The Dance
Phineas put his arm around Adyson as they waited for Ferb to retrieve Gretchen. She gave him a sly smile, and leaned over into him. "I'm really looking forward to this," she said.
He smiled at her and hugged her tighter. "Our first dance. Thank you for asking me."
"Oh, like I was going to ask anyone else."
He laughed. "I would hope not. But you could have decided you didn't want to go."
"Nah, this sounded like too much fun. I wanted to get at least one in before..." she trailed off.
"Before what?"
They were interrupted as Ferb returned with Gretchen, who buckled into the middle row of Linda's minivan.
Phineas looked over at Adyson as his mother drove them along. Her black dress was short and sleeveless, as he'd expected, and he'd worn a jacket primarily because he figured she'd need to borrow it by the end of the night. He still wondered what she saw in him, but whatever it was, he needed to keep it up.
"So who else is going?" Linda asked.
"Technically, we're double-dating with Ginger and Baljeet," Gretchen said, holding Ferb's hand. "And Milly asked Buford, and the new girl Theresa asked Irving."
"Wow, somebody asked Irving? Did she know what she was getting into?" Phineas asked, and Adyson smothered a laugh behind her hand.
"She actually seems to like him," Gretchen said. "She's the one who always wears the Space Adventure T-shirts to school."
"Oh, her," Adyson said. "Yeah, she'd be a great fit for him."
Gretchen said, "She was really vexed that Ginger asked Baljeet first. Sixteenth-level Space Adventure trivia masters are few and far between. But apparently she decided that Irving was a suitable replacement."
Linda pulled up to the curb by the school gym, and the couples started exiting the car. "Oh, look, there's Ferb and Gretchen's lab partner," she said.
Phineas looked up, and indeed, Isabella was getting out of the car in front of them. A tall tanned boy with long brown hair, wearing a grey jacket and slacks, was holding her hand as she climbed out wearing a pale pink dress that came down just below her knees; her hair bow was the same color.
"Marvelous," Adyson said, rolling her eyes. Phineas chuckled.
Isabella sat off to one side as Dave laughed with his friends. She hadn't been seeing as much of him since school started - they didn't have many classes together, and he'd only waited for her after practice that one time, so it seemed like they only dated on weekends now.
Shaking her head at another of his jokes, she looked around the room. Adyson and Phineas were out on the floor, dancing to an energetic beat. Ginger was out there as well, with a curly-haired Indian boy who must be Baljeet. Alex had finally gotten up the nerve to ask Ricky to the dance, and the two of them were just heading off the dance floor, breathing heavily and holding hands.
Ferb and Gretchen were leaning up against a nearby wall; they weren't talking, but instead just gazing into each other's eyes. It almost made Isabella want to gag from the sickening sweetness of it. Much as she wanted that moment where she just knew that she'd found her true love, she hoped she could get it without that sort of mindless bliss and descent into fantasyland.
The song ended, and a slower one started up. She took Dave's hand and pulled him toward the dance floor; he gave a token resistance, then nodded and followed her out to the floor. His arms wrapped around her back as she slid her arms around his neck, and they slowly swayed to the music.
"You okay?" he asked. "You seem distracted."
She nodded wordlessly, pulling his face down for a perfunctory kiss.
Phineas watched Ferb and Gretchen settle into the middle seat of the minivan together. Ferb put his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him with a soft sigh. Phineas chuckled and squeezed Adyson, his own arm resting across her jacket-covered shoulders.
"So are you two 'an item' now?" Linda asked. Phineas couldn't see if Ferb and Gretchen were blushing, but he suspected they were.
"We talked about it, and we're going to date each other. Is...that okay?" Gretchen answered hesitantly.
"That's fine," Linda said. "You seem to be good for each other."
Phineas heard Ferb exhale in relief.
Isabella climbed onto the bus toward the Flynn-Fletcher house again. "Why are you on this bus?" Adyson asked, looking up from her seat. "You don't live in this direction."
Isabella sat down in the seat across the aisle from her. "I'm working with Ferb and Gretchen on our biology lab."
Adyson gave her a distasteful sneer and sank down in the seat, waiting for Phineas.
Phineas grabbed a couple cookies and headed into the living room, leaving Ferb and his lab partners working in the kitchen. He started to call out to Adyson, but stopped as he saw her talking to his mother.
"She seems nice to me, Adyson," his mother was saying. "And she's Ferb's lab partner, and this is really the best place for them to work on their lab reports."
"I don't like having her around," Adyson said.
"I love you like a daughter, Adyson, but Isabella is welcome in my house until further notice," Linda said. "Ferb's education is more important to me than your dislike for the girl."
"Adyson, want a cookie?" Phineas interrupted, holding up his prizes.
Adyson looked over, embarrassed, and said, "Sure."
As he led her up to his room, Phineas sighed in relief.
"Can we talk for a minute, Dave?" Isabella asked as they met up while waiting for their buses after school.
Dave nodded in response. Isabella took a deep breath; she'd been trying to figure out how to do this for a week now, and had finally decided to just do it and see what happened.
"We don't seem to want to meet up any more. We run into each other in class, and occasionally on the weekend, but...I think we're just drifting apart. I don't...I think it'd be better if we broke up."
There. She'd laid it out there. She wasn't sure how she wanted him to react now.
His lips pressed together in a frown - lips she'd just kissed the day before, and now might never again. "I think you're right," he said softly. "I'm sorry."
Resignation hadn't been what she expected. An argument or an attempt to win her back, or maybe delight at being free of her, but not this.
"I'm sorry too," she said. "Can we still be friends?"
"Of course. Is there anyone in particular you're looking at next?"
She shook her head. "No, nobody. You?"
He shrugged. "Not really."
Isabella's bus pulled up. "I need to go." She paused, looking at him for a moment. "You'll always be special to me, you know."
"And likewise. Take care of yourself, okay?"
She nodded, and headed for her bus. As it pulled away, she saw him waiting for his own with a wistful expression.
"You stay away from my boyfriend, Isabella," Adyson muttered as Isabella walked past, exiting the bathroom in the Flynn-Fletcher house.
Isabella considered just ignoring it, but couldn't bring herself to. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Stay away from Phineas."
"Adyson, I'm here to work on my bio lab. With Ferb. Your boyfriend isn't even in the picture here."
"I know your type. You dumped your boyfriend, and now you're after mine."
Isabella stared at Adyson. "I have no idea where you get this sort of idea from. Seriously, I'm not stealing your boyfriend. Get over yourself."
"Why don't we work on this downstairs," Ferb suggested hastily, and Isabella followed Ferb and Gretchen down to Ferb's new basement room, shaking her head.
"I should have moved down here long ago," Ferb said. "It's so much quieter."
"And more private," Gretchen added with a barely-suppressed grin.
They were hunched over their drawings, trying to figure out how best to display what they'd seen in their dissections, when a quiet bell rang with a *glingleglingle*. Ferb and Gretchen started, then Gretchen laughed as Ferb looked embarrassed.
"Sorry," he said. "Didn't consider that in the sensors."
Isabella gave him a confused look, then looked over toward the door as she heard footsteps running down the stairs. There was a knock on the door, and Phineas said, "Hey, guys, Mom said to tell you there's treats in the kitchen if you want 'em." They heard him run back up the stairs.
"Sensors?" Isabella asked.
With a mischievous grin, Gretchen said, "He built an alarm system so that if he and I are down here, and somebody comes down the stairs, a bell goes off so we know they're coming. He forgot to have it be if it's just the two of us, though."
"I still want to know why we get the false alarms, though," Ferb said.
"Maybe it's Perry?" Gretchen said.