Episode Forty Nine
Brigitte opened the cupboard, reached up and pulled down a mixing bowl, measuring cups and a box of pancake mix. She walked over to the fridge, opened it and extracted milk and eggs.
"Are you sure you don't want me to do that?" asked Martin.
"No, that's all right, honey," she said. Brigitte gestured to the ceiling, where there was an electric waffle iron half embedded in the drywall. "Do you remember what happened the last time you tried to make breakfast?"
Martin's gaze followed her pointing finger upward toward the ceiling. "Oh, right," he said, "on second thought, I'll just go and sit down."
Sitting at the kitchen table, Milo, Zack, Melissa and Amanda, had overheard the exchange between Milo's parents. Amanda's eyes had also noticed the wayward waffle iron. "Milo, why exactly is there a waffle iron embedded in your ceiling?" she asked.
Milo shrugged, as if a flying waffle iron was a perfectly normal thing. "Dad tried to make us waffles for breakfast a couple weeks ago," he said, "and the result were," he paused momentarily, searching for the right word, "explosive."
Zack and Melissa traded a knowing look. They could remember when something much larger than a waffle iron had been stuck to Milo's kitchen ceiling. Not long after they had become friends, Milo had invited Zack, along with Melissa, to his house for dinner. Milo had been taking a cooking class at Danville Community College at the time and had decided to cook dinner for himself and Zack and Melissa. They had been skeptical at first, particularly as Milo's cooking class had ended in disaster, when Murphy's Law had struck and blown up the ovens, but they had come around when they had realized that Milo, as usual, knew what he was doing. That reassurance had lasted about as long it had taken for Murphy's Law to hit, which had caused Milo's pot of Mac and cheese to spontaneously explode, which had in turn left Milo covered in Mac and cheese from head to foot and stuck to the ceiling.
"And what is it about Murphy's Law and X-ray machines?" asked Zack, curiously. He traded another look with Melissa. He could tell that she had been wondering the same thing. Milo had always been fully open with Zack, Melissa and Amanda about his life, but that didn't mean that they weren't occasionally caught off guard by aspects of Murphy's Law that they had simply never thought about. Milo's surprising dislike of lace-up running shoes had been one such instance. His apparent dislike of of X-ray machines was another.
Milo shrugged again. "They behave oddly around me," he said.
"Milo, lots of things behave oddly you," said Melissa, "that doesn't really mean anything."
Milo nodded in agreement. "True," he said. Parking metres had been known to tick over from full to vacant as he walked down the street and ordinarily inert substances such as carbon dioxide and water sometimes burst into flames in his prescience. "Do you remember the first winter I took skiing lessons at Bluster Mountain?" he asked.
Melissa shrugged and nodded. "Yeah, I remember that," she said, then she chuckled, remembering, "We were eight. Your lesson lasted about as long as it took you to go head first into a snowbank. You broke both your wrists."
Milo nodded. "Do you remember what happened after that?"
Melissa thought for a second or two, remembering the incident. "You went to the hospital to have your wrists X-rayed and-," she broke off, as if making a sudden connection that she had never seen before. "Wasn't there a power outage?" asked Melissa.
"There was," interjected Martin. "The entire Tri-State Area went dark for four days."
"Wait OK,"said Zack, "Milo took a skiing lesson, had an accident and broke both of his wrists," he said. "For Milo, that's pretty normal. He then went to the hospital to have his wrists X-rayed. OK, also pretty normal, except that Milo having his wrists X-rayed caused a city-wide power outage? How does that happen?!"
"We never found the cause," replied Martin. "The black out lasted for four days because that's how long it took to reset the breakers, but once we reset the system and turned the power back on, everything worked." He took a swig of his coffee and continued. "We then spent the next eight months upgrading the city's power distribution system so that it could never happen again."
Amanda frowned slightly, as if she had noticed a flaw in Milo and Martin's story. "But, Mr. Murphy," she said, "Milo had his leg X-rayed in San Fransokyo and nothing happed."
"Well a lot things went wrong that night," said Milo, "maybe everything that could go wrong already had, so-," Milo trailed off. He suddenly looked slightly uncomfortable. "Actually, that reminds me," he said, "I never said-."
"Milo, you don't need to say anything," said Amanda.
"Yeah, buddy," replied Zack. He put a hand on Milo's shoulder. "We're your friends. What else would we do?"
Melissa nodded. "Yeah, nobody gets left behind."
It took three days for Danville to dig out from the storm. Jefferson G County Middle School remained closed until the following Monday. They spent the extended weekend mostly camped at Milo's house, playing video games, binging Doctor Zone and Skyping with Reggie. Early on Saturday morning, they got an unexpected text from Phineas.
"I wonder what he wants?" asked Zack as they waited at the bus stop at the end of Druid Drive.
"I have no idea," said Melissa. "He just said that he had something cool to show us."
"The last time he had something cool to show us we ended up in another dimension," replied Zack.
"Yeah, but how much of that was Phineas' fault as opposed to Murphy's Law?" asked Amanda.
"That was definitely Murphy's Law-," said Milo.
"-see," interjected Melissa.
"-I mean what are the odds of us being sucked through an inter-dimensional wormhole a second time," said Milo.
Zack opened his mouth to say something in reply to Milo and Melissa, but the arrival of the city bus prevented him from speaking. It stopped at the bus stop with a squeal of cold breaks and the door sighed open. They boarded the bus, swiping their transit cards over the reader. It registered them each them with an electronic beep-beep-beep, except for Milo's card, which seemed to cause an inexplicable malfunction. Milo thrust a gloved hand into the inside pocket of his heavy winter coat and pulled out his wallet. He opened it, extracted the cash fare, handed it to the driver and sat down.
The ride from the bus stop at the end of Druid Drive to the bus stop at the intersection of Maple Street and Povenmire Road took thirty five minutes. It was ordinarily only a twenty minute bus ride from Milo's house to Phineas', but the combination of bad roads, some of the side streets still hadn't been plowed, and Murphy's Law had meant that it had taken almost twice as long. As Milo, Zack, Melissa and Amanda stepped off the bus, they could see the large, rambling two storey house with a tall tree in the backyard. It's branches were bare and delicately dusted with snow. In between the tree and the house, and apparently occupying most of the backyard was-
Zack shaded his eyes. The sun was still low. "-is that a-?"
Melissa whistled in amazement. "I don't think I've ever seen one that big before."
"Come on," said Milo."Let's go find out what it is."
It didn't take long to walk from the bus stop and the corner of Povenmire and Maple Street to Phineas's house. The sidewalks had been shovelled and salted and Milo only skidded on his crutches once. When they arrived in Phineas and Ferb's front yard, they found the gate hanging slightly open. They pushed it open and went into the backyard. They gaped as they took the scene. Phineas, Ferb and Baljeet were huddled around a drafting table covered with blueprints. The object of the blueprint occupied most of the large snow covered backyard. The three boys turned as one as Milo and his friends entered the yard.
"Oh, hi Milo," said Phineas. "What do you think?" He gestured casually to the snow fort occupying most of the yard, as it was normal for ten years to build a snow fort the size of a house. It was huge. The top of the battlements stood level with the top of the roof. Round towers stood at each corner, where walls formed right angles. A square keep rose well above the walls from inside the space framed by the walls, which were made of perfectly laid blocks of pressed snow. Brightly coloured flags snapped in the breeze from the tops of towers and the keep.
"I-," began Milo.
"Wow," said Zack in amazement.
"Yeah," said Melissa, clearly impressed, "this is some snow fort, not the like the one that we built when we were eleven, you remember Milo?"
Milo chuckled and nodded. "Yeah, there was six inches of snow on the ground and it melted."
Phineas gave a modest shrug, as if the huge edifice were nothing at all. He walked over to a large pair of heavy looking double doors made of oak and held in place with hand forged wrought iron hinges. They swung easily as Phineas pushed them open. Milo, Zack, Melissa and Amanda followed him inside. Milo's eyes were drawn to the heavy wooden portcullis hanging in the archway. It swung slightly from creaking chains as it swayed gently in the slight breeze. He momentarily wondered how it stayed up, then he felt as if he was somehow running afoul of Murphy's Law just by thinking about, and he pushed the thought out of his mind. Milo followed the others into the huge inner court yard. Rows of windows with pointed gothic arches stared down at them from all sides. Phineas gestured to something in the middle of the court yard. Milo turned and looked and saw a crudely made semi-circle, with two little stumpy looking towers on each end."We originally built this," he said, "but we had all this left over snow and thought 'why waste it?'"
They spent the rest of the day exploring the huge snow fort. It was full of trap doors, secret passages and hidden rooms. The afternoon consisted of a series of snowball fights, all of which Milo lost. The last one devolved into a free for all. Milo nearly won that one, except that he was unexpectedly deluged in a sudden barrage of snowballs launched from a catapult by Buford. By Sunday night Milo found that he was looking forward to going back to school the next morning. He had enjoyed the extended break brought on by the sudden bout of bad weather, but he found that having nothing to do had left him going a little stir crazy and he was looking forward to the usual routine of school and homework.
"Hello! Hello! Is this think on? Can anyone hear me?" The voice of Principle Milder cut through the sleepy fog of a classroom full of eighth graders early in the morning. The early morning sunlight cast bright squares across the floor of Mrs. Camillichec's home room. As usual, Principle Milder sounded as if she wasn't entirely sure if anyone was actually listening to her. "Good morning Jefferson G County Middle School! I am excited to announce that today we in are the final countdown for The 38th Annual Jefferson G County Winter Break Awards! I will now turn the microphone over to the head of the WIBA Awards planning committee, Amanda Lopez."
There came the momentary sound of shuffling as Principle Milder handed to the microphone to Amanda. "Good morning, Jefferson G County Middle School," she said, "this year we will be holding the 38th annual Winter Break Awards! The WIBAs are your opportunity to show your fellow students just how great think you think they are! The WIBAs will be handed out on Saturday, March 28th. I and the other members of the WIBA planning committee will be visiting your class room later today with ballots. Voting will open today," As Amanda spoke over the PA system, Milo rummaged through his backpack, pushing aside his school books, his usual spare change of clothes, a bicycle tire, his first aid kit, a pair of night vision googles and several of Diogee's chew toys. His hand closed over a sheaf of papers. Milo pulled them out of his backpack, which he picked up and slipped on to his shoulders and got up out of his seat. He thrust his crutches under his arms and hobbled around the class room, depositing a ballot on everyone's desk.
Amanda was still speaking over the PA system. "Voting will end on next Monday and the results will be counted on the following Friday," she said. "Each category will consist of up to five nominees. You will able to nominate your friends for up to five categories. We are also looking for volunteers to help us decorate the gym for the award show. The sign up sheet will be posted outside Principle Milder's office. The cut-off date is two week from today. It takes a lot to set for the award show and we appreciate all the help we can get, so we hope to see you there."
