Chapter Text
Mabel was lying halfway off the edge of her bed playing Animal Crossing and sending a scowl in Dipper’s general direction. They were in the middle of the same argument they’d had dozens of times. And she was in the middle of shaking the apples off a tree to give to her favorite little cat villager.
This time, it was the Venus flytrap that a beaming Dipper had brought into their room from the Mystery Shack just after breakfast. It gleamed in the sunlight, a strange bright green. “It was growing right in between the floorboards!” he had said, his voice full of sunshine and rainbows and his eyes shining brighter than the contents of Mabel’s closet, as he rooted around in his own for a spare flowerpot to put the thing in.
“Oh wow! That’s...that’s great!” Mabel had said, trying to hide the jealousy in her voice. She genuinely was happy for her brother; it seemed like whoever his soulmate was, he or she was really into botany, so they would have nerd shit to bond over. It was just hard not to wish that even just once, she would see something--a single daisy, a rose, a weed--growing near her in a spot that plants don’t normally grow. “Yay, Dipper’s soulmate!”
But Dipper had recognized the tone in her voice. “Aren’t you excited for me?”
“Of course! Of COURSE I’m excited,” Mabel had said, laughing nervously. “I hope I get some of that lovin’ too, soon, you know? Haha! But I’m so happy.”
Dipper wasn’t buying it. And thus the lecture on dependency had begun. “I’m telling you, Mabel,” Dipper was saying now, “first of all, you don’t even need a soulmate, and second of all, they probably just don’t like gardening. And third of all--and most importantly--” He looked up from his flowerpot to point a finger at her, to emphasize his seriousness. “We’re only fifteen. It took Soos, like, thirty years to start seeing plants. And he’s doing fine!”
Mabel chased around a virtual butterfly with a butterfly net. “Easy for you to say,” she huffed. “I just think it’s not fair that some of us have had annoying little science-fair plants cluttering up their twins’ rooms since the first grade, and some of us get nothin’.” She sighed dramatically. “I can’t even get Waddles to poop out a watermelon seed so I can see if it grows a watermelon near Gompers so I can know if they’ll be together fur-ever.” She emphasized the fur .
“Mabel, that is the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.” Dipper sighed. “I just think you need to stop obsessing over this. I can stop telling you when I get new plants if you wa--”
“NO!” The last thing Mabel wanted was for Dipper to not want to talk about his life with her, even if that meant reminding her of her own hopeless, tragic, late-bloomer of a soulmate--or maybe even soulmate-less-ness, but she didn’t want to think about that. “I’m sorry for being all sad and mopey,” she said, flopping over the bed further to emphasize her mopiness.
“I do like your soulmate’s plants,” she added. “They add a certain je ne foie gras.”
“Mabel, that means ‘I don’t steak’.”
“Close enough. I just mean, I’m sorry for...making this about me.” Her cheeks flushed; it was only when she said that that she realized it was what she had been doing. “I really am happy for you. I swear. I just...I dunno, I wanna find my future husband.”
“I know, Mabel,” Dipper said. “Do you want to help me feed my Venus flytrap?”
“I am NOT killing a bug!”
“Come on, help me look for ants.” He grinned. “Ooh! There’s one! Let’s watch it get murdered!”
Mabel ran out of the room, laughing but also kind of freaked out by the prospect of Dipper watching an ant get murdered. She’d seen way, way worse, but still. When she reached the outside of the Mystery Shack (with a quick “Hi, Stan!” to her grunkle, who grumbled back a good-morning greeting that was really more about the cracks in the floorboards) she was still thinking about her soulmate, wherever he was. She hoped he was just a hot guy who was too busy getting with hot girls to take care of plants. No, no other girls--maybe he was in a boy band and he couldn’t ever be seen with dirt on his fingers, for the sake of his image. She liked that idea. Some nice, absolutely perfect, gorgeous guy who was already a teen idol and would parade her around the world. He’d braid flowers in her hair and grin with blindingly white teeth, and people would chant both of their names! “Mystery Guy! Mystery Guy! Mystery Guy!” “Ma-bel! Ma-bel! Ma-bel!”
“Mabel. Mabel?” Mabel was shaken out of her daydream by a blonde jerk--blonde former jerk--standing in front of her. She looked nervous, fidgeting with the sleeves on her bazillion-dollar sweater that wouldn’t have kept her even a little bit warm if it had been cold out, so it was good that it was approximately eighty degrees. Mabel made a mental note to knit her another sweater. She also made a mental note of her haircut. It wasn’t the really short cut Pacifica had kept saying she wanted, the one that had her texting Mabel middle-of-the-night pictures of short-haired celebrities like once a week, but it was a bob. Mabel wondered if it was some sort of in-between step. Or maybe she just got gum in her hair.
“Hi, Paz,” she chirped. She was still a little down, but when she was down, she didn’t like showing it to anyone but Dipper. And occasionally Wendy. “What’s up?”
“Not much.” She fidgeted for another few seconds. “Um, I was wondering if I could hang out here today? Like all day? And if my parents come by I’m not here and you haven’t seen me and I’m probably at the mall with my school friends?”
Oy. Mabel didn’t want to think about what had necessitated this. “Absolutely! Mabel at your service!” She grinned ear to ear. “I’m a really bad liar, though, so if they come by we’re going to have to send my grunkle.”
Pacifica smiled back, a sad smile that tugged at Mabel’s heart for some reason. “Cool. Hey, thanks.” She glanced around nervously, as if worried her family would show up right that second. “Can we go around back?”
“Do you want me to teach you how to drive the golf cart?” Soos had almost totally fixed it this time. He said there was only about a twenty, maybe twenty-five, percent chance that the engine would stop suddenly and send them all hurtling to their deaths, and only a ten percent chance it would blow up completely. So of course she had to take advantage of that.
Now Pacifica’s smile was genuine. “Only if we get to do donuts.”
“Uh, duh. Is there any other reason to ride a golf cart? Last one there has to get out and push when we inevitably get stuck in the mud!” Mabel took off running through the yard, laughing, with Pacifica close behind.
Pacifica reached the golf cart last, but she didn’t mind. She was always up for an excuse to get in some mud. Especially today. Which was sort of ironic, considering the topic of today’s family blowout fight.
It was about hanging out with “peasants.” More specifically, going out with “peasants.” Even more specifically, the uncomfortable topic of the flowers, vegetables, fruits, and occasional saplings that seemed to follow her wherever she went. They horrified her parents, partly because the plants’ stubbornness frequently led them to wreck the house, but mostly for another reason.
“Pacifica,” Priscilla had said. Her brow would have furrowed if there was enough natural skin left in it to actually furrow. She had looked nothing like her daughter in that moment, her perfectly sculpted cheekbones and carefully applied makeup making her look like a lost Greek goddess, Pacifica’s baby fat, budding pimples, and stubborn insistence on wearing less makeup (“only” foundation, eyeliner, mascara, and lip gloss today; a victory nonetheless) standing in stark contrast. Her parents had been begging her to get more plastic surgery
“You know the whole idea of soulmates,” Priscilla had continued, “is sort of a superstition of the lower classes. Ever since the beginning of time, kings and queens have married each other with no regard for ridiculous magical thinking. And we’ve been perfectly misera--happy all that time.”
“Your mother is right,” Preston had added. “We’ve no time for any of that nonsense. And you’ll recall, neither of us had had any encounters with plants growing in strange places. And do you know why?”
Pacifica had never thought of this. “I dunno,” she said. “Why?”
Priscilla looked scandalized that she’d even asked. Disappointment clouded Preston’s face, and Pacifica knew what that meant: a blowout fight was up next, followed by threats of punishment, possibly Pacifica’s grounding, and Pacifica needing to get the hell out of the house and lay low for awhile. She knew this was probably really about something else--her hair, the dirt under her nails, the aforementioned makeup--but it didn’t matter in the moment, really.
“Seriously, I’m on the fuckin’ edge of my seat here,” she said, just to make them angrier.
The curse word made Priscilla look like she was slapped. “Because,” Priscilla said. “We knew our someday partner would be rich like us. And that he or she would have gardeners. Landscapers. Flower arrangers. Petal fluffers! So the idea that anyone we’d spend our life with would have done something so pedestrian as to plant something?” She shuddered in a way that said I took acting classes just because I could.
"To reiterate," she said. “Northwests. Don’t. Do. Our. Own. Gardening.”