Let's turn the clock back about eleven weeks. I arrived in this freakish town with a massive suitcase and when I walked in the door to the Mystery Shack…

"Ohmigosh GIDEON! I haven't seen you since we were like….six!" my cousin yells as she tackles me to the floor. She's hovering over me and her blond ponytail is dangling directly in my face.

"Paz, I'm excited too but I would kind of like to be standing right now." I say. She apologizes and jumps off. I examine my cousin. She's taller than me now, but almost everyone is. Her vibrant multicolored sweatshirt and her black skirt are in complete contrast. Her hair is longer but her bangs are still cut across her forehead like they were the last time I saw her. She appears to be examining me before she comes over and hugs me.

"It's soooo amazing to finally see you again!" she proclaims. "You too!" I reply. She has a piece of lettuce stuck under her braces. "I've been like so LONELY for the past three days!"

"So, do you want to see our room upstairs? We get the attic. Isn't that so cool? There's a couple holes in the roof but that's okay unless it's raining." she says, and rambles on and on about some splinter she got while she was taping up one of her posters. I can't stay focused on her though.

"Hi Robbie!" Pacifica yells. The boy cringes and takes off his glasses, carefully wiping them on his shirt and puts them back on.

"Hi, Pacifica." he says.

"This is my cousin Gideon. I'm three days and I think seven hours older than him." she tells him.

"That's nice." Robbie says and goes back to helping some guy purchase a bobble-head of our great-aunt.

I'm officially intrigued. I look at the girl for probably far too long and then I feel a hand on my shoulder.

"Boo!" I hear and jump. My great-aunt is maniacally laughing behind me. "Sorry, kid. You seemed distracted."

"Stephanie, come on." Robbie says. "You don't need to scare every kid who comes in here." Stephanie looks at him with narrowed eyes and asks, "And who signs your paychecks? Keep your nose outta my business, for the last time."

Pacifica says, "Steph, Gideon's here!" with more enthusiasm than I've ever heard a person use. Steph starts to say something but the door is slammed open with such force it's drowned out. A larger man comes in and announces ,"I'm here." He walks over to Steph and says "I still get full pay today, right?" with the scariest death glare I've ever seen.

"Forget it, Soos." she tells him. "You get HALF, just like Robbie would if he was late."

He gets mad and slams his fist on the counter, and then goes out the door, making sure it slams behind him.

"Gee whiz, that was intense." Paz says. "Steph, if he gets so mad when he gets half pay why didn't you fire him yet?"

"We need employees. He somewhat counts." Stephanie says, and walks outside to a bus full of tourists come to the Mystery Shack to see the "World Famous" oddities. I don't really think that this place is 'world famous'.

Pacifica and I go into the regular house, behind an "Employees Only" door, and she shows me around the house. I'm most interested by the television, which we promptly end up watching.

Paz puts her head onto my shoulder and falls asleep within a few minutes.

The next day, I wake up at 8:03, and as I'm walking out the door Steph stops me.

"And you think you're headed off to where, kid? You've got work today." I'm told. I see Paz, wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt with a graphic of a sun wearing sunglasses on the front waving and smiling at me behind the counter.

After a long, tedious day, we go outside and my cousin walks directly into a tree. As she falls to the ground I hear a metal clanking from the tree. I kneel down to make sure she's okay and when I'm sure she is I ask, "Did you hear the sound the tree made?"

She shakes her head, and then starts dusting off a part of the tree. "Woah, look! There's a creepy line there, Gid!" I examine where her bright green fingernail is pointing and sure enough I see a line. "It looks like a door." I say when I see more lines.

She pulls on the part of the tree that's separated and it opens to reveal a creepy metal box with two levers and a big red button. "It looks like a weirdo microwave." she says.

I test the levers. The first one seems to do nothing. The second, however, opens a part of the ground, and there's a book inside.

I blow off the cover and we see a six-fingered hand with a large 3 in the middle on the cover.

"Weird…" I say. I open the book. On the inside of the cover there's a monocle, and it says 'Vol. 3, property of'. The rest is torn off.

"It's hard to believe it's been six years since I began studying the strange and wondrous happenings of Gravity Falls, Oregon." I read. I leaf through the pages. Floating eyeballs, Zombies, Vampires, Gnomes, Squash with a human face and emotions…

"COOOOOOOOOOOL!" my cousin announces. "Let's show Steph! Maybe it's some of her weirdo merchandise."

"No!" I say. She skeptically looks at me and I explain "This is probably better to keep between us."

"Okay!" she says.

Little did I know that the book I was holding held secrets I couldn't even imagine.