Twenty more days.

Dipper didn't like cramming. It felt like you were jamming information into your brain so fast you could barely keep up with it. And when it came to actually using that information, it seemed like it disappeared.

But when you only had a few days to finish up studies, you might want to utilize it. So Dipper and his friend Jerome put their heads together on a joint study project which helped them out to excel in their tests.

Dipper had bought some pizza and a few drinks and Jerome brought a few beers. Jerome only laughed when Dipper asked him what he got those for when they needed to focus. Dipper ignored them for the majority of the night, deciding to focus his attention on his studying.

Mabel hadn't texted him all day, unfortunately. Maybe she had something going on today. It didn't stop Dipper from looking periodically at his phone, though. His eyes lingered on it.

She'll text eventually. It's not like she's in trouble or anything.

"So, the end of the semester is coming up," said Jerome when Dipper finally finished up a section he was working on and took a break to relax.

"Yep, it sure is," said Dipper.

"Got anybody waiting back at home?"

Mabel. Dipper coughed. "Yeah, of course."

"No, not family. Anyone … you know?"

Dipper laughed. "No, not at all."

"Ah, damn, that sucks, man."

"It's okay."

It didn't help him when his heart started to race at the thought of having someone like that. It didn't help that he knew who he wished was that person. Didn't matter.

Dipper's phone went off in the corner. Jerome walked over to it and looked at the picture on Dipper's wallpaper. "This ain't your girl?"

Dipper felt a sharp pain resonate throughout his entire body. Nope, nope, nope, she is not, not at all, haha, why would you think that? Wouldn't be the first time someone has mistaken you guys, said a little voice in the back of his head. He told it to shut up.

"She's my sister," Dipper said.

Jerome stared at him for a second then started to laugh. "Bro, you are so busted," he said.

Dipper felt like he was going to start sweating. "Huh?"

"You're lying, bro, you're trynna cover your ass right now," he said. "If she ain't, then why you have her as your wallpaper?"

Dipper just looked at him, his face motionless, and he shrugged in an I-don't-know sort of way. When in fact he did know. He just didn't want to tell anybody, much less Jerome.

"If she is your sister, give her a good word about me, man," Jerome said. He looked closer at the phone. "She's got a great body."

That comment made him feel like a kettle being over-boiled. "Give me the phone, dude," said Dipper.

They finished up the session shortly after that. Dipper didn't want to tell Jerome it was because of his intrusive questions. He quickly ushered Jerome out of the room while he was still chattering on about Mabel and saying things like, "Does she have a boyfriend?" He told him no, she doesn't; she didn't have the best track record when it came to having what Dipper considered "good tier" boyfriends. Jerome insisted on saying he was of that caliber, but Dipper pushed him outside his dorm before he could go any further.

Thinking about what Jerome had said earlier, Dipper admitted that he liked having Mabel as his wallpaper. It was just a cool, funny "haha" he could look at with fondness. Like all the other pictures and videos of the two of them together, her giggling and him snapping photos. Her collection – the library, as Dipper loved to dub it – of scrapbooks at home probably had thousands of different images of her, Waddles, Dipper, Grenda, Candy, Grunkle Stanley and Stanford, and so many more Dipper could barely keep count of. He remembered fondly going over to the Walgreens to print off her pictures she took on her super old Kodak camera. She would greet the employees there like they were old friends of hers, especially Larry, an older guy who always gave her a big discount. "Larry's a boss," she always said. "An absolute G." He would urge her to be careful when taking pictures of phenomena they'd seen at Gravity Falls during the summer. That could be problematic.

Dipper looked at his wallpaper again, the beach glowing on his face with a primary yellow aura. There was nothing wrong with having her on his phone like that. She had him on her wallpaper, too. They were twins, after all. They had to match. If someone thought they were together, oh well, they weren't, so it wasn't an issue. But the question was still there.

Dipper didn't want to answer that question.

After Jerome left, he flipped open his laptop and watched a portion of a long video about a Paranormal Guys series retrospective, going over all seventeen seasons of the amazing, spectacular, one-of-a-kind paranormal adventures of Fred and Finn trying to find ghosts. Dipper wanted to call in and tell them about the ghosts in Gravity Falls and the influx of paranormal activity over there, but he remembered what Grunkle Stan told him about revealing the world to that place. "It's not safe," he said, "to bring weird to those who think they're normal."

During this viewing, he decided he wanted to get some snacks from the vending machine. He had a few quarters left to his name and he wanted some chocolate to keep him through up until he finished the video. So he went into the hallway and walked all the way down to the vending machine. He fished out his change and started to put it in when he noticed someone come around the corner from the side of his eye. He punched in the numbers for his Snickers bar when the 'someone' came closer and he figured it was the same girl from Tharsis Hall. She flashed him a smile when she saw him.

"Hey, stranger," she said.

"Hey, you," Dipper said.

"Didn't expect to see you again so soon," she said.

"Well, I live here," he said with a small chuckle.

"I still want to make it up to you, you know," she said.

"Hey, it's okay, you don't have to do that."

"No, no, I insist. There's got to be something that you need."

A flash of Jerome's shit-eating grin showed up in his mind and he grimaced. "Actually, I do need a new study buddy. My old one is . . . not the best."

"Then it's a deal, Mister. I never got your name, by the way."

"Dipper."

"Mine is Katy."

"You need something from here?" he asked, pointing to the vending machine.

"Oh yeah, Tharsis may claim that they have the best grub on the West Coast, but they're lying."

"Don't I know it. I can only eat so much of their food before I get sick."

When Dipper stepped away from the vending machine, he couldn't help but notice the sun tattoo on her leg, near her ankle, the drawn-on face smiling at him as he continued to stare. She gathered her candy out of the receptacle (a pack of Share Size Sour Skittles, one of Mabel's favorites) and turned back to him. "How about tomorrow?"

"Sure, that sounds good with me," said Dipper. "What time?"

"That's up to you, buckaroo," she responded.

Dipper thought about it for a second. He had class at 8 A.M. the next morning so –

"How about twelve?" he asked.

"Right on," Katy said, smiling at him with a ten-thousand watt smile. His heart did a weird ba-bump when she did so. Maybe it was something about the way she looked, or maybe it was because he hadn't had someone look at him that way in a long time, but it did something to his chest that made it hard to breathe. "I'll be at Tharsis around then. Just meet me in the lobby."

"Perfect."

"Good luck with your studying, Dipper," she said as she walked away.

He waved after her. "And you, too!"

She passed the corner less than a minute later and Dipper sighed. His chest went back to normal. Maybe he would be in the clear for the rest of the night.

Then he had a feeling he should check his phone. Mabel might have texted or called or something in the time that he had checked it last.

Sure enough, there was a slew of texts and calls which let him know that yeah, something on Mabel's end was really wrong.

Dipper dialed Mabel's number. Her contact was Lady Mabelton. It rang a few times but she didn't answer. He called twice, then she picked up the phone.

"Hello? Mabes?" he asked in a hesitant voice.

On the other side, her voice came in booming. "Dipper, oh my goodness, it's been a day, you should have been here. Waddles got sick! I feel so bad cuz I should have known better than to give him peanut butter, but he's in the pet hospital right now, and I'm here with him, and he's doing okay, but he's not really having the best time, it's very much No Bueno, capital N, capital B. He's in the care unit, they're taking care of him, and I hope he's doing okay, he wasn't really looking well this morning when we got him here, like his face was all swollen and junk."

Dipper smiled as he imagined her pout on the other end.

"It's been all day!" she went on rambling. "Can you believe that? These doctors have got to hurry up so I can get home and give him a shower of forgiveness and love and support and maybe some piggy treats. I want to apologize to him when he gets back out cuz I feel like I could have been a little bit more careful, but before I knew it, he was looking at me real strange, like something was wrong, and I called Mom cuz she's always telling me to call her if anything goes wrong with my pig, so she left work to take us up here and left to go get some snacks so I can get something in my stomach. Now I'm stuck here in this stupid little waiting room that smells like latex and reminds me of all the shots I got went I was a kid."

"We used to have fun in the waiting rooms, though," Dipper said. "I remember that one time we were waiting for your dentist appointment and you were running around trying to play Duck, Duck, Goose with everyone."

A laugh from her side made Dipper's heart melt. "You were the only one who chased me."

Dipper scoffed. "I felt bad cuz everyone else just ignored you and rolled their eyes."

"It's just their fault you were the only one who wanted to be silly and goofy with me, I guess," she said. "I've noticed you're one of the only ones who want to just go with the flow. But I know if you were here with me when Waddles was around, you'd be like, 'Oh, everything's okay, he's fine, you're overreacting, stop freaking out.'"

Mabel trying to do her best "Dipper impression" made him bust out laughing. "You're not wrong, Mabes. You freak out all the time."

"Freak out! As if I freak out."

"Remember the gnomes?"

"They were trying to make me their queen!"

"My point."

"Hey, this is Waddles we are talking about, not some cryptic creature roaming around Gravity Falls. You would be looking up the most obscure stuff in your Journal while Waddles is going through the most excruciating pain in his life."

"All because you triggered his allergies," said Dipper.

Mabel gasped on the other end. "I cannot believe you!"

"I speak the truth, woman!" he said to her.

"You would cuddle Waddles if he was here right now, right, Dipper?"

"Uh, sure," he said.

"Because he's rattled and shaken up because of all these tests they're doing to him."

"Yeah, why not?"

Dipper remembered all the times he was sitting with Waddles, smacking the side of the pig's rotund body, watching with a smile as Mabel scrunched up his face in her hands and made a little silly configuration with his lips and cheeks. He forgot how much he missed home, to be honest.

There was a hesitant pause. "You would cuddle me?"

"Would I –" Dipper coughed. Woah. Huh? What was that? Dipper didn't understand why she would say something like that. She doesn't say stuff like that. Better be honest, really. You got nothing to lose. And if you lose something, oh, well, things have a way of working themselves out.

"I'm just kidding, dummy," she said with a swift laugh. "That was stupid. I'm just so bored and lonely in here. I'm the only one here. The receptionist went to go get something to eat. It's so cold. They don't have any heat going in here. It was stupid."

Dipper took a minute to process what she said. "No, it wasn't stupid, it was – uh, heh – did you, uh, want me to answer?"

"Uh, I mean, is it yes?"

"No – I mean yes –" He cleared his throat. Good thing he was alone in his room right now. He still looked around regardless, as if the ghosts could hear his confessions. "I would love to cuddle, if I'm being honest."

"And you don't find it weird at all?"

"I mean, I would rather you cuddle me than Jake."

"And here you go about Jake again."

"What do you mean?"

"You never liked him."

"He was a creep!"

"He treated me right."

"Mabel, he was manipulative. He had BPD. He wanted things from you."

"You were just jealous."

Was she trying to make him upset? It didn't matter if he was jealous. Jake was an awful person. It didn't matter that Dipper might have had an issue with him from the start because of his "instant chemistry" with Mabel.

"What about you and Candy?"

Dipper cringed. That. Candy was a cool girl. Dipper liked her, he really did. It was just that after their little stint in Gravity Falls, he really didn't like to go back since she would be looking at him with a look that spelled out DREAD with dark-black dripping ink, her face etched with anger, surrounded by that pitch black mane that spread all the way down her shoulders and across her flat chest. He distinctly remembered his pale hands roaming her even paler skin when they were in bed and on the busted couch in the Mystery Shack, and could recall each sensation which resonated through his hands with every touch he made across the expanse of underneath her shirt and pants and even beyond. It was like his hands were explorers of a new soft planet, something which was as milky as the moon and as smooth as silk. It didn't help him when other people started popping up in his head in her place. No one teaches you how to deal with that when you're in school, but Dipper figured it out. Somewhat.

Candy was hesitant at first and so was he, since it was both their first times, but with Dipper's innate knowledge of "lovemaking" they had gotten the hang of it. At this point, when they got frequent with it, they were seventeen. They would sometimes hide out in the bathroom and come out one at a time, as if they were slick. When Mabel saw them after their little stunts (Candy loved the thrill of being caught, so much that it made Dipper uncomfortable), she would look at them with dismal eyes, as if she were staring at a miserably tragic photograph of a large ship capsizing under the siege of a massive ravenous kraken. She knew what they were up to. She didn't look like she liked it, either.

Her eyes would be hollow, like the soul he loved dearly was sucked from its home and thrown elsewhere, only to return once Candy was gone and they were alone again, back to fall into their normal groove. Sure, Dipper liked doing stuff with Candy, but that look from Mabel made him not want to do it, even if he was sure that she had done the same thing with other people. Namely Jake.

Why did she look at him like that? Did she want him to stop being with Candy? Why did that look make him feel some sort of way he couldn't quite place?

Mabel wasn't a stranger to being "freaky" with others. She was known to be avidly open about her relationships with others and would always have public showings of whoever she was with. This led to Dipper watching as some random dudes grope his sister in the middle of the hallway. Something tugged inside him every time he saw that, like a string drawn so tight it felt like it was on the edge of breaking. Like oh, this is happening again, might as well have to get used to your sister looking very good in front of all the boys in your high school, and she's kissing another one in the hallway again so everyone can see, and here we are with another breakup, looks like you have to pick up the pieces, Dipper, and watch when she does the whole thing over again, with someone new, with someone she doesn't even know, like come on, man, could you maybe chill out and take a break?

So why did the look she gave him when he was with Candy feel like he was betraying her? Like he was cheating on her?

You guys aren't even together.

"Dipper?"

Right, Mabel's at the hospital right now, focus Pine Tree, focus.

"Me and Candy were nothing like you and Jake," said Dipper.

"Candy said –"

"Mabes, please," said Dipper.

"Nah, Dipper, you're gonna listen to me, young man. Candy really thinks that you're gonna come around one day and that you guys are gonna get married and then you're gonna have to live with her and her family. Now if you want that, go ahead."

"I do not want that," he said, shivering. Imagining having to deal with her parents after he already had to deal with the girl herself was not a fun exercise.

"Exactly," she said.

"Me and Candy haven't even talked since last time I was in Gravity Falls," he said.

"Is that so?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, Mr. Smartypants, hopefully it stays that way. I love Candy to death, but I love you, too, and I want you to stay far away from that mess."

Dipper might have blushed, but he couldn't see in the mirror right now. "Thank you, Mabes, I love you, too," he said.

"Are you going to stay on the phone with me all night, Dip?" she asked. "I want to sleep but I can't. I ate a package of Rips before we got here. I'm all sugared up. On the Grand Sugar Rush. All the way out in the Sugar Olympics."

"Of course I'll stay on the phone," he said.

Dipper stayed on the phone with her as he laid down and was rambling with her with his eyes closed as he started to drift off to sleep. He got woken up again when Mabel yelled at him about her recent acquirement of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, courtesy of their mom. "She even got the BBQ sauce! Mom's the goat, for real." Dipper told her to tell their mom that he missed her and wanted to come home. His mom laughed at the comment and told him through the phone that he was welcome back home anytime, that the room was barely untouched, save the few times Mabel rifled around his closet for a few extra pieces of clothing to add to her collection. "She took a few of your hoodies. I don't know if she told you," his mom said.

A little bit later, he fought off the urge to doze after she told him that he was allowed to sleep if he wanted to, but he wanted to talk to her and go to sleep, both to him appealing prospects. Of course, in less than three weeks, they were to see each other again, but he still couldn't wait that long to be by her side. Right now, though, he had to choose. If he got off the phone, he would be prone to doing unspeakable things. Better to opt for the more tame decision. So Mabel entertained him until 2 A.M. with her constant references to good media and jokes about his college and his stupid friends who seemed to be messaging her Instagram with a slew of "Your brother Dipper told me about you." Dipper would tell her that he never gave them anybody's account. He wasn't that keen on allowing stranger's to view his personal life with much scrutiny unless he really needed to.

But as the night went on, the words HAVE TO STAY UP lit up in his head like a fluorescent bulb, glowing bright, rivaling neon. Mabel's voice was like a lullaby, a melody which lulled him into stupors, a malady for which he did not want treatment. He remembered closing his eyes and finding sleep in little bursts, his mind creating imaginative thoughts and projections of exquisitely detailed images which when he opened his eyes, he forgot about completely. Some little bits stuck out when Mabel had caught him dozing off.

"Mabes, it's super late," he said.

"But they said that Waddles is getting out of here in an hour!"

"I have classes at 8 A.M., you have to let me get off the phone."

"Just lay down with me on the phone."

"Gary might come in."

"Screw Gary. He's stupid anyways. Just put me on speaker."

"Mabel, c'mon."

"Dooo it, dooo it, dooo it," she chanted.

Dipper sighed. "Fine, fine. You win, you goober."

"Yay! I'll let you lay down, but once Waddles is out of this pet prison, I will let you know."

"Good deal," Dipper said.

So he laid down in his bed, putting his phone next to his ear so he could hear Mabel when he needed to. He thought to himself that he had an hour or two before they released him. Just enough time to catch some Z's.