5: Heartbreakers

From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Friday, March 14, 2014: Just before the closing bell at school this afternoon an ambulance came screaming into the parking lot. Nobody knew what was going on, but the EMTs hustled into the building and just a few minutes later, I heard, hurried out, rolling a—what is that word? A gurney? That doesn't look right.

Rolling one of those stretchers with wheels, with somebody on it all covered with sheets so nobody got a good look, and then they put the stretcher in the ambulance and it fired up its siren and tore off for, I guess, the hospital.

No practice today, so I met Mabel to catch the bus home. She'd heard about the ambulance, but nobody knew anything about what had happened, though she said she'd pestered her teacher.

Then on the way home her phone chimed, and she answered it and turned pale and grabbed my arm. "No! No! It's not true!"

Whoever was on the line said something else, and Mabel just dropped her phone and it fell on the floor of the bus. I bent over and picked it up, and she was crying. "What is it?" I asked, really scared.

"Mrs. Pepper!" she said. "They said she got real sick and someone called the ambulance for her! Oh my God, how can I find out about her?"

Mrs. Pepper is the art teacher, and she's Mabel's very favorite. They're a lot alike—Mrs. Pepper doesn't wear sweaters so much, but she dresses in really wild outfits, white stockings with peppermint-red stripes, purple tennis shoes sparkling with sequins, blouses that have, like, layers of lace, all different colors of it—Dad says she's like someone out of the hippie generation, but I don't know about that. I mean, she's old, but not that old. I suppose she must be about sixty.

Anyway, when we got home, Mabel ran straight to Mom, and Mom made some calls and then she had Mabel sit down on the sofa. I sat next to her, holding her hand, and Mom said, "It's serious, Mabel. Mrs. Pepper had a heart attack. They have her in intensive care in Sisters of Mercy now. There's no report on her condition, though."'

"We have to go there!" Mabel yelled.

"Honey, we can't! We're not family. They wouldn't let us in, and if she's in intensive care, they won't let her have visitors."

Mabel jumped off the sofa. "I'm going!"

"Stop her, Dipper," Mom said, and I went after her.

Mabel was nearly running down the street. "Wait up!" I called. She didn't, but I can outrun her now, and I caught up and held onto her arm. She tried to jerk away.

"Mabel, listen," I said. "When Dad gets home, I'll see if he'll drive us over to the hospital, or at least see if he can call and find out something about Mrs. Pepper. Come on, that hospital's at least ten miles away. I know it's rough, Sis."

"Oh, Dipper!"

She clung to me and buried her face in my shoulder and cried.

Saturday morning, and the news came that Mrs. Pepper was critical but stable, whatever that meant. Their dad drove Dipper and Mabel over to Sisters of Mercy Hospital, a building made of brick, tan and glossy and interrupted with great expanses of windows.

It took some talking and some negotiating, but at last they were able to go to the ICU. Dad said he'd wait in the waiting room. Dipper and Mabel had to put on paper scrubs and caps and paper covers over their shoes. Mabel said, "We look like we're dressing up for Summerween," but her voice held no humor.

A nurse led them to a strange kind of futuristic room, circular, with a round desk in the center and three nurses and two nuns behind it. Rooms opened up off the big circle all the way around, rooms darkened and echoing with pings and clicks.

"Mrs. Pepper is in I-5," the nurse said quietly. "I can let you have ten minutes."

"Thank you," Mabel said.

The twins edged into the room. Mrs. Pepper, her steely-gray hair disheveled, lay propped up against a pillow. An oxygen tube fed into her nose, and machines tethered her. One gave out a continuous pulse, blood pressure, and blood oxygen readout. Others hissed or buzzed.

Mabel went to the edge of the bed and said tremulously, "Hi, Mrs. P."

The woman blinked, and in a voice foggy with exhaustion, she asked, "Now, who is that masked woman? The Lonesome Ranger?"

Mabel glanced around to make sure no nurse was near and then quickly pulled down the mask. "Just me."

"Mabel, my sweet one," Mrs. Pepper said slowly. She reached up to touch Mabel, but an IV drip in the back of her hand kept her from managing. "Oh, heck, darn, poop!"

She surprised Dipper into laughing. "I'm sorry," he said. "That's one of Mabel's things!"

"Oh, I know," Mrs. Pepper said. "I've heard her exclaim that more than once when an art project's not shaping up. I suppose I gave everyone quite a scare."

"You've got to get well," Mabel said. She reached out and with care clasped the old woman's hand. "We can't get along without you at school, Mrs. P!"

"I shall try my best," Mrs. Pepper told her. "Do you know, you're the very first person to visit me? I'm so glad it was you. You're a ray of sunshine. And this must be the twin you talk so much about. Dipper?"

"Yes, that's me," Dipper said. "I've heard a lot about you, ma'am."

"Ma'am!" Mrs. Pepper said, and she laughed, though the laugh came out almost as whispers. "You're a polite one, sir. Do you take good care of Mabel?"

"Well—I try."

"Bless you for that. Mabel, sweetest, I don't suppose you'd be able to slip out and bring me a great big juicy hamburger? No, no, I'm joking. But the term 'hospital food' is like 'customer service.' The words don't seem to connect logically."

Mabel laughed more than the joke deserved, and a nurse came and said, "Time to go now. Our sweet lady needs her rest."

"Oh, poop!" Mrs. Pepper said. "I hope you can come and see me again."

"Count on it," Mabel said.

Over the next school week, Mabel went every day. Dipper couldn't because of track practice, but when Friday—another break from track practice—came again, Mom drove them both over. They got to Sisters of Mercy at 4:20, and visiting hours would end at 5:00.

Mabel knew the drill, and the hospital staff seemed to know her. They suited up and went back down the corridor to ICU and straight to room I-5.

It was empty.

"She's out of the ICU!" Mabel said. She dashed to the round desk and when a nurse looked up, she said, "Excuse me, but where's Mrs. Pepper been moved? She was in room 5."

The nurse said in a quiet voice, "I'm so sorry, Miss. We lost Mrs. Pepper this morning about eleven."

Mabel's tone became indignant: "Lost? How could you—"

Dipper thought Mabel was going to faint. She braced herself on the desk and sagged. He grabbed her around her waist. She looked at him as if not fully recognizing him and said in a terribly small squeak, "Dipper, Mrs. Pepper is dead."

A nurse had to get a wheelchair. When Mrs. Pines saw her daughter and son, she immediately came to Mabel and hugged her. "She's gone, isn't she?" Mrs. Pines asked.

Before the nurse could speak, Mabel nodded.

"It was a shock," the nurse said. If your daughter needs to rest here for a while, that will be fine."

Mabel shook her head. "I want out of this place," she said. And then she jumped out of the wheelchair and yelled: "Let me out of this place!"

Somehow they got her quiet and took her back to Mom's car, though she jerked and twitched and tried to push them away. Dipper sat in the backseat with her, holding her hand. "It's okay to feel grief," Dipper said.

"Hell with grief!" Mabel fumed.

Her mother said, "Young lady!"

"Mom, I'm not grieving. I'm mad! How could Mrs. Pepper die? Somebody else should've died, not her! She was—she—the best—I loved her—oh, Dipper."

And then the storm of tears broke, and Mabel shook with sobs.

On Monday at school they heard that a memorial service would be held the following Wednesday at a small Catholic church near the neighborhood where Mrs. Pepper had lived. Any student who wished to attend could be excused. Dipper and Mabel both asked to be allowed to go—though Dipper had to clear it with his coach—and finally they got passes.

Again Mom drove them. She said she'd never been to a Catholic service, but both Dipper and Mabel had—when Soos's dad had died—and Mabel told Mom to wear a head covering. "Well," she said, "I'd do that anyway."

Mourners—more than half of them teens from the school—jammed the little church. The priest introduced a skinny, balding old man as Amos Markel, Mrs. Pepper's older brother. He thanked everyone for coming and said a few halting words about his sister. The priest conducted the Mass, and then it was over.

Mabel and Dipper made their way to Mr. Markel. Mabel said, "Mr. Markel, Mrs. Pepper is—was—no, is my favorite teacher of all time. I'm so sorry."

"Thank you, little lady," he said with a sad smile. "Elizabeth loved teaching. She said when her husband passed away, oh, more than ten years ago I guess now, that teaching kept her young."

"She seemed young," Mabel said, and she began to cry.

"There, there," Mr. Markel said. "Elizabeth was sixty-three. Not very old, but no longer young. What's your name?"

Mabel told him, and she also introduced Dipper.

"Dipper?" he asked with a smile.

"It's a nickname, sir," Dipper said. "I don't care for my real one so much."

"Wait—Mabel and Dipper, sure," the old man said. "The day before she passed away, Elizabeth told me that you came to see her every single afternoon. She was so proud of you, Mabel. She told me you have lots of talent and a love for life and you're going to be a great artist if you want to be."

"Really?"

"Really." He thought for a minute. "I'll have to arrange to take care of my sister's estate," he said. "It's not very big, and I can't use her art supplies and such, and I hate to just sell them. Would you like to come to her house, oh, Saturday afternoon, let's say, and pick out something to remember her by?"

"I'd love that," Mabel said.

From the Journals of Dipper Pines: I really didn't expect it would end this way, but I can't say I'm surprised.

Turned out that Trey and Mabel sort of had a movie date for Saturday. I mean, he'd ordered tickets online and everything. Then Saturday morning when he showed up at the house, Mabel told him she couldn't go because instead she had to go to Mrs. Pepper's house to choose a souvenir to remember her by.

Trey's stupid mouth got him in trouble. I always knew it would one day. "The old biddy's dead and gone!" he told Mabel, pretty mad, I guess. "You can't be serious about wanting to remember that crazy old bat! Come on, Mabel, this is a good movie!"

One of our neighbors who saw it all told me that Trey may need stitches. He called Mabel some ugly names when she started beating on him, and he had a few more for Dad, Mom, and, yep, me too. "Scrawny chicken-necked nerd" was the term that got his nose smashed, I think.

The lady told me he said even worse things, but refused to repeat them. "He wobbled off on his bicycle," she finished, pointing to some small, still-fresh spatters of blood on the street. From the splash pattern, I gathered that he'd had some trouble keeping the bike balanced and was weaving a good bit. Good for Mabel, I thought.

Anyway—Mabel and I actually walked over to the house, because it was only about three miles and Mabel wanted to cool down. Mr. Markel opened the door when we got there. He'd been crying—"Been looking at old family photos," he told us—but he seemed at peace. "Come on back into her studio," he said, and he led us into a sunny room cluttered with easels and canvases and paints and glue and buttons and yarns and feathers and—

To make it brief, the place looked a lot like Mabel's room.

Mabel didn't search for very long. On a coat tree near the back door hung a crazy knitted scarf—a striped rainbow scarf, except with dozens more hues than any rainbow ever had. It reminded me of the light of Mabel Land, with colors that only bees and art students could see. "May I have this?" Mabel asked in a choked voice.

In a kind tone, the old man said, "Sure, little lady. My sister used to knit those by the dozen, and she was really proud of that one. Elizabeth is pleased to give it to you." Mabel darted a sharp glance at him but didn't speak. "Oh," he said with a little smile, "I know she knows you have it in your hands right now. And I know she loved you and she's happy that you'll have her scarf. Think of her when you wear it."

"Always, and even when I don't," Mabel said.

So we walked back, on a warm day—hey, it's California—and Mabel wore that scarf wrapped around her neck, trailing behind her, and she wept without sobbing every step of the way back to our house. No sound, but the tears rolled down her face and dripped from her chin.

"I'm going up to my room," she told me as we walked to our front door.

Mom, who had no idea of what had happened out on the front lawn between Trey and Mabel, asked me if she'd be all right, and I told her, "I think she will now."

About an hour later I went up just to check on her. Mabel sat on her bed, running the scarf through her fingers again and again. The scrapbook lay open on her pillow, and I saw she had been working on it. She'd pasted in the torn-in-half movie tickets that Trey had printed out, and on each side of them she had used a red marker to draw in half of a broken heart.

She gave me a sorrowful smile, and I hopped onto the bed to sit next to her. She dropped the scarf onto her lap hugged me. "Oh, Dipper. I've been kind of cray-cray about stupid poophead Trey, haven't I?"

"Well—you know I didn't like him."

She sniffled. "He could seem so nice when we cuddled. But he's not nice at all. He said the meanest things. He's just a—a selfish bastard."

"Mabel!"

"Well, he is! You know what he said? He told me that you didn't like him because you wanted to—to—you wanted to do me yourself! That's just sick!"

I shrugged. "Yeah, it's sick, but he was close, in a way. I do want you for myself, Mabel. But I want you to be my twin sister. To be the Alpha Twin, in fact. To keep on being the beautiful goofy sister who drives me crazy and makes me laugh when I want to cry. To be my best friend." I held her hand. "And because of all that, I don't want you to get hurt. Not once. Not ever."

"Boy," she said, leaning into me. "Life sure screws you around."

I put my arm around her. "Yeah, it does. You and me both, in fact."

"You know what?"

"What?"

She stuck her chin out. "I'm gonna do what Wendy suggested that time we went after the Society of the Blind Eye. I'm gonna forget about boys. Boys are the worst!"

"Did she tell you that?"

"Well, yeah, but she wasn't thinking about you. It was, you know, Robbie."

I rubbed her back, between the shoulder blades. She was tense as a bowstring drawn too tight. "Hey, Mabel, do me a favor. Call Wendy and unload about all this, OK? It would do you good, and she loves to hear from you."

Mabel took a few deep breaths. "Yeah, OK. Wendy's always cool. She'll give me good advice, and I do need to talk to a girl—no offense, Dipper, but you're a boy, and for stuff like this, boys are no good to talk to, and so I'm done with 'em."

"Even me?"

"Nah," she said. "You're not a regular boy. You're my brobro. But the rest of them—pfffft!"

"Forever?"

She took a deep breath. "Um, no, I guess not. But I'm finished with them at least for a while. Until I get over all the hurt, I guess, like Wendy—"

"What about Wendy?" I asked.

"Um, forget I said that. She told me something, but I promised her I wouldn't speak about it to anybody else in the world. Let Wendy tell you when she's ready. But I'll just say, you know, she's had her own problems with guys. Like you said, Robbie and all. Don't push me on this, OK?"

"A promise is a promise," I said, patting her shoulder. "OK. No questions asked, Sis."

"But, Dipper—"

"What?"

She sounded to me like Joan of Arc making a pledge to the people of France: "This summer when we get to Gravity Falls, I swear by my favorite sweater—I solemnly swear, and not hell nor all its minions can stop me—I swear by all that's holy, Dipper, I am finally going to have an epic summer romance!"

What could I say?

Except, "I hope you do, Sis. I really hope you do."