Chapter Text
Wendy
The door swung open. Mabel sat at the edge of the porch, chewing on a strand of hair, which meant that either she was deep in thought or something was bothering her–most often both. I plopped down like I had so many times before and said, “Hey. How’s that hair tasting?”
“No better than last time,” Mabel replied.
A smile played on my lips. “What’s wrong?”
“Dipper is convinced none of it is my fault. He won’t listen. And Grunkle Stan is worse.” I wondered what Ford thought. I barely knew him, so guessing what his stance on how much Mabel was at fault was fruitless. Mabel herself continued, “I kind of think it’s nice, but it also makes me feel worse, because I still did stuff wrong. I guess it wasn’t my fault I was tricked, but I did give the rift thingy to Bill without really thinking about it . . .”
“Eh, we’ve all done stuff without thinking about it before.”
“I’m still gonna be better.”
“Never a bad thing to be,” I agreed.
“Wendy?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Tambry will tell anyone about . . . you know . . .”
“I don’t think so. I mentioned the ‘being our own therapy’ thing to her and Robbie, and now I’m pretty sure Thompson somehow ended up getting in there too to like, mediate? It’s confusing.”
“Thompson is Robbie and Tambry’s couple therapist?”
“Yeah. Sure. Let’s go with that.”
“Thanks for talking to me, Wendy.” She sprang up.
“Always, dude!” I replied, waving as she returned to the interior of the Shack and I hopped on my bike, donning my helmet. The breeze whisked past, the familiar leaves of the forest blurring by. It wasn’t long until I arrived at my destination. I walked the bike to the back of my house and chained it up to prevent criminals and thieving teenagers and gnomes from stealing it in the night. I sighed, stretching while holding my helmet strap in the palm of my hands. I slung it over my shoulder and entered the abode. My ears were instantly assaulted by the boisterous clamor and crash of everyday Corduroy shenanigans and the reek of sweat and wood and flannel, which wasn’t just a color–it had a smell too. Rustic furniture and the occasional picture of me and my brothers, sometimes with my dad too, decorated the dwelling. My mom wasn’t in a single one.
“THE PIGS! THEY SEEK REVENGE!”
I assumed dinner wasn’t treating Dad too well. I escaped into my room and dropped my helmet and bag on the desk by the door. A few articles of laundry littered the floor, which I doubted helped my stress levels, but I didn’t care enough to pick them up. Not yet, anyway. Besides, it added to the lived-in aesthetic of the house. Granted, my room’s aesthetic was considerably lighter than the rest of the house’s with its pale walls. I plopped my hat on a shelf above my bed. My gaze swept across the room and caught on a flicker of red. I peered through the blinds of the window, and, yep–faded into the backdrop of green and brown was a young woman with my face, albeit a few years older and more careworn. Alternate Wendy beckoned to me. I nodded and held a finger up. Just one second, me from another universe.
I didn’t really need time. There wasn’t anything to do before meeting with her besides snatching the hat off the shelf that I’d just put it on, but it seemed appropriate. It was always possible I’d be held up anyway . . . but I found no opposition from my brothers or dad when I vaulted out the door and traipsed to the trees. Plant life and sticks crunched under my feet. The colors in the forest were tinted midnight blue, mixed in with the glowing pastel pink and tangerine shafts of the dying sun. The air was crisp and fresh but tainted with the stink of wild animals, magical creatures, and fear, the last of which emanated from Alternate Wendy. I didn’t need my nose to detect that, though; she yanked me into the forest and away from prying eyes as soon as I came close enough. Hands that should have been strong but instead trembled with weakness clawed my shoulders. She bent to be closer to eye level with me, her jaw taut with worry. Muck speckled her flannel coat and her hair was greasy and matted, like it hadn’t been washed in several days. Her eyes darted back and forth and our faces were close enough that I could feel her breath. It was rank. When was the last time she brushed her teeth?
“What happened?” Alternate Wendy barked. I wondered if she’d always been this intense, or if I’d simply been too preoccupied with Mabel’s safety to realize that my counterpart was perhaps not as sane as one would think at first glance–or it could be that I was much closer to her this time. Alternate Wendy shook my shoulders. “What happened with Mabel?”
“She’s fine!” I retorted, shrugging out of her grip and stepping back. “Seriously, chill. Mabel’s fine. A little shaken, but otherwise fine.”
Alternate Wendy sighed, sagging into the tree behind her. “One more crisis averted . . .” she muttered.
“What happened?”
Alternate Wendy snapped to attention. “What do you mean, ‘what happened?’”
“In your timeline. What made you . . . like this?” I gestured up and down her body. “No offense.”
“I didn’t know we looked that different,” she joked halfheartedly.
“We don’t, but you’ve let your inner stressed woman have full control while I am still the laid-back one.”
“The laid-back one,” she snorted. “Ha. We’ve never been laid back.”
“Not since Mom disappeared,” I replied. “Your mom did disappear, right?”
My counterpart’s mouth opened and closed a few times. Finally, as if she’d oiled the gears that weren’t working, she said, “No, she didn’t.”
“What happened to her? Or–or did nothing happen to her?”
“A bear. A bear happened to her.” The words, blank and wooden, seized my heart and squeezed. “She died from the injuries a few days later. I was eight.”
I almost wondered aloud if my mom still lived, but clamped my jaw shut–it would be cruel to ponder something like that in front of someone who had no chance of regaining that person. At the same time, the hopes that had burned like coals on a stovetop since I’d realized that there might be a version of me who knew what happened to my mother, or better yet, had her back, were doused in ice water.
“You never answered my question,” I said. “All you’ve told me is that Mabel never woke up. Why? Is she–”
“She’s alive, but she’s been in a coma for years,” Alternate Wendy replied forlornly.
“How’s–how’s your version of Dipper doing?”
She twisted so I had a view of her back and crossed her arms. “Wendy, this isn’t something I like talking about.”
“I . . .”
“Leave it be. One day, maybe I’ll send you an interdimensional letter or something. Until they invent that, just know that there’s a reason it was me and not Dipper who came to you.”
It struck me like an axe to the head. Wendy–me–came to this dimension to warn us about Mabel. Not Dipper, who would do anything for Mabel. It hadn’t occurred to me that there could be a reason for this besides Wendy having an interdimensional travel machine that Dipper didn’t, but he was the one with the scientist great uncle who’d built an interdimensional portal, and the other great uncle who’d fixed that portal–it didn’t occur to me at all that something was wrong with this arrangement. I almost asked her what happened to Dipper. Holding myself back, I said, “When you can, please tell me what happened.”
Alternate Wendy turned to me with a pained smile. “Thank you.” With that, she bounded off.
I plopped onto a nearby log. The sun had set, allowing stars to glint. I grasped the log, its coarse whorls and serrated edges pricking my palms, but I didn’t much care. If anything, I gripped it tighter.
We’d really dodged a bullet, huh?
I picked my ushanka off my head with one hand and rubbed the fleecy inside with my thumb. I’d traded hats with Dipper at the beginning of the summer, meaning about two days ago. How would it feel for it to have been the last hat switch? My stomach somersaulted. Bad enough that there was a Mabel stuck in a coma. Now this. It’s not your dimension, I told myself, or tried to. But the idea of one day, anything happening to the twins . . . don’t think about it. Somehow, I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t thought about losing people for years. And now, the fears returned in full force–and invited a veritable party of other ones, too. So many people I cared about.
So many people I could lose.
“DINNER!”
And the night would go on with no one else having this realization. They’d consume dinner, the brothers shoveling meat in and Dad only a little less wild, fall asleep swiftly from the exhaustion of the day, wake up, and go about their day like any other summer, not realizing what grief one mistake could cause.
I pulled the hat back on and went inside.