3: Magic Dark and Light

Track and field season would officially begin the third week of February. Dipper's coach, Mr. Dinson, had been yelling at him for two weeks: "What's up with you, Pines? You were running better before break than you are now! Shape up, kid! Get your mind on what you're doing!"

"You could just cut me from the team!"

Dipper had almost said that twice. Let Dinson pick on me one more time, he thought, and I'll say it.

His guitar lessons had almost stalled out, too. Somehow he didn't have the will to practice the way he used to do, and he kept repeating the same mistakes, in the same order, until he started to dread the walk down the street to the Morgensens' house. Maybe the guitar was another dumb mistake.

Somehow, although he struggled, he did keep his temper around the house. Most of the time, anyway. He pretended to be interested when Mabel showed him videos of Widdles and Waddles. He did his homework mechanically without much concentration. Somehow he kept his grades up—though he uncharacteristically made a B on an algebra test he should have aced, and try as hard as he might, he found it difficult to finish reading the assigned novel in English class, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. He counted six was-es and one were in the first paragraph, and the story just didn't grab his attention. It was a slog.

Everything sort of came to a head on the night of Friday, February 14. Valentine's Day. Mabel had gone off to the high-school Valentine's hop; Dipper pleaded an upset stomach and lay on his bed in his room, strumming his guitar, not really playing, just drifting from chord to chord. He finally put the instrument aside and just lay staring at the ceiling.

Mabel didn't get in until after ten. He heard the front door open, heard Mom say something, heard Mabel's voice and her footsteps on the stair. She tapped on his bedroom door and opened it. "Hi, Dip," she said, stepping in. "You feeling better?"

He wasn't sitting, exactly, but lying with his back propped against his pillows, his arms crossed, his hands behind his head. He shrugged as much as anyone in that position could. Mabel looked—well, actually she looked pretty in her dress. It was white with red Valentine hearts printed on it like polka-dots. She wore just a little blush and a little pink lipstick, and she'd done her hair up. Looking at her, Dipper said, "You really look nice, Sis."

She twirled around once, showing off. "Thanks. With those bags under your eyes, you look like a dark magician put you under a curse." With real concern in her voice, she said, "Tell me, Dip, are you really sick?"

He gave her a gloomy smile. "Not sick, just down in the dumps. But I mean it, Sis, you look great. Beautiful smile, beautiful hair and eyes. You know, your—no offense—baby fat's going away."

"No offense taken." She closed the door behind her and giggled. "And it's not going away. It's just migrating to new places." That much was true. She definitely had a figure now—one that attracted boys, sometimes to Dipper's intense irritation. And she rarely wore those baggy, concealing sweaters any more. Her new ones were, well, sort of tight in places.

"Did you have a good time at the dance?" he asked, finding himself sort of hoping the answer would be no.

She shrugged, too, and glanced sideways at nothing. "Yeah, mostly. Trey asked me to go steady with him."

"Trey Moulter? Oh, man! I hope you turned him down."

She made her yikes! face and looked a little worried. "Not exactly. I turned him maybe. Put him off."

"He's a jerk."

Mabel played with the red belt of her dress. "Wellll. . .yeah, he can be. But other times he can be, you know, nice."

Dipper tilted his head suspiciously. "You don't really like him, do you?"

She shrugged and confessed, "Dunno."

Sitting up on the bed, Dipper glared. "Has Trey been, you know, doing things to you?"

Mabel blushed. "No." She bit her lip. "Yes. Um, you know. I mean we've fooled around a little."

I will kill him. I will kill him and tear him into little tiny bleeding pieces and burn those and crush the ashes and sell them for fertilizer. But aloud, Dipper said, "Mabel, you're too young for that stuff. You know that, don't you?" When she just nodded, he asked, "How serious are these fooling-around things?"

"Umm. . . second base, and I think he's trying to slide to third," she said with the ghost of an apologetic smile.

"No, no, no!"

"Yeah, I know, I know," she said, dropping her head and sighing. "I feel guilty about it and all. That's kinda why I put him off." She glanced back up, a pleading kind of glance. "Dipper, have you and Wendy ever—"

"We've danced, we've kissed, we've held hands, and that is it," Dipper said flatly. Then, in an empty tone, he added forlornly, "I don't know if we'll ever even do any of those again."

Now Mabel looked sad. "You still haven't called her?"

He shook his head. "Don't know what I'd say. But she hasn't called me, either."

Mabel came over and sat next to him on the bed. "Go on and call her. You'd feel better," she told him.

Dipper shook his head. "I don't think so. But I don't know what's wrong with me."

She yawned. "Wish I could help, but I don't know what to tell you, Dipper. It's, you know, guy stuff. Well, I gotta get to bed, Brobro. Hey, cheer up. Read some of your stuff you wrote in your first journal last summer, or maybe read what you wrote in your copy of Ford's Journal 3. Good times, Bro, good times. We've had lots of them, and they'll come again. 'Night."

Without enthusiasm, he said, "Hope so. 'Night."

He didn't read anything at all, but turned off the light and slipped between the sheets in his clothes, the way he always used to do. As he began to drift into sleep, he looked with his mind's eye for Bill Cipher. . . but Bill was only to be met in the Mindscape when Dipper was near the stone effigy, and that was six hundred miles away in Gravity Falls.

When June came round at last, Dipper felt excited to be on the bus again. He wouldn't admit it to Mabel, but as he rode along, Wendy's fur hat warm—well, hot—on his head, he started thinking, Now everything's gonna be OK again. The eighteen hours went by like so many seconds, and there they were, getting off the Speedy Beaver bus in front of the Shack.

Funny, nobody was around to greet them. Mabel ran straight in, the door banging behind her. Dipper lugged his suitcase up to the porch and set it down there with a grunt—

"Uh, Dipper?"

Goosebumps on his arms. He had heard Wendy sound exactly that same way once before, just once—in the bunker, when the Shapeshifter had disguised itself as her and for a terrible moment Dipper had thought she was dead before she spoke from behind him.

He looked around and saw her, standing with her hands in her jeans pockets over where the trail through the woods started. She wore his pine-tree cap.

"Hey," he said, walking over to her. He realized she didn't look quite so tall any longer. "Guess I've grown a little more."

"Yeah, I see you have." She smiled at him, swapped caps with him, and reached for his hand. "Come walk with me to our place."

He couldn't even remember the walk to the bonfire clearing, but somehow, as if it had been conjured up, there lay the log right in front of them. She sat down on it and patted it, and he perched beside her. "Look, Wendy," he said, "I'm really sorry I never called you. It was mean of me. It's been a terrible rotten spring, but that's not really an excuse. Forgive me?"

"Sure," she said. When he tried to put his arm around her, she gently stopped him. "I thought of calling you lots of times, Dip. But sometimes it's better to say things face to face. You know that, don't you?"

Dipper felt clammy, chilly even in the June sun. "Uh—I guess so."

Wendy sighed. "Dipper, I'm sorry. I've met someone else."

"What? No!"

He fell backward off the log—fell back and kept falling, plummeting—

"No!"

Something had grabbed him!

"You're MY puppet, kid!"

"Damn it, Bill!"

"'S just me, Dip." Wendy, holding him tight, clutching him. But—but she held him way too tight, keeping him from breathing, and she was grinning in a weird way, a sadistic, evil way—

"Who are you?"

"Dipper! Dipper! Don't hit me! It's me! It's me—"

"—Mabel!" She was hugging him. "Sh, sh, shhh, don't wake Mom and Dad. It's OK, Dipper, I got you. It's OK. You were dreaming. A bad one."

Dipper couldn't stop shaking. "I—I thought I was back in Gravity Falls, and Wendy—she—I don't know what she was turning into—" He focused on Mabel. "Oh, my gosh! Your nose is bleeding. Did I—?"

She sniffled and gave him a crooked smile, tears gleaming in her eyes. "You got a pretty good right on you, champ. Tissue?"

Dipper grabbed one from the box on the far-side bed stand and handed it to her. She pinched her nose with it. "Nothing broken," she said, sounding like someone with terminal sinusitis. "But you bopped me pretty good there."

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," Dipper said, hugging her. "I'd never hurt you—"

His phone chimed.

Dazed, he looked at the bedside clock radio. 2:50 a.m. "That's Wendy's tone," he said, recognizing the tune.

Mabel mopped the last red splotch from her nose. "Well, answer it, dumbo!"

Dipper snatched up the phone and thumbed it on. "Wendy?"

"Dipper?"

And they both said simultaneously: "What's wrong?"

Mabel whispered, "Dip, are you crying?"

He shook his head and waved her off. "Oh, my God, it's so good to hear your voice," he said, shaking uncontrollably.

"Same here, Big Dipper. I dunno, I was asleep and I woke up with this crazy panicky feeling that something awful had just happened to you!"

"No, no. Had a nightmare, that's all," he said. "Must be ESP or something. Uh. Happy Valentine's Day. One, uh, one day late."

She chuckled just a little. "I got the e-card you sent me. Very cute, man. Didja get my snail-mail card?"

"No, I didn't," Dipper said, feeling let down.

"I mailed it Tuesday!" Wendy said. "It better get there by tomorrow at least!"

Mabel whispered, "I'm going," and she tiptoed out of the room.

"Look, Wendy," Dipper said as the door closed, "I'm so sorry I haven't called you. Things are real rough at school right now, and I was bummed that you couldn't meet us back last month when we came up for that weekend. I guess I was kind of crazy. I was mad, you know, in the angry way, but I wasn't mad at you."

"You should've been," Wendy said. She was speaking very quietly, and Dipper guessed that she didn't want to wake her rowdy siblings or her explosive father. "It was so stupid. Stuck out there in the woods wantin' to be with you. If I'd had a chance, I would've slipped off and thumbed a ride to Gravity Falls to see you—but I swear my dad's like a ball and chain sometimes, man." After a silence, she added, "I'm sorry, Dip. I flat blew it, man. I should have found some way, and I didn't. I'll make it up to you. I promise."

"Don't be like that," Dipper told her, finally controlling the shakes. "It's my fault. Mabel says it's all hormones, but—I don't know. I'm so antsy all the time, and I blow up at nothing, and I hate myself a lot sometimes. Like I hate myself for not calling you. I was just mad at the world and I—Wendy, I was scared I might take it out on you. Sometimes I can't help myself, and I've been so scared. I guess I'm a coward."

"You are not!" Wendy laughed, her throaty, low laugh. "Man, I've seen so much proof of that. You just gotta believe in yourself, man, and you'd better do that. 'Cuz I sure do!"

"You're not mad at me?" Dipper asked.

"No way! You mad at me?"

"Never." Another awkward pause. "So—did your school have a Valentine's dance?"

She sighed. "Oh, yeah, tonight. Yesterday now, I guess. It's early tomorrow, isn't it? Anyways, I went for about thirty minutes. It was totally lame. Thompson, like, tried to spike the punch? But he got a bottle with, like, French writing on it that he couldn't read and so he thought it was cognac or some junk, but it was a pint of fancy vanilla flavoring. People were pukin' in the corners, man!"

Dipper chuckled. "Uh—did you dance?"

"Nope. Not even once. Didn't feel like it. Your school have a dance?"

"Yeah. Mabel went. I wasn't in the mood."

"Dude, don't be like that! If you stayed away because of me, that makes me feel awful."

"I stayed away because of me," Dipper said. He took a deep breath. "On top of everything else, I'm worried about Mabel. She's been seeing a guy named Trey, and he's—he's just not right for her. I know he's not. But she told me tonight they've been fooling around. Getting physical, you know."

"How bad is it?" Wendy asked.

"She said second base."

"Girls experiment, Dip. And before you even start, don't you dare ask me about myself! You'll find out one day. Anyhow, I don't think Mabel would let it get real serious. But I'll phone her tomorrow and talk to her if you want me to."

"Yeah, please do. It might help," he said. "She can't talk to Mom about this stuff, and it just makes me crazy when she talks to me."

"Uh huh," she said. "You get ready to kick ass, am I right?"

"Yeah. I'd probably get my fool head broke," he said, using one of Stan's phrases.

"I kinda guessed you'd go to the mat," Wendy said. "The way you tackled that demon in the Fearamid."

"It's not just my getting crazy about that stuff with Mabel. There's also, well, something else, I mean, talking of Trey and Mabel and all," Dipper said after another pause. "I worry—a lot—that I'm not right for you."

"Get out of town!"

"No, really. I'm a bookworm, I'm a nerd, I'm awkward, I always doubt myself, I have like no muscles—you can stop me at any time."

"Don't have to, man. You know you're lying."

"Well, I feel that way sometimes. All the time, lately. You know you deserve better than me."

Wendy kept her voice quiet, but she sounded almost fierce: "Listen to me, Dipper, and listen good, OK? I heard you say something to Gideon back durin' Weirdmageddon. You might not have known I heard you, 'cause it was after we had our wreck and I'd screwed up my head and was kinda in and out of it. But I did hear you. You remember what you told him?"

"Uh—no?"

"You said, 'You can't force someone to love you. Best you can do is strive to be someone worthy of loving.'"

Dipper blinked. "Oh. That. I just said that because he was—"

She cut him off: "No, no, don't run it down, man. That's some mature junk you laid down right there! Think about it. Nobody's perfect, right? But Dipper Pines, I'll tell the whole world—you're a guy worthy of being loved. You are!"

"Oh, Wendy—"

Her voice became very soft and gentle: "'S all right, man. 'S OK for a guy to cry. Listen to me, I'm cryin' too. Sh, sh. Imagine I'm lyin' right there beside you now. I'm huggin' you, man. Holdin' onto you. Keepin' you warm. You just cry it out and I guarantee you'll feel better tomorrow. Trust me. Girls know about this stuff. Sh, sh, sh. I got you. I got you, Big Dipper."

From the Journals of Dipper Pines:

Monday, February 17—I haven't written anything in this book for a month, so maybe I should record some of my speculations about paranormal phenomena. Let's start with magic.

There must be different kinds of magic. Some good, some bad, of course. Some of it might work by long distance. I didn't think I'd ever meet up with any of either kind, evil or good, here in dull, boring old Piedmont, California. But there IS some of the good stuff here, I think, maybe piped in from Oregon.

Why did Wendy have that feeling just when I had the nightmare? THAT'S some kind of magic. Mabel says it's because Wendy's my soul mate, but then her soul mate has been Waddles and before him, it was a ball of yarn.

I kind of suspect Bill had something to do with it—but why would he help me out with Wendy? That makes zero sense. I mean, wouldn't Bill be more likely to be behind my bad mood? Her spooky ESP thing simply doesn't have his fingerprints on it. Next morning, I accused Mabel of asking Wendy to call me—but she wouldn't have known to have her call me during a horrible dream, and Mabel looked so hurt when I said what I did that I know she didn't do it, so I apologized to her. Awkward sibling hug and all that, with pats.

Do Wendy and I actually have a kind of ESP that even Mabel and I lack? It's a mystery, and mysteries make me feel—well—

OK, I'll admit it: I feel better. Oh, I know high school's going to have its ups and downs. And so am I, now that I'm a real teen and not just a technical teen.

Mabel took that dumb book of Stan's from the Shack last month, and yesterday she made me read through it. She said that Stan did a dramatic reading to her when he thought she was me—the electron carpet thing—and she's not sure she'll ever fully recover from the shock of it. But at least I know now that mood swings are typical for teenagers.

The trick is to be able to ride them out, I guess. I'll try. All I can do is try.

But thanks to Wendy's magic, today at practice I ran the hundred-meter in 10:55 seconds, my personal best time ever. That's not far off the record set for high-school freshmen back in 2006. Coach told me I was shaping up. Guy Creighton, he's a Junior, distance runner in the 1600-meter, and a complete jerk, well, he tried to snap my butt with a towel in the locker room after my sprint trial, and I caught the towel and took it away from him and even standing there in just my shorts, I totally scared him off. He even apologized. Lots of apologies flying around Piedmont these days.

OK, so this week I am definitely going to finish reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles if it kills me—Mabel thinks it possibly might. It's a real downer, according to Mabel. She drew a picture of a crazy-looking Tess for her scrapbook and labeled it "Tess of the Disturbervilles." After she finished reading the book she said, "In my report I give it a thumbs-up, but in real life, I'd really like to give it a boot to the head."

Something else good happened today. This afternoon I finally nailed the song that I've been stalled on in my guitar lessons. Pitch-perfect, correct tempo, everything. Mr. Morgensen smiled and said, "Now, that is more like the real you!" And I know I can play it again the same way any time.

And after the lesson was over, I even went home and finished composing my first song.

I hope Wendy will like it.

Because it's all about her, and the magic she sent to me.

Huh. This must be what the frog felt like after the princess kissed him!

Magic.

Yeah.

That's what it is.