Of Worried Gingers and Cool Adventures

Chapter 1: Joyous Occasion

Sitting on the hood of Thompson's mom's car, Nate and Lee sang, "Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Wendy. Happy—"

Leaning against the front passenger door, Wendy complained, "Guys, stop it, please,", and groaned, "This is so lame."

Nate looked bewildered, not a difficult expression for him. "Dude, singing 'Happy Birthday' is, like, a must right?"

The lanky redhead shrugged and adjusted the blue pine tree cap sitting on top of her head. "I honestly don't care about that! It's not like it means anything. I'm just a year older now, who cares? But you guys aren't even trying to sound sincere."

"When have we ever sincerely tried anything, dude?" Lee countered.

"Yeah, true," Wendy gave in.

The parking lot outside the convenience store was one of their usual hangout spots. Nate and Lee were sitting on the hood of Thompson's mom's car, Robbie and Tambry had been glued together since last summer, and Wendy and Thompson completed the circle of friends. The teens were "celebrating" the "joyous" occasion the same way they always did when the date on someone's passport matched the one on the calendar: they just hung out like they normally would anyway. As Lee said, "Trying" just wasn't their thing. Big gestures were for people that cared and, being teenagers, they'd rather be discovered dead than to be caught caring about something, so they just hung out and talked about how much their teachers sucked, how some band that became popular last month was already getting old, and other things of equal (non-existent) importance.

Thompson stood a little to the side with a slice of cake. He had brought it, and it was the only gift Wendy had received for her birthday, but it was more than she had expected from her group of friends, even if the store-bought cake wasn't even all that tasty. She had eaten her dry slice, mainly because she was hungry and didn't want to seem like a jerk to Thompson, not for the taste.

Tambry had declined because she was watching her figure, and Robbie, Nate, and Lee had held a contest of who could throw their piece closest to the store's garbage bin (Lee won by a landslide). Thompson didn't mind his friends not liking the cake and was just happy to be the only one going for seconds, and thirds...and he was still eyeing the little bit of leftover cake like he might propose to it later.

Wendy stretched and yawned. "Birthdays are such a bore! I mean, I'm not any different now than I was yesterday, right? Except mad 'cause my dad invited some relatives over and I have to spend the night at my house surrounded by the rest of the Corduroy clan."

His mouth full of cake, Thompson asked, "Dude, is that such a big deal?"

She rolled her eyes. "You've met my dad right? What makes you think his brothers are any less crazy?"

"Fair point," Nate said as he and Lee nodded in unison.

"Didn't you say your boss was also coming over?" Tambry asked

"Yeah. Soos and Melody are cool, but Soos has a business to run now and tourist season starts pretty soon. So I'll have to hang out with the family the whole time." Wendy took a can of Pitt Cola from the pack next to Lee before continuing: "The worst thing is, my stupid cousin is probably going to keep bothering me all night about working at his logging camp!" Wendy groaned and popped the top of her cola.

"Dude, this is like the most worked up I've seen you since last summer, and now you're not even dealing with some sort of demonic trigonometry-thingy" Nate noted while sipping his own Pitt.

"Triangle," Lee corrected.

"Yeah, triangle," Nate repeated before he punched his friend in the arm "you nerd."

"Your mom's a nerd!"

Wendy felt the group's attention focus on her, and she took a sip of her Pitt to hide her discomfort at being the center of everything.

Tambry looked away from Robbie and her phone for a second and said, "Girl, don't be going cray-cray, I've got enough content for my blog as it is. If you want to freak out, could you do it next week?"

"Tambry..." Wendy sighed.

"Yeah man, what's the deal with you suddenly freaking out? You don't even care about birthdays." Robbie said trying, and failing, to be helpful.

"Naw mhn," Thompson said while chewing on his latest mouthful of barely edible cake. "She's just bummed Dipper isn't—oemph!"

Wendy's ninja reflexes kicked in, and she quickly smacked the back of Thompson's head before he could finish. The smack sent his fourth slice of cake tumbling to the ground. "Aww, no, man!" Thompson yelled.

"Nice hit! But what was that about Dr. Funtimes?" Lee asked.

Wendy didn't want that conversation, and she got an idea of how to divert it when Thompson bent down to reach for the mess on the ground.

"Ten bucks if you eat that!" Wendy blurted with a wicked grin.

"Hey, yeah! Ten more if you eat it without using your hands!" Lee added quickly, "He's going to eat it anyway, dude."

"Nice one, dude!" Nate said as they shared a totally radical fistbump.

Thompson muttered but got on his hands and knees on the hard concrete of the parking lot.

"Thompson! Thompson! Thompson!" Nate and Lee started chanting, pumping the air with their fists.

Robbie joined in as Tambry started recording the entire scene on her phone.

"Thompson! Thompson! Thompson!" The group chanted as he inched face closer to the sad, splattered pile of "cake" on the ground.

Wendy forced a laugh as she joined in on the chant, silently cursing Thompson for noticing the source of her discomfort. She knew Dipper was serious about his studies back in Piedmont, even if he wasn't even in high school yet. They had stayed connected from the moment the twins had left Gravity Falls. The trouble was that Wendy hadn't heard from Dipper in quite a while.

She had at least hoped for a letter or call from the little detective whom she considered her best friend. She didn't really care about anyone else since everyone barely cared about her, but she did care about him because she knew he cared (the key word being 'care'). He cares about silly things like birthdays... and being there for people when they needed him... he cares about me...doesn't he?

"Thompson! Thomspon! Thompson!" The chant continued louder as Thompson's mouth opened to start grazing on the pile that was now part dirt, part cake. The chant reached its climax and turned into disgusted yelps as Thompson shoved his face into the mess.

Tambry squeed: "Eeeew!"

Robbie laughed: "Dude!"

Nate and Lee both spoke at the same time: "Haha, gross!" "Classic Thompson!"

Wendy just watched, forcing a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

Hey, guys- I won't put an author's afterword at the end of every chapter, but I'd feel awful if I didn't at least give a shout out to the following two people:

GeeknGroom for being an amazing human being and talking to me even after realizing how crazy I am. She has written some amazing Gravity Falls fanfiction that you should definitely check out!

And William Easley for, well, everything. He's the one that inspired me to write in the first place and has been nothing but kind to me in the process. He's helped me in more ways than anyone could imagine. He was able to look at the mess of a story that I had typed out and helped me edit it in a way that made it look presentable. If you like anything in this story, he probably had a hand in it. He has also written an amazing assortment of awesome Gravity Falls fanfics that capture the feeling of the show and expand on it in such a great way that I recommend all of his work. Give it a try, I promise you will enjoy it.