," Teek told both girls, shaking his head.
"Come on, just for fun," Mabel urged in a sweet voice, grinning.
"Mabel," Grenda said, cocking her head suspiciously, "are you OK? You look kind of flushed. What's wrong with you?"
Mabel grabbed Grenda, one of her best friends, by her upper arms and yelled right in her face. "I wish people would stop asking me that. I'm fine! Now, come on! I wanna arm-wrestle right now!"
"OK," Grenda said. "But tell me if it starts hurting. Um, come with me."
They went to the back yard, sat at the patio table, and on the first try, Mabel slammed Grenda's arm down. "Hey!" Grenda said. "Ow! What was that?"
"It's the new, improved Super Mabel!" Mabel announced. "Hey, find me a bully. Let's go find the worst bully in your school! I feel like beating somebody up!"
"Mabel," Teek said, "calm down. Come on, this isn't you!"
Laughing like a maniac, Mabel said, "Oh, yes it is! Hey, Grenda, did you and Marius ever try it like this?" She grabbed a protesting Teek again, spun him around, holding him by his upper chest, lifted him high in the air, upside-down, and kissed him hard on the mouth. "Mmmm-wah!" She rubbed her nose against his topsy-turvy one. "How do you like kissing when you're dipsy-doo, Teek? Want to try it again with more tongue?"
"No, thank you," Teek said, his voice coming out in almost a duck quack because of his position. "Mabel, you're scaring me."
"Me, too!" Grenda said.
Mabel spun Teek right side up and set him up on his feet. "Aw, you're no fun! I know! You can have some of the jam, too! That'll pep you up. And then together we'll rule Gravity Falls!"
"I don't want to rule Gravity Falls," Teek protested.
She hugged him, making him turn red. "Aw, my little Teeky! I'll do whatever you want, then! What do you want, Teek?"
Teek rubbed his arms. "Uh, right now? To get home alive."
Mabel let go of him and tottered around in a small circle, laughing her head off. "Good one, Teek!"
Teek surreptitiously took his phone out of his pocket and speed-dialed.
Over in the corner of the yard, where Mabel was straightening some bent fence posts, Grenda was trying to calm her friend down, but Mabel finished with the last post and then ran around the house, Grenda jogging after her. Teek followed.
Dipper answered his phone: "Hi, Teek, what's up?"
"Mabel," Teek said. "She's in trouble. You remember you told me about the Smile Dip thing?"
"Oh, man!" Dipper groaned. "Did she get into that stuff again?"
"It's worse, it's something she got from the Gnomes," Teek said. He stopped in his tracks. "Dipper? You need to see this. I'm gonna go to face time."
"Got it."
"Look at this." Teek turned the phone so the camera was on Mabel.
Who was standing at the front of Grenda's dad's car. Which she had lifted a foot off the ground. Reared up and resting on its back tires, the car threatened to roll, but Mabel held it. After pumping iron with it three times, she set the front of the car down again.
"That was fun! Let's go find us a bully!" Mabel yelled, punching the air. "And then, Grenda, you and me are gonna try us some Boobberry jam! Boobies for everybody, ah-ha-ha! Unless it does something else! Hah!"
Teek could hear Dipper, his voice coming sharp over the phone's speaker: "We'll get there as fast as we can!"