a collection of what you've lost
It's a beautiful day out. The sun is high and bright in a sky scarcely occupied by a handful of fluffy white clouds. It's the kind of day where people take their work outside, populating benches and porches, filling up restaurant tables under big red umbrellas. The breeze is steady and gentle and just right to take the edge off the heat.
Pacifica is standing next to a warm stone wall directly in the sun and she still feels cold.
"You can totally do this," Mabel is telling her.
Pacifica says nothing. She doesn't want to admit that Mabel's sturdy presence is the only thing keeping her from turning around and running away.
Mabel must be interpreting the look on Pacifica's face, because her own expression falters. "You don't have to do this," she amends hesitantly. "We could go back and help Grunkle Stan with the tour…"
But if Pacifica doesn't do this now, then when? Later, without Mabel? There's no way.
"No," she tells Mabel. "It's okay. There's probably nothing here, anyway. I packed all my stuff when we left."
Mabel makes a sympathetic face. "I know being here has to be all…" She doesn't finish the sentence, either unable to find a fitting Mabel-ism or deciding the one she has isn't appropriate.
They're standing outside the gate to Northwest Manor. Now McGucket Manor, Pacifica supposes. Dipper and Ford are already inside, visiting with Old Man McGucket and no doubt swapping reams of inscrutable nerd talk. Pacifica and Mabel had been in town doing some preliminary shopping for Summerween when Dipper texted them McGucket's invitation; the eccentric inventor is offering Pacifica a chance to recover anything important to her that may have been left behind.
Pacifica knows nothing of any significant value remains in the Manor, and all her personal belongings are in Malibu or Piedmont. The real reason she's taking McGucket up on his offer is that ever since her arrival back in the Falls, her former home has loomed over her consciousness like a dark cloud on the edge of town. The Manor is a mental tooth ache, a stubborn seed lodged in the molars of her mind that she just can't work free. Every time she sees the place perched up on its hill it brings with it a flood of emotions, and none of them are good.
She's tired of it. She doesn't want to think of this place as anywhere she can take shelter. It's been ruined for that many times over. Besides, one half of her real shelter is right here with her, wearing a ridiculous sweater and offering the kind of support she never got in the Manor. She's free now. She's free and this place doesn't matter.
So, she must confront it, to prove that to herself.
Easier said than done.
"Okay, but if you want to leave, we'll just go," Mabel says with an easy shrug. "Dipper is going to nerd out all day anyway."
Pacifica takes a deep breath through her nose. She's fine. This is fine. She's not going to magically turn back into Old Pacifica just by stepping over the threshold. She's got Mabel right here and Dipper is already somewhere inside. She's fine.
The gate to the Manor is wide open, which immediately strikes Pacifica as symbolic enough to be a bit on the nose. The front garden is overgrown and there are several goats grazing on the lawn. The atmosphere of the place is utterly changed, despite the aristocratic architecture. It feels like the border between the rustic and the extravagant, a strange mingling of rural charm and high-society aesthetic. It doesn't feel like home anymore, but Pacifica is pretty sure it wouldn't even if nothing changed. 'Home' has become entirely new word, one with connotations and memories divorced from the Manor and even Malibu. Home is in Piedmont, off Gopher Road, in the girl walking beside her and the boy she likes so much. Home is still changing, still fluid and partially undiscovered.
The front doors are as wide open as the gates and curtains flutter in the gentle breeze through all the opened windows. The inside of the Manor is bereft of its usual scents of wood polish and sterile air. Instead, it smells as warm and wild as the outside. Pollen dances in the light shafts and the floor of the foyer is crisscrossed with dusty footprints. A bee buzzes lazily past, intent on a pot of large flowers which has been set out in the sun.
Pacifica feels a smile tugging at her lips. Her parents would explode.
"There's less raccoons than I imagined," Mabel says as she takes in the room.
Pacifica relaxes a little, comforted by how different the Manor is. The rooms are the same shape and the wooden planes of the walls are as old and elegant as ever, but nothing feels the same. It's as if the place has a new soul wedged into the vacancy of the old one, altering the very character of its shell.
She goes up the big twin staircase and at the end of the long hall with the purple carpet she finds the door to her old room. She places her hand on the handle and just stands there for a moment, overcome by the memory of opening this door a thousand other times on a thousand other days. She turns the handle; when she pushes the door inwards, she can see in her mind's eye her canopy bed and the old oak dresser with her grandmother's jewelry box; she can smell the pine forest on the hills and a hint of lavender.
The reality is an empty room with dust on the floor and shelves. It's dim and smells like a rarely-used closet. In the light from the doorway she can see the impressions on the hardwood where the feet of her bed left their mark. It's all blank and faded from what it once was, so far removed from the space where she slept and read and preened and sometimes cried. Empty, with only the shade of her former self to keep the wallpaper company.
Maybe everything is haunted, because everything has been touched by someone. And everyone leaves pieces of themselves behind, even though they don't mean to. The past never goes away. It's a sea of ghosts, beneath the map.
Everything is haunted.
But in this case, Pacifica is fine with that. These ghosts, these past modes and minds, were left behind on purpose. They are old, empty skin, dry husks that rattle when she passes near. She's still growing, still molting. She doesn't miss their weight.
Mabel is silent behind her, standing a few steps back like she doesn't want to intrude.
Pacifica's expression firms. There's nothing for Mabel to intrude on. This room is empty, and so was the Pacifica that lived here.
She goes in just to make sure there's nothing left, even though she's almost positive there isn't. She finds a hangar on the floor of the closet and the rubber earpiece from a pair of headphones, and that's all. She steps back out into the hall and closes the door.
"I'm done," she says with finality.
"You're sure?" Mabel says.
"Totally." Pacifica lets out a long breath, feeling some of the tension leave with it. "Let's tell Dipper and go back out. I want to look at nail polish; I wore this color yesterday and I'm not wearing it again."
"Are you trying to set summer trends?" Mabel asks with a conspiratorial smile.
"Come on, Mabel. I don't have to try."
They go back down the hall and return to the lower portions of the Manor. Pacifica stops at the bottom of the stairs, struck by a sudden thought. She turns away from the front door and takes a side hall towards the sitting room.
"Wait," she tells Mabel, "I want to check something."
She walks until she reaches the sitting room. Her parents' favorite carpet pattern is still there, as plush and haughty as ever. The furniture is gone, leaving the room an empty carpeted box. She isn't surprised about the furniture; it had all been antique and valuable enough to save. She is surprised about the carpet. She doesn't know why her parents left it here, but she's glad it didn't find its way to Malibu.
To her left, the torn portrait of the skeletal king is gone. There's nothing in its place, leaving a dark hole in the wainscot. She tentatively steps inside, raising her phone as a light.
"Whoa, spook-city," Mabel comments. She sneezes loudly. "Heh, more like dust-city. Is this where the ghost came from?"
"No, we tried to hide in here." Pacifica moves her light around the cobwebbed space. All the paintings are gone, along with everything else that had been stored.
She stops her inspection on a spot in the middle. It's as bare as the rest of the room, but she remembers that section of floor as clearly as if she's still sitting on it, clicking her light on and off in a blackness as deep and dark as her own despair. The cold wood beneath the curtain of her dress. The tears prickling behind her eyes. His warm hand on her shoulder.
It's not too late.
It hadn't been. And she's living without all the poison that was stored here, hidden but never really gone.
Her family name is still broken.
But she isn't.
"McGucket should really put in a door," Pacifica notes. She spins around and strides back out before Mabel can say anything.
She wants to leave. She's had her confrontation and made her peace—or at least found whatever peace is available—and she's ready to go and be done with it. Dipper doesn't need her to check in on him. No doubt he's neck deep in nerdery, anyway, so it's not like he's going to have a lot of attention to spare. She quickly texts him to let him know that she's leaving, though she imagines he probably won't see it any time soon.
She's halfway across the foyer when her train of thought is broken by a shout from above—she'd been so caught up in her own thoughts that she hadn't even noticed Mabel going back up the stairs. She turns around just in time to see Mabel go shooting down the bannister, whooping with glee. Her prolonged cheer comes to a sudden halt when she bails off the railing before she hits the decoration at the end and crashes into the hardwood floor with wince-worthy force.
Pacifica stares down at Mabel's crumpled form. "Oh my god. Are you dead?"
"Worth it," Mabel slurs, lifting one unsteady arm in triumph.
Pacifica hauls her dazed friend off the floor. "You'd better not have broken a nail."
"Hey, I know what's important!" Mabel wiggles her intact nails in Pacifica's face. "I just broke my butt, maybe. Ow."
A cool breeze drifts through the open door. The shadows are a little darker and the air smells different, fresher and lighter. Pacifica looks out and up through the nearest window and notes the grey clouds bearing down on the horizon. The forecast promises clear and sunny for the entire day, but an unexpected rain isn't exactly the weirdest thing that could happen. Not in this town.
Pacifica must care about the weather now, seeing as she's without a chauffeur. "I guess we'll have to do our nails at home. You're lucky I'm an expert. Come on, let's get back before we get wet."
"We could catch a ride with Grunkle Ford," Mabel says, pointing towards the back gardens.
Pacifica raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Mabel, we'll be here forever."
Mabel drops her hand and shrugs. "Okay. Race you to the driveway!"
"What? Hey!"
Pacifica rushes to catch up but Mabel has already given herself a significant head start. The two of them end up playfully shoving each other off the walk in a fit of breathless giggles, making their way back into town.
It's still beautiful out. The edge of the clouds hovers over the valley like a patch of night ready to roll back the day. The two of them make it all the way to one of the signs pointing to the Shack before the first drops begin to fall onto the thirsty ground. They jog through the gentle shower—Pacifica makes the appropriate noises of disgust, but she doesn't mean it. It's wonderful. The warmth of the water, the moist air, and the way the sun still dapples through the trees. The smell of the rain just before the real storm.
She runs up the dirt road as the fresh mud curls up to touch her toes, the skin of her arms and neck slick and shiny, her hair bouncing in time to her footsteps. She is laughing and breathing and wet and warm and it is summer; she is as free as the birds and the butterflies and the last lingering note that swells in her lungs.
They reach the porch and Mabel is opening the door to go up when she sees that Pacifica isn't following. "Super Funtimes Nail Salon, right?" she says, gesturing at the stairs.
"I want to sit for a minute," Pacifica tells her.
Mabel lets the door shut. "Sounds like a plan, Pacifica," she says with a smile.
They plop down on the musty old couch. The rain plinks off the corrugated aluminum awning with a growing clatter. Puddles swell and distant thunder rumbles from somewhere far past the cliffs. Pacifica leans forward and sticks her arm out in one of the streams, watching as the rainwater gathers, parts, and twists its way down her wrist. It draws itself across her skin like veins. It's in her, like it's in the mud and the trees and the town. She is a part of this.
Pacifica leans back on the couch and breathes in the first electric hints of the summer storm.
"Feel better?" Mabel asks.
On the lawn before them the rain washes off the dust of the day, leaving each blade of grass as green and new as the first shoots of spring.
"I feel great," Pacifica answers.
A Collection of What You've Lost by Arrowhead (Not On Label, 2015)