Copyright © 2014 Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  Cover design © 2014 Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-1161-3

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  Contents

  PART ONE Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  PART TWO Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  day in Gravity Falls, and Stan Pines was in the middle of another moneymaking scheme. Workers were busily setting up rides, game booths, and food stands for the first ever Mystery Fair.

  “There she is, Mabel!” he proudly told his great-niece, sweeping his arm to acknowledge the forest clearing. “The cheapest fair money can rent! I spared every expense.”

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Whomp!

  Dipper, Mabel’s twin brother, landed next to them in a blue ride cart.

  “I think the sky tram is broken,” he said. “Also, most of my bones.”

  Stan chuckled. “This guy. All right, all right, I got a job for you two. I printed up a bunch of fake safety inspection certificates. Go slap one on anything that looks like a lawsuit.” He handed them each a stack of paper.

  “Grunkle Stan, is that legal?” Mabel asked.

  “When there’s no cops around, anything’s legal,” he said. Then he marched over to Soos, the Mystery Shack’s handyman. Soos was busy welding a metal arm onto the side of a tank of clear water.

  “How’s that dunk tank coming along?” Stan asked.

  Soos lifted up his welding mask. “Almost ready to go, Mr. Pines.”

  Stan punched the target painted on the metal arm. Perfect! People could throw balls at it as hard as they wanted to, but that arm wasn’t going to budge. He would be sitting high and dry on top of the dunk tank all day.

  “Ha! There’s nothing on Earth that could knock me down,” Stan said.

  “Yeah, except for, like, a futuristic laser arm cannon,” Soos said.

  Stan patted the pockets of his black suit. “Hey, you haven’t seen my red screwdriver, have you? Darn thing went missing.”

  “Maybe some magical creature or paranormal thingum took it,” Soos randomly suggested.

  “You’ve been spending too much time with those kids!” Stan said.

  Ever since Mabel and Dipper had come to visit him for the summer, they had been experiencing strange things in the woods of the Pacific Northwest—everything from monsters to a kid with spooky psychic powers. But Stan never seemed to believe them.

  So he probably wouldn’t have believed it if he knew the truth: a paranormal thingum did have Stan’s screwdriver. He was a chubby, bald man in a gray suit. He ducked behind the nearby portable potties, hiding.

  “The mission is proceeding as planned,” he said into his wristwatch. “Over!”

  Then he used the screwdriver to adjust the watch. First, a camouflage pattern of trees appeared on his suit. Then a pattern of water. Finally, the suit turned the same mint-green color as the portable potties. With a grin, he walked away.

  “It’s twelve o’clock! The dunk tank is now open!” Stan called out from where he sat within the dunk tank, with his feet resting in the water. He had one goal today: to get as many suckers as possible to waste their money trying to dunk him. A crowd had already gathered around him.

  “Who wants a piece of me?” he said to the onlookers.

  The spectators threw dozens of balls at the target on the metal arm, but Stan didn’t plunge into the water like he was supposed to. He laughed at them, and they didn’t seem pleased. In fact, they seemed downright insulted. Stan’s goal of not getting dunked—and making more money—was working.

  Dipper had a goal, too: to get Wendy, the fifteen-year-old who worked at the Mystery Shack, to have a perfect day with him at the fair.

  And Mabel’s goal was pretty much the same as always: to have fun!

  Dipper was working on his goal at the Mystery Hot Dog stand, where he and Wendy got question-mark-shaped hot dogs on sticks.

  “How do they get them into this shape?” Dipper said. “It’s unnatural!”

  Wendy held up her mustard-doused hot dog. She placed it at the end of the DELICIOUS sign hanging over the stand.

  “But, Dipper, they’re so…delicious?”

  They both laughed, and then mustard dripped onto the sleeve of Wendy’s plaid shirt.

  “Oh, boo! I’ll be right back,” she said, and then she strolled away.

  “I’ll be right here!” Dipper called out. Then he chuckled and added weakly, “I love you.”

  Mabel walked up to Dipper, holding cotton candy in each hand. “Look at you two! Getting all romantic at the fair!”

  “Isn’t it amazing?!” Dipper asked. “I just dove in. I said, ‘Hey, you wanna hang out at the fair?’ And you know what she said?! ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ It totally worked! I took your advice about just going for it, and it’s finally paying off.”

  “When are you going to learn, Dipper? I’m always right about everything,” Mabel said. Then she sniffed the air. “Hey, do you smell a gallon of body spray?”

  A tall teen with black hair hanging over his face walked up.

  “Hey, either of you dorks seen Wendy around?” Robbie asked them.

  “Who wants to know?” Dipper asked, even though he knew perfectly well who Robbie was—someone who’d most likely ruin his perfect day!

  Robbie grabbed a piece of Mabel’s cotton candy and popped it in his mouth.

  “Hey!” Mabel yelled.

  Robbie ignored her. He put his foot on an old crate and struck a pose. “Yeah, I got some new supertight jeans,” he said. “Thought she might wanna check ’em out.”

  “Yeah, you know, I think I saw her in the bottomless pit,” Dipper said. “You should really go jump in there.”

  “Maybe I will, smart guy,” Robbie said sarcastically, and then strolled away, bumping into Dipper as he left.

  “He is such a jerk!” Mabel said.

  “Yeah, but he’s a jerk with tight pants and a guitar,” said Dipper. “I need to keep him away from Wendy at all costs.”

  Mabel put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, brother. Whatever happens, I’ll be right here, supporting you every step of the—”

  Her eyes got wide, and she dropped her cotton candy. “Oh my gosh, a pig!” she squealed, pointing to a flier that read WIN A PIG.

  Mabel followed the arrow on the flier to the Win a Pig booth, running as fast as she could. Inside, Farmer Sprott was standing in the mud with a bunch of pink baby pigs.

  “If you can guess the critter’s weight, you can take the critter home!” he announced.

  Mabel leaned over the fence. She locked eyes with one of the pigs.

  “Oink-el!”

  “He said ‘Mabel’!” Mabel shrieked. “Either that or ‘doorbell.’ Did you say ‘Mabel’ or ‘doorbell’?”

  “Oink-el!”

  Mabel gasped. She was sure he had said her name. This was the pig of her dreams!

  Then Pacifica Northwest and two of her friends walked past. Pacifica was super popular and had never been nice to Mabel.

  “Oh, look, Mabel found her real twin,” Pacifica said. Her posse snickered.

  Mabel ignored them. She waved to Farmer Sprott. “Sir, I must have that pig!”

  “Ah, yes, ol’ Fifteen-Poundy. So how much are you guessing he weighs?” the farmer asked.

  “Um, fifteen pounds?” Mabel said.

  “Are you some kind of witch?” he asked. “Well, here’s your pig.”

  The farmer handed him to Mabel, and she hugged the pig to her.

  “Everything is different now,” she whispered to the pig.

  showered her pig with love, Dipper and his secret crush wandered around the fair. Wendy pointed to a game stand with prizes hanging overhead—some kind of weird-looking pink-and-purple stuffed animal.

  “Whoa, check it out,” Wendy said. “I don’t know if it’s a duck or a panda, but I want one!”

  Dipper studied the stand. To win the prize, you had to throw a ball at a pyramid of milk bottles and knock them down.

  “My uncle taught me the secret to these games,” Dipper said. “You aim for the carny’s head, and take the prize when he’s unconscious.”

  Wendy laughed. “Nice.”

  Dipper gave a ticket to the game attendant. “One ball, please.”

  “You only get one chance,” the guy said flatly.

  Dipper closed one eye, taking aim. “A nd-a-one! And-a-two! And-a—”

  He threw the ball as hard as he could.

  Whomp! It missed the bottles and bounced off the shelf behind them.

  Bonk! The ball bounced back and hit Wendy right in the eye!

  “Ow! My eye!” she cried.

  Dipper panicked. “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Wendy, are you okay?”

  “Does it look swollen?” she asked as her eye turned purple-black and swelled to the size of an orange.

  “Everything’s gonna be fine,” Dipper said. “Don’t worry! I’ll…I’ll go get some ice!”

  He rushed back to the Mystery Shack and grabbed a bag of ice. He raced through the crowd and…bam! He bumped into the strange bald man in the gray suit. The ice bag flew from Dipper’s hands, spilling ice cubes all over the grass.

  “Hey, watch where you’re going, man!” Dipper said. He frantically scooped the ice back up—but he was too late.

  Robbie was standing at the game booth, holding a cone of grape-flavored ice over Wendy’s black eye.

  “All right, just ease your eyeball into that Freezy-cone,” he told her.

  “Robbie, thanks. That’s really sweet,” she said. “The gesture and the flavored syrup.”

  “Yeah, I was just here in the right place at the right time,” Robbie said. “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you, we’ve been spending a lot of time together and I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go out with me?”

  Dipper held his breath, terrified.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Wendy said with a shrug.

  Dipper gawked. This was his worst nightmare!

  Mabel came running up. “Look, Dipper! I won my pet pig! His name is Waddles! I called him that because he waddles!” She wiggled her pig.

  Dipper sighed. “Everything is different now,” he said to no one specifically, gazing into space. His bag broke and all the ice cubes fell out of it.

  “What are you looking at?” Mabel asked.

  Dipper pointed at Robbie and Wendy.

  Robbie took Wendy’s hand and they ran to the Tunnel of Love and Corn Dogs ride.

  “Oh,” Mabel said, understanding.

  Dipper wandered off, and Mabel didn’t find him again until hours later, after dark. Dipper was stretched out on Slopey Toss, one of the games, moaning and looking up at the stars.

  Suddenly, Waddles appeared in front of him, dressed in doctors’ scrubs.

  “Paging Dr. Waddles! We got a boy here with a broken heart,” Mabel teased, but Dipper didn’t smile. “Come on, man! These are the jokes!”

  “Mabel, do you ever wish you could go back and undo just one mistake?” Dipper asked.

  “Nope! I do everything right all the time!” she replied confidently.

  “I mean, Wendy only went out with Robbie because he was there with the ice, and she only needed ice because of the ball, and I would have had the ice if it wasn’t for—” He sat up. “That guy!”

  He pointed to the bald man in the gray suit, who was by the Ferris wheel fiddling with his watch.

  “Hey, you—tool belt! You ruined my life!” Dipper yelled, stomping up to him.

  The man looked surprised. “Huh?”

  “Don’t ‘huh’ me! I’ve seen you before! What’s the deal? Are you following us?” Dipper asked.

  “And why are you bald? What’s that about?” Mabel asked him.

  “My position has been compromised!” the stranger cried. “Assuming stealth mode!”

  He started adjusting his watch, but the device malfunctioned. First he turned rainbow colors, then a pattern of a misty island, dinosaurs in sap, an arcade game, and then his suit turned back to gray.

  “Color match. Initiating color match. Dang it!”

  “That’s amazing,” Mabel said, and then she gasped. “Are you from the future or something?”

  “Uh, no, who told you that?” the man asked, starting to perspire. Then he pushed something into Mabel’s face. “Memory wipe!”

  “This is a baby wipe,” Mabel said, peeling it off.

  He sighed and sat on a bale of hay. “All right. You’ve cornered me. I’m a time traveler.”

  “So wait a minute,” Dipper said. “If you’re from the future, do you have, like, a time machine or something?”

  “That’s kind of how it works,” the bald man replied.

  Dipper gazed up at Robbie and Wendy, who were riding the Ferris wheel together. An idea started to form.

  “Could I borrow it?” he asked the time traveler.

  can I use your time machine just once?” Dipper asked.

  “Out of the question!” the strange man replied. He took an ordinary-looking tape measure off his tool belt. “You know, this is sensitive, extremely complicated time equipment.”

  “It looks like a tape measure,” Dipper remarked.

  The man was clearly insulted. “You shut your time-mouth!”

  Dipper turned to his sister. “This making any sense to you?”

  “I think he’s just crazy!” Mabel whispered.

  “Oh, you don’t believe me?” the man asked. He pulled out the strip of the measuring tape.

  Poof! He disappeared.

  Poof! He reappeared, wearing clothes from Elizabethan England.

  “Guess where I was?” he asked.

  “Whoa!” cried Dipper and Mabel, impressed.

  “That’s right!” bragged the man. “Fifteen years ago there was a costume store right here! One second.”

  He pulled the tape measure again. Poof! He disappeared and then reappeared in his gray suit, which was in flames—a side effect of time travel. “Oh, heck! Pat down!” he cried, putting out the small fires on his sleeves. Then he placed the tape measure back in his tool belt.

  “So, who are you again?” Mabel asked.

  “Blendin Blandin,” the time traveler replied. “Time Anomaly Removal Crew, Year Twenty Sñeventy Twelve. My mission is to stop a series of time anomalies that are supposed to happen at this very location. But I don’t see any anomalies. I don’t know if it’s some kind of paradox or if I’m just really tired.”

  Dipper had an idea. “You know, you sound like you could use a break,” he said.

  Mabel nodded, catching on to Dipper’s plan. “Definitely. Definitely. Might we recommend one of the various attractions at the Mystery Fair?” she asked, holding out some tickets.

  “You know what? What the heck! I’m worth it!” Blendin cried, grabbing the tickets from her. “But I got my eye on you.”

  Dipper and Mabel followed him to the Rusty Barrel Rodeo ride, where one could climb into rusty barrels that spun around…and around…and around. Soos was working the ride.

  “One, please,” said Blendin, handing over his ticket.

  “Aw, sorry, dude, but you’re gonna have to take off your belt for the ride,” Soos said. “One of your tools might fly off and accidentally fix something.”

  Blendin removed the belt and handed it to Soos. “Guard it with your life.”

  “I will watch it like a hawk, dude,” Soos promised as Blendin hopped onto the ride. Then Soos put it on a barrel and turned his back on it.

  Dipper saw his chance. He quickly grabbed the tape measure, and he and Mabel ran back to the Mystery Shack.

  “Here it is, Mabel,” he said, staring at it. “Our ticket to any moment in history!”

  “Let’s get two dodos and force them to make out!” Mabel suggested. She’d always felt bad that the birds had gone extinct.

  “No! We gotta be smart about this!” Dipper insisted. “All that paradox talk kind of freaked me out. All I’m going to do is go back and fix my one mistake. If I don’t miss that ball throw, I won’t hit Wendy in the eye, and Robbie won’t comfort her, and they won’t start going out.”

  “I’m coming, too!” Mabel said. “I wanna relive the greatest moment of my life—winning Waddles!” She kissed the pig on the cheek.

  Dipper slowly pulled out the tape measure until he saw the perfect amount of time to go back: six hours. Then he stopped.

  “See you later,” he told Waddles.

 

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