Pacifica Southeast thought her hot pink light-up Sketchers sneakers were very cool. Very cool, indeed. They were totally not at all tacky and stupid.

"Totally not tacky and stupid. Honestly! Coming from a circus freak!" Pacifica yelled, exasperated.

"I mean," she continued. "Who's the one that wears, like, bright blue spandex? Huh? Huh?"

"Uh…."

"And her eyes are so…BLUE! Like, I know the spandex brings out her eyes and all, but honestly, that girl needs to chill with the blue."

"D-do I know you?"

"Hm?" The blonde swung her head around to face the boy. "Oh, sorry." She grinned a blinding smile of metal braces and laughed to herself. "I guess I just got carried away!"

The boy stared at her.

"You can leave now, if you want!" Pacifica encouraged.

The boy ran out the door of the Mystery Shack.

Paz breathed in deeply the air of the empty Shack. The last tourist bus had left and it was just her and the over-worked teenager who manned the cashier.

"Hey, Robbie!" The fourteen-year-old chided gleefully as she swung herself up next to the register.

"It's Robert," the teenager corrected as he flipped turned the page of a thick paperback.

Paz ignored him. "Whatcha reading?"

Robbie Valentino sat up straighter and delicately closed the cover of the novel he had been previously reading. "It's Pride and Prejudice," he said, somewhat stiffly. "Not like you would know that."

Paz laughed. "Robbie, everyone's heard of Pride and Prejudice! Tell me when you're reading something a bit more pretentious, no?"

The blonde looked at the screen door, which was still swinging to a squeaky close from the last tourist who had just departed. "Was that the last bus?" she asked to nobody. It was a rhetorical question - Paz was a people-watcher and had the comings and goings of everybody in Gravity Falls clearly etched into her mind. The liberated tourists had been the last ones of the day.

Robbie walked over to the window of the Shack to change the "Open" sign to "Closed". "Yeah, those were the last ones."

"Aw," Paz pouted. "I'm gonna be bored for the rest of the day!"

"Pacifica, this happens every day."

Ignoring the cashier, Paz let out a groan and let herself fall to the wooden floor of the Mystery Shack. "This is, like, totally gonna be the worst summer vacation ever! There's nothing ever to do in Gravity Falls!"

"Don't you have summer homework to do?" Robbie inquired, slightly condescendingly. "You're going into high school in the fall - it's not easy, you know."

Pacifica scoffed. "Like you would know, smartass," she mumbled to herself.

"Did you say something?"

"No!" She shook her head. "Never mind. I'm going outside."

xXx

Outside in the northwestern forest was a bit more humid and hot than in the Mystery Shack. But Pacifica Southeast was a girl of constant motion; she was always twiddling her thumbs or pacing or tangling a finger or two in her long blonde hair.

She liked being outside, even if she did not always blend in. The unofficial dress code of Gravity Falls was earthy colors and flannel, almost as if the citizens were trying to blend into the background. Paz, to say the least, looked like a background dancer for an 80′s Madonna music video. And that was not really a bad thing, at least to her it wasn't. She felt herself as a Christmas ornament bouncing around the piney grounds of the Mystery Shack; fun and pretty.

"Hey!"

Paz stopped her upbeat roaming when she heard the cry of a very distressed and panicked voice.

"Hey!" it called again.

She turned around to see the same boy who she had held up in the gift shop just moments ago; the same white-haired, chubby boy who appeared to be a few years younger than her. He was running and yelling at the forest.

It seemed that he was trying to gasp something out to Paz. But whatever his message was, it was lost between his panting.

"Um," she asked. "Are you okay?"

He was gasping, face red and and curly white hair sweaty. "Y-YOU!" he managed to squeak out before falling splat onto the grass. He waved his chubby little legs in the air. Then he dedicated the next few minutes to catching his breath.

Pacifica leaned close to his ear and repeated, "Are you okay?"

The white-haired boy started, startled, and mumbled something out that she could not comprehend.

"Okay," Paz said, and she proceeded to sit down next to the nervous wreck of child.

She tapped her hand on the ground; looked around at the scenery; how did one comfort a distressed child? Hesitantly, she began to pat his puffy white hair.

He wheezed in retaliation before sitting straight up. At least, she thought he sat up to get her to stop petting him until he threw off an old, brown backpack and began hastily rummaging through it.

"A phone? A lollypop?" Paz thought to herself. What on earth could he be so desperate to have?

An inhaler, it seemed, was the answer. It was blue (Paz HATED the color blue) and plastic and she watched as he closed his eyes and took a few deep breathes of the silly-looking (it was BLUE) appliance.

He took a deep breath, and when it seemed that he would not die, pointed towards Pacifica and cried, "Y-you made me miss the bus! Y-you holed me up in your house and made me m-miss my bus!"

Paz looked at the boy for a good while before realizing that he was mad at her. "Oh, gee," she apologized, but not with quite enough emotion for her antagonist's liking, "Sorry, I guess." She blushed and began to draw imaginary circles in the grass with one painted pink pointer finger. "Do you have a cell phone on you?"

"No," the boy huffed. "I'm twelve."

"It's okay - I don't have a phone either and I'm fourteen. But I think the Mystery Shack does."

Pacifica stood up. When the white-haired boy below her did not even take a step, she resulted to lifting him herself.

The boy shrieked; this girl was a lot stronger than she looked! "P-put me down! Or I - I'll call the cops!"

Paz blinked. "Really? In the middle of the woods?" She gestured to the nothings of the setting, but still put the angry child down. She almost laughed; he was so short. And angry. It was sort of hilarious.

He huffed off, red in the face, towards the Mystery Shack with the intent of getting the to the telephone himself.

If he thought he could do this by himself, Paz wouldn't force her help upon him. She was more than happy to stay outside, twiddling her thumbs and staring up at the sky.

"The door's locked!" he shrieked as he hung against the unrelenting screen door of the Mystery Shack. Pacifica was more than happy to help him.