this means everything to me
As the first party of the summer begins to wind to its eventual close (and he knows it's only the first party, there's no way Grunkle Stan won't continue to monetize the Shack's local celebrity), Dipper slips away from the heat and the noise. He's just finished an incredibly embarrassing round of karaoke with Mabel and Pacifica and needs a break after demonstrating to all in attendance that he absolutely cannot sing. Mabel can't either, but she makes up for it with sheer enthusiasm, and Pacifica not only can sing, she does so with complete confidence.
For his part, Dipper's had enough of the crowd. He'll be game for the inevitable afterparty, but for now he just wants to go somewhere without bass pumping through his bones and sweaty people knocking into him.
Plus, the thought that he might still have a paper clone somewhere around the house has been gnawing at him.
He ducks into the kitchen and, sure enough, there's a puddle of sodden paper on the floor that comprises the remains of his last clone. He looks down at what little is left of Tyrone-Two with a mixture of horror and relief. Can a paper clone die if it's not really alive? Tyrone-Two didn't seem to think so, and he probably knew better than Dipper ever will.
Dipper isn't sure if he's grappling with the nature of existence or just the nature of magic paper, either way, it's tying his brain into knots. He's not going through this junk again, that's for sure. He makes a mental note to tell Great-Uncle Ford about the copier so they can put it out of commission.
He goes into the gift shop and slips behind the curtain that conceals the ladder to the roof. He needs some fresh air to breathe and some room to think.
Outside, the air is cool and the sky is clear. The steady thump of the party music is muted and low. He clambers down the roof towards the lawn chairs, only to find that one of them is already occupied.
"Wendy?" he says in surprise.
He must have startled her, because she jumps a little in her seat. "Oh, hey," she says.
Dipper was going to sit down, but something about the way she's acting makes him hesitate. She must have been deep in thought to not hear him come up the ladder. "Cool if I join you?" he asks.
"'Course," she says with a quick smile.
He settles into the seat. The clouds at the horizon catch the moonlight, gilding their apices with silver. Soos says something into his microphone, his magnified voice booming through the Shack distorted and unintelligible. Dipper studies Wendy out of the corner of his eye; she's staring at the forest pensively. When was the last time he saw her like this? Has he ever?
He spends a few seconds mentally waffling between wanting to say something and feeling like a companionable silence might be what Wendy prefers. "Um… is everything okay?"
She smirks at him. "Come on, dude. When has everything ever been okay?"
He grins sheepishly, hands reaching up to straighten his cap only to realize he left it on Soos' mic stand. "Well, you got me there."
Her smile fades and she looks back towards the forest that stretches out before them, deep and dark and evergreen. "I did this a lot while you guys were gone," she tells him. "Not always at the Shack, but, you know. Just thinking."
This is a side of Wendy that Dipper doesn't know. "About anything in particular?" he asks.
"I dunno," she sighs. "It's hard to, like, cram it all into words. I always liked that about you. You're awesome at saying the right thing when it really matters. Like, clutch time. You just know what to say."
Not right now, he doesn't. He shrugs. "Maybe sometimes."
"No, it's true," she says, green eyes full of fondness. "It's like your superpower. Well, that and your big nerd brain."
"Yeah, well, where would my nerdy brain be without your survival skills?" he laughs.
He's just joking, but she doesn't take it that way. Her face falls back into a thoughtful stare. "I don't know, man. I try not to think about it."
"I wasn't being serious…" he says tentatively.
"I know, dude. But that's the thing, because it's like… I never used to think about this stuff at all." She pauses, mouth pursing as she grapples internally with whatever she needs to express. "You know why I took my job at the Shack? Because I didn't want to go work at my cousin's logging camp and not see my friends all summer. It was supposed to be this thing where I could make a few bucks and goof off. It wasn't supposed to change my life. But if I hadn't been working for Stan, I wouldn't have met you guys. I wouldn't even have been in town for Weirdmageddon. Can you imagine that?" She shakes her head. "I can't. It's like… what kind of Wendy would I even be?"
Dipper thinks of how easily his parents could have decided that he and Mabel were better off at summer camp than in Gravity Falls. It isn't like the two of them ever spent a summer with Grunkle Stan before. Dipper isn't sure what prompted the decision, but he gets what Wendy is talking about. He literally can't conceive of the person he'd be if he had spent last summer at camp. He's too far away from it.
Wendy is still looking out at the pine trees with a worried crease in her forehead. "I never cared about my grades or getting into college or not getting into college. I just wanted to hang with my friends and have fun, nothing else really mattered. Now I'm all, like… I don't even know. All that junk I used to care so much about…"
Dipper remembers the moment of stepping into his house in Piedmont draped in the tatters of a summer that altered his axis; that first bleeding edge of panic, of being disembodied. Like he'd been a shadow of his former self, cast by nothing, etched on the drywall.
"I'm supposed to be thinking about college for real now," Wendy continues. "We all had to talk to the counselor at school. She's like, 'Where do you want to be in five years?' and I'm sitting there thinking, 'Still alive?'" She laughs and there's an edge to it. "Man, that seemed like a lot to ask for at the end of last summer. But we made it. And now I just want to go to school somewhere where I can still be here when you guys come back. How can I miss this? I'd go crazy."
"Just crazy?"
"Fine, crazier." She acknowledges his smart-alecky comment with a smirk, then says, "So, you know that all the kids from the county go to my school, right?"
Dipper nods. Roadkill County is a big place and when it comes to anything approaching real civilization, Gravity Falls is it. Hence the public pool, mall, and theater.
"School was super weird this year. The pecking order just fell apart and a lot of the cliques don't even work anymore because half the school wasn't here for Weirdmageddon. Everything's different and all these kids have no idea why." Wendy looks at him, her face as serious as he's ever seen it. "Do you ever wish it hadn't happened?"
"No," Dipper says honestly.
"Yeah," she says, turning away again, "me neither."
Downstairs, Soos shouts something into the microphone, his voice buzzing through the warm, scratchy shingles beneath Dipper's feet. A group of teenagers leave the party and cross the gravel lot, their voices ringing with the too-loud exuberance of the partially deaf. Cars start up, horns honk playfully. Dipper watches taillights weave, red and fading, down Gopher Road.
"This is so important to me," Wendy sighs into the silence. "Just, everything. You guys and the Shack and… I feel like such a dork even saying it. I know I'm supposed to be a cynical teen or whatever, but… if I miss a summer with you guys, I'll seriously throw myself in the bottomless pit. As cool as rescuing Pacifica was, it was also kinda an excuse. I needed to see you, man. …I don't know." She grimaces. "Is this too much?"
A year ago, this was everything Dipper had wanted to hear. He would have been ecstatic, nervous and sweating, convinced that this was the moment, the big one, the moment where Wendy (probably) liked him the way he liked her and kind-of-sort-of-but-not-really admitted it. He'd have read all the things he wanted to read into it. He would have set himself up for twice the heartbreak.
Now he knows that this is better—is so much more—than anything else he could have wished for.
"Of course not," he says, humbled by her admission. All he can do is reciprocate. "You mean a lot to me, Wendy." It's her words, given back, but there's so much truth in that simplicity.
"You, too," she says. Then she smiles again. "Though not as much as Pacifica, huh?"
"Yeah, yeah," he mumbles through a grin, accepting her gentle teasing.
"Man, of all the crazy crap that's happened, that has to be one of the craziest. Dude, you're dating the most popular girl in Gravity Falls! Like, whaaaaaaaat…?" Wendy's eyes suddenly light up. "No, wait a minute… Ha! It's totally the other way around! She's dating the most popular boy in Gravity Falls!" Wendy pops her fists open next to her head. "Boosh. Mind blown."
"No, come on. Me?" Dipper protests, even though he's beginning to realize she might have a point.
"You. Your family doing the whole saving the world thing. Welcome to Coolsville, population Dipper Pines. How does it feel?"
Dipper can't even wrap his head around it. "Please don't tell Pacifica I'm more popular than her."
"She would flip," Wendy hoots, and soon they are both laughing into the night, their mingled voices echoing softly from the clearing. The temperature has dropped; the air is cool and flavored with the astringent hint of pine sap.
Wendy straightens up in her seat and calms. "Seriously, though… thanks for listening."
"Of course," he tells her.
"But, yeah, that's enough deep thoughts for one sitting. I don't know how you do this all the time. Don't give me that look; I know you're always doing this stuff in your head."
"Not all the time," Dipper protests feebly.
"It's okay, man. It's cool. That's just what makes you, you." Wendy stands up and offers him a hand. "Come on, I bet the afterparty is about ready to kick into gear. Let's go downstairs and get stupid."
That sounds pretty good to Dipper. "Lead the way."
They head towards the thump of the subwoofers together. It's not the kind of 'together' that Dipper had once so longingly imagined, but that's okay. It's better than that. It's deeper than any unreciprocated summer crush or temporary summer fling ever could have been.
Out on the dancefloor it looks like the afterparty is kicking into gear. Mabel is tearing it up with Candy and Grenda; they're already going nuts, dancing like no one is watching (not that they danced any differently when people were watching). Soos is working the turntables harder than ever and Stan and Ford are discussing something near the snacks. Pacifica is taking a break in one of the chairs, but she gets to her feet when she sees Dipper come in. She grabs him by the hand and the next thing he knows he's back up on the stage, Mabel on one side of him and Pacifica on the other, a karaoke mic pointed at him like the barrel of a gun.
But, you know what? He's okay with this. The night is young. And everyone he wants to spend time with is right here, right now.
This Means Everything To Me by Carlisle (IFB, 2006)