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“Well, we’ve finally figured things out with your Great Uncle, and it looks like it’s set up for you two to spend some time up there this summer.”
Dipper looked up from his eggs. Mabel, who had been surreptitiously feeding hers to the cat, straightened, and said in excited confusion, “The coupon guy?”
Neither of them had ever met their Great Uncle Stanford “The Coupon Guy” Pines, but they had each received their fair share of birthday presents from him. They usually showed up a few weeks late in the form of a great deal on shaving cream, or ten percent off bug spray, or a buy-one-get-one-free Air Wick. It wouldn’t even have been that annoying if they weren’t always expired. Or if either of them had grown any body hair yet.
Dipper had talked to the older cousins about him on the few occasions that they weren’t punching or ignoring him, and they’d told him he was supposedly some genius scientist (though they’d used the words “huge nerd”) who’d moved to the middle of nowhere Oregon to perform dangerous experiments. He wasn’t sure how much of that was actually true, since the birthday coupons usually showed up taped to a postcard from some place called The Mystery Shack, and when he’d asked his mom about it she’d just said that Stan was a “business owner.”
“Please don’t call him that, Mabel,” their dad said. “I know we’ve joked about that sort of thing before, but he’s actually being very nice in taking the two of you for the summer.”
“What!” Dipper exclaimed. His voice cracked sharply on the word, and he swallowed, embarrassed, before continuing, “For the whole summer?”
“Well, you’ll come back two weeks before you start high school.”
“This is so exciting! The mysterious Grunkle Stan. Do you think he’ll have a peg-leg? Or maybe an eye-patch?”
“He isn’t a pirate, Mabel,” Dipper snapped. “Dad, when did this come up? Why are you just telling us about it now?”
Their dad calmly finished his coffee and stood from the table, clearing his plate. “Your mom and I had the idea for a while, but we didn’t want you to get your hopes up if it ended up falling through. We thought it would be good for you kids to get out of the city for once. And I thought you’d be happy about it, Dip. You were so excited when we went to Yosemite last spring.”
“Yeah, for a couple days.”
“Come on, Dipper,” Mabel said encouragingly, finally spearing the rest of her eggs (which came up in an unsettlingly uniform clump) and shoving them into her mouth. “It’ll be fumb! Twim bombing time!” She swallowed grandly. “A new city for us to make a new name for ourselves! You’ll be...Cool Dipper, and I’ll be Elizabethia, lost princess of Atlantis.”
“Wouldn’t that make me the lost prince?”
“We’re not related in this one.”
Their dad swung back into the room and began to collect the rest of the dishes. As Dipper passed him his bowl, he asked, “Have you even ever met him?”
Their dad didn’t pause. “Well, no,” he said, and this time it was Mabel who looked astonished. Though her astonishment also looked a lot like delight.
“Woaaaah—You’re sending us off to spend a summer with a stranger?”
“He’s not a stranger, Mabes, he’s family.” Their dad chided. “Anyway, I’ve talked with him on the phone plenty of times. He has...a very unique sense of humor. Like your pawpaw does.”
Dipper looked at Mabel and made a face. There weren’t many other people like their pawpaw, as far as he was concerned, who was a quiet old man whose pockets were perpetually filled with Little Bebbie Nuttey Bricks. Dipper had never seen him without a placid smile on his face, or with a sour word in his mouth. Their fridge was covered in newspaper clippings from the Sunday Funnies, which he would periodically mail Mabel and Dipper. Neither of them really understood why he did this, as they usually weren’t very funny, and sometimes didn’t make any sense at all. It was weird, but it was still a world of difference from a coupon.
“But what did he say?” He pressed. “When mom asked. Does he even want us there?”
“Of course he does. He said he’d...appreciate having some extra hands around.”
Dipper sat up straight in his chair, trying to get a better look at his father’s face as he retreated to the kitchen. “Extra hands? Like working? We’re twelve! Isn’t that—Isn’t that against OSHA or something?”
From the next room, their dad scoffed. “Where did you hear about OSHA?”
Dipper bit his lip. He’d only heard other people reference it, and wasn’t totally sure he’d used the phrase correctly. “That’s not important.”
The dishes clattered loudly as his dad dropped them into the sink, and Dipper heard him start the water running before he walked back into the room.
“Alright, go get your stuff together, we’ll leave in a few minutes.”
Mabel hopped up and ran off to her room. Dipper didn’t move. “I—I just don’t know, dad. It’s my last summer with Raj before he moves, and I just... We were really counting on those months to finish our DD&D game.” Raj had been his best (and only) friend since elementary school. He’d just told Dipper last week that his Dad had sold his start-up (whatever that meant) and that they were moving back to New York to be closer to family. And now Dipper was learning that, unless his parents changed their minds, their last time seeing each other would be the last day of middle school. “I just really think it would make more sense for me to stay here. Let Mabel go alone if she wants to!”
His father met his pleading gaze levelly. “I know it seems hard, Dip. But you’re gonna make tons of new friends up in Oregon.” At Dipper’s disbelieving snort he smiled. “And, I know it may sound silly, but sometimes your mom and I need alone time. We really appreciate you being so understanding about that.” He gave Dipper a quick slap on the back. “Now you gotta go get ready, kid. You’re gonna make me late for work.”
Dipper usually sat with Raj at lunch, but it turned out he was out sick, which meant that he'd have to wait until the next day to let him in on the bad news. That is, he would have to wait until the next day—unless he managed to convince his parents what a bad idea this was before then.
What he needed, he figured, glumly gazing at his freezer-burnt tater tots, was Mabel on his side. Dipper was already known around the house for what Mabel called his “droopiness,” and what his dad had once referred to as his “pre-teen angst.” Dipper resented the implication that he was some kind of wet blanket, and preferred to see it as pure practicality. It wasn’t his fault that his sister didn’t always think things through the way he did, and that it usually fell on him to give her a reality check. Wasn’t that supposed to be a good thing? A brother thing? Something that kept her safe?
His parents wouldn’t listen to him alone; they’d already expect his protests. But maybe having Mabel on his side, who was usually so up for anything, would give them pause. He was sure, given proper time, she would come around to seeing things his way. She always had before.
He didn’t have the time to bring it up between the end of the school day and their mom picking them up, and he couldn’t really say anything with their mom sitting in the front seat, so the next time he was able to approach the subject was that night, before his dad came home from work. He and Mabel were sitting at the kitchen table, working on homework, and their mom was in the kitchen, frantically chopping vegetables and repeating phrases in Spanish, which she’d been learning via a book-on-tape. Dipper had never seen his mom do less than two things at once. His dad had said on more than one occasion that the reason she’d had twins was because she was competitive down to her basic biology, and had needed to have just one more child than her sisters. Dipper thought that was kind of gross, but there did seem to be some sort of truth to it.
“Mom?” He said. He had to repeat it a couple times before she heard him and paused the recording on her phone, by which point Mabel had looked up curiously from the unicorn she was doodling in the margins of her unfinished math homework to watch the exchange.
“Buenos días, Esteban. ¿Cómo—What? Sorry, honey, are you saying something?”
“Mom,” Dipper said again. “What do you know about Great Uncle Stan?” When she dumped a load of carrots and celery into a pot and finally turned to frown at him, he went on insistently. “Like, really know? Because I talked to dad this morning and it sounds like no one’s actually ever seen the guy. Like, what if he’s some con-artist trying to...to lure unsuspecting parents into selling their children to the black market?”
His mom stared at him. Then she laughed. “That would be pretty impressive! In that case he’s been working on our family for a long time.” She laughed again, which set Mabel off giggling. “Think of all the half-off hairspray he could have by now!”
Dipper sank back down into his seat. “Mom,” He said, half pleading.
She smiled, and turned back to give the vegetables in the pot a turn. “I have met him. A couple times, actually.”
Mabel dropped the pen she was doodling with and sat up a little taller, as if sensing a good story, or at least an excuse to put off her homework for another minute. “Oooh, what was he like?”
“Hmmmm.” Their mom moved to the cupboard and pulled out a container of dried red lentils. Mabel made a face that Dipper empathized with; lentil soup for dinner again. “Well, the first couple times I was little—littler than you two—so I don’t remember very well. He didn’t ever play with the kids, and there were so many of us, you know. It wasn’t hard to hide in the background.” She poured the lentils into a measuring cup, and then into the pot. “He didn’t come back to Jersey often...maybe the last Passover he attended I was five? Six? I’m not sure. And then the next time I saw him I was much older, at your grandpa’s funeral.”
“Uh huh,” Mabel intoned seriously, eyes wide and sympathetic. Neither of them could remember their grandpa; he'd died shortly after they were born.
“He looked different than I remembered…”
“Like how?” Dipper pressed.
“Well, his hair was grayer,” she smiled at him. “His voice was different. And sadder. He came up to us and said he was sorry he’d never met any of us before, but that he’d like to stay in touch, since we were all he had left now.”
Dipper frowned. That was actually pretty sad, and he didn’t want to feel sorry for the old man that was stealing his summer from him. “If he wanted to be part of our lives so bad, then why have we never met him?”
His mother shrugged and poured a carton of broth into the pot. “Oh, you know. It’s a long drive for an old man to do alone. And he has a business to take care of.”
“Poor Grunkle Stan,” Mabel cried. “Just a sad, stinky old fart living in the woods, dreaming of his family he never got to know. But no longer!” She stood up and lifted a righteous finger in the air. “I’m going to knit him a get-to-know-you sweater!”
“Finish your homework first, Mabel.” Their mom said, and Mabel sat back down with a thump.
“Drat.”
Dipper stared at his sister for a moment. Then he saw his chance. “I’ll help you with your math. That’s all you have left, right?”
“Yeah.” Mabel eyed him. “How come?”
He shrugged. “Just being nice. My class already did that section.”
She relented, like he knew she would, and scrambled over to his side of the table. She didn’t actually need much of his help, it looked like she’d already started most of the problems herself, he just knew that if it was up to her she’d put off finishing them for hours. As soon as her pencil lifted from putting the box around her last answer, he said, “Nice! Okay! Let’s go put your homework away and get ready for dinner! In your room!”
“Suuuuper subtle, Mr. Secret Agent,” Mabel sang, but agreeably stuffed her books and papers back into her backpack and followed him to her bedroom. She hung her backpack up carefully and then took a running leap onto her bed, briefly disappearing under the hoard of stuffed animals that she carefully arranged there every morning.
Dipper quietly closed the door behind them. Then he turned back around. “Okay. We need to figure out a way to fix this.”
The mass of stuffed animals parted as Mabel reemerged. She had picked out one of her oldest friends, Professor Bear Bearington III, and tucked him comfortably under her chin. “Fix what?”
“This going to Gravity Falls for the summer thing! I’ve been thinking about it, and I know mom and dad won’t listen to me, but they will listen to you. Or, they’ll listen to us, if we come at them together. Which is why we need to make a plan for dinner tonight.”
Mabel frowned at him, and leaned a little heavier on Professor Bear Bearington III, who wheezed out through his decaying voicebox, “Well, my word!”
“But I want to go.”
“I know you want to go,” Dipper said soothingly. “For now. But let’s think about this a little more. Weren’t you just talking about how you were looking forward to watching the new Midnight movie with Aja when it comes out this summer? I bet Gravity Falls doesn’t even have a movie theatre.”
“Well...yeah. But without mom and dad around to tell me it isn’t age-appropriate I bet I could finally read the book and find out if Isabell chooses Edwin or Yacob! Who needs the movie!”
Dipper frowned. “Okay. But…” His gaze wandered the room. The family cat, Trebuchet, glowered at him from where he was sitting under Mabel’s desk. “What about Boosh! I’m gonna tell him you won’t even miss him.”
“What! Dipper!” Mabel flung herself off her bed and in Tebuchet’s general direction. The ancient cat streaked towards the door, then, seeing that it was closed, tried to swerve under Mabel’s bed. Before he could, Mabel descended upon him on all fours and buried her face into his gray fur, willfully ignorant of the dark growling coming from behind the cage of her limbs. “He doesn’t mean it,” she crooned. “Ole’ mean Dipper is just telling lies.”
“Mabel,” Dipper said. “Come on. I could stand here all night naming reasons why it’s a bad idea, but we don’t have that kind of time. I just—I just need you to be on my side for this one, okay?”
Mabel mumbled something into Trebuchet’s fur.
“What?”
She looked up. “I said no!”
Dipper took a step back, stung. “Wha—why?”
“Because I want to go, Dipper. I already said so! I think it’ll be fun.” She tucked her head back down to stroke the top of Tebuchet’s with her cheek, then said, softer now, “It’s our last summer together before we go to high school, and I want to spend it with you. I feel like I never see you anymore.”
“What—we—Mabel, we live together. We see each other literally everyday.”
“Yeah but we don’t play together anymore! You’re always hanging out with Raj, or playing that stupid video game, or...or doing math!”
Dipper felt himself going red in the face. “You’re mad at me for hanging out with Raj? You’re the one with like, a hundred friends!”
“I’m not mad!” Mabel looked up at him. Her eyes had started to get all pinched and shiny; the way they always did when they fought. “I’m just saying!”
Dipper took a deep breath, the start of another shout building in the back of his throat. Then he paused, and let it go. In the hanging silence Trebuchet let out another piteous warbel from underneath Mabel, and she silently sat up, watching as he sprinted to the door and began to paw at it furiously. Dipper leaned over and opened it a crack to let him escape, then closed it again. He turned back to where his sister was sitting on her knees, staring forlornly at the floor.
He heaved another breath. “Okay,” he said.
She looked up at him, expression watery. “Huh?”
“I said okay. We’ll go.”
Immediately she was smiling, and leapt to her feet. “Ahhhh, Dipper! It’ll be super fun! I swear.”
“Yeah, okay.” Dipper turned back to the door, the weight of his defeat hanging heavy on him. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not leaving behind your only friend.”
“You’re not leaving your only friend, doofus.” Mabel said, and when Dipper whipped around to make a snarky comment she was beaming, and had a thumb pointed at her sternum. “You got me!”
There were a lot of mean things Dipper could have said to that, but upon even the briefest reflection he discovered he didn’t really mean any of them. “Yeah, I got you,” he said darkly, and then whipped a pillow off the floor and across the room, where it hit her squarely in the face. “Got you!”
Mabel slumped, shocked, onto her bed. When she didn’t get up, Dipper crept closer to see if she was alright, and then wheeled back when she exploded upwards in an attempt to tackle him to the ground. The ensuing pillow fight was one of the most vicious in Pines Twins history, and only came to a wary truce when their dad came upstairs, apparently home from work, and told them that dinner was ready.
At dinner, their mom formally informed them they’d be staying the summer with their Great Uncle Stanford. It was all already planned, she said. They both had bus tickets purchased in their name for the Monday after they matriculated. When Dipper looked at Mabel, her eyes were wide and excited, and she was nodding. So Dipper nodded too, and he looked down, and he didn’t say anything more.
The first hours on the bus felt like an eternity, and Dipper spent a lot of it with his face hidden behind one of the many Sibling Brother’s books he’d brought for the trip, not reading a word, so Mabel wouldn’t see his watery eyes. Mabel sat next to him, her legs tucked up in her sweater, and graciously sang Sev’ral Timez’s greatest hits louder than was publicly acceptable as she knit so no one would hear his sniffling.
Finally, just as Mabel was finishing the last row on their great uncle’s get-to-know-you sweater, the bus driver cleared his throat and loudly announced. “Next stop, Ashland. Coming up, Gravity Falls.”
Dipper jolted, realizing for the first time that he’d fallen asleep with his head against the rattling window, and that he’d been that way for a number of hours. He rubbed his aching face, and blinked his swollen eyes, and then opened them wide at the shock of finding that the world outside had turned a swimming, breathing, green, and that the sun, even the sun had changed. And when he turned back to look at Mabel she was looking outside too, and she was smiling in a way that was different than usual, and he knew what the smile meant, because he was feeling it too. Like something in him was waking up.
“I told you so.” Mabel said.
(Their uncle did have an eyepatch. And he spoke like a sailor, in cadence and vernacular. That night, as they both settled down into their new beds, and stared at the ceiling under which they’d be dreaming all their dreams for the next few months, Mabel rolled over and whispered into the dark, “Pirate.”
Dipper nodded. She was right. She usually was.)