#I won't be posting for tomorrow. I couldn't wrap my head around Typical Pines Luck.

[ticknart]

Second Summer: School

Summer school sucked. That's all there was to it. However, it was the only way Wendy Corduroy could finish enough credits to come to school half days her senior year. Six more weeks of school. She wanted to ring the neck of the groundhog that made that happened. It would be worth it, she kept telling herself. She'd get to work more and put away the extra money. She'd get into a good school and leave Gravity Falls for a while.

She popped her locker open and dropped the Algebra II book inside. One good thing about summer school was very little homework. The teacher basically gave them an assignment and they worked on it all morning. At the end they turned it in and would see their grades the next day. Class moved fast, but the days dragged on forever.

Days outside of summer school weren't much better. Ever since the whole Weirdmageddon thing last summer and then the "Never Mind All That" policy things had settled down in Gravity Falls. Well, actually, things had gone back to the way they were before two kids from California had shown up. It was those two kids who kept finding strange things in Gravity Falls and not forgetting them.

It was with those two that Wendy had learned that the people of Gravity Falls had memories targeted and removed. Wendy never knew if she had lost memories to The Society of the Blind Eye. When she and Soos had gone back to the museum to look for the memory canisters in the Fall, they were all gone. She assumed that everyone in town had been taken by The Society at some point.

Which was too bad because at least then people simply couldn't remember what was going on around them. Now they all choose to ignore the amazing things around them. Although, many of those had become normal, too. There are only so many times you can watch gnomes1 root through the trash or hear the manotaur war cry before it becomes normal and boring. She wondered what had been wiped from her mind. Had she dated a man/beaver? Did she have tea with a sasquatch? Had a meteor crashed to Earth bathing her in radiation and granting her superpowers that she could no longer access because the memories of using them were gone? There was no way to know unless those canisters were found. Unless she moved the canisters and wiped her own memory clean before going home. That was a questions that would sit with her for a while.

Also, it didn't help that she only had semi-regular work at the Mystery Shack. For the time when the Shack was run by Soos and Abuela, Wendy worked the weekends. (Really worked. Abuela had no time for relaxing at the counter.) Ever since Melody had moved to Gravity Falls, though, Wendy had been knocked off the schedule. Not fired, but not working, either. She thought she'd be able to pick up some hours during the summer, but that hadn't happened, yet. Hopefully soon. She didn't want to work at The Royal Ragtime Theater, but her in with Thompson could get her hired. Ugh, she should probably head over there now that school was out.

She sighed as she walked toward the doors of the school. If the rest of the year was anything to go by, this was going to be a long, boring summer. Nothing but watching gnomes go through trash and sweeping up popcorn for Wendy Corduroy. The sun blinded her as she pushed out of the building. She blinked away the brightness walking down the steps. When her eyes cleared, she stopped, causing one of her classmates to bump into her.

There, on the sidewalk in front of the school, ringing his hands and pacing back and forth, was a kid in a fur hat. Dipper Pines. Wendy smiled. Summer suddenly got a lot more interesting. He wouldn't be content with the normal weird things in Gravity Falls, no way. No matter what he thought about himself, he was a fearless hunter and he'd root out all the new weird.

She straightened the blue pine tree cap she traded him for last year and increased her pace. He hadn't noticed her and still didn't notice her as she approached. He looked a little green around the edges. And nervous. Why did he look so nervous?

"Dipper," Wendy said, stopping near the pacing boy.

He jumped, looked up at her, and blushed.

Dipper hadn't changed much over the last year. He'd grown a little, maybe, but she still felt like she towered over him. He wore the blue vest he'd worn all last summer, probably stuffed with everything he'd need to find new and interesting things in Gravity Falls; he was such a scout. On his head sat the furred ushanka she'd given him when she took his cap. His brown mop of hair stuck out in all directions from under the hat. He still wrung his hands. Also, he looked like he wanted to puke.

Smiling, she said, "Welcome back to Gravity Falls, man."

"You, too," he said and then looked down at his feet. "I mean... Well... It's good... You know?"

She put her hands on his shoulders and he stopped fidgeting. "It's good to see you, too," she said. She gave him a huge smile when he looked at her again. He smiled back, shyly.

There it was. He still had a crush on her. And it was worse than ever. She hoped she had settled things with him last summer, after the run-in with the shape shifter, but wasn't surprised that things hadn't settled. As they say, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." He was a really sweet guy who had avoided picking up his great uncle's worst habits when it came to women. He would make someone very happy, one day, but it probably wouldn't be her. She'd have to work hard this summer to make him understand and make it stick. Though, she wasn't sure how to do that without being cruel, yet, because she still wanted to be his friend, running through the woods or chasing down monsters. Friends like Dipper were important to have, and rare, because the only thing they expected of you was to be you. That was probably the greatest gift a friend could give.

"How was the bus ride?" she asked.

"Long," he said. "I didn't sleep. I was too excited to get here. I could barely eat. Mabel thought I was being stupid."

"Stupid about what?"

"About coming here," he said, "back to Gravity Falls. It's like... Look I was born in the Bay Area and have lived there my whole life, but coming back to Gravity Falls is like coming home."

She watched him as he spoke. The nervousness had disappeared. He'd stopped wringing his hands. He had a dreamy look in his eyes. This was a Dipper she could work with.

"Dang," she said. "That's not stupid."

"Yeah, but it's okay," he said, taking off his hat and running his fingers through his hair. "Mabel fits everywhere. She doesn't know what it's like to constantly be where you don't fit. She doesn't get what it's like to finally find a place where you fit."

"Dang," Wendy said, again.

This was some deep stuff. Especially from someone so young. He had gone through some pretty intense stuff last year and she could understand how that could lead to some serious thinking. Wendy remembered how felt and thought when all that stuff with her mom happened. She was younger than Dipper at that time.

"Not that it isn't great to see you," she said, hoping to force away any thoughts of her mother, "but what are you doing here? At school, I mean. We could have gotten together later."

"Yeah, well, when we first got here and were loading our stuff into Soos's truck, I heard a couple of guys talking about weird frogs wandering the high school. One of them thought they might be leftovers from dissections. I thought, maybe, we could check it out?"

Every school year there were stories about living animals being dissected in the biology classes. Worms wriggling as a student made an incision down the length. Fish gasping for breath as they're placed on the dissection tray. Frogs hopping away before their feet could be pinned. The same old stories year after year. Wendy had never seen anything that made her believe the stories, though. It would probably be a waste of time, but summer was totally for wasting time, wasn't it?

"Absolutely," she said, grinning. "Where do we start?"

Dipper pulled a notebook from his pocket, tugged off the elastic band, and opened it to the book-marked page. Wendy noticed that there was a large "4" written on the cover because of course he would create his own journal. What she thought was most interesting about this new journal was that he hadn't opened it to the first page, which meant that he had found some interesting things near his home. That, or he was being an angsty teen filling up the pages with his worries and bad poetry. She doubted it, though.

"Okay," he said, as his finger traced down the page, "one of the guys said that he'd heard that his friend's girlfriend's sister saw one near some barn by the baseball diamond."

"The Barn2? Where the custodian keeps his stuff? Isn't that friend-of-friend thing kind of a stretch?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said, closing the notebook, "but some of the best tips that I've gotten came from hearsay, like this, or drunks."

"Good enough for me," she said, feeling happy because he had kept up his research, if that was the right thing to call it, while he was at home. "This is your show. Lead the way."

"Wendy?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't know where The Barn is."

"Right. Sorry. I'm used to you taking the lead on these sorts of things. Follow me."

She led him up the walk to the entrance. She pulled the door open and, like the gentleman she was, Wendy held the door for him. He flushed and muttered a thank you. She darted in behind him.

"How was your school year?" she asked.

"Okay," he said, "we got to go to the..."

It was a shame that he still had a crush on her. Sure, she was flattered and he was cool and smart and fun, but, as she told him last summer, the age difference was just too big. Yes, there had been a larger age difference between her parents, but, come on, he had been 12 and she was 15. Three whole years apart. Three seemed like a small number, but it was a huge chunk of life. Three years had been a fifth of her life and a quarter of his. Not to mention the grade difference. She couldn't help it if she'd finished her sophmore year before they met. It wasn't her fault that she'd started kindergarten at four. She didn't get to pick her birthday. It wasn't her choice to turn five just before the cutoff. No one wanted to be the youngest one in the class. She was, though. Lucky her.

Whe she tried to let him down easily, he seemed to understand that they were friends -- great friends -- and that's what counted. They could watch movies, eat pizzas, go on adventures and it was the best. Better than it was with any of the boys she had dated. How do you explain to a kid, who'd never held hands with a girl, that things change when you start dating? Boys might say that they like that you can throw a hatchet and hit a target from 20 feet away and beat them in a contest, but once you start dating, suddenly it's a problem. Suddenly you don't dress pretty enough. Suddenly you're too tall. Suddenly you hang with too many other guys. You don't change anything that they said they liked about you and suddenly you were all wrong. If they every really liked you at all.

It's why she never should have agreed to go out with Robbie. They'd been pretty good friends since starting high school, but after they started to date, he expected her to do everything he wanted to do without a question. He knew who she was before they dated. Why did he expect her to be any different because they smooched some at the arcade instead of arguing over who could change a tire faster in Pit Stop Mayhem3? Kissing was nice, but fleeting. Arguing with a friend could last forever.

Also, though she hated to admit it, Dipper was so smart it scared her sometimes. He messed up like all kids do, but he knew so much about how the world around them worked. He actively went out to learn more. When he didn't know something he did everything he could to research. He wanted to understand. He seemed to remember everything. Wendy knew that she was smart enough, decent grades in school and all that, but she wasn't on his level. Even if he wasn't a GENIUS genius, like his uncle, Dipper was still awfully smart. If he had been her age when they met, she didn't think that she would have been able to speak to him like a person. She would have been too worried about looking like an idiot and feeling dumber than dirt.

"...gull just reached up and snatched it from her hand." Dipper laughed. "She chased after it and when it started flying she yelled, 'I'll find out where you live, you flying rat, and then you'll be sorry.'"

Wendy laughed, too. She hadn't heard any of the story, but since he was laughing she did it too. There wouldn't be a quiz about the story later on, right?

Dipper broke away from her side and ran to the small stone building they had been walking toward. He stood by the wall for half a second and ran back to her.

"Is that thing 'The Barn' you were talking about?" he asked. "'Cause if it is, it stinks. I mean it really stinks."

"You think they'd give the custodian some place that nice to work in? That's the bathroom. The Barn's behind it."

"All of the smell without the charm?"

"Exactly."

"I guess it's nice to know that some things in high school will be the same as middle school."

Wendy scoffed then said, "It's all the same, dude. The only difference is that people are taller and growing more hair in weird places. I mean, armpits? Seriously?"

"You don’t have to talk to me about weird hair. I've seen Grunkle Stan in his underwear."

They both laughed as they walked around the bathroom. As they curved around the corner, they stopped. There was The Barn. It was about the size of a two-car garage. It had two large doors. Behind one was the riding mower, she assumed. On the short end closest to them was a window, perfect for peeking through.

"The door is on the far side. I think we should take a look here," she said.

"I," said Dipper, "agree."

The ground beneath them was squishy as they snuck toward the window. Small rectangles of something were scattered everywhere. Dipper picked one up, so Wendy picked one up, too.

"It's leathery," said Dipper. He smelled it. "It smells like... kerosene? I'm not sure."

"Formaldehyde."

"How do you know that?"

"I think these are the skin flaps you get when you open up a frog to dissect them."

"What?"

"You know, you take a scalpel and cut through the chest" -- She used her finger to cut horizontally across his chest. -- "then the bottom of its belly" -- She swiped at him again, much lower this time. -- "then you go right up the middle" -- Her finger moved up the center of his body. -- "so you can pull it open" -- She pretended to rip him apart where she had traced the last line. -- "and get at the frog's insides."

Dipper's eyes were as big as his opened mouth.

"I guess you haven't dissected a frog yet."

"No."

"Look. It’s nothing. It's way easier than field dressing a deer."

"I guess... So, what are these exactly?"

"You kinda pull the skin back and pin it down. You don't cut it off 'cause the teachers gonna get pretty pissed if it ends up floating around the classroom. I think someone's been cutting the skin flaps off."

"Why?"

"That's what we're here to learn, right?"

"I... yeah, but it just so" -- Dipper shivered. -- "blargh."

"Totally blargh," Wendy said.

They dropped their skin pieces and continued to sneak to the window.

Once underneath, Dipper found the dried out body of a dissected frog and showed it to her. She shrugged back at him. Ever so slowly, they stood up just enough to peek through the window. It was open and the screen was missing. All they could see through it was an odd green glow. They rose up more. When they were standing tall enough, Dipper practically at his normal height, to see the floor, they saw a small pit surrounded by eleven candles with green flames4.

A large rectangle of light appeared at the far end of The Barn. Wendy and Dipper ducked down fully before raising up so that just their eyes peeked over the window. They watched as the light disappeared and heard heavy steps. It was the custodian. He unzipped his jump suit, pulled his arms out, and let the top part hang. He wore a white t-shirt with a messy, multicolored, eleven-pointed star, with a swirling design in the center, drawn on it. It looked like he took several Pokeys5 from classrooms and drew the star himself. He pushed a bright yellow mop bucket with his feet.

When he reached the pit, he picked up the bucket and carefully placed it inside.

"Okay. Okay. Okay," he said, puffing out his giant, drooping mustaches when he breathed out. "Here we go."

He walked around, chose a candle to stand near, and faced the pit. He spread his arms out wide and, with a loud whoop, clapped his hands together. He took a step, turning around and facing away from the pit, then took another step, turning again to face the pit and stretching his arms out. He step-turn-clapped his way around the circle until he faced the first candle, where he dropped to his knees, picked up the candle, and spoke:

"Sú to posvätný dar? Dokážem svojho najlepšieho priateľa. Neodpovedal si môj posledný hlas, ale nezáleží na tom. Viem, že ste veľmi zaneprázdnení. Všetka tráva vyrastie a bábika je hovno. Dúfam však, že máte čas, aby ste mi pomohli. Naozaj nenávidím každého, kto tu pracuje. Prineste ďalšiu žabu a strávite celý deň v sobotu, aby ste dokončili erotický román založený na živote Nevillea Chamberlaina. Dúfam, že vaša rodina uspeje a starší ľudia nevadí, že meranie je prázdne. S dobrou láskou som."

The flames on the candles surged and went out. Nothing else happened, but the custodian continued to hold the candle out in front of him. Dipper and Wendy held their breath and strained to see and hear any changes in The Barn. Wheezing. Wendy heard wheezing. Wheezing with a croak at the end of it? She heard a second wheeze-croak. A third and fourth. Soon there were too many wheeze-croaks to count.

"What the heck?" she said.

The custodian whipped around and asked, "Who's there?"

Wendy and Dipper had ducked before he saw them.

"Your not going to live to tell the world what you saw here!"

They heard a clatter and soon frogs came flying out of the window, covering them and the ground.

"GET 'EM OFF!" screamed Dipper.

Wendy reached over and brushed frogs off of him. They fell with no resistance. They didn't hop or squirm. The frogs just wheezed and croaked. The barely moved.

She stood and pulled Dipper to his feet. The frogs fell with no resistance. He kneeled and picked a frog up off the ground.

She turned to the window and said, "What the heck, man?"

He puffed out his mustache in frustration.

"You shouldn't go around dumping undead frogs on people," she said. "What did you hope they'd do?"

"Well," the custodian said, his sun browned skin blushing, "I hoped that they'd, uh, eat you?" He grinned at her sheepishly. "Or at least your brains."

"Frogs!?"

"They are zombies."

"Yeah, but... FROGS!?"

"It’s not like I could have gone digging up the cemetery, or the pet cemetery to get bodies. People visit those places all the time. I would have been caught. And there are so many frogs thrown out during the school year. I thought it was a good use of resources. Recycle, reduce, reuse, you know?"

Dipper popped up, holding a wheezing frog in his hands and asked, "How did you expect frogs to get to our brains?"

"With their... With their teeth?"

"Frogs don't really have teeth like we do, see?" -- Dipper forced the mouth of the frog in his hand open. -- "It's this hard gum thing. It kinda crushes bugs and stuff, but it doesn't cut. It pinches, but that's about it."

"Plus," said Wendy, "we live in small town Oregon. Frogs and toads are always hopping through lawns and getting squished on the roads. No one around here is afraid of frogs."

"This kid screamed pretty loud," said the custodian, pointing at Dipper.

"Hey!"

"That was the shock of frogs being dumped on him," she said. "He's not scared of frogs."

"Yeah," said Dipper, puffing out his chest.

"Whatever," said the custodian. "Now I gotta clean up this mess."

"Before you do that," said Dipper, "can I come in and sketch your ritual's design?"

"Kid, you don't want to get into this stuff. It'll mess you up."

"It's only for science. I swear. I just want to take notes. I don't want to summon ancient evils."

The custodian shook his head and rolled his eyes as he said, "Fine."

"Great," said Dipper, hopping up to hoist himself through the window. Wendy put her hand on his butt and gave him a boost. He tumbled in.

As he stood up, Dipper started to ask questions. "What's that symbol in the middle of your shirt? And the colors of the star? What do they mean? Are they to please a god or a demon? Oh, and those candles, tell me how their made. And do they have to be green?"

As Dipper continued to pepper the man with questions, Wendy turned around, placed her back against the wall, and slid down to the ground. She sat cross-legged among wheezing, undead frogs. She leaned back against the wall and smiled.

Since Mayor Cutebiker6 had announced the "Never Mind All That" police, the gnomes learned the most humans simply ignored them. Soon after, the gnomes went to war with the local racoons, they won the right to scavenge the trash cans within Gravity Falls.

There is a fear in the gnomish community that the raccoons will one day regroup and perform terrorist acts on the gnomes in preparations for a new war. Jeff, the current leader of the gnomes, does not believe the remaining raccoons to be a credible threat. ↩︎

Why it is called "The Barn," Wendy never learned. She heard the older students had called it "The Barn" when she started school, so that's what she called it. Students aren't permitted to go as far as "The Barn," so everyone did.

The truth behind the name has been lost to history and only exists in legend. ↩︎

Pit Stop Mayhem is a first person shooter (FPS) where players are members of a pit crew fighting their way through enemies, using a crowbar, their fists, or one of many different attachments for an air gun, to get the parts needed to repair the race car. When they get the part back to the pit they play puzzle mini-games to attach the parts and repair the car.

The sequel, release date undetermined, is expected to be a multi-player FPS. Pit crews will be no larger than seven team members and one pit boss, who is the only member with access to the track map. Crews will still have to repair the cars as quickly as possible, but crews will now be able to raid other pits for additional parts and weapons. A rumor persists among fans that players will be allowed to drive the car as well as repair it. Developers have neither confirmed or denied this possibility. ↩︎

It has been long understood that green flamed candles (GFC) are the creepiest and, therefore, the most likely candle to help when performing an ancient ritual that many deem "unholy." However, many "holy" deities enjoy the minty grass smell given off by the highest quality GFCs and will respond favorably to most rituals that use GFCs as well.

The highest quality GFCs are made in Edmonton, Canada by a family that has been crafting GFCs, and other candles, for more than a thousand years. This is the last Great Candle Dynasty (GCD) in North America. Many other GCDs have married their children into this North American GCD hoping to learn the secrets to their GFCs. There have been no reports of the secrets of the GFCs being stolen or leaked. ↩︎

Pokey is an off-brand dry-erase pen popular with the school districts of Central Oregon. The pens are cheap and don't completely erase off of white boards, leaving the boards in all the classrooms muddied with former lessons. The pens are odorless, which discourages students and faculty from sniffing them to distract from reality.

Pokeys are not recommended for use on fabrics. ↩︎

Mayor Tyler Cutebiker is currently considered to be Gravity Falls's greatest mayor since the accidental election of a headless squirrel dropped by a passing bird of prey.

Mayor Headless Squirrel is well remembered for keeping a light hand on businesses regulation and refusing to pass a bill that would have banned dust motes and dust bunnies. Many mote and bunny owners across Gravity Fall cried when Headless Squirrel did not win a third term. ↩︎