Beneath the Stars

Chapter 1

"OK, dudes, we'll set up here," Wendy said, tossing the bulky, rolled-up tent to the ground.

"We're barely out of sight of the Shack," Mabel complained. In fact, they had trekked to a site they visited almost every day: the bonfire clearing, they called it.

"Hey, hey, I don't wanna take you noobs into the wild places your first campin' trip," Wendy teased. "You OK there, Dipper?"

Dipper staggered along under the weight of a cooler and a backpack. "Doing OK," he puffed. "We won't have to lug this to those wild places, will we?"

"No way!" Wendy said with a laugh. "This is strictly backyard campin'. Hey, how'd Stan and Ford enjoy their party?"

"It was a million per cent success!" Mabel said. "We caught 'em by surprise, they had a great time, and then we went out on the lake to fish and Dipper and I did that thing you and I talked about. You know, the present that can't be put in a box?"

"I bet that went over big," Wendy said.

"Yeah, it did! Grunkle Stan couldn't stop crying, and Grunkle Ford couldn't stop smiling! And you know what? Tonight Grunkle Stan's taking Sheila out on a date!"

"Get out of town!" Wendy said, busy unrolling the tent and ground cloth.

"Yep," Mabel said. "They're driving all the way to Portland, and he's gonna take her to dinner at the City Grill."

Wendy whistled. "It must be true love! That's, like, a super expensive place with a great view of the city, and I hear it's real romantic! Ready for a Graunty, Mabes?"

"If it's Sheila, I'm OK for it!" Mabel said. "Oooh, I hope I get to be the maid of honor!"

Laughing, Wendy said, "I think you got a lock on that if it happens! Dip, put that thing down, dude! Tell you what, you get a fire started, OK? Scatter some of the old ashes first, 'cause we're gonna cook later."

Dipper set the blue-and-white cooler down with a thud. He also shrugged out of his backpack. "OK!" They always kept a supply of cut firewood and kindling in the clearing, and it didn't take him long to build a loose cone of dry pine twigs with thicker branches making vertical ribs. When that caught, he could pile on a couple of small hardwood logs. "Got matches?"

"Yeah, from lightin' the candles," Wendy said. She was unfolding one of two long, flexible, collapsible tent poles. "In my left jeans pocket."

Dipper turned pale. "Uh—you—you want me to stick my fingers in there?"

"Whoa!" Mabel yelled. "Go, Dipper!"

Dipper growled, "Shut up!"

"Just get the matches, man," Wendy said, and Dipper reached into her front jeans pocket. It was a tight squeeze. "Hey, love the way you wiggle those fingers! Just don't go too deep!" she cautioned playfully, making him jerk his hand back as if he'd thrust it into a fire. Wendy laughed. "I swear, dude, you have so many hang-ups! Wait just a sec." She fished in the pocket, then tossed a small matchbox to Dipper. "Just light the fire, man."

"OK." Dipper knelt by the stone fire circle, struck a match—succeeding only after two tries, because his hands were shaking a little—and soon the twigs began to crackle. He went over and helped Wendy and Mabel with the tent.

They were spreading out the ground cloth. "Why do we have to do this?" Mabel asked. "The tent has a floor in it!"

"Keeps everything dry in case of rain, and also keeps bugs out," Wendy told her. She glanced up at the clear blue sky. "'Course, we're not s'posed to have rain tonight, but this is how you put up a four-person tent, so you might as well learn the right way. Dip, hold down this side of the ground cloth. Mabel, help me spread the tent on top of it. We want the door facing the fire, OK? There you go. Square it up, now. Get the corners down. OK, Dip, you an' Mabel kick off your shoes. You never want to step on the tent with shoes on, right?"

"Sure," Dipper said, tugging off his sneakers without unlacing them.

Wendy shed her boots, too. "OK, now we're gonna put the two poles across the tent in an X shape, right? If you'll look there are hooks all along the tent that go around the poles. So let's do the one where Dipper's standin' first. Mabel, you get on the other corner, and you guys hook the tent onto the pole."

That wasn't very hard, and when they'd finished the other one and bent the long poles, the tent started to look like something a person might actually sleep in. They planted the ends of the poles in the soft earth, rolled the excess ground cloth under, and then pegged the corners of the tent down. "Pret-ty good, you two," Wendy said approvingly. "Now, if it really was rainy, we'd add the rain fly, but we'll be OK tonight without that. Let's check it out!"

They crept into the tent. The light inside was green—because the tent itself was green—and the smell was like that in a cloth store, mixed with a kind of waxy aroma. "Cool!" Mabel said, sitting on her knees. "There's plenty of room in here!"

"Yeah, but you're gonna think the ground is hard if you just sleep on it. You both got your sleeping bags an' air mattresses, right?"

"Yeah, in our packs," Dipper said.

"Just toss 'em in the tent for now," Wendy said, crawling out and grabbing her boots. She got her own pack and stowed it inside the tent. "We'll blow up the air mattresses before it gets real dark. Anyway, we got the battery lantern, so we're cool. Fire's goin' pretty good, so Dipper, get your shoes on and add a couple kinda small logs, OK? Not pine, though. Next we're gonna cook over a campfire."

"Marshmallows!" Mabel said, sounding like a little kid.

"Maybe for dessert," Wendy told her with a chuckle. She opened the cooler and took out three medium-sized potatoes and an onion. "OK, guys, couple things: First, tomorrow when we leave we're gonna take out all our garbage, right? We can dig a hole to bury anything that'll decompose, but anything else—cans, aluminum foil, whatev'—we pack up and haul back. First rule of bein' a good camper."

"Wait, wait," Mabel said. "What if—well, you know—I have to—bathroom stuff?"

"Welcome to your outdoor toilet," Wendy said, holding up a small folding shovel in one hand and a roll of toilet tissue in the other. "You dig the hole, do your business, an' cover it all back up, dude!"

"Outside?" Mabel asked in a squeak. "We could go back to the Shack!"

"No, not if this was a for-real wilderness campin' trip. Get used to it, girl! We're all gonna do it," Wendy said with a grin. "Right, Dip?"

"Huh? Oh, sure, right, right." I can probably hold it, I can probably hold it, I can probably—

Wendy put the tissue and shovel away. "Where was I? Oh, yeah, the second thing: We need to collect a few rocks, 'bout six inches thick. I gotta put the grill over the fire eventually. First, though, potatoes au outdoors!"

She nested each potato in a sheet of aluminum foil, sliced each one into half-inch circles, and then cut the onion the same way, but much thinner. She tucked a slice of onion between every two slices of potato, drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled on salt and pepper, and then wrapped all three vegetables up. "We're gonna fire-roast these," she said. "Come on, I'll show you."

By then the campfire was burning well, three hickory fire logs on a big mound of red-hot embers. Using the shovel, Wendy carefully made a space in the embers, put one of the wrapped potatoes down, and then covered it over with the hot ashes. "Now you guys do the same thing. Don't get burned!"

Mabel and Dipper followed her directions and buried their potatoes. "'Kay, good goin'. Now, these will take forty-five minutes to get done. Dipper, keep time!"

"Got it," Dipper said, setting the timer function on his phone.

"Go get me some rocks!" Wendy said. "They don't have to be real big, but you maybe better bring 'em one at a time, 'cause they gotta be like six inches thick, and they'll be heavy!"

A small stream meandered through the woods not too far away from the campfire, and Mabel and Dipper went to it and found a jumble of rounded river stones. The best-looking ones were turtle-shaped and about ten inches across—and heavy, as Wendy had warned. Dipper managed to carry two, and Mabel, not wanting to be outdone, struggled along lugging three. Halfway back, though, she set two of them down. "I'll come back for you guys later!"

When they returned to the campsite, they saw that Wendy had added more small sticks to the fire and had raked it down level. "Yeah," she said. "These oughta do. Looks like we need three more 'bout this size."

"On our way!" Dipper said.

They returned with the last three rocks, and Wendy arranged them on either side of the fire and then laid a metal grill over them. "This is, like, our stove, see? I'm gonna grill up some burgers, and we'll have them with the potatoes. But we got like another fifteen minutes before I can start that, so relax for now."

"Um—where's that shovel?" Dipper asked.

"Right over there," Wendy said, pointing. "Dude, word of warning—if you go in the bushes, take a good look at the leaves! If they're like a kind of deep green and kinda shiny, and they grow in clusters of three, that's poison oak. Don't go there, and I mean that literally! Man, I once squatted in—"

"Too much information!" Dipper yelped, grabbing the shovel.

"Wait, wait, you're gonna need the toilet paper too!"

"No, I don't!"

Wendy laughed. "Then you don't need the shovel either, dummy! Just go behind some trees and pee already."

Dipper felt like his face was on fire as he left the clearing, hearing both Wendy and Mabel giggling behind him. But he found a convenient thicket of saplings and got the job done.

When he got back, Mabel was grinning evilly. "Wanna sing some campfire songs?" she asked. "How about 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat Gently Down the Stream? Get it, Dipper? Stream?"

"Very funny," Dipper said, sitting on the log and feeling the warmth of the fire. The sun was going down, the western sky turning a peach color. A cooling breeze had sprung up, but the sky overhead remained clear.

"Nice," Wendy said, sitting beside him and leaning back. "Little wind'll keep the skeeters away."

"They're not usually bad around here anyway," Dipper said.

"Hey, Dipper!" Mabel said. "We could sing 'By a Waterfall!' Or 'Please Don't Pee in the Pool!'"

"Ease off, Mabes," Wendy said. "Dip knows that everybody pees. Hey, you remember what I said about poison oak, too. Unless you want an itchy butt so red it'll attract baboons!"

Dipper laughed at that, and even Mabel joined in. From time to time Wendy raked more live coals over the potatoes—she had marked the spot where she'd buried each one with a small stone, because "Ashes get caught in the wrinkles of the foil and it's hard to find 'em sometimes"—and when Dipper's phone chimed, she said, "Burger time!"

They had already made the burger patties, mixing in some grated Parmesan cheese and seasoning, so she took them from the cooler and plumped them down on the grill. They started sizzling at once. "Won't be long now."

"Man," Mabel said, "they smell so good!"

"Yeah, for some reason, nothin' tastes as good as burgers cooked over real wood outdoors," Wendy said. "Mabes, get us three Pitt's from the cooler, OK? And find me the buns."

The burgers turned out perfect, slightly charred outside, done all the way through, and juicy. They put them on buns with pickles, onions, and mustard (except Mabel had brought a couple of squeeze packets of strawberry jam and used that, too). Wendy dug out the potatoes, gingerly unwrapped them, and said, "Feast's on, dudes!"

Dipper dug in. "This is really good!" he said.

"Told'ja, dude! Mabel, how's yours?"

Mabel's response was basically "Nom-nom-nom-nom!"

"She means it's good," Dipper said. "I can tell."

Then they made sloppy S'mores, munched them and licked their fingers, and everybody felt full. They finished and cleaned up, storing the empty soda cans, crumpled foil, and other waste in a thick plastic garbage bag, the forks and utensils in a gallon-sized zip-up one. "Wash these when we get back," Wendy said "Ordinarily we'd camp near water and heat some up to get stuff clean, but since it's just the one night this'll do."

Mabel kept burping contentedly. "Guys, this is so-o-o nice," she said.

Deep twilight had fallen, but at that time of year it would linger until nearly ten p.m. They took their sleeping bags and unrolled them in the grassy clearing a little way from the bonfire glade and lay back, looking up at the sky.

"Dipper should've brought his guitar," Mabel said.

"Dude, how's that goin'?" Wendy asked.

"He practices every single night," Mabel said. "Even down in my room I can hear him. He's pretty good on some songs, too. Hey, didja know he writes songs? He even wrote one—"

Hastily, Dipper said, "Mabel! When I'm good enough, I'll play, OK? I got a long way to go yet."

"Sorry," Mabel said.

"It's OK. It's just—when I'm in front of people, I get self-conscious and I, you know, mess up a lot," Dipper muttered.

"You'll get there, dude. Hey, look. Stars're comin' out," Wendy said. "There's the Big Dipper." She pointed to the western sky.

"Yeah, tonight you can see Mars and Saturn, too," Dipper told them. "Can't make out Mars yet, but there's Saturn, that yellowy-looking star right over there."

"Where's the moon?" Mabel asked.

"Won't be up until nearly midnight," Dipper told her. "We had a full moon a couple of days ago."

"Yeah . . . ." She sounded upset.

Dipper could have kicked himself. Dang it, she's thinking of the night Russ—

"'Round here they call that the Strawberry Moon," Wendy said.

"That's actually an old Algonquin name for it," Dipper murmured. "'Cause it was the time when strawberries began to get ripe in their territory."

"Huh," Wendy said. "'Round here they say it brings in a time of new life and new loves."

"That would be awfully nice," Mabel murmured.

They talked about this and that while the sky overhead darkened. Then around ten-thirty—Mabel was already starting to snore a little—Wendy said, "Well-p, let's haul back to the tent. 'Bout time to turn in. Mabel! Come on, girl!"

They walked back to where the tent was outlined by the ruddy glow of the dying fire. Wendy cheerfully asked, "Think you dudes can handle real campin'?"

"Sure we can," Mabel said. "We're Pines! Or is that Pineses? I never can remember. Uh, Wendy, where's the shovel and the, you know, tissue paper?"

"Gonna need the lantern, too," Wendy said. "I'll go with you."

"Girls always go to the bathroom in pairs," Dipper said.

"Duh!" Mabel told him. "'Cause we wanna talk about guys!"

Dipper sat on the log near the fire and started to inflate the air mattresses as the two girls made their way into the forest. "Watch your butt, Mabel!" he called after them.

"Watch your butt face, Dip!" she yelled back.

He rested between inflations—the mattresses took a lot of blowing up, and it made him a little dizzy. He'd just finished the last one when the world lit up green.

He jumped up and ran from under the tree cover, looking upward. "A meteor!" he yelled.

He heard crashing in the brush behind him. "What's that weird light?" Wendy shouted, emerging beside him.

"Look!"

The streaking meteor had come in from high up in the west and was steeply arcing downward. It shone an unearthly green, and Mabel just had time to come running out and gasp, "Wow-wow-wowee!" before it plunged out of sight.

"That was a big one!" Dipper said.

"Did it hit?" Wendy asked.

"Probably hundreds of miles away," Dipper told her. "You can't really judge—"

A rumble like thunder interrupted him.

"Huh," he said. "Guess I was wrong!"

-To Be Continued