"No one loses their innocence. It is either taken or given away willingly."
― Tiffany Madison
INNOCENCE
"Y'know, our Grunkle Stan used to own this car" Dipper casually mentioned to Andrew.
Andrew turned away from the car window to look at Dipper. They had been driving for about fifteen minutes now, and Andrew had become so preoccupied with watching the lights of Portland whoosh past the car, and as those bright lights eventually receded into the darkness of the night.
It had been awkward silence ever since he entered that car, besides little side conversations between Dipper and Mabel in the front.
To be honest, he didn't know what to say to them. Years of being told they were going to hell, and there they were, right in front of him. What would you say?
"G-grunkle?" Andrew asked, not remembering hearing anything about a "grunkle".
"Yeah, Grunkle Stan. He owned the Mystery Shack in Gravity Falls." Dipper replied.
Mystery Shack? Another nonsensical term to Andrew. Was it the name of the tourist trap or something?
"Oh, you would've liked Grunkle Stan. He was…he was the best grunkle anyone could've asked for. He accepted us when…no one else would." Mabel explained to Andrew, with a barely visible smile.
Andrew thought back to when his father punched Mabel in the nose so hard, that she fell over in her chair. He remembered the outrage he had against them at that moment in time. He remembered the confused feeling Andrew had when he first saw them kiss, "Why were they kissing?" Andrew remembers asking himself.
"So uhh…how are Mom and Dad anyways?" Dipper asked Andrew.
Andrew remembered that Dipper and Mabel hadn't seen their parents in over eight years. Eight years of wondering what happened after they left. Eight years of wondering if they got over their feelings about them. Eight years of wondering how their little brother that they left behind was doing.
"Oh, uhh…they're fine. Dad works at some finance company in Charleston, or at least he did." Andrew accidentally slipped out. He faintly remembered his parents telling him not to revel anything about their move to Chicago, because they didn't want them to know where they were, they wanted to get as far away from them as possible.
"Did?" Both Dipper and Mabel asked at the same time.
Andrew didn't know what to do. Should he deny what he said? Or just come clean about it?
"Umm…y..yeah, we've decided to move to Chicago because….Dad's company's moving there." Andrew spat out. He didn't want to tell his siblings that they were the reason why he was moving away from all that madness in Charleston.
Andrew thought that it would crush both of them if they knew that they were the center of all the suffering that Andrew's had to endure from both his peers and parents over the past eight years.
"Oh…that's great! It's good to have a change of scenery once in awhile!" Mabel cheerfully exclaimed, obvious to the real reason of the Pines' departure from Charleston.
"So umm…Andrew?" Dipper asked Andrew nervously.
"Y..yeah?" Andrew replied, not sure what to expect from them. Knowing them, he was expecting to hear something that would make his parents' blood boil if they were there will them.
"Mabel and I were wondering if…Mom and Dad would be open for us to visit them sometime" Dipper said, hopefully awaiting an answer that would relieve him of the stress that's been plaguing him for years.
Andrew stopped. The years upon years of torture about this came flooding back to him, from the time his parents punched his sister to the last lecture he was given from his parents, in the car to the airport. All of these horrible memories that no person should ever have to endure reentered his mind, and made him afraid of what his parents were to do if they ever laid eyes on their twin children ever again. His father, after eight years, would live up to his promise, and beat both of them up.
Andrew had gotten a couple of smacks from his father over the years, mostly due to minor things, as his father descended further into the realization of the full problem he faced: as long as Dipper and Mabel were together, he would never he happy again. It would always follow him, no matter how fast he were to run, it would always catch up. No matter what he would do in life in effort to try to forget about them, there would always be a reminder once in a while that Dipper and Mabel still existed. They were still together. They were always going to haunt his thoughts, reminding him of the monstrosity life had put on his shoulders.
Mrs. Pines had never been worried about the state of her children's relationship, but the state of her social status. She had a constant fear that she would be rejected by her friends because of her children. When someone were to look at her, they would not see her as a person, but they would see the woman whose kids ended up in a romantic relationship. It happened quickly in Piedmont, all of her closest friends started to drift away from her, not wanting to be around that strange woman.
That was part of the reason why they moved. After the big kerfuffle in the seventh grade, when Andrew revealed to a "friend" about his siblings, the rumors spread from the kids to their parents and mutated from them living in a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, to Mrs. Pines' children running an incest farm in the middle of the desert, with a dozen kids who ran around naked and lived in dirty trailers. Yeah, who would want to hang out with someone who gave birth to that? It only took a couple of months for Andrew's mom to be completely ostracized from her community. Mrs. Pines look refuge in her house and spent all of her time cleaning it and watching rom coms on Lifetime.
And all of this revolved around Dipper and Mabel and their life choices. Something that had no relation to Andrew and had been forced on him unexpectedly.
"Mom and Dad's been kinda…bummed out since…y'know" Andrew tried to explain to them.
Dipper and Mabel took one look at each other and knew exactly what he meant. Their parents wanted nothing to do with them. The same people who had taken care of them for the first nineteen years of their life, didn't even acknowledge them as people, let alone their own children. Mabel let her head down in sorrow and started to sob, knowing full well that if she wasn't welcome to her parents by now, she wouldn't be welcome for the rest of her life.
Andrew started to feel sorry for her, and for the first time, he tried to put himself in his sister's shoes.
It must be hard for her to exist, hard for her to be accepted in this world. If Andrew thought that it must be hard for his mother to go out in public, then it wouldn't seem as severe compared to his twin siblings. Hell, Dipper and Mabel probably never leave that tourist trap, or the Mystery Shack, as they called it.
Andrew felt himself being thrust to the left, and saw bright lights flooding the dark car. Andrew looked around. They had pulled over at a road side convenience store, which was mostly empty except for another car filling up their gas tank. Dipper pulled over towards a gas pump and parked the car. Andrew figured they must be at least an hour away from Portland by now. Dipper got out of the car, and before filling up the tank, knocked on the door of the backseat, asking him to get out of the car and to leave the sobbing mabel alone in the front seat. Andrew got out of the car to face his twenty-seven year old older brother.
"Hey Andrew, can you run into the store and get some juice or something for all of us?" Dipper asked Andrew, handing him a crisp ten dollar bill.
Andrew nodded, took the money and started to run off, but not before being stopped by Dipper.
"Also could you get some skittles or...something sweet for Mabel?" He asked Andrew, looking at Mabel, still sobbing with her head down in the car.
Andrew again nodded at Dipper and walked off to the bright lights of the looming convenience store ahead.
He heard a bleeping sound as he entered the store, awaking the cashier from her slumber; customers must be rare in this store. Andrew wandered the aisles of the room, before grabbing three bottles of apple juice and grabbing a red plastic sack of skittles for his sister.
He walked up to he counter and spilled the contents in his arms not he counter. The cashier sighed, and scanned all of the items and asked for money. Andrew shakily handed her the ten dollar bill and only got a couple of coins back. She hastily dumped the drinks and bag of skittles in a plastic bag with the store's logo on it, wanting to get back to being paid to sleep on the job.
Andrew ran out of the store back to Dipper, who was just finishing up at the gas pump, and handed him a bottle of the juice he had just bought and handed him back the coins Andrew had received in change.
Andrew then proceeded to walk over to the passenger car door, to see Mabel leaning against it in sorrow. At first Andrew didn't know what to do, except watch her silent weep at her situation.
Mabel eventually noticed Andrew awkwardly standing there and rolled down the window to see her younger brother pulling out a drink and a bag of candy.
"Th..thanks Andrew, you're the best little bro a girl could…ask for" Mabel squeaked out, as she wiped away her tears and smiled as best she could. Andrew extended her arms with the snack, and Mabel gleefully took it, ripping the package of skittles and started to pop the little candies into her mouth, cheering her up somewhat.
Andrew walked back to the backseat car door and opened it and entered the car, waiting for Dipper to get back in the car. It wasn't ten seconds until Dipper got back in the car, and hugged Mabel as she was slowly eating the skittles, still silently crying. Dipper proceeded to kiss her on her left cheek, in hopes of helping her feel better. Andrew watched as Mabel hugged her brother back in a romantic embrace, feeling each other with every movement.
They didn't move for another five minutes, holding each other, knowing that they would never be lonely as long as they had each other. Andrew just awkwardly sat there, hoping to sink into the carseat.
Mabel, now feeling better, leaned away form Dipper and towards the wall of the car. Dipper started the car up and turned the car back on the interstate, driving towards their destination.
"We're going to be in Gravity Falls in another hour" Dipper said to Andrew, while keeping his eyes on the luminated road.