Chapter 53 Of Human Bill Cipher Not Properly Appreciating The Fact That Mabel Is His Only Friend On Earth:

Chapter 53 of human Bill Cipher not properly appreciating the fact that Mabel is his only friend on Earth:

Mabel has read a book about Bill's home dimension and is prepared to interrogate him all about where he comes from.

Bill is willing to do anything to avoid being interrogated.

(Featuring SEVEN illustrations, provided by 🌈 MABEL 💖)

####

Flatworld, from what Mabel had read, was probably literally the worst place to ever exist. 

The book was a hundred pages of an old-fashioned formal-sounding super boring guy rambling on about the most egregiously evil society Mabel had ever had the horror of reading about.

Society consisted of a bunch of geometric shapes—which in concept sounded half nerdy and half adorable—but they'd made a brutally oppressive government organized by quantity of sides, with infinite-sided circles at the top and three-sided triangles at the bottom, and one-sided lines—women—oppressed into near silence. Career options, educational opportunities, who you could love, were all determined by your sides. Irregular shapes—quadrilaterals that weren't squares, triangles that weren't equilateral, anyone with a side too long or too short—were presumed from birth to be criminally insane. Each generation had sons with one more side than their father—and they had to, because having higher-ranked sons was the only way families could climb out of poverty. When babies were born with too few or irregular sides, poor families abandoned them—or worse—and rich families put them through oft-fatal bone-snapping surgeries to regularize or increase their sides. Knowledge of the third dimension was considered heretical, and anybody claiming it was real was locked in an insane asylum.

There was a lot of mathy stuff in the book about a square meeting a magical sphere and going on educational adventures to the higher and lower dimensions; but most of it passed by her in a blur. When she'd finished reading last night, Mabel had lay in bed for an hour, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about dead baby shapes and fighting the urge to wake Bill up just so she could hug him; until she'd finally drifted off and woken up in her own bed.

At least, thank goodness, the bit about banning colors so lower shapes couldn't contour themselves to look like higher shapes was false. But she was sure that at least part of the story was true. And it had happened to somebody she knew. It was a lot to process.

So she processed it the way she usually did the stories that weighed on her: by creating a self-insert and pulling out her art supplies.

####

"You're drawing fan art of Flatworld?" Bill asked warily.

"I wouldn't call it fan art. I'd say it's more of a... thoughtful artistic critique. I don't think I'm a 'fan' of the second dimension," Mabel said. "No offense."

"Sure."

Mabel had designed a shapesona of herself: a pink heart with a rainbow-colored outline, a big sparkly eye, and skinny black stick limbs like Bill's. If, as Bill had said, colors weren't illegal, she didn't see any reason she couldn't be rainbow. The heart shape was maybe unconventional, but Bill hadn't said she couldn't be a heart yet, so she was sticking with it for now.

She'd honestly expected Bill to come over and interrogate her about her creation long before now. Usually, when she was doing art and he was unoccupied, he was hovering right by her, examining her work and dropping hints—some more subtle than others—that she should draw him next. But she hadn't immediately noticed when he'd silently drifted into the room, and she wasn't sure how long he'd been there before speaking up. He was still leaning on the wall, arms crossed, watching askance from halfway across the living room as Mabel worked with her crayons, as if she were playing with a chemistry set and he was trying to figure out if she was building a bomb.

"Is Flatworld really about your world?" Mabel asked. "Did you tell Edward Bishop Bishop all that stuff? With the circles and all the laws about shapes and stuff?"

Bill mulled over the question, staring into space. Mabel had never seen his face look so inexpressive before—at least, not since his first night as a captive, after he'd gotten all the screaming out and had looked too exhausted to feel. "We talked," he conceded. "I'm surprised you got your hands on it. I suppose Stanford brought it up."

Something in the back of her mind pricked up defensively—what was that supposed to mean, he was surprised she got her hands on it?—but she pushed it back down. "Yeah, he told me and Dipper about it when you guys got home yesterday," Mabel said. "But you brought it up to me first!"

"No I didn't. When?"

"A few weeks ago? You mentioned Edward Bishop Bishop."

"I don't remember that," Bill muttered. "I probably didn't think you'd make sense of it."

"Hey!"

"You didn't make sense of it! Ford had to tell you about it."

"Yeah, but—mean!" She shoved aside her drawing and started on another one, grumbling, "I could've made sense of it if I'd looked it up."

What was up with Bill today? He wasn't usually this much of a jerk. To her. Lately. Plus, she thought they'd really had a moment yesterday! But Bill had had a rough couple days. Maybe he was just tired and cranky. 

A wiser person might just leave well enough alone. But a wiser person wasn't exploding in their brain with curiosity about just how bad Bill's life had really been. There was something itching at the back of her head, had been itching since she'd woken up—something about Bill, something important, she was sure of it—but she couldn't quite put together what it was. She just needed to talk to Bill long enough to figure it out.

"So..." She glanced up from filling in a shape yellow, "were lines really executed if they didn't make noises all the time so everyone always knew where they were and they couldn't sneak up and stab anyone?"

Bill scoffed, rolling his eyes, as if the very idea was stupid. "It wasn't that extreme. Making a peace cry is like a human saying 'coming through' when they're trying to squeeze past somebody. Lines are just taught to do it in public because it's easier not to see a line, that's all."

"If they didn't, were they executed...?"

"No. They were just rude."

That was a relief. Mabel had been worried for her fellow ladies. She was plenty noisy, but she didn't think she could remember to make constant sound any time she was around other people. She turned back to coloring her newest drawing, but watched Bill out of the corner of her eye. "Is it true that rich people killed almost all of their babies by giving them surgery to break their sides?"

The corner of Bill's mouth curled in a sneer. "Do I look like a pediatric surgeon?"

"Um." Not a welcome question. She tried to backtrack to something softer. "So, in the second dimension, the outside of your body is just your outline and your guts are everything inside the outline, right?"

He gave her a wary look. "Yeah."

"So your bow tie is basically in your stomach."

Bill sucked in a deep breath; but quickly caved in to the need to be the most correct person in the room. "More like around my esophagus, but. Sure."

"So, where did you wear it when you were back in the second dimension? Was it on your side? Did you have to wear two so people could see them from both sides—"

"I didn't need a bow tie then."

Mabel stared at him. "What do you mean, you didn't 'need' it? What do you need it for now?"

Bill ignored the question. "You know, I didn't think Flatworld was an interesting enough book to deserve this much attention! Especially not from you. You like fun stories." It felt oddly like he was criticizing her for having read it.

"Well—yeah, but it's about your home! That makes it fun!"

Bill raised his brows.

"Right? Doesn't it?"

"Kid." Bill laughed condescendingly. "Don't give me that. You read an entire book. In the summer. About math. With a downer ending where the narrator goes insane and gets locked up. That's some people's idea of a fun time, but I know it's not yours."

Maybe "fun" was the wrong word—but it was still important. She was glad she'd read it. She'd cared about it. She'd cared enough to know Bill was describing it wrong. "That's not what happened. The square got locked up because he kept telling everybody the third dimension's real."

"Like I said! He went insane!"

"But he's not insane. Everyone says he is, but he's right about the third dimension! It's everyone else who's stupid!"

"So what," Bill said. "The things he knows mean he'll never be able to see the world the way other shapes do, and no matter what he does he'll never be happy with his home. If that's not insanity, what is?"

Last year, she'd heard Bill agree when Gideon called him insane. She'd always wondered. "Is that why you're insane?"

Bill shot Mabel a furious look. That was the wrong thing to say. "Shooting Star—"

(Oh no, she thought, he's using my full name.)

"—what's with the third degree." Bill crossed the room to lean on the other side of the table. He gave her the guarded glare of a guilty suspect facing down a cop in an interrogation room—and trying to figure out whether he could kill the cop before he was stopped. "What do you think you're trying to dig up?"

"I'm not trying to 'dig up' anything," Mabel said. "I just want to learn more about you!"

"Oh yeah, I'm sure you do! Who doesn't wanna know all about me! And right after I trusted you yesterday! Do you think you're the first person to start digging into my history? 'Hey, does anyone know what made Bill Cipher so crazy'?" Bill laughed bitterly. " You're not even the first Pines to try it. Not even the second."

"That's not what I'm trying to do!" said Mabel, right before it dawned on her that that was exactly what she was trying to do.

"Right. I'm sure whatever you learn will make a nice two-page spread in Journal 5. Another secret you and Fordsy can add to your Mysteries, huh? Think he'll draw the dead babies?"

She thought back to Portland—to asking Ford what had made Bill so awful. I think if anyone’s ever had a chance of finding out what made him like he is, it might be you. Mabel shook her head. No. She didn't want to be that. "I'm not Grunkle Ford's spy, I'm your friend. I just—I just want to understand you—"

"Yeah, and the 'friends' who understand you are the most dangerous kind." Bill laughed harshly. "Your uncle and brother couldn't figure me out! And Sixer's been trying for years! So what makes you think YOU can?"

He was calling her stupid. He'd been calling her stupid all day. That was why he was so surprised she'd read the book.

"You—shut up!" She wadded up her latest drawing and flung it in Bill's face. (He snatched out of midair.) "All I did was read a book I thought was important to you, you jerk! I thought you'd like that!"

She hadn't meant for that waver to enter her voice. But she was exhausted from too little sleep and worrying about dead baby shapes and worrying about Bill's fear of death and worrying about what Ford had said about not giving Bill a second chance, and now Bill was being a jerk, and maybe he was just exhausted and upset too, but he was treating her like she was stupid—and there was that pathetic little waver.

But it made Bill pause in his onslaught; for a moment, he averted his gaze. Still, he said, "Maybe if you'd thought to ask—"

"You were asleep! I was being nice! And letting you sleep! In my bed!"

"But—"

"Just go away!" She pointed at the doorway.

Bill's face hardened again. "Fine!" He flung his hands in the air and stomped from the room. "Who wants to hang out with you when you're in such a bad mood, anyway."

Mabel glared at her stupid drawings so she didn't have to watch Bill's stupid back as he left.

Why had she bothered?

When Bill was out of sight, she dropped back onto her chair, pulled her sweater over her face, crossed her arms on the table, and buried her head in them.

####

Bill didn't think to smooth out the paper Mabel had flung at him until he was out of the room.

On one side she'd drawn Bill—properly triangular—with an expression that he thought was supposed to be fear and on the other side several angry-looking shapes, pentagons and hexagons, colored gray and black, being led by a pale figure shaped like a human skull and wielding a scythe; and between them, a bright pink heart, standing in front of Bill protectively, hands on its "hips," glaring down the would-be assailants.

The corners of Bill's mouth sagged down.

####

The bell rang and the shapes began filing out of class, muttering to each other about how they thought they'd done on the test. As the triangle cheerfully left the room, the teacher caught him by the arm again to pull him over. "Just a minute," she said. "I want a word with you."

Oh, he bet she did. Breezily, he said, "Sure thing! What is it?"

"Who was the first triangular president?"

"Wh— Th—" He spluttered indignantly. "There's been like—seven of them."

"Nine. And I'm only asking about the first one."

"How should I know!"

"You knew an hour ago."

He sputtered again. "That was— That was a multiple choice test! And it was an hour closer to when I'd studied! And I can focus better in the classroom! You can't expect me to remember anything in the hallway. You're using intimidation tactics. How could anyone focus under these conditions—"

"I don't know what you're doing," the teacher said, "or how you're doing it. Maybe I never will. But..." She sighed, and the anger seemed to leak out of her, and that only made him more nervous. "But whatever you're doing—you won't be able to do it forever. What will you do when you're out in the real world and you didn't learn anything in school?"

Her pity was worse than being hated had been. At least when he was hated, he knew she only looked down on him because she had something against him. What did he do with pity? With concerned warnings about the "real world"? He'd never heard anybody use the phrase "the real world" as anything but a threat. He hoped he was never out in the real world.

"Who cares! I'll never need any of this!" He should have shut up there. He didn't: "You're just jealous that me and my family make a million times more lying to everyone than you'll ever get trying to teach them the truth!"

His teacher gasped in shock; but before she could say anything, he was halfway down the hall with no intention of slowing down.

The next day, he stayed home, and his mom visited the principal. The day after that, he had a new teacher.

####

He was stupid. He knew that. He didn't know when he'd gotten stupid—if it was because he'd started touring so much and missing classes, or if he'd always been dumb and just didn't notice it before he registered just how often he was using his all-seeing eye to pick up answers that other kids couldn't see. It had crept up on him. But there it was. He was stupid, and he was too stupid to figure out what to do about it.

There was a big difference between being able to see everything, and actually knowing anything. And he might be all-seeing, but an idiot like him would never be all-knowing.

####

A trillion years later, he still didn't remember the name of the first triangular president. And look how far he'd gotten without it.

Lunch was toast and peanut butter. The toaster was the only source of heat he could use without having to ask his captors for access; and peanut butter and bread were the most nutritious foods he could reach without asking his captors to open a cabinet or fridge. He was sick of toast and peanut butter.

He wasn't about to ask Mabel to help him get lunch.

Well. He'd succeeded. He'd known just the right thing to say to get Mabel to lay off and drop the topic. Did he feel accomplished?

He stared out the window as he ate—there were hazy gray clouds on the horizon, beyond the trees, slowly inching closer—and he tried not to look at the picture Mabel had flung at him.

####

Mabel felt dumb about being upset that Bill thought she was dumb.

Because of course he did. Sure, he liked her art and he liked dance music and games without rules; sure, he was a willing student when it came to stuff like making friendship bracelets or artistically mixing sprinkles; sure, he was a weirdo fun guy; but he was also a Smarty McSmartypants, just like Dipper or Ford. And Mabel was the Girl Dipper who brought home C's. And even a weirdo fun Smarty wouldn't want to hang out for long with someone who couldn't keep up with nerd talk. He probably just... put up with her for as long as he could stand pretending he took her seriously, but he'd finally lost his patience...

And shown his true, jerky colors again.

Maybe Ford and Dipper were right about him; maybe he couldn't really change.

Except... there was something he'd said. And right after I trusted you yesterday. When he'd cried in front of her. When he'd told her about his fear of death.

He was being a jerk because he thought she'd betrayed him. But by reading a book?! Why couldn't he ever just explain himself? Did he think whatever was bothering him was obvious, and she was stupid for not figuring it out?

Something she almost but didn't quite remember thudded like a drum inside her brain. Dum-dum-dum. Dum-dum-dome.

From the entryway, Bill called, "Hey, star girl. I—"

He stopped in the doorway. Mabel had taped 28 pieces of paper together, drawn on a door knob, written "DOOR" at the top, and taped it across the doorway into the living room. Irritably, Bill said, "It doesn't work like that. This is obviously paper."

"Bill," Mabel grumbled. "Go away."

"No. I'm gonna say something to you."

He didn't phrase that like he was giving her a choice in the matter; but all the same, she said, "I don't wanna hear it."

"You know that horror story about a bride with a velvet ribbon tied around her neck, and her head falls off and rolls down the stairs when her husband unties it?"

She did. She and Dipper had read a book of scary stories to each other on Halloween a few years ago while waiting for it to be late enough to go trick-or-treating. In spite of herself, he'd piqued her curiosity. She reluctantly turned to look at him. "Yeah? So?"

Bill was leaning in the doorway, head tilted against the doorframe so he could see Mabel around the paper door curtain. "That's why I wear a bow tie."

Mabel blinked. "Wait—if you didn't, your head would fall off? What part of you is your head? How did it come off? Were you decapitated? Did you get decapitated for knowing about the third dimension—?"

"It doesn't keep my head on; it keeps my skin on."

Mabel's nose wrinkled. "Gross! How?"

"Remember how you said my outline is my skin and all my organs are inside the outline," Bill said. "That didn't change when we left the second dimension! We had to get exoskeletons on our top and bottom sides so solids like you can't stick you fingers in our guts. My bow tie keeps it tied in place."

"Whoa." So that was why they hadn't seen Bill's organs before. "Do you ever take it off?"

"Mostly when I'm eating!" He knocked on the doorframe. "So can I come in now?"

Of course. He'd been using information to buy his way back into her good graces. (No—that was what somebody who didn't think Bill deserved a second chance would think. He was making up for earlier by answering one of her questions about him.)

She took a deep breath, turned to face Bill, and said, "You didn't talk to me like a friend earlier."

"I—" Bill grimaced, looked at the ceiling for help, and conceded, "I mean—It's how I talk to my friends, but all right, I know you're not used to that—"

"Nobody should be used to that!" Mabel said. "What would Love Bunny say?"

"Wh—?! I— Th— You—" His voice cracked as it jumped higher, "What do I care what a cartoon rabbit thinks about—"

"What. Would. She. Say."

Bill's face screwed up in agony. He crossed his arms. "Ugh."

"Biiill?"

Eyes squeezed shut, Bill said, "She'd say my breath smells like I've been eating mean beans."

"Aaand?"

"I'm not going to say it. I won't say it."

"And you need to eat your nice rice!"

Bill let out a long, slow sigh.

"Say it!"

"This is my penance," Bill muttered toward his feet. "This is my penance. This is fair." He took a breath. "And... I need to eat my nice rice."

Mabel nodded. He'd confessed his sins.

"I think we're out of nice rice," Bill said, "but I've had the peanut butter of kindness and the toast of remorse. Good enough?"

She considered it. "Yeah. You can come in."

Bill batted aside the paper door curtain and ducked into the room. 

He sat across the table from Mabel and set down the paper she'd chucked at him amongst her others. Mabel glanced at the drawing, embarrassed of it now; but Bill didn't say anything about it.

He just propped his cheek against his hand and started looking over her other art.

Mabel sat there with her hands under her legs, watching his spotlight eyes rove over the table, feeling like she was waiting for a teacher to grade a poster she'd made for class. He saw a stop sign red octagon in sunglasses that was labeled "Bill's parole officer" and snorted. She wasn't sure if it was an amused snort or a derogatory snort. His gaze stopped on her attempt to figure out how Flatworlder anatomy worked, and didn't move farther. She'd probably gotten everything wrong, hadn't she?

She couldn't stand waiting for him to pass judgment on her art. "You think they look dumb, don't you."

Bill took a moment to reply. He didn't look up from her drawings. "I don't think you're dumb, Shooting Star."

"You think I'm dumber than Dipper and Grunkle Ford."

Bill winced. "I don't." At her dubious look, Bill amended, "Only Stanford! And that barely counts, all humans are dumber than Stanford. It doesn't mean I think you're dumb-dumb"

"Could've fooled me," Mabel muttered.

"You bet! I'm good at fooling people. All I have to do is say things I don't mean that make people feel the way I want." His voice was flat and matter-of-fact. "I wanted you to feel like the conversation wasn't worth it. That's all."

She stared at him. "By letting me know you think I'm stupid?!" She chucked a crayon at his face. "You could have just told me you didn't want to talk about Flatworld!" Her voice was getting that stupid waver again. "If I'd known, I would have dropped it! I didn't want to upset you!"

"I wasn't upset, it's just a stupid thing to complain about! It's just a dumb book! It'd—it'd take a real loser to be bothered by talking about a dumb book! I'm not..." He sighed harshly. "I know you weren't trying to get on my nerves, kid. It'd mess up your sticker chart." (Mabel hadn't even realized he knew about her sticker chart.) Almost inaudibly, he added, "M'sorry."

She'd never heard him apologize before.

She let out a slow breath. "Biiill. I don't think you're a loser."

He muttered something she couldn't make out as he flipped his hood on and pulled it down over his burning face. "Forget it. Move on. It's in the past!"

"If you're so embarrassed—"

"Not embarrassed!"

She chucked another crayon at his chest. "Then why are you telling me this now?"

Bill shut his eyes; took a deep breath; and, with a look of solemn dignity, and no small amount of pain, he said, "Because. Teddy Tender says. Our friends can't help us feel better if we don't tell them why we feel bad." He almost, almost managed to say it without sounding sarcastic.

Mabel burst out laughing. Bill pulled his hood lower.

Bill didn't even like Teddy Tender—he thought he was the stick in the mud of the Color Critters—and he certainly wasn't actually trying to follow Teddy's friendship lessons. He was just... saying something he didn't mean to make Mabel feel the way he wanted. And he wanted her to feel better.

No matter what anyone else said, he could change. And he was changing.

"Apology accepted," Mabel said. "Gold star!" She peeled one off a nearby sticker sheet and held it out.

Bill eyed it, like a man so hungry he was too nauseous to eat eyeing a pizza; and then snatched it from her and stuck it in the middle of his hoodie.

Mabel said, "And... I guess I'm sorry for getting all diggy about your home world." Even if she hadn't known it was bothering him, she probably should've guessed, shouldn't she? With how crabby he'd gotten. "I just got all excited and curious and... kinda worried about you after reading that book?" She sighed. "I understand if you don't wanna talk about it. You probably hated your dimension."

"What? He lurched forward with the vehemence of his denial—"Of course I don't hate my dimension!" Mabel leaned away at the sudden rage that had flared up in his eyes; but it died just as quickly and Bill immediately reeled himself back in, sitting back, crossing his arms: "I mean, come on, kid, use your head: you read a book about a culture. We're talking about an entire dimension. Would you hold a grudge against Jupiter if an ant bit you on Earth?"

Even as casually as he played it off, Mabel was sure he hadn't meant anything as calm and measured as claiming it was technically irrational to hate an entire dimension. He meant—emphatically, with his whole heart behind it—that he didn't hate his home dimension, at all.

Then why didn't he want to talk about it? (Then why had he destroyed it? Or was not hating it just another fiction he'd made up because he'd prefer that reality? Or was the destruction itself a lie? He hadn't mentioned it once since they'd started talking about Flatworld. Or did he think she didn't know about that and didn't want her to know? Or...)

Something had been churning in her subconscious since she woke up, and now—watching Bill ball up around himself as he squirmed around the things he didn't want to say—it finally dawned on her. Two words. Another piece of the Axolotl's poem. She tried to hold the words in her head until she could write them down, repeating them over and over—Misses home. Misses home.

Quietly, she asked, "Then... don't you want to remember it?"

His face spasmed, like it was nearly cracking in two—and then smoothed out. His face was blank. He didn't answer for a moment. "The last time I told a human more than two sentences about where I'm from... he gave me the universe's most depressing geometry textbook."

Oh. Maybe Bill was following Teddy Tender's friendship advice. "That's because you were talking to a boring old-timey math teacher, duh."

He laughed wryly. "You may have a point!"

If Bill assumed anybody prying into his history was either looking for the reason something was wrong with him, or publishing a whole book about the super bad parts... No wonder he hadn't wanted to talk to her. "So you didn't dislike Flatworld? You just dislike the book?"

Bill grimaced. "Did you read Eddie's biography?"

"No?"

####

As soon as he'd buckled himself into his seat for the drive to Northwest Manor, Dipper read the summary on the back cover of Flatworld, and then the paragraph-long author biography underneath it:

Edward B. Bishop, born in 1838 in England, was an accomplished mathematician, writer, theologian, and closet occultist, as well as a professor at the esteemed University of Fancyton. He published twelve books, the last of which was Flatworld in 1884. After sentencing his square protagonist to a two-dimensional asylum for preaching of the existence of the third dimension, he himself succumbed to an ironically similar fate: three months after publication, he was committed to an asylum for insisting that two-dimensional alien invaders intended to conquer the Earth and were persecuting him for revealing their existence, a delusion he maintained until his death from sleep deprivation in 1886. His most enduring legacy is inventing the margarita glass, which he claimed came to him in a dream. 

Dipper hissed between his teeth. "Ouch."

####

"Never mind, don't worry about it," Bill said. "But no. I didn't like the book."

"You poor thing! All this time you've been homesick for the second dimension, but the only things humans talk about is the bad stuff!"

"Don't call me that."

"Do you want to talk about the non-depressy stuff instead? Like..." Mabel wracked her brain for something nice she'd read in the book. She winced. "Uh... I'm sure there's something. You could choose the topic?"

Bill didn't look directly at her. He just looked over all her drawings again. "Tell me why you want to know so badly."

It was basically the same question he'd asked earlier—what's with the third degree—but his tone was different. Mabel swallowed hard and repeated, "Because... I'm your friend. It's crazy that we've been friends for like a month and I barely know a-ny-thing about who you are or how you grew up! By now, I'd usually know about a friend's family, favorite subject, favorite animal, opinion on glitter, and biggest life dream! Plus all the stuff humans have in common—like, 'do you breathe?'"

This time, Bill didn't argue with her answer. (He could have called her a liar. A month ago, she had just been trying to find out what was wrong with him. But this version of the truth she'd made up was better.) "You already know I'm pro-glitter in all contexts and my life's work is to throw an eternal party. What else really matters?"

"Those are the two most important questions," Mabel said seriously. Tentatively, she asked, "Did you have glitter in the second dimension?" He'd already reassured her that they'd had color, but it was hard to imagine glitter in such a bleak world.

"Sure."

Mabel heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness."

She looked around at the morning's art production, pulled over the first drawing she'd done of her shapesona, and grabbed a bottle of glue to draw a thin line around the heart.

Bill watched as Mabel carefully sprinkled several separate colors of glitter on the line of glue, like a master chef adding a precise amount of spice to a gourmet recipe, to create a glitter rainbow gradient; and then he slowly sat up and leaned toward the table again. "So, who's this freak?"

Mabel gave him an exasperated look. She decided he'd meant "freak" neutrally; but she'd clearly labeled the heart "ME IN FLATWORLD," she thought it was pretty obvious who this freak was.

But Bill cheerfully went on, "He's the most hideously disfigured shape I've ever seen."

"Hey!"

"I'm not joking, it hurts to look at this guy. At least he's symmetrical, but woof."

"She's not a guy! She's supposed to be me in Flatworld," Mabel insisted. "She's a powerful lady and I think she's beautiful." She paused. "Can a heart be a girl?" Lines looked boring, but Flatworld said that girls were all lines and all other shapes were boys. (Or were they? When they'd talked at the mall, Bill had been very clear that he considered himself a triangle instead of male or female, which scuttled the "all polygons are male" concept. Maybe Edward Bishop Bishop had made that part up?)

"She can be anything she wants," Bill said firmly. "I don't see any gender cops around here, do you?"

Good point. "And when there's no cops around, anything's legal."

Bill laughed. "Hey, I like that."

"Grunkle Stan says it!"

"Wise man." Bill leaned forward further across the table and tapped a finger on the deep cleft at the top of the heart. "Personally, I'm more worried about that agonizing-looking birth defect. I'm surprised she survived past infancy!"

Mabel glared at him, but she supposed she couldn't argue. A heart was a pretty irregular shape. And according to Flatworld, almost all irregular shapes were executed in childhood or else imprisoned in adulthood, since they thought irregular shapes would grow up to be depraved, imbecilic criminals—

"Wait," Mabel said. "Wait. Last year, when I called you an isosceles freak—"

Bill cut in, "It was 'monster,' but go on!"

"Was that, like..." Mabel's voice dropped to a whisper, "a slur on Flatworld?"

Bill fought to keep his face straight as he decided how to respond. He went for the funniest answer. "Yes."

Mabel clapped her hands over her mouth and squeaked, "Nooo!"

"It's actually pretty impressive a human managed to come up with it!"

"I'M SORRYYY, augh I didn't know!"

Over her anguished whines, Bill went on, "It's just a good thing you didn't say 'scalene'! I would've had to wash your mouth out with drain cleaner!"

Mabel had pulled the collar of her sweater over her face. From within Sweater Town, she asked, "Was that the first thing I ever said to you?"

Bill choked back a laugh. "Yeah, it was."

She squealed in embarrassment and slid under the table.

"Heck of a first impression, star girl!"

"i'm sorryyy."

Bill reached under the table to pat the top of her head. "Ahhh, it was funny. Get up here." 

As she climbed back into her seat, Bill added, "I'm getting back at you now, I'm not done making fun of your medical miracle yet. You know what she'd look like as a human? A headless, neckless body with an eyeball shoved six inches down her esophagus." He paused thoughtfully. "Actually... that sounds kinda cute."

"Eww, Bill."

"It is, it's cute. Like a clumsy puppy with a neurological disorder! I guess that's how the hideous Miss Heart here must look to humans!"

Mabel looked over her art again, wondering if she should change her shapesona, considering Bill's reaction to it. 

So, maybe she was creating a freak. She didn't see any shape cops around here. She kept drawing. "I'd be fine," she said. "You like weird freaks! You'd keep me safe."

A stricken look crossed his face. He was momentarily silent as he watched Mabel start another picture. And then, as though he were only considering it for the first time, he said, "Yeah. I guess I would."

His gaze drifted to the wrinkled picture of Mabel's shapesona standing protectively in front of Bill. "Freaks can't afford to tear each other down."

####

(THIS is the chapter that's been giving me hell the last few weeks. Months. Last few months. I'm so glad to finally have it out, and I hope y'all enjoyed!! This chapter probably brings up a lot more questions than it actually answers—and completely different questions based on whether or not you've read Flatland lol—so I can't wait to hear what y'all think.)