you must be this tall
(celebrate)
As the midweek arrives, Gravity Falls at last begins to move again, freed from the rain and the impassable streets in town. Salvageable car tires are being patched and any that can't are awaiting the first shipment of replacements, said to be parked just past the cliff trestle in anticipation of the highway's clearing (at least according to Mabel, who heard it from Wendy, who heard it from Tambry, who heard it from her uncle, who works for the county). There's a sense of incipient freedom as the valley waits for the moment when the road is at last clear.
It's good that things are finally happening, because Pacifica knows that the resources of the small town are starting to strain. Yesterday saw the gradual waning of the good will that's kept everything so civil. It's hard to be polite when it's Wednesday afternoon and you've been sleeping in your car since Saturday. The public pool and the local schools have opened their showers to the public, but there's a lot of people who don't have an RV or a hotel room, and it can't be much fun to wait in line for a five-minute scrub in a middle school locker room (Pacifica cringes at the thought of it). The last time she saw it, the laundromat had a line around the block.
She's glad to have her own room with her own bathroom in her own Shack, and all these tourists need to leave before someone asks her to share.
She checks her watch: It's almost eight in the evening. The day has been mostly spent at the Shack, dealing with the remnants of the tourist surge, the latecomers and repeat visitors. She is now released from her shift at the register and is sitting on a bench across the street from the ice cream shop, watching as the western sky blooms turquoise and tangerine. She doesn't know how many times she's seen the valley turn to twilight without actually seeing it, without appreciating the painterly quality of the sinking sun and its last, brilliant burst of color. A light breeze brushes her face as she looks into the dimming sky, its cobalt canvas slowly shifting into night, the first stars deep set in velvet blue. There is beauty here beyond fine dresses and pageant crowns. She understood nature as a backdrop, or at most an obstacle; she has since moved through it enough to know it is too complex to be so easily reduced. The aesthetic qualities of this place have meaning for her. The valley has become textured in her mind—not just as a source of attention or money, but a space with width and depth: cliffs and forests, lakes and streams, streets and houses.
She once thought that Gravity Falls was hers, a fiefdom for a princess, but it wasn't. Now, it is: Not because she owns it, but because it is a part of her. Because she belongs here.
And that is worth much more, as it turns out.
Yet there is a darkness in the east that stretches across the sky's vast dome to push the light below the horizon, same as the shadow which spills across her mind. Every day that goes by makes Pacifica more keenly aware of August's end as it crawls inexorably closer, a spreading blot on her tomorrows.
But what she told Dipper on the hill—she meant it. And she's so tired of dreading the future that it's become almost like an obligation, like something she has to do before she can move her mind on to more important things, a tedious mental chore. She doesn't know if things will work out, and she can't seem to make herself believe the way Mabel is able to, but does that mean she has to obsess over it?
It sounds crazy dramatic even in her own mind, but you know what? Maybe she'd rather die than be afraid to live. She never felt things the way she's felt them this last year, never loved like she's loved, never hurt like she's hurt, never been so happy, so devastated, so content. Isn't that worth it? Isn't this so much better? Could she have even understood the joy if she hadn't first felt the sorrow?
She takes a deep breath; the air is chilled by the evening shade. Tonight is going to be fun. Whatever else happens will happen, but tonight… tonight is hers. The breeze is cool against her skin, tugging at her hair and skirt, and this moment is the only one that matters, because she chooses to live in it.
Her attention is pulled from her musings when Mabel reappears, hopping over the back of the bench to sit next to her.
"Almost!" Mabel says, her eyes bright with anticipation. "Wanna get more ice cream?"
Pacifica slips her hand into the pocket of her shorts, using her fingers to judge how much cash is left in her coin purse. It's feeling pretty slim; after months of minor expenses, the money she got from her mother at the beginning of vacation is just about spent. Shouldn't Stan be paying her for all the time spent at the cash register? She's worked a bunch of hours… maybe even twenty. Surely that should cover whatever she's eaten over the summer so far and have some to spare. How much can a box of cereal cost? Like, a dollar?
She pulls out her receipt from the ice cream shop and uncrinkles it. Her eyes widen when she sees that her fudge sundae was six dollars. She doesn't even know how much her mother gave her to begin with.
Maybe she should start paying attention to how much things cost…
"I don't want more ice cream," she tells Mabel, stuffing the receipt back in her pocket.
"Smart," Mabel says with a sly nod. "Gotta save room for corndogs."
"Are there corndogs?"
"They have to have corndogs—it's the law."
Pacifica ignores this because she thinks Mabel is joking but isn't completely certain. "Maybe they'll be done by the time we get there," she suggests, and the girls get to their feet and start to walk.
It's obvious that as mild as the air of tension in the valley is now, it's only going to get worse as the roads are cleared and tires are replaced, both things happening much more slowly than anyone would like. So, in lieu of an immediate solution, Gravity Falls is offering its inadvertent guests the next best thing: a grand distraction.
Hence the fair now sprawled across the town square.
It's taken all of yesterday and most of today to set up. The fair is apparently Stan's big idea, the thing he's been trying to pull together and sell the town on. It turns out that some of the rides and stalls that Stan rented for his Mystery Fair are owned by the city, which uses them for the annual Snow Festival and other local events (Pioneer Day's aesthetic is too rustic for such modern amusements). The rest have been relocated from the festival, as it was much easier to clear the town square of deactivated origami-hawks than the festival grounds. Since a fair combines an additional diversion for cranky tourists with the potential for profit, Pacifica doesn't know if Stan had to try all that hard to get the town on board. Most of the negotiations were probably about the revenue split.
The fair is about a block and a half of outdoor amusements, starting in front of the steps to the old church, filling the square around the central statue, and continuing for a bit down Main Street. There's no Ferris wheel—Stan must have rented that from somewhere else—but there is a spinning-arms-thing, a big slide, an upside-down twirling cages thing, and a round room that spins. Mabel knows the real names for all these rides, but Pacifica can't keep track. It's not like her parents ever took her to fairs and festivals to hobnob with the lower classes. The closest she ever got was the pageant stage or Pioneer Day. She only went to the Mystery Fair last year because by that point in June she had developed what was, in hindsight, a deeply embarrassing fixation on showing Mabel up (and she's been told by the twins that she won Waddles at the pig booth in an alternate timeline, but no matter how many times she hears that story she cannot conceive of any series of events that would make her try and win a muddy pig).
Which just serves to make her resent her parents even more, because this summer she's discovered that she really likes going to the fair.
Just as her appreciation of the valley has irrevocably shifted with her perspective, so too has her view of what her parents would call 'low-class entertainment.' Rides are fun—games and funnel cakes and oversized stuffed animals are fun. Walking through town on a cool summer evening, wearing a nice outfit to be seen in, meeting her boyfriend at the fair where they can spend the night together amid the lights… there's so much more to all of this than whatever vague idea of lowbrow hijinks her parents have.
A snickering group of teens runs by, heading away from the square. Pacifica and Mabel find out why a second later when they see the sign marking the edge of the fair, which now reads 'GRAVITY FALLS FUN FART.'
Okay, but it's not all lowbrow hijinks and pig stalls.
"Nothing like a night at the fun fart!" Mabel says with a big, sparkly grin.
Their timing is impeccable: Just as they approach, the makeshift gate (nothing but a board across a couple crates) is being lifted to allow the first customers in. Since the event is a short-notice, slapdash affair as much about keeping people placated as making money, there are no tickets, and everything is cash only.
As the line that's formed was only waiting for the gate to open, it quickly disperses. Pacifica halts near a lemonade concession and looks around the square for Dipper and Ford. The two brainiacs have moved their sideshow trick-slash-data collecting scheme to the fun fair to gather even more information. But she doesn't know where they are; when they left the Shack, they didn't know where they were going to put Project Mentem, yet another detail up in the air as the town rushed to put the fair together.
This puts Pacifica in a difficult position. On one hand, she recognizes the deeply compelling mystery of what keeps Gravity Falls secret, a question that only grows in urgency with every passing day. Can the valley hide itself after the origami-hawks? Is life here about to change forever? She would have thought the question wouldn't matter to her, not after losing the mansion, but here she is anyway, summering in the valley again. Maybe this stuff is a part of her in the same way it's a part of Dipper and Mabel… and maybe she shouldn't be thinking 'maybe.' She's past this, isn't she? She knows she's tied up in all this Weirdness. Sometimes she thinks that she always was. So, yeah, she wants that data to get collected.
On the other hand, she really wants Dipper to spend the night at the fair with her, and he can't do that behind a console.
As the fair fills with its first swarm of customers, the sounds of it begin to permeate the air: bursts of laughter and music, the whirring and clanking of rides, the constant swell of a hundred simultaneous conversations. As she walks with Mabel, Pacifica makes mental notes of the things she wants to do. Every stand and stall offers a delicious diversion; every ride is inviting and bright.
They eventually find Ford and Dipper set up on a plot of grass adjacent to the museum. Their hastily erected amusement is a slapdash affair with traffic cones establishing the line and a large sign for the Mystery Shack propped up against a rumbling generator; they must have taken the sign from somewhere on the property because it still has a lot of old pine needles stuck to it. With the sun setting and the museum directly adjacent, there's more than enough shadow to cast Mentem's green lines against the white stone of the museum's side wall.
"Sorry for the noise," Ford yells over the generator when he spots the girls. "We're supposed to get a line from the city, but I fear they may have forgotten about us. Dipper, try that window. See if we can't get an extension cord into the museum."
Pacifica goes with Dipper to the side of the museum and helps him push open a narrow window, which in true small-town fashion is unlocked. Dipper pokes his head in; Pacifica can't see much, but it looks like it goes to the museum's basement.
"I wonder if all those memories are still hidden down here," Dipper says, turning around to get a leg through the slot window. "I guess they'd have to be, right? I don't think anyone else knows they're here anymore."
"Memories?" Pacifica says, not sure what he's talking about.
"All the recordings the Blind Eye made before they zapped people."
Dipper slides backwards through the window, pausing awkwardly at the bottom with his arms raised when his shirt hooks on the latch. Pacifica frees his shirt, and he begins searching the room for an outlet, poking amid the stacked boxes of what looks like a storage space.
He continues, "Great-Uncle Ford's talked about giving the memories back to people but he's not sure of the best way to do it. We don't have any more memory guns and there's just the one reader here. I don't know… Maybe people won't want the memories back. Do you want yours?"
There was a time when she might have said no. But that time is long gone. "Obviously. I can't believe they zapped my brain like that, it's so gross. Like, what a creepy thing to do."
"Yeah, it's pretty messed up," Dipper agrees. "Well, maybe we can come back soon and see if we can find yours."
He finds an outlet along one of the walls and Pacifica passes the extension cord through the window. He hauls himself out a moment later, tugging at his shirt to knock the dirt and dust off it. She assists with his back, not wanting to tour the fair with her boyfriend looking like a dirty drifter.
Speaking of touring the fair: "When are you going to be done?" she asks.
He glances guiltily at his watch. "Um… soon?"
She crosses her arms. "So, never."
"No, I… I just need to make sure everything is all set. Great-Uncle Ford won't mind if I leave for a little while. We'll have time to do stuff, I promise."
Feeling a little more optimistic since he's at least trying to get away, she settles in to wait. As the sky gets darker, the fair becomes brighter—it's coming to life, filling with people and noise. Curious passersby stop to see what the projector is for, some of them pointing to Project Mentem in recognition. Ford and Dipper flit around the console as they put it all together. Mabel leaves for a moment and comes back with mustard on her chin. The air gentles with the soft chill of oncoming night, and every passing minute the lights glow a little more, bright spots blooming throughout a teeming garden.
Ford and Dipper soon have their machine in good working order. "Good!" Ford says as he tries it out, a series of mathematical proofs blinking across the museum's wall. "Dipper, set the program to filter any identical scans from repeat customers. That should save some space."
"But… we still have almost a terabyte of drive space," Dipper points out. "The scan files are only a few megs each."
"Right! Of course." Ford appears embarrassed. "Old habits. Put the folder with the release forms on top of the console and I believe we're ready for business!"
Dipper glances in Pacifica's direction, then says, "Do you think I'll get a chance to see the fair? I know you could use the help, but if things are going well, then—"
"Don't worry, I knew you'd want to get out there. I certainly would have, when I was your age; I have fond memories of the carnival on the boardwalk," Ford says, pausing his typing for a moment to reminisce. "Stick around for the first few scans, just to make sure everything is in good order, and then you can enjoy yourself."
Despite the fact the line entrance is blocked by cones, a few people have been waiting there for Mentem to open. At least a couple of them experienced the project already and have been explaining it to the others, which should help to hurry things along. Too bad the repeat visitors are useless data. But the line quickly begins to fill so it shouldn't be too much longer. Dipper removes the cones, and the first customers move forward.
Mabel puts on the cap and shows off for the tourists, making the projection light up with 'GRAVITY FALLS 4EVA!' She probably wanted to flex her image-projecting skills, but like Ford said, it's better that the tourists don't know it's possible to make pictures—things are slow enough as it is. When she finishes her demonstration, the customers begin to try their hand at assembling basic sentences, assisted by Ford's advice. The success rate is surprisingly high, even if the results aren't exactly mind-blowing. Pacifica thinks that Mentem was more interesting in the original incarnation that she's heard about, the version that could read subconscious thoughts; she understands that isn't fit for public consumption, though.
The line moves but grows continually at the other end, and thus never gets any shorter. Pacifica soon tires of the green messages Mentem is producing and turns her attention to the wider fair. Evening has left and the valley glows beneath the cloak of night, the fair a cluster of earthbound stars to mirror the sky. There's a ride set up between the center of the square and the church, the one where it's just a big circle that spins around—she really needs to learn the names of these things—and its whirring can't entirely mask the elated screams emanating from within. She decides that's the first thing she and Dipper are going to do.
With things working smoothly, Dipper turns to Ford as another fairgoer slowly ekes out a few letters. "So, is it okay if I head out?"
"Absolutely, and don't come back until you've had your fill of cotton candy!" Ford declares. He then pauses. "But try to exercise some restraint. Remind me to tell you about the cotton candy incident of '61… vomit that colorful sticks in one's memory. It certainly stuck to that poor woman's dress. And her husband. And son. …And dog. I wonder if Stanley still can't tolerate the stuff?"
"You tell me about that, and I'll tell you about Smile Dip," Dipper promises.
"You're a smile dip!" Mabel yells from the other side of the line.
"You're both making even less sense than usual," Pacifica notes as Dipper comes around the line towards her.
"Nope, those were all totally normal things to say," Dipper says cheerfully. "What do you want to do first?"
The big spinning thing awaits. Mabel joins them and they walk around to the entrance, and she can now see that it's called 'UFO ABDUCTION,' complete with bad space noises coming from a very fuzzy speaker. The cheesy theme doesn't matter, that's just dumb fairground trappings; what matters is getting inside and spinning around.
"The Gravitron?" Mabel says, sounding a bit surprised. "Ah, the choice of a discerning fairgoer!"
"And Pacifica is very discerning," Dipper laughs.
"I always like the best things," she retorts with an arrogant tilt of her chin.
Mabel grins. "Like us!"
Pacifica won't say yes, but she also won't say no, and she hopes that conveys even a sliver of what she feels.
The fair is much more crowded than it was half an hour ago. Getting into any ride is going to involve a considerable wait—unless, of course, you know the right people. And Pacifica knows all the right people.
His experience managing the Mystery Fair has put Soos in high demand, and at the moment he's filling in as the UFO ride's operator. He waves when he sees the three of them approach, picking up a segment of the metal fence to make a gap for them.
"Ultimate cuts!" he says, high-fiving Dipper and Mabel. "Time to take this thing for a spin, dudes."
"Literally!" Mabel says, sharing another extra-hard high five with him.
Soos chortles heartily as he lets them pass. "Man, Mabel: you are always on!"
They follow Soos to the entrance, clambering into the machine ahead of the extensive line and no doubt drawing many looks of envy. The space inside is a circular room with places along the wall for each person to stand against, separated only by slight rises. Pacifica grabs Dipper's hand to ensure that there won't be anyone between them, picking a spot along the far wall and slotting herself into it. The fact that there's no harness or any visible safety measures at all is a little worrying, but no one else seems concerned. Soos takes a spot right in the middle of the room, seating himself within an operator's booth where he can observe the whole wheel. The other riders file into the craft, quickly filling the rest of the slots.
Pacifica grips Dipper's hand more tightly. She knows that the ride is going to spin, obviously, but she doesn't know what that means, what's going to happen. On the other side of her, Mabel wiggles around until she's perfectly centered in her slot, so Pacifica does the same. Soos gives them a thumbs up from the operator chair, and the ride begins to whir. Or, at least, it makes whirring noises. She feels the sensation of motion but the room itself appears still, despite the growing cacophony and flashing lights.
"Here we go, dudes!" Soos says into a microphone, his voice booming in the confined space. "Uh, there's supposed to be music, but I don't know how to turn it on, so here's a little something for your ride: doo doo-doo doo doo, doo, doo doo-doo doo doo, hey! Dah dah-dah dah dah—"
A sensation like a weighted blanket presses down on Pacifica, pushing her into the wall slot, growing as the whirring increases its frequency. The pressure grows until suddenly she tips further back and slides upwards in defiance of gravity, her feet leaving the floor like she's learned to levitate! She is pinned in place by nothing but physics and finds herself exhilarated, letting out some delighted shrieks in time with Mabel, the sounds joining the cacophony of other riders.
Still holding Dipper's hand tight, she leans over and shouts towards his ear: "How hard are you nerding out right now?"
He looks back at her, his eyes glittering with excitement. "Centrifugal force! It's a pseudo-force only experienced in a rotating reference frame!"
"It feels a lot more exciting than that sounds!" she yells back.
"For sure!"
"I AM ALSO YELLING!" Mabel yells.
Gradually, the ride winds down. The slot that Pacifica is squished against slides back down the wall and her feet meet the floor again. The room looks exactly the same, her perspective never changing; she can only imagine what it might have looked like from outside, if people could see in. How fast were they spinning? Maybe it's better not to know. All the rides are rickety enough that ignorance is probably bliss. She feels a little strange, but not dizzy. They wave to Soos as they exit and walk out, the metal ramp rattling loudly beneath their feet. The lights and bustle greet them once more, the night air cool and full of promise.
Veins running hot with adrenaline, Pacifica is ready to throw herself into the next ride. There aren't that many choices; all the major rides are contained on the central square, which isn't that much real estate. Naturally, she focuses on the most extreme-looking one.
"That one!" she says, pointing towards a crazy contraption from which many squeals are emanating. It's a big, rotating arm upon which are mounted a bunch of cages that flip freely as the arm turns.
"Ooo, the Zipper!" Mabel says. "Someone's feeling spicy!"
Dipper looks strangely nervous. "Uh, maybe you should ride with Mabel…" he says to Pacifica.
Pacifica looks at him askance. "Seriously, you're scared? You jumped off a water tower onto a flying robot. There's no way you're scared of this thing."
"Well, you said if I ever threw up on you, you'd break up with me, so…"
Pacifica takes his hand, holding it tightly in case he's thinking about making a run for it. "Then it's a good thing we haven't eaten yet."
This time Soos isn't there to get them in right away, but there's a lot of seats on the ride and the line moves quickly. It probably doesn't hurt that a lot of fairgoers don't seem interested in riding it. Pacifica doesn't care if it looks a little scary—she's feeling wide awake and reckless in a way that goes hand in hand with the brightness of the night, with her mind shutting out the future. She's going to feel everything, all of it, and if that means throwing up somewhere along the way, then that's how it is. Not that she's going to throw up. Dipper's just being paranoid, it can't be that bad.
As soon as the ride finishes slowly rotating to load passengers and begins to actually spin, Pacifica realizes she may have been slightly overconfident.
This isn't like the Gravitron—she can see the world spinning around her through the slots of her twirling cage as the motion of the central arm swings her horizontal, the ground and the sky trading places in an instant. She squeezes Dipper's hand so hard that it has to be hurting him, but he doesn't seem to mind, his face a mask of grim determination as he grips the safety bar for dear life with his free hand. Back, and forth, and then, finally, all the way around, just like she's been bracing herself for. Her stomach hits the bottom of her throat and then immediately reverses course to sink deep towards her knees. It's terrifying, and exhilarating, and incredible, and oh god Dipper was right, she's going to be sick—
As the ride ends, she concentrates on breathing as the arm rotates and they descend. When at last they are freed from their stifling cage they stumble out together and without trading a single word make a beeline for the same stretch of grass just beyond the perimeter of the fair, on the side of the slight hill where the church is perched.
Pacifica slumps to the ground, waiting desperately for the world to stop spinning. All the lights in front of her seem to slowly swim in the air, even though she knows most of them aren't moving.
Next to her, Dipper reclines to lie on his back. "Here, lay down like this and put both your palms on the grass," he advises.
"There you are!" Mabel approaches them on unsteady legs. "Woo, what a rush! I guess I'm ready to be an astronaut now, ha ha ha! You guys want funnel cake?"
Pacifica's stomach lurches. "No!" she snaps.
Mabel takes a closer look at her. "Oh, you're all loopy like Dipper. Okay, you rest up and I'll find the next best ride!"
As Mabel disappears back into the bustle of the fair, Pacifica takes Dipper's advice and nestles into the cool grass, staring up into the dark dome of the sky. She presses both her hands into the earth and is shocked at how immediately this offers some relief. The sensation of spinning is partly quelled by the unquestionable presence of unmoving earth. Slowly, she comes back to stillness, aided by the chill of the grass and the breeze as it soothes her heated skin.
She sits back up, no longer in danger of critical nausea; but it only takes a glance to assess that Dipper is not yet over his motion sickness. He's got his eyes closed and his palms are pushing hard against the grass, his forehead beaded with sweat.
Well, she knows an opportunity when she sees one. As Stan is fond of saying, 'when there's no cops around, anything's legal.'
She scoots over to be closer and fits herself against him, placing her head against his chest and draping one arm over his midsection. "I'll keep things steady," she murmurs against his shirt.
He huffs out a breath of amusement and tilts his head to the side, so his nose is in her hair. "Wow, I feel better already."
"You'll be fine in seconds with this hotness next to you," she tells him.
He suddenly rolls over to face her. His free arm descends over her waist, his eyes inches from her own. "You did it, Pacifica. You cured motion sickness forever."
All at once she is hyper-aware of how near his lips are to hers, and how much of her is pressed against him. She wants to say something appropriately sarcastic back to him but now there doesn't seem to be enough air to say anything. And like it always does, this tension between them stretches until it feels impossible that it won't snap, that something will finally give, and they'll…
She doesn't know. Which makes the possible relief of that breaking moment also tempered by the fear of it, by the unknowns, by the giving in to that something she doesn't understand yet… sort of. She's not stupid—she knows where babies come from and what the older teens get up to. She has a TV and a lot of books. But it's all stuff that feels far away; or maybe just high up, waiting for her to grow enough to reach it (or decide to jump).
Besides, making out in public is just ew.
So she clings to him and presses her face to the crook of his broadening shoulder, relishing every point of contact, how their budding geometry fits together as if they were made for this. She feels secure in the circle of his arms, flush with the electricity that arcs between their bodies, at once exciting and yet so safe. Has he gotten taller just in the time since they were at Log Land? She could stay like this forever; she can only breathe when she feels him breathe.
"I do feel better now," Dipper says into her hair.
Pacifica giggles into his shoulder. "I bet. If that hand was just a little lower, you'd be feeling much better."
Dipper's hand immediately shoots up from her lower back to just below her neck. "Uh, sorry."
"I didn't say move it."
"Hey, you lazy grass people!" Mabel's voice rings out from the edge of the fair. "Come join the rest of us, we've got food on a stick!"
Dipper rolls over with a sigh. "Okay, okay. But I am never riding that last ride again."
In the absence of his warmth, the air abruptly feels too chilly. Pacifica sits up and suppresses a shiver, wanting to be moving again. "What's next?" she asks.
"I thought you were picking the rides," Dipper says.
"I got it," Mabel assures them. "Follow meeeeeeee—"
She leads them to the other half of the fair, past stalls and tents and attractions strobing in the busy night. Pacifica is a little confused when she takes them off the street and through a cordon of pine trees, but there, in a small vacant lot between the bakery and the hardware store, are a bevy of brightly colored bumper cars. Three of the cars are currently occupied by Wendy, Nate, and Lee, the teens savagely crashing into each other with plenty of yelling to go along with the collision noise. There's currently no line, no doubt due to the trees partially hiding the ride (there's only so much real estate downtown). The operator has her head buried in a book, not even trying to get the teens to calm down.
"Absolutely not," Pacifica says.
"Aww, come on!" Mabel cajoles. "You get to crash into people, when else can you do that?"
"No."
Mabel arches an eyebrow. "You can ride side-by-side with Dipper…"
Pacifica hesitates.
The ride comes to an end and the cars slide to a stop, cut off from power. In lieu of any waiting customers, the operator blindly reaches out to start the ride again, but Wendy stops her.
"Yo, hold on!" Wendy shouts. She stands up in her car and waves to Pacifica and the twins. "Eyyy, get in on this!"
"Where's everybody else?" Dipper asks as he approaches the gate.
"Thompson wanted a corndog, and Robbie and Tambry bailed to make out or whatever. But who cares! Check it: All these cars share the same circuit, right? The fewer you have running, the harder they hit! It's brutal with just three," Wendy explains with glee.
"I can't feel my neck," Nate says with a somewhat unsteady thumbs up. (A few feet away, Lee laughs like that's the funniest thing in the world.)
Pacifica's temptation comes to a swift end. "I'm not going in there," she states.
Dipper scoffs lightly. "You jumped onto the back of a Boss-Lobster and torched its eyeball. There's no way you're scared of this thing."
Pacifica does not appreciate having her words thrown back at her. "If I drive one of these dumb cars, I will totally cream you."
Dipper merely shrugs. "Prove it."
Oh, he's in for it. She hops into a sky-blue bumper car ready to do battle. The attendant—who still hasn't looked up from her book—slaps the button, and the cars lurch to life.
Pacifica has never driven a bumper car before but it's not too different from the Mystery Cart. There's a wheel, and a pedal that makes it go. When her car is struck a glancing blow by a grinning Mabel a few seconds into the game, she's surprised by the power of it. How can this possibly be safe? Wendy said it's worse when there's less people but still…
A moment later, she suffers a head on collision with Wendy that nearly sends her nose smacking into her steering wheel. Wendy immediately yanks her wheel to one side and spins away; Pacifica sits there for a second, feeling a little stunned. Everyone else is crazy if they think this is fun, it hurts! Having never ridden before, she doesn't realize that as an unmoving car, she is a prime target. She gets t-boned by what feels like a freight train and before she can even understand what's happening, she finds herself trapped in a corner of the arena as a cackling Wendy boxes her in, slamming into the side of her craft.
She's already had enough. "Stop!" she demands.
The shrill pitch of her voice must be enough to cause concern, because Wendy comes to a halt and waves off the other players. "Whoa, are you okay?" the older teen shouts to her.
"I'm done, I want off."
"Okay, wait-wait-wait," Wendy tells her with an apologetic look. "Is this your first ride? That was too much, my bad. Look, let's at least team up and wreck Dipper before you quit, huh?"
That does sound like fun… Against her better judgement, Pacifica decides to hold out until she gets in a hit or two of her own. "Fine."
"Yeah, let's toast that dude!"
Nate and Lee are off in their own corner of the arena, doing their best to give each other whiplash, which leaves Dipper and Mabel squaring off on the other side. Dipper's back is to them, and when Mabel spots the other two girls approaching in tandem her face lights up with a wicked grin. She disengages, zooming around Dipper and leading him towards the corner as he follows. This exposes his right flank exactly as Wendy and Pacifica arrive at full speed.
Dipper has about half a second to realize what's about to happen—Pacifica gets brief, hilarious look at his panicked expression before impact. The girls crash into him, sending him flopping against the side of his car and driving him into the corner with enough velocity to subsequently smack him against the other side of his car. He abandons his steering wheel and braces himself as Mabel comes back around to make his defeat total.
"Hey, not fair!" Dipper yells, using his arms and legs to push against the inside of his car.
Before too long, Nate and Lee notice Dipper's predicament and skate to the rescue, breaking up the blockade. A short boy-vs-girl war ensues before it inevitably turns back into a free-for-all. Dipper gets his revenge on Pacifica a few moments after, rearending her car hard enough to make her head bounce off the back of her seat, which hurts despite the padding.
As much as she enjoyed going on the attack, she's not disappointed when the cars lose power and slide to a halt. Dipper and Mabel follow her out of the arena, leaving Wendy, Nate, and Lee to continue their well-cushioned war.
Dipper and Mabel are arguing over the validity of mid-game team-ups.
"You can't just make a team like that, it's not fair," Dipper argues.
Mabel pokes him in the side, making him recoil. "You're just mad 'cause you got smushed."
"It's immoral!"
Pacifica is feeling a little discombobulated after enduring so many hits, cushioned or not, and when she spies a bench at the edge of the fair it looks like a good place to take a moment. Without informing the twins, she heads over to it and sits in the middle, taking a deep breath of the pleasant night air.
Dipper sits down to her right. "Yeah, I could sit," he says, rubbing at his neck and wincing.
Mabel plops down to Pacifica's left, slouching until her head rests on the back of the bench, eyes looking up at the sky. "Maybe we should always take a break between rides. You know, to keep from dying."
"Right. We don't want to do that," Dipper agrees.
Mabel is close enough to Pacifica's side that she can feel the slight warmth from the other girl, insulating her against the chill settling over the valley. It's a reminder that as crucial—as necessary; like air, like water—as Dipper is to her, Mabel is no less important. The glittery girl has become part of the bedrock of Pacifica's life, her closest, truest friend, confidante, cheerleader. Even when they leave, even when they are all separated, there are still so many things to hold them together over the distance. It will be harder. But when has something being hard ever stopped them?
The fair swirls before her, flashing, sparkling, a coruscating dance of brilliance below the gloom of night. And Pacifica, she is one of these lights, and though she must soon glow alone, she will never be lonely—and she hasn't left yet. She will shimmer here, and learn to shine, and brightly be happy until the time comes to shoot away and be the last light leaving for the undiscovered.
If she can close her eyes and memorize this feeling, maybe it will carry her.
The bench shakes, bringing Pacifica out of her reverie. Mabel is sitting up straight, appearing recharged.
"Alright, what's next?" she asks.
Pacifica smiles. "Surprise me."
You Must Be This Tall by Michael (GOODblonde, Ghostmeat, 1999)