Chapter One: Under Her Bottom Lip
Phineas,
I know you're probably wondering where I am. Why this isn't my handwriting, why I didn't come back from that visit to Pinky at the vet. Why I'm writing you a letter while you live right across the street. Why you haven't seen me in three weeks. Well, the truth is, when you do, I won't be able to see YOU. I lost my sight, Phineas. Permanently. I can't see anything but shadows anymore. I don't remember what pink looks like. I don't remember what YOU look like. I'm coming home in a week. I know that inventor head of yours is buzzing on asking me what happened, how you can help. That's the Phineas I know (erase marks). I look forward to hearing your voice again.
Your Best Friend,
Isabella Garcia-Shapiro
(Written by Doctor Hirano)
"Isa, are you excited to see all of your little friends again? It must be so-"
"Mom," Isabella said warningly as the car engine laughed beneath her. The window of the passenger seat was the only texture that felt solid against her skin; the only object that carried familiar reality and the assurance that it wouldn't shatter apart.
"Sorry, my little mariposa," her mother apologized, words weighed by a sigh. Isabella heard the shift of her mother's damp palms against the leather of the wheel, a sound that influenced her imagining of her mother scrunching her shoulders in her usual awkward gesture. "Eh...that was too soon, wasn't it?"
"Yes, yes it was," Isabella answered, almost surprised at how toneless her voice sounded. Inhaling deeply, she tried to place her elbow on the window ledge but missed, hitting it sharply against the switch to unlock the door, on the metal of the door handle. She hissed against her tongue and rubbed the elbow with her other palm in the hope it would calm the pain.
Isabella's mother clicked her tongue in a discordant rhythm and moaned sympathetically. "Oh, hija, I am going to be completely honest with you," she breathed as the click of the turn signal hummed in Isabella's ears, "I do not know how you feel. Not many people experience blindness, Isa, but in a way, you're afortunado, lucky. I think you will be able to see more than they can. I have always felt that having eyes made us humans even more blind; we only rely on what we see, not what we believe."
"Lucky? I feel anything but-neahh!" Isabella's stomach rippled as the car slid sideways and she grabbed onto the handle for support, which sent a slight slither of pain to her elbow. "Yeech!" she squealed, knowing that the impact of another car against her own would surely come, her mother had made a terrible move; the vulnerability, how easily their bones would shatter apart like pixels in a video game-
"Isa, I only turned right," her mother soothed. Flustered, Isabella realized she had bent over and had raised her hand as a shield, causing her to squeal in embarrassment as her heart stopped running. She uncrumpled and dropped her shoulders, letting her head fall until she could no longer feel the back of her neck.
"Oh, mom, I can't see anything! How will I be Troop 46321's leader? Hang out with Phineas and Ferb! Read, write, dance!" her words seemed to burst out of the sides of her lungs as she slammed her head against a lower part of the car door. She clenched her hair tightly in her fingers, frustrated that she couldn't see it, frustrated that she could only feel each individual tangle.
"Isa, I am not going to lie. Your life will be more difficult now that you are blind, but that does not mean you will not adapt. Knowing your amigos, they will probably adapt for you! I wouldn't put it past those boys to spend every minute trying to help you see again," her mother assured, and Isabella could hear the smile lifting her words.
Isabella lifted a hand in front of her open eyes and shook it as if it was a tub of expired jello. All she could see were shadows in-instead of endless-halting white, bending as if they were processed through a cheap kaleidoscope. She blinked, because it simply felt...human. It was as if her blindness made her an extraterrestrial observer, as if the world was so bright for her species that she would be punished to never see the world again.
"I know they will," Isabella laughed quietly.
"Chin up, Isa-ah, how sweet! Look, Phineas is sitting on his front porch, waiting for you," mused her mom, her words dipped in sugar. The car teetered to a stop, and the image of the one she could count on to let her win sitting with his hands against his cheeks, waiting, was so real that her sides twisted with anticipation and emotion as she tossed her head up and grabbed the door handle, placing a fumbling hand against the glass.
"Really? I-I didn't think he'd-" Isabella started, but let the sentence run over the period and grind it into a beach of rubble. She tucked the last word under her bottom lip, as if she could only use it once and had some distant occasion she was saving it for.
She heard a muffled, "Isabella!" as a soft feeling bloomed out of her feet and stitched its tendrils around her individual limbs, making her feel half of herself, but all of her being. She guided her fingers to the dip in the switch to unlock the door, and gently pressed it, her pulse racing against her thread of thought.
"Phineas? Phineas, is that-Phineas, are you there?" Isabella swayed with the satisfaction that he was, he was there, that her head was the perfect blend of dusty and clear when he was near her. She stroked the leather that lined the inside of the car as the door swung open, bouncing against its hinges before stilling.
"Isa, you will break the door if you do that," her mother pushed air against the top of her mouth in annoyance. Isabella's mouth curved into the shape of and upside-down half of a watermelon, appalled that her mother would care more about the wellbeing of the car than the wellbeing of her blind daughter. She gritted her teeth against the top of her chin as she struggled to lower herself safely to the ground, grunting with the lingering pain in her elbow and her slipping feet.
She was so disoriented that it seemed as though the ground was never there, as if she was laying sideways against the Earth and everything felt so fleeting that sky and ground had the same meaning. As if she was falling, but she wasn't, as if she wanted someone to catch her, but didn't.
"Here, let me help," said Phineas's nostalgic voice, and all the shadows straightened. The first segment of 'thank you' slipped itself out of Isabella's mouth, but then fell away when she found his hand against her waist. She could see herself, her cheeks shining with crimson embarrassment, as the tendrils of that feeling doubled themselves.
She let go of the handle of the door, losing all space, then found herself guided to the ground and balanced precariously on the rumpled concrete bordering the right side of Maple Drive, in the accidental arms of Phineas Flynn. If this is what being blind is like, Isabella cherished the flowing distance between them, I'm keepin' it.
And then the shadows twisted and the heel of her foot slipped, "Ya-ah!" was the only sound her lips would let out before she arched back and all of the words were backwards inside of her head and everything she imagined was too big-
-and then he caught her.
One hand on the back of her neck, the other grasped around her elbow, he caught her, with a "Who-ops! Gotcha." And the sky backed away and they both felt it safe to blink again.
"So-uh...whatcha' doin'?" offered Isabella, flicking her sightless eyes to the sides as if painting the image she couldn't see in front of her. The phrase was so ironic, so fitting, that the humor tugged on both of their laughter until it burst up like springs and their shoulders both convulsed with it.
"No, the question is, what are you doing?"
Isabella steadied the world and placed her hands on his shoulders, heaving herself up and lightly pushing him back so they could stand comfortably there, the fizzing of laughter still jumping in their throats.
"Trying to remember your face," said Isabella, her colorless eyes becoming heavier.
"It's uh, kind of a triangle. You can't miss it."
"I'm just joking, Phineas," she responded airily, and wrapping herself in a cliche she thought, I'll never forget your face, Phineas. Not until all the butterflies in the world drop dead. It'll be the only sight I'll remember.
"Ah, how sweet your reunion is! Now, Isa, why don't you catch up with the Flynn-Fletchers while I work a little Mexican Magic on our grill? Have Phineas or Ferb walk you home or I'll be here at nueve. Nice to see you Phineas, by the way, you've grown so much since I last saw you-" interjected the static voice of Isabella's mother from the front seat. During the tumble of sounds, Isabella had found a grasp on the door handle and slammed it shut before her mother's sentence married it's period.
"Don't worry, mom, the Flynn-Fletchers will take great care of me!" Isabella rocked on her toes as the car engine coughed and she waved. She prayed that Phineas just thought the interruption was a cause of parental embarrassment, and hoped that she hadn't been too rude!
The only awkward part?
She was waving in the wrong direction.
She couldn't see it, but something expanded in Phineas's eyes.
Isabella's cheeks were hollowed by the tck-r-ckl of her Jeep's engine as it lumbered down the road and pushed through the humble gravel on her driveway with a memory-filling crunch. The reverberating sound swung through their skulls like shadows tripled in a room with strange lighting, until it bended back into the silence that rumbled Isabella's shadowscape.
"It's great that you're back, Isabella," said Phineas, and the dropped tone of his voice, implying business, caused the vine-like emotion to condense down her legs and to her feet. She slowly turned, hoping that her assumed direction of his voice would help her face him correctly. This blind thing was still new to her; she imagined a line in the middle of his body, imagined lining herself parallel to it.
Isabella felt the firm clutch of Phineas's hand on her own, and suddenly the Earth was rolling beneath her, a treadmill of concrete. The only solid feeling Phineas's touch, she was walking.
"Really?"
"Of course! We need your intelligence and instincts to help with projects, you know, to make summer the-"
"Um, I don't know if you noticed, but I'm kindof, um, blind, over here."
The world shuddered to a stop and Phineas's shoes scuffled against the sidewalk, and Isabella could sense energy seeming to flutter around him. He ran an index finger softly along her wrist; emotion cascaded down her neck.
"Isabella, I would never forget about that! Ferb and I, as soon as we got your letter, we've devised a system that will help you 'get your sight back', so to speak."
"You did that...for me?" It's moments like these, Isabella carved her smile out of these thoughts, that make me wonder if he's not so oblivious after all.
"Well of course! We'd do it for any of our friends," a laugh of incredulously slammed against his words like a ping-pong ball.
The numbness in where he had touched her twisted into meaningless feeling as his last sentence spread across her shoulders like a ruler lined with a teacher's cruel punishment. She was the china pot in her cabinet, teetering on the edge but never seeming to fall.
"Oh," her voice clawed.
The retraction in her eyes alarmed Phineas. He pulled his mouth to the side and fondled the skin above his ear, tightening his grip around her hand as if he could send a message through his pulse.
"Are you alright?"
Her momentary throne lowered, Isabella dragged her free hand against her hairline as if brushing away a priceless crown. When the imaginary clatter of the gold against the sidewalk jumpstarted her thoughts, she shrugged a smile on.
"Yes, yes I am- its just, an inventor like you probably has better things to do than help a blind girl." Huh, thought Isabella, worries creep up on you like the blue moss on the side of the oak.
"What are you talking about, Isabella? I'll always have time for you if you need it. C'mon, I'll explain how you're going to 'get your sight back.' See, you won't actually be able to see again, because we don't have the technology, but Ferb and I-"
The numbness and movement of the world beneath Isabella's feet resumed, as if the Earth was a tired limb of the universe regaining feeling. Isabella touched the word tucked under her bottom lip with her tongue and let Phineas's words bend the shadows in her eyes until she could almost see his face and she could forget the question she knew he was going to ask her:
What happened?