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It figured, Pacifica thought to herself as she raced down the stairs. She’d let herself forget she was a Northwest, and that Northwests didn’t do things like sleep on the floor in a bag.
No, in a moment of weakness, she’d let herself be charmed by the smile of a friend…frenemy…frustratingly cheerful, yet respected rival…someone she hadn’t seen since last summer and kind of missed, and accepted an invitation to something called Mabel Pines’ Slumber Party Madness.
Worse, once she got there, she’d let herself get talked into eating too much junk food and letting Mabel, Candy, and Grenda give her a makeover. And then into playing their stupid retro party games. Even worse, she actually found herself having a good time.
Where did that get her? Covered in glitter and too much makeup, being chased all over the Mystery Shack in her pajamas by a being of unspeakable horror, having consumed so much Mabel Juice that she was now vibrating too fast to properly wield the miniature golf club that was her only weapon.
Oh, and she’d lost an earring her family no longer had the money to replace. She was pretty sure it had fallen out and the pig had eaten it when they were making their way down the stairs. Her parents were going to kill her.
When they got to the TV room, Grenda slammed the door behind them. “Think that’ll hold it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Mabel said. She was wielding a golf club of her own, and was doing a slightly better job of holding it steady, despite having consumed more Mabel Juice than the rest of them combined.
Pacifica glared at her. “If I die, I’m suing you and your entire family.”
Mabel blinked. “Me? How is this my fault?”
“You’re the one who insisted on playing a board game called Girl Gossip: The Game of Truth or Die,” Pacifica said.
Mabel shrugged. “So I didn’t read the wording on the box all that carefully.”
“Or the rulebook.”
“Okay, so I may have missed the teeny-tiny print where it says that if you accept a truth challenge and then lie about it, a being called Veriffany the Truth Enforcer gets to drag your soul to a realm of unspeakable suffering. But, really, who would have ever thought to look for that in the rules to a game meant for girls ages 10 and up?”
“To be fair, strange things do tend to happen when we play games at your house,” Candy said. She had forks taped to the fingers of one hand again, and was holding it like a claw ready to strike.
“Not all the time,” Mabel said. “Nothing strange ever happens when we play Calling All Boys.”
“Well, there was Chad,” Grenda said. She picked up a table and added to the pile of furniture she was starting to make in front of the door.
“Chad?” Pacifica asked, in a dry tone.
“Chad was very romantic. And a good listener. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t survive on this plane of existence,” said Candy.
Mabel sighed. “Chad was the creature from Dimension 379 Candy wound up talking to on the game phone thanks to an accident with a summoning spell, a microwave burrito, and some residual energy left over from Weirdma…you know what, never mind all that. That’s not the point. The point is that you’re the one who lied, Pacifica.”
“I did not!”
"LIAR!" cried the voice of Veriffany the Truth Enforcer. A force slammed into the door, scattering some of the lamps and end tables Grenda had just tried to pack in front of it.
“You guys, I don’t think this is going to hold,” said Grenda.
Mabel gave Pacifica a look. “All you had to do was tell us who your crush is. One crush. Easy. Just say the name of one boy.”
Easy? Well, of course that would be easy for Mabel. Pacifica had heard about at least sixteen different new guys Mabel had crushed on since last summer, not counting her renewed interest in the one on the ten-dollar bill. But for Pacifica…
“Or you could have just admitted you were too scared to answer and taken the penalty,” Mabel continued.
Pacifica gasped. “Northwests are never too scared. And we don’t take penalties. Northwests play to win.”
“Even if you have to cheat?”
“I didn’t cheat! I..."
"LIAR!" came the scream again, punctuated by another slam of force. The door began to splinter.
“Okay, new plan,” Mabel said. “We split up. Candy, Grenda, head toward the museum. See if you can find Soos, Melody, or anything we can use as a weapon. Pacifica, Waddles, and I will try to find my grunkles and my brother. Between the three of them, they ought to know how to stop this, even if Pacifica is going to keep being a poop head.”
“Did you just call me a…?”
Mabel took her by the shoulders and shoved her in the direction of the gift shop. “Move, Pacifica!”
Pacifica headed out, swinging her miniature golf club in front of her. “Don’t think you’re going to get away with talking to me like that. Northwests don’t…”
Mabel groaned. “Northwests don’t this, Northwests don’t that. I’m beginning to think Northwests don’t do anything except lie and cheat and get themselves into a lot of trouble with the supernatural because they’re being stubborn.”
“We do not…” Pacifica started.
"LI-!" the shriek began behind her.
“…do that all the time,” she amended hastily.
“But you do it a lot,” Mabel said. “I mean, there was what happened at your party last year.”
“That was one time!” Pacifica said. “And I fixed it.”
“When you stopped being stubborn and kept your family’s promise after decades, yeah. And then there was the thing with Bill.”
“Okay, so my father isn’t always the best person. But be fair. That was a weird summer. It’s not like we always…”
“So that was a different Pacifica who called us in September asking for our help because her family had annoyed a herd of leprecorns trying to steal their gold?”
“Well…”
“And then again in February when someone needed our help because her mom tried to get out of debt by selling her butler to some barf fairies?”
“Hey, we’re down to just the one servant these days. We can’t afford to be careless with them anymore.”
“And I’m not even gonna ask about March and the call for tips about how to get an angry invisible wizard out of a Jacuzzi…”
“Okay, so this town is weird and my family’s the worst,” said Pacifica. “I’ll stop calling you if that’s what you want.”
“That’s not what I want!” said Mabel. “I just think things would go so much better if you would finally let yourself stop worrying about being a Northwest, and just be Pacifica. I like Pacifica. She’s sort of a good person. And usually not a big liar. I don’t understand why you can’t be honest with me now.”
“I am being honest with you!” shouted Pacifica.
"LIAR!" came the scream from behind them, followed by the sound of the door finally breaking under the strain of whatever eldritch force Veriffany the Truth Enforcer was using.
“RUN!” shouted Mabel.
Pacifica ran. She was pretty sure she was running in the wrong direction, but she was too panicked to turn around.
She heard Mabel’s footsteps behind her, and then felt Mabel grab her wrist and pull her into the kitchen. “In here! Hide!” she said, shoving Pacifica into a cabinet. Pacifica started to protest, then thought the better of it. Mabel crawled in after her, followed by Waddles.
“Now stay still, and try not to be dishonest about anything,” Mabel whispered.
“I--" Pacifica began, then stopped as heard the door to the kitchen slam open.
Mabel put a finger to her lips and a hand over Waddles’ mouth.
Pacifica kept watched through a crack in the cabinet door as Veriffany the Truth Enforcer burst into the kitchen and floated in the air for a few minutes before rummaging through and knocking things out of nearby cupboards. Aside from the electric blue skin, the sixteen eyes, and the hair and wardrobe at least twenty-five years out of date, Veriffany looked like a girl who would have fit in at the public school Pacifica was now forced to attend thanks to her family’s declining fortunes.
Veriffany yawned, revealing a mouthful of fangs, before seeming to decide the girls weren't in the room and floating out the open door.
Pacifica tried to keep still and not talk. The entity hadn’t seen them come in, she realized, and maybe if they kept quiet and didn’t tell any more lies--which seemed to attract it directly--it would go away. Unfortunately, Mabel was making that difficult.
“I don’t understand what crush is so embarrassing that you would literally rather die than admit it,” Mabel whispered.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Pacifica countered, trying to keep her voice as quiet as possible.
“Is it my brother? Because if you like Dipper, it’s okay. It’s great, even.”
“I don’t like Dipper!” Pacifica said, a little louder than she meant to. And then, fearing the Truth Enforcer, clarified, “Not like that, I mean. Not like like.”
“Oh,” Mabel’s face fell when she seemed to realize the resulting silence from outside the cupboard meant this wasn’t a lie. “That’s okay. I just thought…”
“Don’t get me wrong. Your brother’s a perfectly nice person,” Pacifica said, watching Mabel in the dim light. Was Mabel mad? She couldn’t tell. The Pines twins were a matched set, and rejecting one of them in a conversation with the other was awkward, to say the very least. “I mean,” she continued, “someday he’s going to make someone very happy. Probably someone who also considers ghost hunting a viable career choice, and doesn’t place a big emphasis on the importance of dressing well or daily showering...”
She watched as Mabel’s expression changed. Oh, no. Pacifica had made it worse. She was good at social interactions when she was trying to be mean and condescending, but when she wasn’t, she often fell flat on her face.
And then Mabel put her hand to her mouth and made a stifled noise in between a giggle and snort. “You’re not wrong,” she whispered.
“You’re not mad?”
“Of course not. I just thought that if you were dating my brother, it would make us a little like sisters.”
“And you’d be okay with that?” Pacifica ventured.
“Sure, silly. I like you and it would give us the chance to hang out more. Of course, if you ever hurt Dipper it would mean I would have to kill you, but…wait. So, if it’s not my brother you have a crush on, why couldn’t you tell us?”
“I-" Pacifica began, then sighed.
“It’s not Marius, is it?”
“Grenda’ Marius?” Pacifica scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“One of my exes from last summer? Because I’m over all those guys.”
“There isn’t a guy!” Pacifica half-whispered, half-shouted.
From outside, silence.
She could see the light dawning in Mabel’s eyes. “Pacifica, is the person you have a crush on a girl?”
Pacifica sighed. “I didn’t mean to cheat,” she said, instead of answering directly. “It’s just that almost all the other questions were about boys, and I thought I could kind of ignore the fact that this one was non-specific. Because I don’t have a crush on any boy. Of course, that was before I knew you made us play a game where you could accidentally summon a truth demon or whatever.”
“Is that what you were embarrassed about?” Mabel asked. “Don’t be. I have girl crushes, too.”
“Really? But you’ve never said…”
“You’ve never asked.”
“You talk about boys all the time without being asked,” Pacifica pointed out.
“Oh. Well, I guess talking about boys is easy.”
“And talking about girls is hard?”
“Only in certain situations,” Mabel said. “It’s like…okay, say there’s this girl you like. Let’s call her, um, Non-Specifica. And she probably doesn’t like you that way, but it’s okay, because you’re great friends otherwise. Well, not great friends, but an okay sort of friends, when she’s not being overly competitive or snobby or insulting…”
Pacifica blinked. There was no way Mabel was saying what Pacifica thought she was saying, was she?
“…and so you just never bring it up when Non-Specifica's in the room, because it’s easier that way. What I’m saying is it’s okay to chicken out sometimes.”
“Northwests do not chicken out!” Before she had time to rethink it, Pacifica said, “Mabel Pines. There. I said it. I said my crush's name.”
“You…? ” Mabel began. “What? Do you mean it?”
Pacifica sighed and turned away, as far as the lack of space would allow. “Do you hear a truth enforcer outside screaming at us?”
“I…wow. Pacifica, I…”
“You don’t have to make a big deal about it. You can forget all about it if you want to. In fact, that would probably be...”
And before Pacifica could stop talking, Mabel kissed her.
It was Pacifica's first kiss.
Mabel lips tasted like fruit punch, glitter, and a little bit like how Pacifica had always imagined the taste of sunshine.
This was not how Pacifica Northwest’s first kiss was supposed to go. It was supposed to be on a yacht or something. With a guy who would be rich and smart and help her work to restore the Northwest family fortune. It was not supposed to be in a cupboard, in a shack--or in front of livestock, she mentally added as she heard Waddles grunt--with a girl with no money and even less fashion sense.
Still, it was perfect.
She wondered if Mabel would insist on bringing the pig on their first date.
She broke away when she heard multiple thuds coming from outside the cabinet. Too heavy to be Candy or even Grenda’s footsteps. “Wait…what?” she whispered. It couldn’t be that thing coming back, could it? Not now, after she’d actually told the truth.
She was only slightly relieved when she heard an old man call out, “Kids?!”
It was followed by a younger and all-too-familiar voice calling out, “Mabel? Where are you? Are you okay?”
Mabel threw open the door to the cabinet, and tumbled out, followed by Waddles. “Hi, Grunkle Stan! Hi, Grunkle Ford! Hi, Dipper!”
Pacifica crawled out after her. The kitchen was a minor disaster area. Half the cabinet doors hung open, and pots, pans, cans of food, and boxes of cereal were scattered all over the floor.
In the middle of the mess stood Mabel’s two great uncles and her twin brother. The grunkle in the fez was holding a spiked baseball bat, while the one in the long coat had what looked a ray gun of some sort. Dipper was holding a book open to a page Pacifica was sure contained some sort of banishing ritual.
“Fascinating,” said the grunkle in the long coat. “We were analyzing the specimens from the Bermuda Triangle when we got readings of a Class W Eldritch Abomination upstairs here in the shack. But it seems to have vanished.”
“What exactly is going on around here, Mabel? The kitchen is trashed, it looks like a bomb went off in the TV room, and…”
“Nothing but a little slumber party madness, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel said, beaming up at him.
“Mabel, is it safe now?” called Candy. She crept into the kitchen, forks on the fingers of one hand, a stuffed jackalope she was brandishing as a weapon in the other.
Grenda followed Candy. She was holding a giant firework labelled DOOM ROCKET. Behind her were Soos and Melody, wearing what looked like cardboard armor and wielding cardboard swords.
“Yeah, is everything okay, dudes?” asked Soos. “We'd just closed the gift shop and were out back FCLORPing when we heard what sounded like shouting and breaking things.”
“Yeah, did Pacifica finally…?” Grenda began.
“Everything’s fine, you guys,” said Mabel, before Grenda could finish. “We’ll talk about what to tell them later,” she whispered to Pacifica. Pacifica nodded. “We should get back to the party,” Mabel said to Grenda and Candy.
“Do you want to finish the game?” asked Candy.
“I don’t know,” said Mabel. “I think we’ve had enough Truth or Die for one night.”
“We’ve still got Necronomiconopoly. Or the game of What Could Go Wrong?” said Grenda.
Pacifica shuddered. “I think I’ve had enough of board games altogether,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Mabel. “Let’s think of something else less dangerous to do.”
“There are a few more of these babies in the storage closet,” Grenda said, gesturing to her firework.
“And we still have that case of Smile Dip upstairs,” Candy added.
“All right!” said Mabel.
Out of the corner of her eye, Pacifica thought she saw Dipper shudder. “I think I’ll camp outside tonight,” he said. “Somewhere far, far away from the Shack.”
The grunkle in the fez ruffled Mabel’s hair. “Those sound like fun and completely reasonable party activities for young teenagers. But before you do that, you’re first going to play an even more fun game called Clean This Mess Up.”
Mabel sighed. “Yes, Grunkle Stan.”
As everyone else left, muttering things about eldritch abominations and teenage girls on sugar highs, Mabel began to pass out cleaning equipment. Pacifica found a broom being pressed into her hand.
"Uh, Mabel," she began.
"Yeah, Pacifica?"
"Should I call for a maid service now, or what?" Pacifica asked, confused.
"No, you should start sweeping."
"But I..."
"Let me guess," Mabel said, a hint of exasperation creeping into her voice. "Northwests don't do housework."
"Well, we don't," said Pacifica. She glared, then admitted, "I have no idea how to use this."
"Do you want me to show you?" Mabel asked, her voice more gentle.
"Yes," said Pacifica.
And that was how Pacifica Northwest, against her better judgment, went to her first slumber party, had a brush with death--two, if you counted what happened later with the fireworks--got her first kiss, and learned how to sweep a kitchen floor. All in all, it wasn't bad for a party with no catering.
Of course, it was nothing compared to the party Mabel Pines threw the very next week.