Forest of Riddles (Reverse Falls, S1)

CC: Part One

Mysterious and old towns were hard to get used to - if everything in it seemed sketchy.

Pacifica Pines was currently wedged in between her very hyper cousin and a seat full of backpacks, seated in a car that was headed, in fact, to a mysterious and old town. She felt very uncomfortable and squished - she did not want to spend her spring break in a sketchy and suspicious town.

Pacifica pursed her lips, pulling her purple jacket tighter around her. What she had wanted was to read books safely in her room all spring, but her parents had other plans.

They had pulled her into the living room of their apartment and they had told them what they wanted to do: they were going on vacation.

"Vacation?" Pacifica had asked in surprise. They rarely went on vacation.

"We're going to take a trip to my hometown," Priscilla Pines had said cheerfully. "We thought it was about time you got to see it!"

Pacifica had never heard of her mother's hometown before, but a chance to actually go on vacation for spring break was exciting and rare in the Pines household. So she questioned where her mother had grown up, so that she might possibly do a little research on the town before they left for it.

Priscilla had handed her daughter a dark-green pamphlet that was far too dusty to be recently printed, and Pacifica gazed at the lettering on the pamphlet with a curiosity.

"Gravity Falls, Oregon," Priscilla said brightly. "We're going to stay with an old family friend."

Pacifica had looked back up at her parents. The pamphlet had little information on it, and it wasn't very helpful to Pacifica's research. "There's no information on here," she stated.

"Odd town," Preston Pines remarked. "Never did have much information about it. I suppose that's a side effect of being a small town in the middle of nowhere."

As soon as Pacifica had had a chance, she stole away to her room and did countless research on this so-called Gravity Falls. Much to her dismay, her father had been right: she couldn't find any information on the town at all, only old (and probably fake) scientific research papers about "paranormal activities" there.

Finally Pacifica had done the one thing she usually did when faced with something she didn't want to face.

She asked her parents if her cousin could come along with them.

So the following week, Pacifica, her parents, and her cousin left their home city in California and headed up north to her mother's old town.

Now, Pacifica stared out the window. The bright sun shined down on the car, but spring in Oregon was too cold for her liking (colder than it had been in California, at least).

She crossed her arms and sunk into her seat, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. Beside her, her cousin bounced up and down in his seat, pulling on the strings of his baby-blue hoodie. "How much longer?" Gideon Pines asked excitedly.

Priscilla stopped humming to a song from the local radio station and turned around. "Not much longer," she said. "About twenty minutes."

Pacifica sunk into her seat even further. Twenty minutes seemed too short. If this town was as sketchy as it seemed, this wasn't going to be a fun spring break.

~

The Pines family van came halting to a stop in the parking lot of a museum for tourists nearly twenty minutes later. Priscilla and Preston Pines stepped out of the car and started to unload their things while Gideon hopped out of the car immediately; Pacifica, rather reluctantly, grabbed her bag and followed her cousin.