The First Day of Summer

"So, are you going to be at Phineas and Ferb's tomorrow?" Gretchen asked Isabella in biology class on the last day of school.

"Why? There's no patches to work for any more," Isabella answered.

Gretchen laughed. "They didn't just help us with patches. They wanted to do something cool every day. It's just that a lot of the time, helping us with patches was their cool thing for the day."

Isabella looked at her, confused.

"It's like this - Phineas and Ferb would be trying to figure out what to do for the day. Adyson would mention, oh, I don't know. We don't have our desert survival patch. And Phineas would say, 'Ferb, I know what we're going to do today. Let's build a desert biosphere.' And then we'd get the patch, and the biosphere would mysteriously vanish."

"So their goal wasn't helping you guys get patches?" Isabella asked suspiciously, looking at Ferb. "Because Adyson liked to say she had you guys at her beck and call."

Ferb finally spoke up. "The goal was originally to have interesting things to talk about for the obligatory 'what I did on my summer vacation' paper. And then, it just became something we did every day in the summer."

"Huh. So what's the plan for tomorrow, then?" Isabella asked.

"We try not to plan too far ahead," Ferb said, "but traditionally we've begun the summer with a rollercoaster."

"I don't know how you're going to top last year's subterranean coaster," Gretchen said.

Ferb grinned enigmatically. "Neither do I. But I trust Phineas will think of something."

Isabella's mother dropped her off on Maple Drive on her way to work. A bit hesitantly, she opened the gate to the spacious back yard. Phineas and Ferb were sitting with their backs against a large tree; Gretchen was sitting on Ferb's lap, wrapped in his arms. Ginger and Baljeet stood nearby, holding hands and talking to Phineas. A large, muscular boy in a black skull-emblazoned shirt leaned up against the fence casually.

"What'cha doing?" she asked, curious.

Phineas grinned. "Trying to figure out what to do today. Some people," he nodded his head toward the muscular boy, "think we should repeat one of our earlier coasters."

"I'm just sayin', the tunnel coaster from last year was pretty dang cool," the boy said. "Buford van Stomm," he said, turning to Isabella. "Ex-bully and provider of protection."

"Isabella Garcia-Shapiro. Ferb and Gretchen's lab partner, Ginger's teammate, and Adyson's arch-enemy," Isabella said, shaking his extended hand.

The boy raised an eyebrow. "Oh, right. Well, given what she's done to my friends, an arch-enemy of Adyson is a friend of mine these days. Nice to meetcha."

"As I was saying," Phineas said, "some people don't seem to understand the gravity of the situation. We can't reuse an idea for the first day of summer. We need something new, we...hey, wait. Gravity. That's it! Ferb, I know what we're going to do today!"

Ferb nodded, and reluctantly shifted Gretchen off his lap as they stood up.

"You start working on the construction ship, and I'll start working on a track layout," Phineas said.

The gate banged open, and a curly-brown-haired girl Isabella vaguely recognized as being in Adyson's Fireside Girls troop ran through. "Sorry I'm late," she said. "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing much. We had the 'I know what we're going to do today' but not much more," Ginger said.

"Oh, cool. In that case...where's Perry?" the girl said.

Everyone looked around, and a faint tune seemed stuck in the air, but Isabella couldn't place it.

"Why do you ask?" Isabella said.

The girl shrugged. "It's just traditional. He usually shows up just after things disappear."

Isabella laughed. "You people are weird. I'm Isabella, nice to meet you."

"I'm Milly. Nice to meet you too."

Buford came up behind Milly and squeezed her tight. "Missed you," he said gruffly.

"Missed you too," she said, turning her face up and over her shoulder toward the self-proclaimed ex-bully.

"So if we are weird," Baljeet said, "and yet you are still here...does that not make you weird as well?"

"I never claimed to be normal," Isabella said.

"So, if you'll remember, two years ago we tried a lunar rollercoaster, but it didn't work as well as we hoped because the gravity was too low," Phineas began as he prepared to unveil the first project of the summer.

"And then aliens attacked, so we had to turn the coaster cars into snub fighters to attack their moon-like space station before they could blow up the earth," Ginger added.

Phineas waved his hand at her. "Yes, yes, that's all past. Today's idea is different. We're building a roller coaster near Jupiter, which has a surface gravity of about two and a half times Earth's. We think with the higher gravity, we can get some really impressive dips and turns."

Isabella seemed taken aback by this, and asked, "Aren't you a little young to be building roller coasters on other planets?"

Phineas flashed her a grin. "Yes. Yes, I am."

Isabella had to admit, the boys had done everything they'd planned and then some. The coaster hovered over part of Jupiter, and the spaceship they'd ridden out sat docked to the entrance. The little two-person cars on the coaster were open, so they had to put on spacesuits to ride. Ferb and Gretchen took the first car, then Ginger and Baljeet. Buford had a bit of trouble squeezing in next to Milly, but they managed.

Finally, it was just her and Phineas and the last car. He gestured her toward it, and his voice came over the suit radio. "After you."

With a giggle, she climbed into the coaster car; he took a seat next to her, and after pulling the lap bar down, the coaster took off. It wove through the clouds high in Jupiter's atmosphere, pulling them down faster than Earth ever could and then rocketing them back up into loops and turns. She found herself leaning against Phineas as they turned some sharp corners; a quick glance showed he was blushing, and she felt her own cheeks getting warm.

No. Not happening. The last thing I need is to steal Adyson's ex-boyfriend. He's totally not my type.

Suddenly, a green beam from Earth hit the track in front of Ferb and Gretchen's car, ahead of them. The car shot off on a new trajectory, away from Earth. The other three cars all followed it into deep space.

"You know, in retrospect, I question the decision to omit the emergency rockets from the individual cars," Phineas said.

Isabella nodded, concerned. "Is this sort of thing common?"

"Pretty much. Last year's tunnel coaster got attacked by mole people. We'll get out of it, don't worry."

"Any ideas how?"

Gretchen's voice came over the radio. "Hey, look, there's somebody coming toward us."

Indeed, Isabella saw a spacecraft getting larger. It pulled aside Phineas and Isabella's coaster car, and she could see it was piloted by an utterly adorable little white creature wearing a pink helmet.

"Meap!" it said.

"Oh, hey, Meap!" Phineas called. "We got knocked off-course by another random stray beam. Any chance you can give us a tow back to Earth?"

"Meap!"

"Did you lose your translator mustache again?" Phineas asked.

The creature rustled around in its spacecraft for a moment, then came up wearing a long, curly mustache. In a deep, masculine voice, it said, "Sorry about that, Phineas. Certainly, I'll give you folks a tow."

They landed in the back yard, and Meap asked to keep the space suits and coaster cars for a kiddy park back home. Just after he left, Linda came out with a plate of cookies, asking, "Who wants snacks?"

Phineas heard a familiar chattering sound behind him, and turned around. Before he could say anything, Isabella said, "Oh, there you are, Perry."

Phineas grinned at Ferb, who said, "I told you she'd fit right in."