Not Quite Lost (Gravity Falls Fanfiction)

Chapter Twelve

She couldn't focus properly. "Oh, um, pardon?" She asked politely, her heart beating fast.

   "Was Mabel telling the truth or was she just being crazy?" He repeated.

   She thought about it. She could lie to him and it'd be done and over with, or she could tell him the truth and have a mountain load of questions to answer. "Well," she started, still torn. "She was telling the truth, most definitely."

   He looked at her excitedly. "Really? There was a large machine?" 

   She sighed and nodded. "Yeah. I'm not 100% sure what it's for, but it's there and it's in the basement."

   I can't believe it, he thought. "Why didn't you want Mabel to tell me about it?"

   She shrugged. "It wouldn't have mattered either way, she still told you. But I didn't want to get your hopes up until I knew for sure what it did."

   He smiled a little bit. "Oh." They stood there in silence for a few seconds until he said, "You know you could've just lied to me and it would've been done and over with, right?"

   She nodded. "I'm not a liar, Dipper. You of all people should know that."

   He nodded in response. "I know."

   That night, Quinn walked towards her bedroom when she overheard a conversation between Stan and Mabel. "Mabel," he said. "What did you hear about this secret passageway in the Shack?"

   She could tell that Mabel wasn't even trying anymore. "Quinn and I found it."

    She stopped in her tracks and listened more. "Really, Quinn and you found it?"

    "Yes, sir," Mabel said in an unusual regretful voice. "We didn't mean to find it, we were just looking for Waddles. There was a soda machine and Quinn put in the code and it opened up like that."

    There was a pause. "Okay, Mabel. You can go back to bed now." She then heard footsteps going up the stairs behind her. She fell against the wall and started breathing heavily. Oh, my gosh, she kept thinking. What am I doing? I'm making a big deal out of nothing. Good God, now they're being integrated like they're suspects of a crime? All because of me. And now Stan is going to wonder how I knew the code and the machine probably not even as big of a deal as I think. What if I'm wrong and I'm making a huge fool out of myself? She then noticed her bedroom door down the hall, ran towards it and shut the door behind her.

   Dipper was awoken abruptly when his sister shook him awake. "Mabel...?" He groaned.

   "It's Quinn," she said, sounding like she just finished crying.

   "What about Quinn?" He asked, still not fully awake.

   "She-she-she's gone!"

   He sat up immediately and looked at his sad sister. "What do you mean she's gone?"

   She put her hand over her mouth briefly. "I noticed she was gone at six, and I've been up waiting for her to come back. It's almost ten o'clock. She ran away."

   "What?" He was really confused. Why would she run away? "We have to look for her," he got out of bed and quickly put on his day clothes.

   "No kidding, Dipper." She whispered.

   "Is Stan up?" He asked while putting on his cap.

   "No, I tried waking him up an hour ago and he told me to go back to bed." She started to cry again and her brother held her and kept shushing her. "It's going to be okay," he assured her. "We are going to find her and she's going to be alright, okay?"

   He felt her nod and they pulled away.

   Dipper was driving the cart through the woods while Mabel walked and looked for her in town. "Quinn!" He kept calling her name, getting more worried with more silence that answered his desperate calls. He was starting to think that maybe the town's weirdness had something to do with this, not her running away. He was going to turn around when he noticed he was right next to the gnomes village. He stopped the cart, jumped off and ran to the working little bearded people. "Hey," he called. "Gnomes!"

   The gnomes turned to him and rolled their eyes at him. "We aren't doing your dirty work again, kid. Get lost."

   He caught up to them and panted. "I'm not asking you to do anything for me. I just want to know if you saw my friend. She ran away last night and we need to find her."

   The gnome leader thought about it. "Maybe. What does she look like?"

   "Short black hair that she keeps in a ponytail, wears a red T-shirt,  green eyes, a little taller than me." He described, hoping that they've seen her running around somewhere.

   All the gnomes stopped everything they were doing and  looked at each other, their eyes wide. "Oh," said the leader finally. "We haven't seen her."

   The twelve year old was disappointed, but was about to turn around when the gnome said, "But, we know who she is! She is a very important person."

   He cocked an eyebrow. "What do you mean, exactly?"

   Two gnomes ran to him and handed him a piece a papyrus paper. "There is a prophecy that was created decades ago by a wise man only known as M." He examined the paper as they continued. "M wrote of a young girl, around your age, who would come from a place not near here and would be so smart and kind to everyone she met. She'd be so smart, she'd change how the entire town would think about the supernatural nature of this place by one discovery she'd find in a conman's basement. That discovery would challenge her and her friends to battle terrible creatures, but she'd overthrow the creatures and go home once and for all."

   He looked at the picture of the girl in the prophecy and his eyes went huge. It showed a young girl, her black hair down to her shoulders and these huge green eyes that sparkled. Her grey sweatshirt had been ripped up and she held this large sword while looking at the sky. It looked so different, but he could easily tell the girl in the picture was Quinn Mitchell.