Trans Pacifica
Chapter 2
I could get used to this, thought Mabel—or Mabel in Pacifica's body—I mean, it was Mabel's mind, but—oh, screw it.
Look this is hard enough, right? So from now on, whenever there's a character whose mind is in a different body, expect to see this: (Mabel) is Mabel-as-Pacifica; (Pacifica) is Pacifica in Mabel's body. And, I don't know, (Soos) might be Soos in Waddles's body again, except Melody would probably kill him. Anyhow . . . .
(Mabel) had the thought as the Northwest butler—Pacifica had told her his name was Wellington—chauffeured her in the family limo. "You are rather late, Miss Pacifica," he said. "Your father is already home."
(Mabel) said, "Oh, thanks, Mr. Wellington. I'll be glad to see him."
Wellington glanced into the rear-view mirror, but his eyes were always so squinty that (Mabel) wasn't sure he was taking a peek at her. "Please, Miss Pacifica, it's just 'Wellington.' Do not prefix it with 'Mr.' I must remember my place. And, if you will permit the observation, Miss, I am not sure you will be glad to see Mr. Northwest. He is rather put out with you at the moment."
"Huh? Why?"
"Well, Miss, you have been, ah, I believe my grandmother would have said 'gallivanting' quite a bit."
"Galla-who?"
"Going about and enjoying yourself," the butler said. "Hobnobbing with your acquaintances, such as Miss Mabel."
"Look, Welly, let's get this straight: Mabel Pines is super! She's my bestest BFF."
The eyebrows rose, though the eyes did not open. "Indeed, Miss? Then you don't mind defying your father's wishes by seeing her?"
"Heck, no!"
Very quietly, with the ghost of a smile, Wellington said, "Bully for you, Miss!" He chuckled and almost whispered, "'Welly.' I must say I quite like that."
When they arrived at the Northwest farmhouse—this was the first time (Mabel) had actually seen it—Wellington held the door for her and then hurried to open the front door. "Chin up, Miss Pacifica," he murmured. "Remember, Mr. Northwest is your father and deserves respect, but—" he leaned close—"Never buckle under!"
"Got it, Welly. You're sweet."
The old man actually blushed.
(Mabel) had stepped into a long hall. From Pacifica's description, she knew that the living room was to her left, the formal living room to her right; beyond that were the library (left), music room and a small office (right), formal dining room (end of the hall) from which the kitchen, pantry, and wine room opened. Halfway to the dining room, a stairway led up to the second floor, where Pacifica's bedroom was.
As she closed the door, (Mabel) heard Preston Northwest's peeved voice coming from the office: "Pacifica Elise Northwest! Is that you?"
"Yup," she called back cheerfully.
Mr. Northwest appeared in the office doorway, scowling at her. "Pacifica, you know the rules! You have one hour a day scheduled for free play time. You have missed your music lesson, your French lesson, your etiquette lesson—and for what?"
"For fun, dads!" she said, grinning.
"For fun! For FUN? For—wait, what did you call me, young lady?"
(Mabel) had a fit of giggles. "Dads! I wouldn't call you 'young lady.' That would be creepy! Uh—unless you have a secret to tell me, maybe?"
"You will address me as 'Father' or as 'Sir!'" Northwest said, his face turning purple. "Now, young lady, you are confined to your room until dinner time. Go there and spend the next three hours thinking about what you have done!"
"Okay—but, dads—I mean Father? Why are you so upset all the time?"
He glared at her. "That is my business!"
"Mud flaps?"
Northwest looked as if his head were about to explode. "Yes! No! I mean—young lady, go to your room!"
"Dear, what's wrong?"
(Mabel) looked at the stairway. Pacifica's mother, Priscilla Northwest, was coming down the stair. She was dressed informally—a loose yellow silk top, tan slacks, white flats—but groomed impeccably, as always.
Preston Northwest stepped into the hall. "Priscilla, it's your daughter! Her behavior has absolutely gone to hell since we lost our money. You try to talk some sense into her! I give up!" He spun and stalked back into the office, slamming the door behind him.
"Oh, dear," Priscilla sighed. "Pacifica, what have you done?"
(Mabel) said, "Mom, I just went over to visit Mabel Pines and we hung out and played some mini-golf and had a good time. And da—Father is upset because I missed my dumb old lessons. It's summer, Mom! School is supposed to be out!"
"Come up to my dressing room, dear," Priscilla said.
(Mabel) followed her. The room surprised her: two big windows, lots of light, a dressing table with Hollywood-style lights around it—two lines of them, one daylight, one artificial—a whole chest full of makeup, a compact loveseat upholstered in fabric with a butterfly print, and a matching armchair. Priscilla Northwest settled into the armchair and patted the loveseat. (Mabel) sat there.
"Come, darling," Mrs. Northwest said in a faintly scolding tone. "Posture!"
Oh, yeah. (Mabel) shifted from her usual casual sprawl into an upright position on the loveseat, back straight, chin lifted, legs crossed at the ankles. "Better?"
"So much better, darling." Priscilla smiled. "Pacifica, you know your father is working hard to re-build the family fortune. We're worth only about a third of what we were a year ago. He feels the humiliation. He's a man, and men are competitive."
(Mabel) said, "Well, he wants me to be competitive, too! He practically ordered me not to come home last year if I lost that stupid golf match."
"It's a Northwest trait," Pacifica's mother said.
"Yeah, well, so are lying and cheating and treating people like dirt!"
"Pacifica!"
"You know it's true!" (Mabel) took a deep breath and forced herself to sound calmer: "Mom, why is Dad so tense? I mean, I know he's working hard, but we have enough money, don't we?"
"I think we do," Mrs. Northwest admitted. "But he doesn't. He'll drive himself to an ulcer or a heart attack. The problem, you see, dear, is that sales of mud flaps are level. There's only so much to be made. We have enough money to maintain our present scale of living, but Preston wants to live in a mansion again, with lots of servants, not just three. He wants to be the leading millionaire in the state again, not number 204. So he's really working himself to death to find new ways of promoting his product. It isn't easy."
(Mabel) nodded solemnly. "Mom, how about me helping him?"
"How?" Mrs. Northwest asked with an indulgent smile.
"I want to think about it. Could I get some art supplies? Sketch pads, pencils, gum erasers, a set of color markers with yummy fruit scents?"
"Dear, we have all those in your art room."
"Oh, right!" (Mabel) struck herself on the forehead with the heel of her hand. "Doy! I forgot for a moment." Art room, art room . . . . "Uh, Mom? Remind me where the art room is."
"Are you all right?"
"I hit myself pretty hard there!" (Mabel) chortled, but cut herself off when she saw how Pacifica's mother was staring at her. "I—I'd just like your company," (Mabel) added contritely. "Mom, we don't spend enough time together."
"Oh, come along, dear."
The art room was just across the hall from Pacifica's bedroom. Though it was full of light, (Mabel) gathered up the materials and decided to take them to the bedroom. She always did her best sketching stretched out on the bed, or sometimes hanging upside-down off the bed and reaching back over her head to draw. That had produced most of the art in her Surrealist period.
She had a whole set of markers, and she began to scribble to make sure none of them were dry. Pacifica's mother, standing in the doorway, said, "Dear? Why are you using your left hand?"
(Mabel) paused for a moment, then said, "Because I want to learn how to be ambidextrous. My, uh, I mean Mabel's brother Dipper is ambidextrous, and it's so cool. Uh—little privacy now, Mom, so my Muse can fire me up?"
"Very well, dear," Mrs. Northwest said with a worried little smile. "Ah—don't hit yourself in the head again, though."
(Pacifica) walked straight into the attic room without knocking, as Mabel had advised her to do. Dipper lay on his bed, clicking a pen like crazy, his lips pursed in thought as he frowned at a big book balanced on his bent knees. (Pacifica) said, "So what's happening, bro'?"
"Hm, nothing, really," Dipper said. "According to Ford's second Journal, there should be a colony of spider monkeys in the woods, but so far I haven't tracked them down. I'm just trying to figure out where they might be hiding."
(Pacifica) came over and sat at the head of the bed, next to Dipper's pillow. He had to scoot over a little to make room for her. "Ugh. Why would you want to find a bunch of smelly old monkeys, anyway?"
"Spider monkeys," he corrected. "And these aren't ordinary South American spider monkeys, but animals that are part monkey and part spider. If only Ford had provided a map or even sketched them—but I'm determined to locate their colony and photograph them, and then—wait, what? 'Smelly old monkeys?' Mabel, have you gone crazy? You love all animals—the smellier the better! Remember when you smuggled the skunk into your closet back home?"
"Oh . . . yeah, right," (Pacifica) said with an uneasy chuckle. "Well, but you know, monkeys in a zoo are one thing, right? Monkeys in real life—I've heard they, like, fling poo and junk."
"You've done that, too," Dipper muttered, going back to clicking his pen. "Aw, heck, I'll try another part of the woods tomorrow. So how did your day with Pacifica go?"
"Oh, fabulous!"
"You're being sarcastic," Dipper said.
"No, really!" (Pacifica) felt a little nervous, but went on: "We played a couple of games in the arcade, sort of bummed around and talked, and then played some mini-golf on that course you guys—I mean we—made beside the Mystery Shack. It's really a lot of fun! Very creative."
"That's modest, since you designed it," Dipper said dryly. He slammed the Journal shut. "Aggh! Great-uncle Ford, why didn't you sketch in a little map, at least?"
"You could call him and ask."
"Except I don't want to bother him. He and Stan are in Glass Shard Beach this week, visiting our great-grandparents' graves, remember? The trip they had to postpone?"
"Oh. Ah, right." After a few moments of silence, (Pacifica) asked, "So—how do you really feel about Pacifica, Dipper? You hate her, right?"
Dipper had started chewing on his pen. He nearly bit it in half and spat it out. "What? No! I like her!"
(Pacifica) couldn't keep the smile off her face or the relief out of her voice. "You do? Really? She'd be so glad to hear that!"
"I told her so, back at the dance. Remember? You should, because you made so much fun of how awkward I was dancing with her?"
"Oh, well, yes, but I'll bet she didn't even care about that. We sort of talked about you, and I know she likes you. A lot."
"She had a crush on me, yes. But I just don't like her in the same way, that's all. I mean, in some ways she's a really neat person and she's a lot of fun when she's just being herself, but Mabel, she deserves a guy who's been raised to know how to dance and what fork to use and all that stuff. I really like her as a friend—and she's good deep down, when the Northwest crust flakes off—but—well, you know, you can't decide who you're gonna feel romantic about, that's all."
"Oh." (Pacifica) murmured, "You know, Dipper, I'm sure Pacifica could teach you how to dance better. And how to dress and which fork to use. Those aren't important things, really. They . . . they . . . don't matter as much as . . . ."
"Mabel? What's wrong?"
"Huh? Oh, I don't know. I'm just feeling sort of off, I guess."
"Yeah, Wendy told me that would happen from time to time."
"You—you really like Wendy, don't you?"
Dipper sighed. "You know I do. If we could get over this thing she has about being too old for me, it'd be so great. By the time I start to college, it won't matter all that much, but right now—it weirds her out, you know?" Dipper sighed. "Any advice from Mabel Land on how to handle that?"
(Pacifica) fought down a mean impulse to say nasty things about the redheaded lumberjack's daughter. After all, she reminded herself, Wendy jumped on one of those horrible eyeball bats and petrified some of Bill's hench-creatures! And she came right into the Fearamid, trying to save my family and everybody else in Gravity Falls. She has smarts and skills I'll never have. But she's not as beautiful as—as some other girls! Carefully, (Pacifica) said out loud, "Well, little brother, I'd just keep it way casual for now. Let her think it over. In fact, let her make the first move, you know? Why are you scowling like that?"
"LITTLE brother?" he said, giving her an icy, angry glare. "You know I hate that!"
(Pacifica) blinked. "What? But Mabel said—I mean, I thought that was your favorite nickname ever! Ooh! She'll pay for this!"
"Who?"
"Never mind!" (Pacifica) hopped off the bed and stormed out, leaving a puzzled Dipper wondering just what was wrong with his twin sister.
