The Long Way

The Script

Isabella marched from the elder log with determination in her eyes. It was still that same lukewarm Friday evening where she had decided to confront her shy truth, she marched with haste, not because of anxiety or any inwards spiraling self-doubt that might have emerged there alone in her head as she strolled, no, she walked at that speed hopeful she'd still find the pair of brothers, along with the gang, working on a crazy project or just hanging around.

She had memorized to the back of her head the schedule of their summer adventures. She knew that if they started working on the project in the morning, it would be gone by lunchtime, and if they started in the evening, it would've disappeared by the time her mother got back from work, around 6 in the evening.

Her powerwalking slowed down as she turned the final corner, past the house of the old lady that always watched them from her window (Nobody ever brought the thing up) until finally coming to a halt before the backdoor of the Flynn-fletcher household backyard. She stood there for roughly ten seconds, trying to calm her breath so that it wouldn't be obvious she had almost run 2 miles just to get there, and went to open the door, strange that whatever they were doing wasn't visible from the other side of the fence, she sometimes wondered how it was possible that the boys never got busted, muffled noises from behind the garage door healed both her train of thought and movement, she knocked on the door.

The noises stopped, and moments later the garage door elevated, revealing an extensive metal scaffold that went along the borders of the room, like a frame of a metal box they forgot to attach the walls to, and inside the box, there was a bright green screen and three boys staring back at her.

"Hey, Isabella, where were you? You missed half of the show." Said Phineas, tugging the garage door controller into one of his cargo pockets.

"Seem like it, what did I miss?"

"We're filming my newest idea: Terror in Danville. Set in the medieval era, where there's a strange thing going on, like witchcraft or something." Said Buford, taking out a paper mache skull and holding it up.

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?"

"And I keep telling you that's not how they spoke!" Said Baljeet, folding his extravagant black leather and silver raper outfit and placing it on the counter.

"You're just too blind to appreciate real art," spat Bufford, igniting a chain reaction that quickly became, surprisingly, a fully-fleshed-out argument between the two of them about mid-19th-century linguistics.

Isabella, initially surprised the Buford could hold up to Balkeet in historic literacy, quickly lost interest after their conversation spiraled into background noise, repeating the same arguments with different words.

"So Phineas, where's Ferb?" She asked, looking around the improvised film studio, half-expecting him directing the lights from above or in the editing room.

"Actually, Ferb is working on our play," Phineas said, opening the door that connected to the rest of the house.

Ferb sat on the kitchen table, with an old gunmetal typewriter, with a pencil on his ear, and had focused squinted eyes. There was a fine pile of clean papers and paper balls equally spread around him.

"I thought you guys would make a machine to do that," said Isabella, "Like a creativity computer, or a thought scanner. Though you guys already did that one."

"Yeah, no. We haven't really tapped into the creativity department with machines yet, we still have to wait until high school programming courses for that."

"Well, is there anything that I can help with?" Said Isabella, taking a detailed scan of the room in search of something worth doing.

Phineas, finding himself momentarily in thought answered, "You could go help Ferb with the creative output. There is only so much his British ancestry can do, and your point of view could really help us out."

Isabella, though she didn't show it, choosing instead to cast a radiant front, eager to help on a project that upon closer look seemed to be largely finished, approached Ferb by the table and began reading the early parts of the script.

Her disillusionment turned to intrigue, her intrigue to expectation, and her expectation ultimately turned to excitement as she progressed through the story, captivated by the well-balanced combination of mystery, comedy, thrill, and romance the story weave into 45 minutes.

The idea struck her moments later, when her brain, constantly trying at the back of her mind to further her goal to be with her crush, spotted an opportunity tying her, him, and the main leads of the play together.

Ferb recollected the pages fr her hands into a finely packed block of white paper and walled back into the garage, not before turning back and giving her a wink in the process.

Isabella only staggered for two moments before catching up with Ferb to rejoin with the rest back in the garage.

The idea had come in a rush, and after the initial surprise, it was clear to her that she didn't want to wait a whole month for the moment to happen. Without foresight onto what might happen during the next couple of weeks it was too risky for her to wait it out, so she decided that the play would serve as a sort of deadline to her, a plan B if everything else failed.

"Oh yeah, I totally forgot. Where's Perry?" Said Baljeet, gathering around to read the Isabella approved script.

"Oh no, he's been here with us all day," chuckled Phineas, a blue platypus appearing seemingly out of nowhere next to him, "he doesn't disappear as much as he used to."

They were about to go over the play, recreate it in their film studio to give it the sign of approval when from the driveway they heard two horns from an orange car which parked right in front of them.

"What's going on?" Said Linda, staring at the film equipment and metal scaffold.

"Oh my god," Said Candace, stepping out of the car after her mother, "I can't believe this is finally happening. Stacy, I'm gonna have to call you back."

All seven of them stood in a standstill that seemed to last minutes, while in reality barely a second had passed, one of them watching with wide eyes what will happen, while another one stared at the rest of them trying to make sense why everyone had gone quiet, but all of them waiting for Linda to say something.

The silence broke when one of the heavy lights that hung high on the ceiling broke off of its mount, plummeting and shattering loud on the green garage ground.

"Hi mom, we're working on our school play. Want to check out the script?" Said Phineas.

Phineas was about to say something else, but he stopped when his mother started stuttering and pointing at the fallen light, the scaffold, everything, before frowning and turning towards the brothers, and also their friends.

"You kids are in so much trouble."