Chapter Text
We had been on the bus for five hours and forty-seven minutes, which meant that I had exactly thirteen minutes (traffic notwithstanding) to figure out what we should tell our parents.
A triangle almost killed us several times and nearly took over the world? Definitely not something I should lead with.
Grunkle Stan(ford) is actually Grunkle Stan(ley) and he has an identical twin named Stanford? That would require so much explanation.
A bunch of gnomes in a trenchcoat tried to marry Mabel, for reasons still unclear? Maybe they would think it funny. After they got over the existence of gnomes. Come to think of it, if we told them anything, we should lead with “creatures like gnomes and multi-bears are real but they mostly all live in Gravity Falls.” Should we tell them anything?
“Mabel!” I whispered urgently. She looked over at me.
“Yeah?”
“How much should we tell Mom and Dad?”
“I think it depends on how much they believe that letter I sent . . .”
“What letter?”
“The one about Grunkle Ford coming out of the portal.”
“You sent them a letter about that?”
“I thought I told you.”
“Maybe we should have asked Great-Uncle Ford if he was okay with us telling our parents about him . . . we could have based our explanations on that. Whether or not he said yes, I mean.”
“We can tell them a lot without telling them about there being two Grunkles,” Mabel pointed out.
“Maybe we should just see how it goes,” I mumbled, sighing.
“I probably won’t be able to keep everything in forever. Or for a week,” she agreed.
“I guess that’s true.” I checked the time. There were still eleven minutes before we arrived. Traffic notwithstanding. I sighed again. “Eleven minutes.”
“Actually . . .” Mabel pointed out the window at an angle. The bus stop was approaching. My jaw dropped. “Traffic must have been good,” she remarked, shrugging. “We can tell them a little and see how much they believe us.”
“That’s a really good plan,” I conceded, nodding for longer than I should have. I thought we had another eleven minutes! Now there’s barely forty-five seconds!
“Relax! We’re seeing our parents again!” Mabel shouted, leaping in the air with one fist raised like Superman. It was decidedly unrelaxing, but managed to snap me out of my anxieties anyway. I laughed.
The bus rolled to a stop. Mabel and I rushed out of it (well, she rushed and I followed at a normal pace), scanning the area for our parents. It didn’t take long for us to find them; they stood outside our black sedan, Mom in a hand-knitted purple skirt and Dad with his arm through hers. Now I rushed at Mabel’s pace, and we slammed into our parent’s embrace. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them and I remembered how close we came to losing them, or maybe it was how close they came to losing us, and I felt tears welling, but if I cried that would require so much explanation, and I could brush it off as gladness at being home, but I didn’t really want to do that, and apparently thinking in run-on sentences helps push back tears, because I was no longer in danger of crying.
“We missed you,” I told them when we finally pulled away.
Mom smiled. “We missed you too.”
“Happy birthday, you two,” Dad added, sporting a great big grin.
We shuffled into the car and made the short drive home. Mabel and I didn’t say much, and neither did our parents. They could probably tell that we were tired. Soon we were home, Mabel was discussing Waddles with Mom and Dad, and I was stuffing clothing and other various belongings back into my room. It felt empty with only my bed. I wondered what Mom and Dad would think if Mabel and I slept over in each other’s rooms–yeah, they were right across the hall from each other, but . . .
“Dinner!” Mom called. Already?
I hurried downstairs.
“He’s an inside pig, Mom! If we leave him outside, another pterodactyl might get him!” Mabel was explaining. Or maybe exclaiming. Actually, it was both.
“I’m pretty sure that only happens in Gravity Falls, Mabel,” I replied as I slid into my seat at the table.
“We should have kept closer in contact with you two during the summer,” Mom remarked.
“And with Stan in general,” Dad added.
“We received some very interesting letters from Mabel during your stay.”
I looked at Mabel. She grinned and shrugged sheepishly. “There was more than that one.”
“So . . . how much of what you told us about in your letters actually happened?” Mom queried.
“If I said ‘all of it’ would you still let us visit Grunkle Stan and Ford and Soos and Wendy and Candy and Grenda and–”
Mom held her hands up. Dad blinked. “Whoa, slow down Mabel! I’m glad you seem to have made a lot of friends–” Mom started.
“The best,” she agreed.
“–but we’re talking about what did happen, not what might happen. Why would you think you couldn’t go back?”
“Becausesomegnomestriedtoforciblymarrymeandotheradventures.”
“I told you that I saw gnomes when we visited!” Dad exclaimed at the same time as our mystified mother asked, “Gnomes tried to marry you?”
“You’ve been there before?” I exclaimed at the same time as Mabel’s, “Wait, you believe me?”
“We visited several years ago. It was an odd place, to say the least,” Mom explained, “but everyone seemed nice enough. So when we wanted you two to get out more and–and some other things that your dad and I were um, doing, we thought it would be a pleasant little place for you two and good for you to get to know some family.”
“What other things were you doing?” I questioned.
“Well, we’re circling back around to the gnome story later, but . . . there was a possibility that . . . your dad might have cancer. He doesn’t, though!” she hastily added after noticing Mabel’s gasp and my widening eyes. “But we didn’t know then, and we were worried, and we didn’t want you to see us . . . like that, especially if it turned out that everything was fine.”
“You didn’t tell us,” I mumbled.
“If the results came back positive, we would have sent for you. Maybe it wasn’t fair,” she sighed, “but it’s too late now. And you two did enjoy your summer, didn’t you?”
I smiled as Mabel shouted, “YEAH!”
“Now can we circle back to the gnomes?”
“My first date was with five gnomes in a trench coat. I was hoping he was a vampire, but man, the vampires were all doomy and gloomy and almost as clingy as Gideon, too, so . . . heh.”
“You kids wouldn’t lie, so unless you’re speaking in metaphors–” Dad broke off, then resumed, “Do you have any, say, proof?”
“SCRAPBOOK TIME!!!” Mabel raced upstairs, barreling back down in time that would be impressive for an Olympic runner but was just average Mabel for you. She flipped it open. “That’s from when Dipper accidentally raised some zombies! Or maybe it was on purpose, I was never clear on that.”
“It was an accident.”
“Cool. And that’s a wax statue of Grunkle Stan that I made. The rest of the wax statues came to life so we killed them. And that’s me and Dipper’s clones of himself he made that one time!”
“Wait, what? You know my clones?”
“Yup, met them that last week! And that’s–”
“That looks dangerous, dear.”
“Me and my grappling hook!”
“You have a grappling hook?”
“Yeah, isn’t it great? And that’s from when we went fishing with Grunkle Stan the first time. And that’s from when we went fishing the second time! And that’s a giant robot. And that’s the Shack turned into a giant robot!”
“How’d you get a picture of that? You didn’t have a camera on you!”
“The Mysteries of Mabel, bro-bro!”
“‘Kay. Alright.”