"Alright, Isabella. This is it. You can do this," the eleven year-old mumbled to herself as she stood outside the gate that she walked through every single day for the last seven years.
Summer was finally over, and it was Isabella and her friends' first year of middle school. Which meant school dances. Which meant more awkwardness surrounding her crush on Phineas. It didn't help that her first school dance was a "girls ask boys" dance. And it certainly didn't help that the Fireside Girls were pushing her to ask him.
"Hey Phineas, whatcha doin'?" she said, just as she did every day, as she opened the gate up.
"Hi Isabella!" Phineas greeted with a huge grin. Isabella nearly melted. "We were about to start building a Zombie Apocalypse shelter."
"…Why do you need a Zombie Apocalypse shelter?" Isabella asked, confused, as she walked towards him.
"For the Zombie Apocalypse we're doing tomorrow, of course!" Phineas explained. Isabella wondered how they continued to build such enormous inventions and do all of their schoolwork. She went over to help almost every day for the first few weeks of the school year, but she started getting low grades and her mom made her stay home until she finished homework. There were a lot of days that she didn't finish until dinner, and by that point the project was completed.
"Look, Phineas, I-I wanted to ask you something," Isabella said as she turned away and started playing with her hair. "I was… wondering if you…" She felt herself starting to freeze up. No! Bad Isabella! No freezing up! You can do this! "Do you want to go to the dance with me?" she blurted quickly, then closed her eyes nervously.
After what felt like forever, the response came. "Isabella, I am so honored!" Wait a second. That wasn't Phineas. Isabella slowly opened her eyes and turned her head back. Phineas was measuring wood with Ferb, and instead Baljeet stood in front of her.
Baljeet.
She had just asked Baljeet out.
"…Greaaaat," Isabella said, forcing a smile. She knew for a fact that Baljeet had had a crush on her since the beginning of summer when she stood up to Buford for him. And although she didn't like him like that, she couldn't tell him, although she was pretty sure he knew she liked Phineas. Now she accidentally made him think that she liked him too. And she couldn't bring herself to say what actually happened.
Now what was she going to do?