day three of my new life

Dipper doesn't have a lot of friends.

He has the guys from Math Club and the guys from AV and the guys he sometimes sees at the game store in the mall, and occasionally the guys who sit at the corner table in the lunchroom and play Tragic: The Garnering. None of them are what he considers friends other than in the general sense that they get along and they know each other and that's about it. He sees them on the internet and in games and shares common interests, but they have their own best friends and their own circles. He gets the occasional invitation, he hangs out sometimes, and he wouldn't count on any of them to help foil a monstrous conglomeration of gnomes.

When he was nine, his best friend Jeremy moved to Pasadena with his mom after a divorce. When he was eleven, his other best friend, Arthur, moved to Milwaukee when his dad got a job there. He still keeps in touch with them online, if that counts. Even then, the contact only happens because they send him status updates and dumb memes. He'll comment if he has nothing else to do.

Dipper doesn't hold on to people. His connections are loose and when they break, he doesn't try to reconnect. He's always been that way.

But when he gets a rambling, twenty-five-percent illegible long-form email from Soos, detailing everything that's been done with the Shack plus about a hundred random anecdotes, he forgets to finish his first paper for English in his haste to respond.

He gets a text from Wendy the next week. He's surprised because he just emailed her the number for his new phone (he and Mabel were gifted cellphones on a family plan for their thirteenth birthday; sometimes growing up is pretty alright) and hadn't been expecting such a swift response. He spends three hours replying to her, both vying to create the most ridiculous emoticons.

Great-Uncle Ford sends him a subscription to U.S. Science, complete with a handwritten note pointing out an article of interest. Grunkle Stan sends him another Mystery Shack hat, along with a brief, typically gruff letter about how he'd had some stock in his car trunk after he left the Shack, Wendy's hat is too hot to be wearing in Piedmont, and Stan expects compensation in the form of indentured servitude. Dipper reads the affection between the lines and feels lighter. Mabel has her own correspondence and they share, every time. It's like they're working together to maintain the tether. He can tell Mabel is happy with him for putting forward the effort. She had probably expected him to rely on her to do the heavy lifting when it came to staying in touch, and it's not an unfair assumption.

It's the afternoon near the end of the first school month and Dipper is changing in the locker room. He pulls off his shirt and realizes he's forgotten to wear an undershirt for the first time.

The kid next to him (Wendell? Maybe?) immediately spots the bruising and thin scars that wrap around Dipper's arms and torso. "Whoa, what happened to you?" he asks.

"What? Oh, this," Dipper says, pretending not to know while he tries to think of an explanation. "Um, I did a lot of hiking on vacation and fell a couple times."

It's not a very good answer, considering the precise contours of his wounds, but most of his fellow thirteen-year-olds aren't much for forensics. Wendell asks if it hurts, Dipper lies and says it doesn't anymore, and then he exits the conversation as soon as he can without being obvious about it. He doesn't need the attention.

There is a small part of him that's actually glad someone else saw where Bill grabbed him, because it means it was real.

The days blend together. Everything is just like he remembers it. The exception is how the girls in school catch in the corner of his eye in a way they hadn't before Wendy. Girls in sweaters, blouses, skirts and t-shirts. Pastels and perfume. They gather in groups by the lockers and at the lunch tables and something must be hilarious, because they always seem to be laughing. When he walks past and a peal of giggles follows, he thinks it must be directed at him. He has no evidence for this, but it's a thought he can't always shake.

He sort of misses the days when girls weren't so notable. They all pale in comparison to Wendy, in his opinion, even though the vestiges of his crush are slowly flaking away like stubborn old bark. Maybe it has less to do with Wendy and more to do with the fact that none of these girls know anything about secret bunkers or dream demons or how the world almost ended. Nobody knows those things outside of Gravity Falls.

He wants to interact with girls only in the abstract, anyway. Mostly, he wants to be left alone. And, mostly, the other denizens of the school oblige.

But not always.

It's Tuesday and he's trapped in his own head. He walks down the crowded corridor with his cap pulled low, on his way to his next class. The stream of students flows around him, and they might as well be air currents or freshwater salmon given how alone he feels.

Then he walks headlong into something solid. He bounces back a step and looks up.

He doesn't recognize the face that's glaring down at him, but he does recognize the type: big, mean, entitled. There's always someone who likes to throw their early puberty-gifted weight around. Public school is full of kids who consider themselves sharks. Dipper's seen a thing or two over the summer, though. He knows what's really out in the water.

"Sorry," Dipper says blandly.

The bigger kid shoves Dipper back before he has a chance to move. "Watch it, twerp," the big guy says harshly.

In the previous year, Dipper would have stammered something and slunk off, or maybe even gotten angry, depending on his mood. Current Dipper, however, has stared death in the face. And death didn't have acne on its jawline or the wispy traces of an unfortunate mustache, so he figures he's probably okay.

"Whatever, man. Go ahead and be a jerk about it," Dipper tells the older kid, and then steps around him to plunge back into the moving crowd.

He doesn't know who that kid is or if he'll somehow pay for his insolence later, but he doesn't really care. His only regret is that he didn't try harder to think of what Grunkle Stan would have said. Of course, whatever that would have been would probably have started a fight. For the first time in his life, Dipper considers that he might have won a physical confrontation. Not because he's gotten bigger (though he is stronger, at least), but because he knows what it's like to fight when your life literally depends on the outcome. Not because someone bumped into you in the hall or someone said something behind your back or someone kissed your ex, but because losing means you die. It's a question of perspective, he supposes. The stakes really change things.

And it's some low stakes in Piedmont, all around. At least from where he is standing.

Later, on the bus ride home, he can feel Mabel's stare against the side of his face like a worried spotlight. He resists the urge to roll his eyes. Maybe if he pretends not to notice her concern, she'll let it be. That thought is the closest he's been to optimism all week, so of course it's an entirely false hope.

She nudges him in the ribs, making him squirm. "Why's your face all broody?" she asks. "Were you up all night fighting on the internet again?"

"That only happened once and that show finale was garbage!" he immediately fires back, and then sighs, slumping in his seat. "It's nothing, Mabel."

Mabel's eyes narrow a bit too perceptively for his liking. "Melanie said some poophead shoved you in the hallway."

"Melanie should mind her own business," Dipper says stubbornly.

"Well, what if it's my business, huh?" she says, getting up on her knees to put her hands on his shoulder.

That, Dipper can't argue with. Not after all that's happened. "I'm fine. It was just some guy being a jerk, and I walked away. End of story."

"It better be. Or I'll show him a couple things I learned from Grunkle Stan! Thing one, and thing two," she says, dramatically raising each of her fists and kissing them. Then she makes a face. "My hands taste like rubber cement."

Dipper doubts the big kid would be all that impressed. Then again, Mabel had once showed up covered in various unicorn fluids after apparently delivering a savage beating to the mythical creatures, so maybe the kid should be. "I don't think that'll be necessary, but… thanks, Mabel."

"Got your back like a buttcrack, bro-bro," she says cheerfully, plopping back into her seat.

Still, he doesn't miss the way she keeps watching him the rest of the ride, and he knows she isn't done with him yet.