stories to weather and storms to tell
Pacifica is dreaming.
At first, she's unusually aware of this fact. She's draped in the cobwebs between sleep and waking, in the fuzzy, peculiar place where reality has only partially receded. She can hear the rain rattle on the Shack and feel the pillow against the side of her face, but she slips into dream, nonetheless.
She's at the party—not the recent one, or first one. The big one, the best one, if marred by the presence of a ghost. And it's just before… no, it's just after. It comes into being around her, part memory, part imagination:
It's the tail end of the party and Pacifica is riding the crest of the wave, too high up to feel anything but the afterglow of victory but not so blind she doesn't see the rocks below. Mother and Father are watching her from the sidelines, their expressions speaking volumes. If she can keep her head up and keep moving, maybe she won't fall. She's a cartoon character running past the edge of the cliff, refusing to look down.
She'd rather look at Dipper, awkwardly bobbing his head to the music in his borrowed suit. Perhaps it's the near-death experience talking, but maybe he's not so bad after all.
This didn't happen. The dream shifts slightly, becomes less concrete. The feeling of being in her room fades.
He lights up when she approaches. "Hey!" he says. "This is great, huh?"
Pacifica hears something big and expensive crashing to the floor in the side parlor and smiles contentedly. "Of course. I told you, it's the world's greatest party." She puts a hand on her hip, acknowledging him with a flippant gesture. "Besides, we won. What's not to celebrate?"
Dipper raises his fists in nerdy exultation. "I know! I told you the journal would come through. Never doubt the journal."
She rolls her eyes but must concede the point. "Fine. Maybe your book isn't so dumb after all."
The song changes. Pacifica recognizes the tempo and, still floating on the bright madness that is a death averted, holds out a hand. "Quit standing around by the stairs like a weirdo. Let's dance!"
"Uh…" He shuffles his feet with indecision. "I don't know how?"
She huffs in amusement. "Just follow my lead, dummy."
She grabs his hand and whisks him into the crowd. The lights whirl as she spins and for this single drawn out moment she is in motion, she is happy, and she is safe.
No, this didn't happen. Not then. She knows this, in some dim way, and brushes it aside. She's too content.
Somehow, it's still the party, but before the dance. Or is it after? Time is strange and she moves from place to place without travelling.
She's watching Dipper by the stairs. He looks self-conscious; he lets his arms fall to his sides, then crosses them, then ends up trapped in an awkward compromise with his hands loosely clasped at his waist like he's one of the waitstaff.
The party ebbs and flows around them; the smell of cider and hors d'oeuvres, the sound of classical strings humming beneath loud conversation. Mabel brushes by with Candy and Grenda, the three of them in a giggling miniature herd. Manly Dan is drinking an entire keg of cider in one go. Father is still running around frantically trying to exert some modicum of control on the proceedings, which is just as entertaining as anything else that's happening. Mother is slumped on a couch, about halfway through what looks like her second bottle of champagne.
Pacifica is… by the stairs? Near the banquet? No, she's at the top of the staircase. She approaches Dipper, the sound of her expensive heels on the waxed wooden steps behind him drawing his attention. She meets his eyes—and maybe it's just the shared high of a near-death experience but there's something electric in their gaze.
This is familiar. Happy with the dream, she is almost convinced that this is how it was (it wasn't. Not then).
Dipper points to where Manly Dan just finished off the barrel of cider; the lumberjack lets out a belch that rattles the chandeliers. "Now it's the world's greatest party," Dipper says with a smile.
Pacifica wrinkles her nose. "Oh, gross." But her eyes dart over to where her parents are looking on the proceedings with identical expressions of utter horror, which makes her smile. "Well, as long as they hate it." Descending the rest of the steps, she gestures to Dipper with an elegantly gloved hand. "Come with me."
Dipper follows her down a hallway to the kitchen. She ducks into the pantry and emerges with two glasses, each filled with sparking grape juice.
"A little something to celebrate," she says, handing him a glass.
He looks dubiously at the reddish liquid. "Uh… should we be drinking this?"
She rolls her eyes. "It's sparkling grape juice, dork. This isn't a trailer park."
Dipper is just about to raise his glass when there's a commotion at the other side of the kitchen. Voices filter in from the hallway, outraged and familiar. Pacifica knows them immediately.
She hisses and grabs his arm, pulling him away. "My parents!"
They dodge the elder Northwests and end up by circuitous route back in the entry hall. They stand near the wall as the party swells around them, a raucous event that's never far from being completely out of control. It's strange, and sometimes gross, and way too loud, but at the same time it's like a reward, in a weird way. She made this possible.
"Any regrets?" he asks curiously.
She fixes him with a side glance, her mouth tilted in a smug pink smile. "Maybe tomorrow," she says.
He smiles back and her heart does something odd in her chest, something new she can't describe.
But it isn't new. Or it is, in this not-memory… She is fully surrendered to the dream, now—she's in the deepest pocket of sleep.
"Well, here's to you, Pacifica," he says, raising his drink in her direction.
The rim of her glass meets his with a clink. Pacifica watches the chaos unfolding as she takes a long, pensive sip. "This isn't so bad," she says, deciding that it's true.
And neither is he. Not bad at all. Kind of cute in that tuxedo, actually… if she went for boys like that. Which she doesn't.
Except she is.
Something's different. Maybe wrong. The dream is twisting again. It is wilder, stranger. She rolls over in her sleep, the first hints of unease penetrating her serenity.
It's later. Or the same time, or— it doesn't matter. It is night and day. She pulls Dipper away from the party and into her room. He sits at the edge of her four-poster bed and his eyes go huge when she drapes her arms over his shoulders, when she leans in closer. They kiss and he tastes like grape juice and something else so familiar—except, no, it can't be. This is the first time. This is new.
They are in the garden, but it's sunny. Dipper has something to give to Ford. Pacifica picks it up: It's a journal with a blue cover. She turns to give it to him, but he's gone.
She walks the empty streets of the town while lightning dances along the tops of the cliffs. She's late. She's forgotten something. She sees Dipper's hat through the window of the diner and runs towards it; when she opens the door, there's no one inside. It's dark and the air is stale. No one's been in here for years.
She turns around and the edge of the woods is close, having swallowed up the road. There's a deep pit in the dirt and she can hear Mabel calling somewhere below. She gets on her hands and knees and crawls for what must be hours, maybe even days.
She emerges in her old room in Malibu. It is dark, just like the diner, and rain runs down the big windows. Mabel is saying something; it sounds like she is in the kitchen. Pacifica follows the sound, but when she gets to the kitchen, it is empty. The door to the basement is ajar.
Pacifica descends the steps. The basement is lit only by a few standing lamps clustered around the hole in floor by the far wall, and the concrete is covered in water. She walks across the flooded room; when she looks down, she sees huge pale fish skim beneath her toes, and she realizes the water is as deep as an ocean.
At the rim of the pit, the water pours endlessly over the ledge beneath her feet. The sea has entered the house and the hole is a hundred feet deep, sinking down far below to where the waves crash against its cylindrical sides.
Pacifica contemplates this impossible well, trying to make out the figures in its center. She hears something clacking behind her, a sharp and threatening sound. But when she turns around, she sees nothing but a curtain of water; she is at the bottom of the pit.
In front of her, the Boss-Lobster lies dead with its pincers and legs curled over its abdomen, its one black marble eyeball staring blankly upwards. Mabel is crouched by its side, weeping over the corpse; her tears run down her chin and into the swells. She cries as if her heart is irreparably broken.
Confused, Pacifica reaches out to put her hand on the other girl's shoulder, but Mabel leans forward and wraps her arms around the body as she sobs. When Pacifica looks down again, it's not the Boss-Lobster whom Mabel holds—it is Dipper.
Overcome with horror, Pacifica grabs one of his hands. His skin is wet and cold, and there is no life in it. She looks at his face; it is slack and grey. There's a colorful line around his neck, and when she looks closer, she sees that it is pink thread, stitched into his skin.
Mabel looks up, tears still flowing freely from her tortured eyes. "I put it back on," she says.
No no no no NO— something explodes in her, loud and real and the world falls away from her in a jumble of splinters—
Pacifica wakes up.
A mighty crash of thunder sends her spinning from sleep, thrust into the waking world with her heart pounding and her mouth dry. Her breathing gradually slows as her mind reconnects with reality. She's in her room in the Mystery Shack. The events of the day come pouring back over her when she sees the stuffed panda-duck thing at the foot of her bed.
The same rain she had been briefly caught in has turned violent in the hours since nightfall. Through the window at the top of the wall she can see lightning flickering on the horizon with enough frequency for the light to be almost constant; the rain lashing against the glass sends weird, blurry shapes sliding down the interior of her room, a shifting, watery shadow world. The rain rattles against the Shack, muted through the wood or plunking loudly against the windowpane, rising and falling with the sharp gusts of wind that intermittently turn the clatter into a burst and roar. The thunder rolls in the distance, echoing through the valley in a low seismic growl which is frequently punctuated by the sudden stuttering crackle of a closer strike. The whole house shudders and creaks under the storm's assault.
Pacifica takes a few deep breaths, waiting for the aftershocks of her nightmare to fade. And, really, having a vivid bad dream on a night like this? Such a cliché. She wants to roll her eyes at herself, to scoff and pull her sheets back up and ignore the storm.
But every time she thinks she's calming, another bolt from the black sends a jagged spike of anxiety through her chest. The knot in her breast has yet to loosen. In the dark corners of the room she can still see faded imprints of Dipper, dead in Mabel's arms. Pacifica squeezes her eyes shut, trying to wipe them away.
Lightning strikes so close that its deafening report is like a bomb blast, the window rattling as the sound slaps against her body, compressing her lungs.
Her composure shattered, she scrambles out of bed and pads away from the sluicing shadows, stumbling blindly into the hallway. It's only once she's there, frozen still in the dark with the rain thumping hollowly through the hall, that she considers what she's trying to accomplish. It's just a nightmare. It's just a storm. She should go back to bed.
Her feet carry her another direction entirely. The tatters of the nightmare still cling to her, and she hurries through the darkened rooms with the snarl of thunder at her heels. The wooden steps fly beneath her bare feet and she soon finds herself standing in the doorway to the attic room, the creaking of the door unheard beneath the fury of the storm.
The twins are in their beds, somehow still asleep. Lightning strobes through the triangular window, casting a bright shape on the floor that is unsettlingly familiar. Dipper is where he should be, but Pacifica can't see him clearly. She can't touch his skin to check for warmth; she can't see his chest rise and fall. She needs him to sit up, look at her, say something. She needs to see his unmarred neck.
Still, she hesitates. She's not supposed to do this. She's not supposed to be here. Stan and Ford are exceptionally permissive compared to the twins' parents, but even with them it is tacitly understood that Dipper and Pacifica shouldn't be together after bedtime. Bending the rules is one thing—they do that all the time. This is outright breaking them.
With the nightmare's inky tendrils still draped around her brain, she finds she doesn't care.
She walks across the room as a fork of lightning bisects the seething horizon and rocks with house with its cannonade. She is a heroine in a horror movie, approaching a still form on a dark and stormy night. This is stupid, utterly ridiculous. She might still be dreaming. She's going to wake up again and feel like an idiot.
Another lightning strike, this one close enough to make the glass in the window flex and ring. The hair on her arms stands up.
She thinks, This is real.
She reaches Dipper's bed. He's turned towards the wall and his face is hidden in shadow. This should be enough—she can see him, he's here; he's fine. But it's not.
She does it quickly, like she's afraid something will happen if she hesitates; she reaches out and puts her palm on his arm.
He immediately rolls over and blinks at her. "Pacifica?"
Her heart nearly stops. She involuntarily takes a rapid step back; just as quickly, anger replaces fear.
"Oh my gosh!" she hisses, smacking him on the shoulder. "You scared the crud out of me!"
"Hey!" Dipper holds up his hands defensively as he sits up. "I scared you? What are you doing sneaking up on me? What time is it?"
Pacifica exhales harshly, one hand pressed to her startled heart. "I don't know. I… never mind." She turns around and falls into the space between his knees, lying sideways against his chest and wrapping her arms around his middle. "Just shut up for a second."
It's obvious something is wrong, and even Dipper can tell. "Okay… But, did something happen, or—"
"No." Pacifica doesn't want to put it into words and reveal just how dumb it all is.
Dipper's tone of voice is aptly skeptical. "Right, you just wanted your usual post-midnight hug." As soon as he finishes his sentence, a tremendous crack of thunder splits the air and reverberates through the valley. "…Well," he says more soberly, "I guess you weren't sleeping anyway."
"I shouldn't be here," she says, making no attempt to leave.
"Definitely not," he says, making no motion to remove her.
It's enough to just sit there and feel him breathe. Pacifica starts coming down from the plateaus of terror. She presses her cheek to the heat of his shoulder and listens to the storm which now seems more distant from inside the safety of his embrace.
"Sooooo, you guys aren't kissing," Mabel suddenly says, startling Pacifica yet again. "I don't have to keep pretending to be asleep, right?"
Dipper hugs Pacifica tighter to himself and scoots backwards until they are propped up against the wall. "Alright, Mabel," he says like he's been expecting this.
Mabel springs from her bed in a flurry of sheets and flops onto Dipper's. "I don't like storms either," she tells Pacifica. "Dipper does, 'cause he's weird."
"They're cool," Dipper says defensively.
Pacifica usually likes them—just not tonight. In the circle of Dipper's arms, with the steady pulse of his heartbeat at her back and Mabel's friendly presence nearby, the truth isn't quite as embarrassing.
"I had a nightmare," Pacifica admits. "It's dumb, I know. It just seemed so real."
"About the storm?" Dipper asks.
"About that stupid Boss-Lobster. I can't believe we saw that thing again."
"I had a nightmare about the Boss-Lobster one time," Mabel says. "She was helping me knit a shell cozy and then she tried to eat me, like a jerk."
"You think the Boss-Lobster is a she?" Dipper says curiously.
Mabel shrugs and makes a 'don't know' sound.
Pacifica plucks a loose thread from Dipper's sleeve, glad she doesn't have to meet his eyes. "Anyway, it's not a big deal," she claims.
Mabel sighs loudly and rolls over, tilting her head back and looking at Pacifica upside down.
"What?" Pacifica snaps.
"Pacifica, if it wasn't a big deal then you wouldn't be here," Dipper points out.
She has the urge to tug out of his grasp and go back to her own room in a fit of petulance; it quickly passes. She's still not good at this, but she is going to keep trying.
"I was… scared," she says haltingly. "I just wanted to see you." She falls silent, attempting to find the words to explain. "I don't know why I freaked out. I like storms too, usually, but… it was different this time."
"I've had a few like that," Dipper says with quiet understanding. "They stick with you, even after you wake up."
"Nightmares are a sucky bunch of poop," Mabel opines with equal sympathy.
Pacifica is glad the darkness hides the grateful hint of tears in the corners of her eyes. Sometimes it just hits her, in the deepest way, how amazing it is to have this kind of support, and how desolate her life had been without it.
The three of them huddle together as the storm lashes the Shack. Sometimes they talk, but mostly they share a tired, companionable silence in their tripartite refuge. In time, the storm begins to ebb. The thunder dims into a distant percussion drumming somewhere out past the cliffs of the valley; the night is given back to the darkness and the driving patter of the rain.
Mabel returns to her own bed, and Pacifica should do the same. But Dipper has already fallen asleep, slowly tipping over until he is breathing softly against his pillow, Pacifica still tangled up in his coltish limbs (it's crazy how much he's grown in the time she's known him). She should extract herself and make the trip to bed, but he is so warm against her back and she is so worn-out. The rain against the attic roof is as potent as any soporific, and even as she commits to going downstairs, one blink lingers; then a second—then she drifts away.
Stories to Weather and Storms to Tell by Ornaments (Heads Up, 2015)