Dipper Pines

Chapter 2

(Dipper pov)

I lay in bed glancing at the time on my phone as my father's words ring in my head from yesterday.

"When a person is bad, they have to be punished."

By that logic, wouldn't it be only fair if I was allowed to punish him and my mom for mistreating me my whole life? The only way to really punish them for that is if I turned my dad in to the police for the stuff that goes on at his dealership and as much as I dislike my family most days I can't bring myself to hate them that much.

Last night was not fair at all though. I got punished just because I can do simple math like any first grader can. How is it fair that he punishes me for that?

I sit up as I check the time on my phone. It's currently 6:50. Both my parents will be waking up in 10 minutes so if I'm going to punish him for last night then I have to move fast.

I exit my room and step into my parents bedroom, making sure to be silent as I go into their connected bathroom. I pick up the bottle of my dad's hair tonic and the perfect idea comes to mind.

I dump it's contents into the sink before I pick up the bottle of hair bleach my mom uses to help make her hair blonde. I pour its contents into my dad's bottle of hair tonic instead and screw the lid back on it putting both bottles back where they rightfully belong just as my parents alarm clock loudly rings.

Acting fast I quickly hide in my parents closet and wait until my dad goes into the connected bathroom before I quietly crawl on the ground for extra silence and make my way out of the room.

Once in my room I get dressed for the day. I change into a pair of jeans, a red shirt with a blue pinetree on the front, this charm necklace I bought a few weeks ago, and my dark blue hoodie tied around my waist.

I push my glasses back up the bridge of my nose before I pull on two leather, one beaded and one cloth bracelets that I made to cover the pale scars on both of my wrists. My eyes glance over both the tattoos on my arms. Even though I don't bother trying to hide them, I seriously doubt my parents have noticed them.

Pulling on my sneakers and putting my headphones around my neck keeping them plugged in to my phone that's in my back pocket I head out into the kitchen.

My mom is busy pouring two bowls of cereal for her and my dad while Mabel is just eating from a package of Chips Ahoy.

I warm up some frozen waffles for myself and pour myself a glass of orange juice before sitting myself back at the counter.

"Your dad is taking both you kids to his shop today."

"Why?" Mabel ask, her mouth full of cookies.

"Don't ask me why he would want either of you in that dreadful place, especially you Mabel. A dealership is no place for a young lady such as yourself. But it was his idea and I don't have the time to argue with it. I have bingo to get going to soon."

My dad walks into the room and it takes every ounce of my being to not just burst out laughing at how horrible his now brightly bleached hair looks. Once Mable sees it the cookie she was holding falls out of her hand. My mom doesn't yet notice it yet.

"What's wrong with you? What are you looking at? Lovekins, where's my breakfast?"

"Here we are, my heart strings." She turns around but once she sees his hair she lets out a scream and drops the two cereal bowls that she had in her hands. "Snickerdoodle, what did you do to your hair?"

"My hair?"

He goes over to a mirror that was in the hallway and once he sees his hair he lets out a yell. Mom rushes over to him and they both start fretting and arguing about what he could have possibly done to his hair.

I just focus on finishing my breakfast and as I'm putting my plate and cup in the sink my dad is pulling on his coat and fedora to cover his bad hair. "Come on kids. We're going now."

Mabel pulls on her coat and shoes as we head out the door and get into his car.

My dad puts some packages in the trunk and I know why he's being secretive about them. The packages are just stolen car parts that he puts on the cheap cars he sells for unfair prices. I also know that the cops are watching our house from a car across the street. They aren't very secretive about it either.

My dad gets in the driver's side and the entire car ride is silent. I put on my headphones blasting my music into my ears as I stare out the car window in boredom. I have no idea why he brought me along for this. Maybe to just make sure I wouldn't be able to go to the library again or so I wouldn't spend my time reading.

I pause the music and take the headphones off once I see that we're at the dealership.

We get out of the car and my dad takes me into the garage part of it where there's a bunch of old car parts laying around and in the center of the room is a car that looks like it belongs in a junkyard.

"See this junker. I paid a hundred dollars for her. She's got 120,000 on her. Transmission's shot, bumpers are falling off. What do I do with her?!? I sell her!"

He goes over to a bumper on the table and takes a brush out of a jar of glue he spreads some of the glue on the bumper. "We really should weld these bumpers on, but that takes time, equipment, money. So we use 'Super Super Glue' instead. Go ahead. Put it on there."

Mabel and I both take one end of the bumper each and put it back on the car even though this doesn't seem like it would stay on once someone gets driving, especially if it's on a bumpy road.

"Won't this fall off?" I voice my concerns.

"Without a doubt."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"Not to me." My dad opens the hood of the car and puts a funnel in something before he puts some powder into the funnel. "Transmission..... The sawdust quiets the gears and lets the motor run as sweet as a nut, for a couple of miles."

"Dad, that's cheating."

"Of course it's cheating." He gets under the car messing with something that involves an electric drill hooked up to something. "Twenty years ago we could turn the numbers back by hand, but, here, take my hat!" Mabel hands his hat to me and I just put it on a nearby table. "But the feds like to test the ingenuity of the American businessman."

He comes out from under the car and holding the drill in his hand he leans inside the car, Mabel right next to him. I stand outside the car with my arms crossed over my chest.

"Two directional drill. You run it backwards, the numbers go down. Watch the speedometer. See?"

"Cool." I see Mabel smiling and if I had to guess I would think he's making the car look like it has less miles on it than it actually does.

"Dad, you're a crook." I say finally, my fists balled up into fists by my sides angrily.

"What?" My dad looks back at me.

"Everything that you are doing here is illegal."

My dad scoffs as he hands Mabel the drill. "Here. Keep drilling." He gets out of the car and walks over to me looking highly annoyed. "Do you make money? Do you have a job?

"No. But don't people need good cars? Can't you sell good cars, dad?"

" Listen, you little wiseass. I'm smart; you're dumb. I'm big; you're little. I'm right; you're wrong. And there's nothing you can do about it." He pokes my chest hard with each thing he lists to prove his point even more before he walks back over to the piece of junk car.

I grit my teeth in anger, my palms hurting from my nails digging into the skin and I can feel both of my fists shaking.

Glancing around I see his hat and a brilliant idea formulates in my head.

I pick his hat up off the table, glancing over my shoulder making sure he isn't watching before I go over to the thing of Super Super Glue. I take out the glue brush and just heavily coat the entire inside of his hat.

I just finish this and quickly hold the hat behind my back as I hear a car horn honking outside and my mother's happy squeal.