Shot to the Heart
(August 1-3, 2014)
Chapter 2: "We Love Rock 'N Roll"
From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Wendy dropped us off at the shack a little after 9:00 PM. I asked her if Manly Dan would be mad because of her coming in late, and she laughed. "Not tonight, Big Dipper! I called an' told him about Sev'ral Timez comin' to town, and he's over in Circle Park, standing in line at the ticket RV, waiting for the sales to start."
"When is that?"
"Ten AM tomorrow!" she said. "That phone call I got in the store was him calling me back. He told me he's, like, seventy-five places back in line, waiting for sales to start! Stan's gonna make out like a bandit! But seriously, I ought to drop Teek off and then get back to Casa Corduroy to make sure my brothers aren't wrecking the joint. And I gotta get some food in them—guess I'll haul through Yumburger. You and Mabel OK for dinner?"
"We'll scare something up," I said. "Worst comes to worst, we can cook burgers in the snack bar!"
With Teek in the back seat, I didn't quite kiss Wendy goodnight, but I did squeeze her hand and we had a little bit of our patented Vulcan mind-meld or whatever:
—Hey, Dip, I'm gonna knock your eyes out with my outfit tomorrow evening!
Can't wait, Magic Girl! Wonder if I could pull off a V-neck this year!
—Go for it, dude! Love ya!
Love you, too.
It was over in a flash. I had like eighty pounds of clothes and sewing stuff to haul in, but I pulled it all out of the trunk and piled it onto the grass—it was all in plastic bags, anyway—and then lugged them into the Shack a couple of bags at a time. Melody met me at the front door and came out and helped. "Mabel and Soos aren't back yet," she said.
"Oh, they over at Yvonne's Salon?"
"Yes, Soos drove everyone over in the truck. I hope the singers don't fall out of the bed! They don't seem very . . . stable, somehow."
"Well, they started out as clones who were kept in cages, and they've been living with the Multibear for two years," I said. "You can't expect them to be as sane as you or me." Or even Deputy Durland for that matter, but I didn't say that. No use worrying her. "Uh—is Mabel charging the haircuts and manicures and stuff to the Shack?"
"To your Grunkle Stan," Melody said. "I think she lifted his credit card when she hugged him."
Oh. THAT was going to make her real popular with him. No, I'm not making a joke. It's exactly the kind of thing that Grunkle Stan really admires.
Soos drove them all back at about 9:50. The clone guys came in looking—strange. Well, better, but still strange. Mabel had the stylists at Yvonne's Salon fix them up with their old looks—except I don't remember if Chubby Z. really had a goatee—I guess he did because Mabel would know, and she gave the orders for the grooming. But my point about their strangeness was that because their clothes were in such rags, Mabel had decked them out in Mystery Shack merch.
They all wore identical green cargo shorts with the question mark on the butts, plus identical green tees with the question mark on the fronts, plus Mystery Shack flip-flops, which have a question mark embossed on the sole so that you leave question-mark footprints behind you. The effect of those clones in clone clothes was sort of like gazing into reflections in a hall of mirrors, and the sight gave me a mild flashback to that dance when I made all the copies of myself. Not a good memory.
OK, and I should have totally seen this coming, but I didn't. Mabel bedded all five of them down for the night in the attic. My bedroom. Without even asking me. And it was like a girls' sleepover, but worse.
In the end, I took my pup tent out into the yard and pitched it beside the totem pole. That wolf even came and gnawed on my ankle a little for old time's sake.
That was still better than trying to sleep among chattering, yo-ing clones.
Just like old times, man. Just like old times.
A little before seven the next morning, something seized Dipper's ankle and tried to drag him out of the tent. "Go 'way," he groaned. "You chewed on my leg enough last night!"
"In your dreams, dude!"
"Wendy!" Dipper forgot he was in the tent, sat up too quickly, knocked down the tent pole next to his head, and had to fight his way out of the floppy canvas. "Oh, gosh, I didn't wake up in time to get ready for—what's that I hear?"
"That music?" Wendy, already dressed out for their run, jerked her head upward. "Sounds like Sev'ral Timez is up in the attic, already rehearsing for tomorrow afternoon! What happened, they kick you out?"
"I kicked myself out." Dipper made a face. "I even hate to go up there and get my running shoes and clothes, but I guess I ought to." He yawned. "Hear from your dad?"
"Called him before I drove over. He's still in line for tickets. He told me he's not gonna come home again until maybe Sunday night—he's met some buddies and they're gonna be campin' out at the Woodstick site, dude! He's sure nuts about that group."
"Guess I'd better go in and get dressed," Dipper said. "Oh, I meant to call you last night, but it was late—Soos is closing the Shack until Monday. But you might still have to work."
"Say what? Work where?"
"In the Mystery Bus!" When Wendy just stared at him, Dipper shrugged. "Grunkle Stan bought a used RV-style bus, gutted it, and then tricked part of it out with a few exhibits and stuffed another part of it with merch. He's parking it in the Woodstick lot—he picked out a prime spot in the shade, with water and electrical hookups—and Soos is going to run it. Teek's already volunteered to work the register in the portable gift shop, but Stan might call on us, too."
"Sounds like a good reason to avoid Stan!" Wendy said. "So, I don't have to report for work today, huh?"
"Well, except we may have to put up some signs directing visitors to the Mystery Bus," Dipper said. "But let's do our run first. Wish me luck—I'm going in."
"Good luck, yo!" Wendy said.
"Stop that!"
Dipper grabbed his socks, shorts, tee-shirt, and headband, but the upstairs bathroom was constantly occupied—the five members of Sev'ral Timez had already showered and didn't have to go all that much, and besides, the Multibear had taught them to, you know, go in the woods, but they constantly paraded in and out to check their new haircuts in the mirror.
Mabel wouldn't let them wear their stage clothes until performance, so they were still in the Shack tees and shorts. Dipper finally went down to the guest bathroom to dress out, then joined Wendy outside. They spent some time stretching out on the lawn, serenaded from the attic by a medley of Sev'ral Timez songs: "Yo, Girl, Go, Girl"; "You Mah Baby, So Let Me Rock You"; "You Got Me Ackin' So Cray-Cray"; "If We Gonna Be Apart, Just Gimme Back My Heart"; and about a dozen others, mostly indistinguishable from each other. As perhaps befitted a clone singing group.
Finally, even Wendy seemed to have enough, even though they hadn't done all their stretches. "Ready to run?" she asked.
"Tell you what," Dipper said. "Let's just run and keep running out of the town and out of the valley until this whole thing blows over!"
"Not a chance, dude!" Wendy said. "Gotta hear my tunes! And Robbie said to tell you he wants us to hear Tombstone's first set. Got something special he says will knock us out."
"Yeah, I know there's no escape," Dipper said. "Uh—later this morning, would you take a look at me in my Woodstick outfit and tell me honestly what you think?"
"The V-neck you bought last night? I told you, Dip, it'll look fine on you. You've grown some and your shoulders and neck will let you pull it off now."
"Well—there's other parts to the outfit," Dipper said as they headed down the driveway. "I don't want to look too ridiculous."
"Oh, man, that's what Woodstick's all about!" Wendy said with a laugh.
Downtown was . . . crammed with tourists, musicians, and incredible traffic already. They saw a long line of people snaking around Circle Park—and an RV with TICKETS $100 stenciled on it in big red letters. "There's your dad!" Dipper said.
"Yeah, still waitin' for the ticket office to open. Dude, there must be five hundred customers lined up now! Guess we'll have to sneak inside."
"No, it's cool. I got us comps," Dipper said.
"Yeah? Sweet! But how much did Stan make you pay for them?"
"Not a dime," Dipper said. "Mabel stole them from the office safe. It's OK—she left at least a hundred in there. Just got enough for us, her and Teek, Candy and Grenda, and I think Pacifica, her boyfriend Adam, and maybe her two ponies. And a few more to spare. Stan will never miss them until it's too late."
"And then he'll be happy that Mabel was so enterprising, I bet!"
Because of the congestion in the streets, they didn't make their full run, but headed back toward the Shack. "Hey, look!" Dipper said as they ran up the driveway. "Soos already put up the signs!"
"We are luckin' out today all around, dude!" Wendy said, laughing.
To make up for cutting their route short through the overcrowded downtown, they ran for about another mile down their nature route, then doubled back. "What's that?" Dipper asked, tilting his head as they neared the Shack.
It was the sound of Sev'ral Timez harmonizing—but another, much deeper voice had been added, and they weren't singing one of their own songs. Dipper and Wendy heard part of the lyrics:
" . . . comin' through,
That girl is you! Ooh-ooh!"
"Whoa!" Wendy said. "That's, like that lame disco-girl song by the Icelandic group—what was it, BABBA? Why're they singing that? And who's that with them—oh, I see."
Sev'ral Timez stood on the lawn in front of the shack, clustered around the Multibear, and Mabel said, "One more time, from the top!"
"Wait!" the Multibear rumbled, beckoning with one of its six paws. "Dipper! Come and join us! We need a tenor!"
"Uh, no, thanks, guys," Dipper said, waving the invitation off.
"But it's your favorite song, Broseph!" Mabel yelled. "Come on, we'll put you right up on stage with the group and the bear, and—"
"Dude!" Wendy said, laughing. "I didn't know you liked BABBA!"
"Used to, used to," Dipper said. "Thanks, guys, but I'm not, uh, professional enough for you. Is the Multibear really going to, uh, appear with the group—?"
"Yeah, he is!" Mabel said enthusiastically. "This is gonna blow their minds, right? What an act! And he doesn't even want pay! Just some fish! So, I told him you'd go fishing and he can have whatever you catch, Brobro!"
Dipper blinked. "Great, that's . . . yeah. Uh. Well, I'm going somewhere else, now. Because, uh, I want to be surprised when I, you know, see the act."
Wendy took her duffel from the car and they went inside. "Let's shower upstairs," Dipper said.
She nudged him as they started up the stair. "Is that an offer, dude?"
Dipper grabbed her hand and thought to her: One day it will be! Seriously, though, I don't even want to be on the same floor as those guys. They have no hesitation about barging in, and they creep me out. Anyway, I thought while you showered, I'd guard the bathroom door.
-From inside, right?
Don't think so!
But they at least paused at the top of the steps for their first kiss of the day.
Then Dipper stood with his back against the closed door—the outside of the closed door—while Wendy showered and dressed, and then she came out in her usual attire of flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. She'd dropped her fur trapper's hat on Dipper's bed, and she still wore the headband. "Don't want to get my hair all crushed," she'd explained earlier.
"Thanks, dude," she said now. "Never noticed this door doesn't have a lock or a latch or anything."
"You would have if you'd shared the bathroom with Mabel for a summer," Dipper assured her.
"OK," Wendy said, "I'm good. Grab your shower and I'll stand guard."
From his bedroom Dipper got his jeans, tee shirt, and regular sneakers and went in to shower. The bathroom smelled, very pleasantly, of wet girl. He took a quick shower, toweled off, and then dressed. Even from the landing outside the bathroom door he and Wendy could hear Sev'ral Timez harmonizing.
"I still kind of think we should have just kept running," he said.
"So—want to go fishing?" Wendy asked. "Bear's gotta be paid, man."
Dipper sighed. "Tell you what. I've got some money. Let's go to the fish market instead. I don't think it matters to the Multibear as long as it's fish."
"Don't lame out, dude!" Wendy said, but she was grinning.
With a rueful shrug, Dipper confessed, "I never had much luck fishing, but if you want, yeah, we'll drive out to the lake and rent a boat. That wouldn't be so bad. At least we'd be together and away from all this craziness."
"You're really a BABBA fan, huh?" Wendy asked, nudging him.
"Was when I was twelve," Dipper admitted. "Let's face it, they were a top-forty group, and their songs were catchy!"
"Didn't see the appeal myself," Wendy told him.
"Once that song saved my butt, though," Dipper said. "Kept me from doing something I knew I shouldn't."
"That weak disco-girl thing? How?"
He explained, "When the Manotaurs were trying to teach me how to be manlier, they sent me to kill the Multibear. Turned out they hated him because he went around singing BABBA tunes all the time."
"Prejudiced against his musical judgment, huh?" Wendy asked.
"Yeah. The Manotaurs didn't like anything but head-bangin'."
"Oh, heavy metal fans," Wendy said with a nod.
"No, not at all. They just like running hard and banging their heads against rocks, I mean. They told me the Multibear was a disgrace to fierceness and sent me to kill him, and believe it or not, I came close to doing it. But then he and I found out we both liked that song, so we kind of bonded over it."
Wendy looked impressed. "Huh. Well, Multibear's a good dude for a bear with eight heads. I'm glad we had him on our side during Weirdmageddon. Hey, Dipper, did I ever tell you that my dad once chloroformed the Multibear?"
"What?"
"It was no big deal," Wendy said. "Yeah, couple-three years before you guys showed up in Gravity Falls, I guess it was. See, Dad goes into the deep woods looking for timber to harvest, and sometimes bears are a nuisance, so he keeps a little bottle of chloroform in the truck. He could wrestle 'em, but if he's in a hurry, it's easier just to send them to sleep for an hour or two. Trouble was, he couldn't figure out which head of the Multibear to anesthetize. I think he got like three of them and then the talking one spoke up and told Dad that if he would just knock it off, he'd go back to his cave and leave him alone."
"Hearing a bear talk must have startled Manly Dan."
"Eh, nothing much startles him. I wouldn't have pegged the bear for a BABBA fan, though."
"Hey," Dipper said, "'Disco Girl' has a good beat and a catchy melody, and its theme is female empowerment, even if the lyrics are dumb!"
"Yeah, I guess we all love rock and roll, but we all got different tastes, right?" Wendy chuckled. "So, dude, it's totally OK with me if you like BABBA. Could be worse, man. You could've liked 'Straight Blanchin'.'"
"Don't even go there," he warned her.
In quest of fish and a little together time, they did drive to the lake, spent about three hours out in a rental boat fishing with very little to show for it, turned the boat in, and on the way home hit the seafood market for some salmon. Then it took them a good long time to get back to the Shack—traffic was that heavy, and they saw as they neared the town that in Circle Park the tickets were selling fast.
Still, the drive through the crowded streets was a miserably slow creep—mainly because Deputy Durland was on traffic detail, and he had a genius for creating gridlock where none existed. He could probably cause a traffic jam in the middle of the Sahara. It was even worse when real cars were around.
It took them thirty minutes to travel the two-odd miles to the Mystery Shack—and then it was hard to park, because Stan was using the lot as spillover Woodstick parking, and Soos was ferrying visitors to the concert site in the tram.
Mabel had moved the guys and the bear out back, past the pig pen—she didn't want to let the tourists get an advance peek, she said. Gratefully, Dipper took the salmon from the trunk, which had begun to acquire a distinctly maritime aroma, and turned it over to its grateful recipient.
The Multibear didn't even mind that in the hot weather the salmon had started to smell. In fact, he seemed to relish it even more that way.
"Guys!" Mabel said to Wendy and Dipper while the Multibear gobbled his salary, "hope you're all ready to rock out! The opening groups are gonna start performing in about an hour."
"Nate and Lee are gonna meet us outside the gate," Wendy said. "Wonder if they scored tickets."
"Meh, have another couple of comps," Mabel said, reaching inside her musical-note tie-dyed sweater and then handing over two orange cards. "There's lots more where they came from!"
"Mabel," Dipper said, "you are going to get in serious trouble."
To his surprise, Wendy tugged his trucker's hat over his eyes. Then she and Mabel said in unison, "That's what makes it fun, dork!"
Dr. Funtimes to dork. My life is just an up and down highway, Dipper thought. And if he'd been a serious musician instead of a weekend guitarist, right there he might have had the inspiration for his first big hit.
"Come on, Dip!" Wendy said. "Let's go suit up for Woodstick 2014!"
"YAYYY!" Mabel cheered.
Dipper smiled weakly. "Yay," he said, hoping the V-neck would work this time—and that the rest of his ensemble would make him look cool, rather than dorky.
But he rather feared it wouldn't.