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“Are you sure you want to come?”
The inside of the car was stuffy in the late summer heat as it turned slowly down another street corner, tires rattling on the uneven pavement. Stan, who wasn’t sure at all but refused to admit it, pressed his face to the window and looked out at the steadily more familiar streets.
It was like waking up from a dream, driving back into New Jersey. The first few days of the road trip had been exciting, filled with loud, off-key singing and detours to attractions even more ridiculous than the Mystery Shack and getting kicked out of hotel swimming pools and tiny, kitschy gift shops. But in the last day or so the mood had changed. Mabel still sang, but the rest of them didn’t join in. They only stopped when the car was low on gas, and they ate their cheap rest-stop meals in silence.
“It’s all right if you want to stay in the car,” Mabel said, trying to catch the twins’ eyes in the rearview mirror.
Stan took a deep breath and looked across the back seat at his brother, who was doodling furiously in one of his notebooks. It wasn’t even words or any recognizable image, just scribbling so hard that the point of his pencil snapped off and pinged against the seat in front of him.
“No. We wanna come. Right, Ford?”
Ford had stuck the broken pencil behind his ear and was sitting on his hands, rocking back and forth. He looked up at Stan with an expression of both fear and grim determination.
“Right.”
Mabel turned the final corner and the car came to a stop, the front wheel rolling up onto the sidewalk in front of Pines Pawns.
Some part of Stan was expecting the building to look different, the way all the buildings back in Gravity Falls had changed over the summer, with patches and repairs and fresh paint covering up apocalyptic graffiti. But it looked exactly like he remembered. Even the patina of dirt on the unwashed windows was the same as it had been when he last saw it three months ago.
They’d fought demons that summer. They’d saved the world. But as Stan looked up at the plain brick building he felt his chest constrict. He wanted nothing more than to sink down to the glitter-stained floor of the car and hide.
The rumble of the car’s engine died as Mabel removed the key and stuffed it, along with its rhinestone-bedecked keychain, into her purse.
The front doors opened, and Mabel and Dipper stepped out of the car, stretching their stiff limbs.
Stan looked at Ford again. His brother looked even more scared than he felt. That was okay, though. Ford being scared gave him a reason to be brave.
Stan unfastened his seatbelt and opened the car door. He hesitated for a moment, looking down at the grimy pavement. As soon as he stepped out of the car’s comforting interior, he’d leave the last little bit of Gravity Falls that had travelled here with them. He’d have to admit that summer was really over.
He took a deep breath and stepped out into the blazing New Jersey sun.
Mabel turned to her brother. “You ready?”
Dipper nodded. “Absolutely.”
She knelt down next to the younger twins and put a hand on each of their shoulders. “You ready?”
“As we’ll ever be,” replied Ford wryly.
Mabel straightened and rapped on the door.
“We’re open,” came a rumbling voice from inside.
“Yeah,” called Mabel, unmoving. “I know.”
There was the sound of a chair being pushed back, and then heavy footsteps approached. The door swung open and Filbrick stood silhouetted in the doorway, staring out with his usual inscrutable expression. He grunted when he saw them. A clattering of high heels rang out from behind him, and Mrs. Pines appeared on the stairs.
Mabel was standing closest to the door, with Dipper to her left and the twins a pace behind. Filbrick ignored the adults, brusquely gesturing Stan and Ford inside. “C’mon, knuckleheads.”
He was turning to re-enter the shop when Mabel stepped between the twins and their father, and said, quietly, “No.”
For a moment Filbrick seemed taken aback at the audacity of this strange glittery old woman in her pink sweater, and then he laughed in her face.
“What are you talking about, you senile old hag?”
Stan could feel himself getting smaller, as if he was trying to melt into the sidewalk and flow away. Up close, his father was so big and powerful, and Mabel looked so small. All the possibilities that had seemed so certain in Oregon shriveled up under Filbrick’s stare. This wasn’t going to work. Mabel would give in and they’d go inside and the summer would turn into a dream that it hurt to remember—
But Mabel didn’t flinch. “They’re not coming back,” she said.
Filbrick stepped forwards, raising one massive hand to push Mabel aside. “What are you talking about, you—”
Before he could take another step Mabel shifted, slightly, into a fighter’s stance, her knees bent and her hands curled into fists. “I said they’re not coming back.”
Filbrick drew himself up to his full height. “You think you can threaten me?”
Stan couldn’t see Mabel’s face, but she cocked her head in a way that suggested she’d just winked at him.
Glowering like a storm cloud, Filbrick raised his hand to strike. Stan, who had been at the receiving end of his father’s fists more than once, held his breath. Next to him, Ford reached out silently and clasped his hand.
There was a very soft, very subtle click. Dipper had drawn back his trench coat and laid one hand on the blaster at his hip. He didn’t draw it, just kept his palm resting gently on the pommel. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
“You want to make this hard, we can make it hard,” said Mabel. “You want to fight, go ahead. But don’t think for a second that this is a fight you can win. I’ve been fighting to protect my family for thirty years. I’ve fought monsters and dinosaurs and demons that you couldn’t even begin to imagine. My brother’s done the same. If you try to hurt these boys again, you’ll have to get through us.”
“I’m their father!” blustered Filbrick. “It’s my legal right—”
“To hit them?” Mabel cut him off. “To make them so scared of you that during the fucking apocalypse it was still you they had nightmares about?”
Stan gasped despite himself. He’d never heard his great-aunt swear before.
Mabel turned her head and winked at him. “Sorry, pumpkin,” she said, and he saw her clenched fist, the ostentatious costume jewelry rings she was wearing on every finger. Just as good as brass knuckles.
“You can try to bring the courts into this,” Mabel continued, “And I’m no lawyer, so under other circumstances you might have a chance, but my brother here has ties to the shadow government, and back in Gravity Falls these boys managed to make a few powerful friends. Powerful and rich and very, very eager to see that these kids stay safe. We will bleed you dry, and you still won’t get them back.”
Filbrick didn’t respond.
“You know the funny thing?” said Mabel levelly. “If I’d called you from Oregon and offered to hold on to the kids—pay their expenses, let my brother teach Ford science—you would have jumped at the chance, wouldn’t you? Get them out of your hair, keep them from weighing you down? But there’s no goddamned way I’m going to give you that satisfaction.”
Mabel looked behind Filbrick, where the twins’ mother was hovering uncertainly, and her face softened.
“Listen,” she said. “From what these boys have told me, you actually love ‘em. That’s not enough for me to let ‘em back in this house, but if you ever decide you want better than this, we can help you. If there’s one place on Earth a fake psychic can do well for herself, it’s Gravity Falls.”
Mrs. Pines’ eyes darted from her sons to her husband to the old lady dressed in pink who had appeared to turn their world upside down.
“Mom,” Stan said. “Please . . .”
Filbrick looked like he was going to say something, opening his mouth and wrinkling his brow, but Mabel cocked her head at him and he shut his mouth again.
There was a strange expression on their mother’s face, and then, very slowly, she reached down and slipped the two rings off her left hand.
“Hey,” she said. “As it happens I’ve got something to pawn. And don’t try to stiff me; I know what they’re worth.”
As Filbrick gasped at her like a beached fish, Mrs. Pines turned to her children and smiled. “Give me five minutes to pack my things.”
Stan was squeezing his brother’s hand so tightly that he was afraid their fingers would go numb. He felt like he was going to cry, and for once it didn’t matter if he did. No one would punish him for it. No one would hurt him.
“Hey kidlets,” said Mabel, “You need anything before we ditch this dump?”
Stan shook his head. He had things upstairs, but he could get new things, better things—
“My books!” exclaimed Ford.
Dipper chuckled. “A kid after my own heart. Come on, I’ll help you carry them.”
Stan followed them in, crossing the threshold of his childhood home for what he was finally starting to believe was the last time. He could hear his parents arguing by the register, but the familiar sound ceased when Dipper gave Filbrick a courteous smile and said, “Can I help you?”
While Ford and Dipper packed up the contents of Ford’s bookshelves into a couple of cardboard boxes, Stan ran around their bedroom, grabbing objects and then putting them down again. Did he want to take any of their B-movie posters? The monster mask? The Cool Rock collection?
In the end, all he brought were a couple of trinkets that fit in his pockets and the stash of uneaten candy from under their beds.
As they stepped out the door, Dipper called, “We’ll send you the paperwork later! And if you don’t fill it out, we’ll send a lawyer, and if that doesn’t work we’ll send a different lawyer who’s also an enforcer for the Shadow Government, so really you should probably save yourself the hassle and just get it done the first time. Toodles!”
“Grunkle Dipper,” muttered Stan, “Nobody in this dimension says ‘toodles’.”
Mabel was waiting in the car with the engine running and the radio blaring the girliest pop music she could find. As the rest of the family approached, she lowered her rhinestone-studded lilac sunglasses and grinned.
“Let’s blow this joint!”
They piled Ford’s books and Mrs. Pines’ suitcase into the trunk, and Dipper slammed it closed with an air of finality.
“Front seat or back, Ma’am?” he asked. “Or, well, actually, the boys seem to have decided that already.”
As soon as she’d put her bag down, Stan and Ford had each grabbed one of their mother’s hands and were trying simultaneously to explain everything that had happened that summer. It wasn’t very effective so far, but they had time. They had all the time in the world.
They kept chattering as the three of them clambered into the back seat. “So, ah . . .” Mrs. Pines looked around her at the sparkling purple interior of the car. “Where are we going?”
“Gravity Falls!” shouted Ford, at the exact same time that Stan said, “Home.”
“That’s right,” said Mabel, gunning the accelerator and speeding away from the dusty pawn shop in a way that probably broke at least three separate traffic laws. “Home.”