OUR DESTINATION DON'T MATTER [nell]

Fourteen-year-old Pacey had yet to discover the wonders that would come with bleach and obnoxious colours of hair dye, and so his hair was very much still its natural colour. That did make most sense considering how much he still otherwise looked like a child (since kids shouldn't be running around with dyed hair all the time anyway, he figured), and he was well aware of it. Pacey tended to use it to his advantage whenever he was able. It was part of his charm or something! Well, in some situations he was sure that he was going to regret it in the future -- at the age of nineteen he highly doubted that anybody was going to let him waltz into a club even if he did have ID to show. Ah, well. He was just fourteen still and found bliss without the help of sneaking into places with his friends and all the like. That was, if he would even be able to find the bus so that he could ever go into town in the first place... because he highly doubted that the Academy had its own bar somewhere around here. It didn't really matter much to Pace. He was just lost and wanted some help.

Her words threw him for a loop though, and he followed the direction she pointed in. A few feet away there was a little sign with what he figured was someone boarding the bus. "Oh," he said, his jaw dropping open. How many times must he have walked past that thing without even realizing what it was?! Pacey resisted the urge to facepalm. "Uh... Thanks," he said, hitching a smile on his face when he looked back at her and away from the sign. His face grew warm from embarrassment and he was sure that he was turning pink, but maybe this would work in his favour and she'd feel sorry for him and want to help him or something. Alright, Pacey wasn't really that manipulative, but he just didn't know who he could trust around here! At least the girl seemed friendly enough. Her next question did, however, throw him off guard. "Uh, yeah... yeah I do!" He went a deeper shade of pink. "Fourteen." He was so little still though, looked impossibly younger than he really was. Pacey was aware of that. He wasn't even the youngest out of all his classmates, but this was how it went.

"I'm just in Grade Nine... I'm really lost around here," he admitted, waving a hand to gesture at the Academy in all its castle-y glory. He didn't know that it was also her first year, of course. She did look remarkably older than he was (and certainly older than he looked).

He really was short, he thought, but it couldn't be helped! Both his parents were fairly short too, but according to the doctor (and Pacey of course trusted the doctor to know what was talking about) he was expected to grow to be taller than both his parents. Well, he hoped that it would be the case. Thus far he was still shorter than the both of them, though he was slowly gaining on his mom. Still, at least she pointed out his height rather than... the rest of him. Pace was pretty well aware that his face made him look like a five-year-old kid sometimes. "Yeah, I'm trying to grow. Stretches and stuff," he joked, grinning. Admittedly he wasn't always a huge fan of, uh, looking like a child, but meh, it didn't bother him that much either. At least people thought he was cute. That sometimes came in handy."But yeah, we should. Someone has to stick it to all those basketball players and... tall shelf reachers." Pacey hoped he wouldn't be short forever, though.

"Oh, that's cool," he said, nodding. He wondered what that was all about -- he'd always thought the Academy was pretty much mandatory, so the idea that she apparently hadn't started at the same time as everyone else was kind of confusing, but he didn't bother prying. If she wanted him to know she would have told him. "How's twelfth grade though? Hard?" he asked curiously. Then again, considering it had only been a few days, maybe that wasn't a super great question to ask. Pacey nodded his comprehension when she spoke of the dungeons. He'd yet to go down there, had thus far been able to avoid it, but so far all the helpful older students he'd met were rather deadset that the dungeons were full of Fire and Thunder students and he shouldn't go down there unless he absolutely had to. "Yeah, I keep getting warned not to go down there in the first place." He would be an obedient kid and keep to where he was supposed to go. He got lost often enough as it was. "How'd you get lost down there in the first place already?" It had only been a couple of days, even though it did feel like longer -- but it hadn't been longer, had it? Nah, he didn't think so. "But it is really cold, yeah..." Pacey was very much used to being comfortable. His dorm room was so not always comfortable.

He frowned then, considering this for a second. "Yeah, kind of lost in general," he decided. "I'm not from around here either." Admittedly it wasn't as different from the rest of Canada's as this girl's accent was, but his Toronto accent was strong when it needed to be. Luckily that was only when saying certain words, but Pacey liked his accent -- even across Canada there were serious accent differences, he'd noted in his few days at the Academy. Hers sounded distinctly different, though. "Wait, so where are you from?" he asked curiously, cocking his head slightly on an angle. Then he smiled a little. "Cool. Nice to meet you. I'm Pacey!" She did seem like a very very nice girl, he decided, going ahead and taking a seat next to her at the bench. "I, uh... Yeah I do board here, but I just wanted to see what there was in town --" He stopped. "Wait, did you say shopping? Is there good shopping in town?" Pacey's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

The advice was kind of amusing, Pacey thought. Milk was good! He drank milk pretty often, actually, just chugged the stuff down like it was nobody's business... but at the same time he also drank tons of stuff that was probably horrible for him -- pop and energy drinks and everything that tasted good, seriously. Coffee he had yet to really get hooked on just because the taste was better and gross and weird, but this didn't mean that he was beyond it in the future. All of this stuff probably stunted growth, but he hoped that he'd be able to grow taller in the future. The doctor said he would! "I do drink lots of milk! Though... does chocolate milk count?" he asked, grinning kind of sheepishly. "But I do drink regular milk too." He generally had something to drink with every meal, so considering how much he ate even at the age of fourteen... yeah, there was also plenty to drink. "Wow, really? Dude, that's sick," he said. Pacey had never been great at basketball, but he enjoyed sports on the whole. With all that the kid ate (some of which was healthy, but much of which was not at all), there had to be some way that he kept in shape and all. "Are you on a team or anything?" The fact that she mentioned an actual position did make it sound like she was.

He supposed that supplementary classes did make sense considering the fact that she had come to the school late. Wow. It had to be pretty difficult catching up on three years of elemental studies -- the other stuff wouldn't be so bad he supposed, considering he was assuming she had attended a regular old school before that and her powers had just come late or something -- but damn, elemental classes were tough. He was only in ninth garde, had only been in his classes a couple of days, and already he was finding it pretty difficult. "Must be hard catching up," he said, frowning a little bit. Pacey was a decent student, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to do that at all. "Yeah, it's huge." Then he laughed a little. "Yeah, it's a lot colder than home." Toronto could get well below freezing too, but considering the geography of the place, it was a huge difference to be out in Maple Hollow. This place was freezing cold. "Thanks!" He smiled when she answered that she was from New York -- he was going to assume the city rather than the state just because... well, maybe it was just what he did, as a kid from Toronto. He was just a big city kind of guy, in what was hopefully not a weird, cliché way. That was just the way his mind operated. "Oh, sweet! I'm from Toronto." It didn't seem pertinent to him to question her background further.

Were his parents creative? He didn't think so. They hadn't actually made the name up or anything, he was pretty sure. Pacey had almost been given a unisex name, his parents wanting him to match with his cousins -- he'd spent so much of his childhood with those guys. In the end they chose Pacey -- most definitely a boy's name, but it did rhyme with Jamie and Sydney at least... kind of. "I'm pretty sure they just picked it off a website, actually, so... not that creative," he said, grinning a bit. Nell was a pretty interesting name too, not one that he heard particularly often. "Oh, dude, that's awesome!" If she lived in the Hollow, then it seemed that he'd found himself a pretty sweet tour guide, assuming she wasn't busy or anything... but maybe she was. Pacey wasn't counting on much at the moment -- the lousy week was grating on even his positive attitude, honestly. Shopping in a thrift store was not anything that he'd ever actually done before, though maybe he should have at some point just to try it. It seemed silly to him, though, when he had the money for department stores and... designer things, actually, like his shoes. "Yeah," he answered anyway at her question, not wanting to come off like the spoiled brat that he knew he probably kind of was. Maybe if she showed him around and they came across a store or something, he could buy her something cute as a kind of thank you -- young yet, Pacey had already discovered that buying things for people was probably one of his favourite things to do ever. "Hey, yeah, that sounds good! Though... as long as we don't get lost and kidnapped or something." That would be pretty damn scary.

The kid definitely got plenty of calcium, at least he was pretty sure. Then again, he probably got an excess of everything... good and bad. He just ate way too much for a kid of his size, but pfft, he was growing! He was allowed to do these things sometimes, or... all the time... but whatever, that was close enough for him. The kid did drink tons of milk though, and ate his dairy products and everything, so he'd be fine. One day he should maybe see a professional about this kind of stuff, but until that time it'd be just fine. "Yeah, I think I'll be good for calcium," he said, laughing a little. There was no way he could be deficient in anything... could he? He actually ate fairly healthy meals for the most part, even if he did also have a really soft spot (in his stomach, heh, see what he did there) for fast food and junk food and the like. He just liked food! "Hey, that's cool!" He wasn't a basketball junkie or anything, didn't know much about the sport, but he did like playing for fun with his friends and shit like that. "Wait... does the Academy have any sports teams?" he wondered aloud, not really asking her but curious anyway. He didn't know if his new school was the type of place that would do that, but it was a high school, wasn't it?

The Academy really was neat, but at the same time, it was... scary. Pacey had yet to be away from home for any stretch of period without someone there with him. When staying at his friends' places and things like that, or when he went on trips... it didn't require a huge amount of knowledge of how to take care of himself because there were generally things to take care of that. On vacation for instance, he could always grab something to eat while out, since that was obviously no problem... but actually living here on his own like this was definitely weird. He knew that the entire population of the school was there to help too, but it was just weird when he didn't actually know any of these people. Pacey wasn't quite that comfortable with strangers. Still, he didn't bother saying most of this, just said, "Yeah, it is really neat. The elements and stuff... It's cool! I mean I kind of knew a little, but... not... really. Until I came here." He'd known that both his parents were elementals, but it was the kind of thing that had never come into play in his life, so he'd never bothered asking more after it. Now he wished that he had because he was actually living it. "Does it? I guess. I mean Toronto's pretty cold too, though... I feel like it's colder here." Considering the mountains it probably was, but he couldn't be sure of anything about New York. He smiled a little bit when she said that he wasn't far from home. Well... he kind of was. "Yeah, East. We're pretty far West right now, so..." They really couldn't get much more West if they tried. "Like... four, five hours by plane? A couple days driving. To Toronto, I mean." It was definitely far, but probably a little bit closer than New York, so he understood.

Paprika was a spice and a character on Blue's Clues, if he remembered correctly, but he didn't know much about it other than that. Was it spicy? Sweet? The boy loved food but he never cooked, so he wouldn't be able to tell anyone anything for sure on that type of thing. "Nah, they just found it on a baby name website," he said, smiling. It was kind of a cop-out or something, but he didn't mind that much, obviously. A name was just a name, and he happened to like his. Apparently there had been a chance he could have been named Zachary, and that was just weird. "And Paprika's a pretty name! Like Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper, right? Though I guess they were thinking of the actual paprika if they took it out of a cookbook..." He was thinking of Blue's Clues again, but he didn't know that she might not know what he was talking about at all.

The word "yet" just made her sentence sound horribly suspicious, but he was going to take it as a joke. Plus... Pacey was from Toronto, which wasn't exactly particularly safe itself. Admittedly he lived in a fairly upscale neighbourhood, but he wasn't blind or deaf. He knew where the dangerous intersections were and the like. Maple Hollow was smaller, from what he knew... so it was probably safer, right? He wouldn't worry too much about it. He trusted this Nell girl, uh... whoever she was. Okay, so he didn't know much about her. "Uh... well, as long as you've never been mugged yet, I guess." Then again, maybe she'd only just been there for a short time. Pacey tried not to get panicky or anything, but then the bus rolled up (he did recognize that at least even if not the bus stop itself) and he realized... oh. Uh, how the fuck do you take the bus? He wished that Nell would go first but she seemed to want him to, so to avoid making it awkward he boarded first as he reached for his wallet. He had some change in there as well as bills and a few cards and the like, but he paused. There were no instructions or anything. "I, uh... Wait, how do you..." He looked behind him where Nell had stepped up to, and glanced between her and the driver. "How much is it, I mean?" he asked feebly, feeling incredibly dumb and lost in the ways of the world. "And where do you, like... put it" He stared at the weird box thing that was there like he had never seen that before -- because uh, he hadn't.

He glanced behind them when she mentioned the lawn, but she couldn't actually see it properly anyway from where they were at the bus stop. From what he had seen of it already just walking around on his way to class or wandering (read: getting lost) in his spare time, though, it really was huge and perfect for sports fields. "That sucks," he said. Sports teams would have been nice. It might have given him something to do, something that didn't make him feel utterly useless at life. He wasn't the greatest or the most dedicated of players by any means, but he was bound to know more about soccer and basketball and the like than he did about... laundry and things like that.

Pacey laughed. "Who knew! Castles do seem pretty European." Of course, he had no idea what the heck the history of the Academy was yet -- maybe it'd come up in class later, since he did know there had to be history classes or something on this type of thing with the elementals -- but it still seemed weird to him, too, that there was a castle here. Then again, maybe it was more common than he'd thought. He wondered what the heck a castle was doing here otherwise. "Yeah, pretty much. Or the South Pole." The Earth was cold on both sides, after all, though he was pretty sure he'd heard somewhere that the entirety of the Southern hemisphere was warmer on average. Still, the North and South Pole were both freezing. "Second biggest in the world! Country, I mean. So it's... yeah," he said, sighing a little. He didn't really like being this far from home, really -- he'd been so excited before coming, but now that he was here... it was an entirely different world from getting to live at home and have everything taken care of for him and having his parents there whenever he needed.

Though he knew that it was rude, Pacey's eyes pretty much popped out of his head when she said that she'd never seen Blue's Clues. "How?!" he spluttered, forgetting to be polite for a second. Then he checked himself and paused before continuing. "Sorry, I mean like... I thought everyone had seen it." That had been a staple of Pacey's childhood in front of the TV. Of course he'd done other things too, but TV had been a big part of everything at the time. He could probably still sing the song that Steve sang whenever the mail came, and he was still bitter about Steve's leaving and being replaced with that other guy on the show. These things were of vital importance to him. "That's good. Doesn't seem that nice to make fun of someone for their name," he said, frowning a little. Paprika really was kind of pretty, and it wasn't like the spice or whatever it was was so bad either. Nor was it so common that it would have been weird, like naming someone Clock or Table or some other household object.

Despite her optimism and positivity, Pacey was still pretty worried about this entire prospect of going into such a sketchy part of town (or, oh god, what if the entire town was that seedy?). He pushed this aside though, figuring that it was probably fine. "Well, as long as nothing actually happens," he said. He would just have to figure it out for himself this time -- nobody was going to tell him what to do or where to go. He had to make it back to school by curfew of course, but this was something that he was going to have to deal with on his own.

The fare was honestly very low by Pacey's standards, but then again he didn't know what a "normal" bus fare should be, so it wasn't like he could have compared it to anything. Even if he did know some other cities' bus fares, it wouldn't have meant much -- the difference of a few quarters was nothing to Pacey. He would have honestly paid her way as well on the bus, but of course she had to pay to demonstrate for him. He had no idea that she might be pressed for money, of course, but still... it was the small things that he thought he should do as repayment. "Thanks," he said anyway, still feeling stupid as he sorted out the change that he needed and followed suit, then trailed along to take the seat beside her. The bus was warmer and more comfortable than he'd suspected it would be, but this didn't mean much. "Are there even seatbelts?" he asked, confused when she told him to buckle down -- he looked around for a second before realizing that there were, in fact, none. There were, however, weird yellow plastic string things above the windows, but he couldn't guess that they'd be there for people to pull approaching their stops -- they just looked random to him, and he ignored them. "Siblings? Nah." He had his cousins and they were as close to siblings as he'd get, really -- acted like them too sometimes -- but this didn't seem particularly relevant. "What about you, any siblings?"

He could agree with that sentiment readily enough. Both the Earth's Poles just seemed really cold and silly and he wasn't sure why people would willingly go there except to claim that they saw Santa Claus, or just to brag later and say that they'd explored the North and/or South Pole. There couldn't even really be that much to see and discover up there! There certainly weren't any shopping malls or fast food joints for him to hang out at. "Yeah, not sure I'd want to live that far up North." Canada was pretty far North, but they weren't even in the very coldest parts of the country at all -- not even close. He was sure it'd be much colder if that were the case. "And nah... I mean, up North more there'd be more polar bears, but it's pretty warm here I think. By, y'know, Nunavut standards or something." Nunavut was one territory that had to be pretty darn cold, yep. He was sure they had polar bears up there. Apparently summers in Maple Hollow got very warm, though -- which he was looking forward to, though it was his first year at the Academy so he'd yet to witness it -- so it didn't seem to him that there should be many polar bears in the area. "Yep, Russia. I think China's the third... then the States --" he nodded in her direction, the American in front of him, "and then I think it's Brazil, but can't be sure. Don't quote me." He did know the first four for sure, though.

It was still pretty difficult to understand that she had never seen the show before, but Pacey tried to put himself into her shoes. It had probably been pretty rude of him to react like that -- it wasn't really any of his business anyway if she had never seen the show! "Sorry," he apologized again, looking a little shy this time even though he wasn't a timid person by any means. The past few days had definitely put him in a weird spot, though -- he hadn't really met many friends yet. "Uh... not exactly, it's like..." He scratched his head, trying to explain. "There's like this guy named Steve and he has this dog named Blue... and then he gets mail and sings this mail song, like, 'Here's the mail, it never fails, it makes me want to wag my tail...' Uh, sorry, that was lame." He laughed sheepishly, but he was kind of proud that he could remember the entire song, he was pretty sure. "And then he tries to figure stuff out and he draws stuff in his handy dandy notebook and Blue runs around and leaves pawprints on things, and those are the clues..." It didn't really make any sense now that he thought about it, but it was a fairly straightforward show to watch. That had definitely been something he'd liked a lot as a kid, just spending all his time in front of the TV watching Blue's Clues. No, he'd done more than that, of course, but when he was at home with nothing to do, Steve and Blue and Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper were wonderful friends.

Kids really could be pretty mean, and while Pacey (fortunately) couldn't claim to be a victim of bullying as a kid or now, he knew that it was no walk in the park. He would have probably made easy pickings, actually -- he was a pretty small kid, kind of scrawny too. He'd been told a couple of times that kids were friends with him just because he had money and cool stuff -- he had yet to learn this lesson himself. That wasn't really bullying though, or at least not in the most direct sense of it that he could think of. "Yeah," he agreed with one quick nod. "Are people here really mean?" He was thinking of the Fires and Thunders mostly, but he didn't want to say this. He didn't know who this girl was, after all -- she didn't seem like any of the Fires or Thunders he'd come across yet, but maybe she was one, or her best friend was or something. There were lines he shouldn't cross. Nell seemed nice, at least. "But how... like, how do you trick a thug?" he asked, frowning. Thankfully it wasn't from experience, but he knew that a kid like him, dressed all nice and what-not, was probably an easy target. Maybe he was being paranoid, though. It wasn't like he'd often hung out in sketchy parts of town.

She was right -- it really didn't make any sense that busses carried this obscene amount of people yet still had no seatbelts. "Or maybe they just trust that bus drivers are better than regular drivers or something..." He trailed off, shrugging. Pacey didn't really bother overthinking these types of things. He knew that there had been bus crashes and accidents in the past before, but he'd yet to hear anything particularly horrific, so maybe it was just that bus drivers were better. "Yeah, kind of," he said with a slight grin, not realizing how she might have been feeling yet. "Still shared with my cousins a lot, though." His cousins were practically siblings, for all the time they spent at his place. It wasn't a bad arrangement, honestly -- he'd never been lonely as a kid, between his cuosins Jamie and Sydney, and the friends he made at school. "Oh," was his response when she said that it was complicated. He couldn't imagine what could be complicated about having siblings, but he didn't pester. "Okay." It was clear she didn't want to talk about it, after all. Pacey wasn't too dense to realize these things.

He finally realized what the string might be for when she pulled it and then a few seconds later they pulled over to a stop. Oh... That did make sense! When she got up he followed her off the bus, calling back his own thanks to the bus driver as he unboarded. "Where are we going?" he asked curiously, but it became clear when she pulled open the door. He looked up and saw that it was a thrift store. Huh. He'd never actually been in one, but he also had never ridden the city bus before, so it was a day for trying new things. "Yeah!" he answered, probably a little too enthusiastic about this, but that was okay. He could be a pretty excitable kid. "Oh my god, it's so nice and warm." Outside it really had been freezing cold. He looked around -- there weren't many people in the store, and the only employee he could see was ringing someone through at the cash register. "I've never been in a thrift store actually," he admitted after a second, glad that if he was blushing or anything it'd probably be covered up by his cheeks, which were already red from being outside.