"Fireside Diaries"
Story Written by Freedom Fighter

So, the third entry of 'Fireside Fantasy Month' also happens to be the second of two ideas suggested by you, the readers, to implement in an episode of this series. The idea for this one was suggested by WordNerb93. The concept is, basically, that some of the other Fireside Girls see how well Isabella's mentorship of Melissa is going. So they try to get in on the fun and try to mentor a few Lil' Sparks of their own.

And then they learn every five-year old Lil' Spark is not doe-eyed, cute-as-a-button, pigtails-and-all Melissa.

So, this episode is what I've come up with. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The characters of 'Phineas and Ferb' belong to Disney.

Entry #417 - Written by Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, troop leader

As the leader of a Fireside Girls troop, I have the responsibility of making sure I act as a role model for the other members of the group. The others always look to me to do what's right, and at the same time, I have to lead my girls back on the right path should they ever wander astray from it.

In turn, all us Fireside Girls are supposed to be role models for those younger than us. In particular, for girls, and to be more precise, for members of the Lil' Sparks, which as you know, is basically a junior organization to the Fireside Girls. Once a week, I serve as a mentor to a Lil' Spark named Melissa. We hang out, I tell stories, and I instill good, moral values into her.

This week was no different.

Isabella and Melissa were walking side-by-side, as they headed towards the southern Danville Park exit.

"Thanks, Isabella!" Melissa said in gratitude.

"Oh, no problem!" Isabella replied.

They reached the exit just as a bus pulled up to the stop in front of it. Isabella led Melissa towards it, while behind them, Gretchen, Holly, and Ginger followed.

But this week's story isn't about me. It's about them.

"The Chief bonds so well with Melissa," noted Gretchen.

"If I already didn't know the truth myself," stated Holly, "I'd swear those two were sisters."

Isabella boarded the bus with Melissa. The doors closed behind them, and the bus pulled away from the curb. Holly resumed the trio's talk, smirking as she put her arms around her friends.

"I think, in a roundabout way, we're all thinking the same thing. And that is..."

The next afternoon, inside the secret forest clubhouse...

Isabella was handed an application form by Gretchen, who then stepped back and stood, with similarly hopeful-eyed Holly and Ginger, as their troop leader scanned the document.

"You girls want to be Lil' Sparks mentors?"

The trio nodded in unison. Isabella pulled out a rubber stamp and used it to mark the application with an 'Approved' print.

I'm happy that the girls want to follow in my footsteps and help guide the next generation of Fireside Girls. But something told me on that day that this was not a responsibility that they were quite ready for...

-
Entry #417 [FSD311] - A Spark Filled with Lil' Lies (02.11.03)
-

One week later, in front of the lodge downtown, Gretchen, Holly, and Ginger were all giddy as they walked up. Isabella was waiting for them, along with Melissa and three other girls her age that none of them had ever seen before.

"Hi, girls!" greeted Isabella. "Ready to get your mentoring on?"

"You bet!"

"You know it!"

"Let's do this!"

"Okay," Isabella said. "Let me introduce your new quote-unquote 'lil' sisters.' Holly, I'm pairing you up with Charmaine."

Charmaine was a dark-skinned girl with short, curled weave-style brown hair.

"Ginger, you're going to be with Lea."

Lea was an Asian girl with straight, light brown hair, who wore glasses.

"And Gretchen, this is Patti. With an 'i,' not a 'y.'"

Patti was a light-skinned redhead with freckles.

"Pleased to meet you!" Holly, Ginger, and Gretchen greeted in unison.

"I hope it's important that you girls understand what you're getting into."

The trio all shot confused glances at each other.

"Uh, Isabella? We all have our Babysitting Patches. This'll be a snap!"

"This isn't the same. Babysitting requires you to just take care of someone. Mentoring requires you to actually teach them something. Oh, AND take care of them."

"One step ahead of you, Chief!" Gretchen proudly declared.

Gretchen pulled out four copies of a five-page checklist of things they could teach the girls. She handed them out, keeping one for herself.

"We have to do this all in one DAY?" asked Holly.

"Just the first half of the first page," Gretchen replied. "It's a ten-week program."

Isabella lowered the paper from her face and smiled.

"Looks good enough to me!"

Isabella grabbed Melissa's hand, and the two started walking away.

"Wait!" Ginger shouted. "Where are you going?"

"Oh, us? To the Tri-State Area Museum of Architecture! I'm gonna teach Melissa about the stone arch! Wanna come?"

Holly shook her head, while Ginger stuck out her tongue in disapproval.

"We're good, Chief," Gretchen said, making their response unanimous.

Isabella shrugged her shoulders. "Suit yourself!"

The two left, leaving Gretchen, Holly, and Ginger to their mentoring job.

"Alright," Holly exclaimed, with an enthusiastic fist pump. "Let's get mentoring!"

"We... might want to find them first," Ginger said, concerned.

The three Lil' Sparks were gone! The Fireside Girls started scanning the area, already fearing the worst. Thankfully, they were relieved when they discovered that the door into the Fireside Lodge was ajar. They concluded that the girls must have already gone inside.

"Relax!" Gretchen said to Holly and Ginger. "They're all half our age, and you know at five how quiet and innocent a kid can be. What could possibly go wrong?"

She opened the door to the lodge, and all three girls' jaws almost dropped to the floor after seeing that the inside had been turned topsy-turvy and upside down. And the three most likely subjects were standing in the exact center of the room, flashing innocent smiles.

"Who's responsible for this?" questioned Holly, in a demanding voice.

The three Lil' Sparks troop members responded by pointing fingers at each other.

"I was trying to stop Lea from fiddling with that computer!" exclaimed Charmaine.

Charmaine was referring to the lone desktop computer in the lodge, whose tower's back plate was now on the floor, as were circuit boards of various sizes.

"I was trying to stop Charmaine from messing with that sewing machine!" Lea argued, in return.

The elder girls' heads turned to the opposite side of the lodge, and saw that the sewing machine had knobs hanging out of their sockets and a needle that was bent at a forty-five degree angle.

"You two should be ashamed of yourselves," shouted Patti, as she waved a capped black marker at them. "That's not the way of the Lil' Sparks!"

Charmaine and Lea both lowered their heads, ashamed of what they did. Patti then turned to the older girls to apologize.

"I'm really sorry for what they did. We're just so amazed by everything you have here, and they got curious and wanted to try and see how things worked. I should've done more to stop them."

Gretchen, Holly, and Ginger looked at each other, and then back at Patti. To them, something did not seem quite right.

"You're saying you had NOTHING to do with all this?" Gretchen queried.

She proceeded to point at a trophy case, on which someone had drawn a rose on the glass. Holly drew Patti's attention to the podium, which had a heart with an arrow going through it sketched onto it. Finally, Ginger directed her to look at a painting of Eliza M. Feyersied. Someone had drawn a mustache on her face. In addition, in the bottom right-hand corner of the framed photo, the words 'Patti wuz here' had been written.

The common thread between the three etchings? All were done in black marker. The same marker that Patti was now hiding behind her back, in hopes that the elder girls would forget they had seen it.

The disappointed scowls on their faces said otherwise.

"Heh... would you believe me if I said that Charmaine and Lea put me up to it?"

The scowls then quickly turned to displeased glares.

"I'll take that as a no."

Over the course of the next hour and a half, Patti, Charmaine, and Lea cleaned up the mess they had made, restoring the lodge to what it had looked like when they first entered it. As the younger girls were finishing up, the older ones were trying to figure out what to do now that half of their mentoring session had already been lost. Gretchen had her checklist in hand, and was visibly marking off things they could no longer do.

"Well," she said aloud, "not enough time to go paragliding, prepare a meal at the local senior citizen's home, fix up Old Man Miller's three broken tractors, assist that non-profit group at the beach who's trying to build the world's largest sandcastle, or to introduce the girls to music by taking them to the new shop at the mall."

"What are we going to do about THEM?" asked Ginger.

She, of course, was referring to the Lil' Sparks.

"They just need a little guidance," Gretchen replied. "That's why we're doing this, after all."

Patti, Charmaine, and Lea had finished cleaning, and now checking in to report just that to their mentors.

"All done!" they said in unison.

The elder girls did a quick scan of the room. Nothing seemed out of place and the lodge looked even cleaner than it was beforehand.

"So," Gretchen asked, "what did we learn?"

"That we should always treat other people's property as lovingly as if it were our own," stated Lea.

"And that we should never touch anything without asking permission first," added Charmaine.

Gretchen nodded in agreement with both statements.

"What about you, Patti?"

Patti was reluctant to answer. Gretchen pressed her again for an answer.

"Patti? What have you learned today?"

This time, the redhead did respond. "I learned that I shouldn't lie. It was very wrong of me to push all of the blame on my friends when I was equally responsible for what happened."

"Good," Gretchen said, smiling in glee. "That's just what I wanted to hear!"

"So, can we actually do something fun?"

"Of course!" Ginger exclaimed. "I know just the place!"

Sometimes, though, a Fireside Girl's idea of fun is not the same as one of a Lil' Spark...

The younger girls were disappointed to be standing in the midst of a Farmers' Market, which was bustling thanks to the presence of both locals and tourists taking advantage of buying fruits and vegetables straight from the source.

"Fireside Girls are supposed to support their local community," explained Gretchen. "And this is one of the ways we do just that!"

"Once a month," Holly said, "a few of us volunteer at the Farmers' Market. We do odd jobs around the block. We help direct foot traffic, break down empty boxes, load and unload produce. Whatever needs to be done, we do it!"

"You're making us do this?" questioned Patti. "Two words. Bor- and -ing!"

"Relax," Holly said, pulling out a clipboard. "You're doing something much more exciting!"

She led them to the first stand. This one sold apples and oranges.

"Afternoon, Mr. Ripley! Sales check!"

"9 A's and 3 O's."

Holly scribbled a '9' and a '3' onto the first line of the form. She then saluted Mr. Ripley and walked off, with the girls in tow.

"Every hour that the Market is open, someone goes around to all the stands and asks what they've sold since the last check. Helps keep everyone on the up and up."

Holly then handed the clipboard to Patti.

"Shouldn't take you too long. It's a slow day, so there are only about 15 stands up today. Come find me when you're done."

Holly headed back over to Gretchen and Ginger, leaving the Lil' Sparks to do their new job on their own.

"5 W's," one stand owner shouted.

"3 BB's and 5 SB's," proclaimed another.

"9 C's, 6 C's, and a dozen C's," stated a third, who was selling cabbages, cauliflower, and carrots.

"Why does everyone here speak in letters?" thought Patti aloud, as the trio walked away from the previous stand. "It's like being in Saturday school!"

"Just bear with it," pleaded Charmaine. "'Sides, this is the last stand."

Sure enough, they were at the last stand, which was another apple cart.

"Hello!" shouted Lea, searching for the owner. "Anyone here?"

She peeked behind the cart, but there was no one there. Charmaine appeared on the other side, as she apparently had the same idea.

"Now what?"

They went back to the front of the cart and were surprised to see that Patti had not only picked up one of the apples, but she was taking a bite out of it at that very moment.

"Mmmm," Patti said. "This is good!"

"PATTI!" Lea shouted. "That's stealing!"

Patti scoffed. "Fine."

Patti flipped the once-bitten apple over her shoulder, in the direction of the cart. Charmaine and Lea both raced to catch it. In doing so, though, they ran straight into the cart, sending both themselves and the apples in the cart tipping backwards. Upon hearing the crash, the Fireside Girls came running in to investigate, as did the cart's owner.

"MY APPLES!" the cart owner screamed, in grief.

"What happened?" asked Holly.

"Charmaine and Lea were playing around the cart," replied Patti. "I said they shouldn't be, but they ignored me and, a few seconds later, bam! Into the cart they went."

The other two girls were about to state their side of the story, but the owner had already decided that he did not want to hear it.

"This is my livelihood, and you ruined it!"

Gretchen stepped in to diffuse the situation.

"They're really sorry, Mr. Manson. They're under our supervision, so we'll take full responsibility. We'll pay for any damages."

Mr. Manson seemed willing to accept Gretchen's offer. That was until he saw the bitten-into apple sticking out amongst the other apples now at their feet.

"You can start by paying for that apple right there!"

Holly went over and picked up the partially-eaten apple by the stem. She then held it out in front of the girls.

"Alright, which one of you is responsible for this?"

"Not any of us," answered Patti. "That apple was like that when we got here. Someone else must've bitten into it."

Suddenly, Patti's lips began to pucker. She reached up with her hands as she stuck out her tongue, and tried to rub the taste out of it with her fingers.

"Mr. Manson," Ginger spoke up, "don't you sell Crabby Apples, one of the sourest-tasting apples in the world?"

"Why, yes," he replied. "Yes, I do."

Gretchen and Holly joined Ginger in staring down Patti, who had been caught red-handed.

After fixing Mr. Manson's cart and paying for any damages, as well as the once-bitten apple, the six girls left the Farmer's Market. As they all headed back to the lodge, the younger girls were a few steps ahead of the older girls, who were discussing what to do.

"Is it just me," whispered Ginger, "or did Patti lie about learning her lesson about not lying?"

"She definitely didn't," Holly replied. "We need to do something, before she gets to the point where she's telling nothin' BUT lies!"

"I have an idea," Gretchen stated. "Holly, do you still have-"

Holly held up a wolf costume. "Way ahead of ya!"

Ginger groaned. "Can I be the wolf this time?"

"Can you growl?"

Gretchen and Holly waited for Ginger to give off her best wolf impression.

"Grrrr... grrr... grr... meow?"

20 minutes later, back at the lodge, Ginger, in uniform and not in the wolf costume, walked into one of the smaller rooms in the lodge. Inside was the younger trio, all nervously sitting at a table.

"What's going to happen to us?" wondered Patti aloud. "Are we going to get punished?"

"We'll decide that after we talk to each of you individually," replied Ginger. "And we'll start with you. Charmaine and Lea, would you excuse us?"

Ginger motioned at the door, and that was their signal to exit and wait their turn outside. Once the pair had left and closed the door behind them, Ginger began her interrogation of Patti.

"Okay, Patti. Tell me what really hap-"

"EEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK!"

Ginger was interrupted by the screams of Charmaine and Lea coming from outside.

"What's going on out there?"

She walked towards the door. Suddenly, Patti heard growling from the other side. And she was pretty sure it was from an animal.

"Don't open the door!" she shouted.

But Ginger ignored Patti's warning, thinking that she was lying. She reached for the knob to open the door, but was beat to it when it was opened from the other side, and the door was pushed right into, knocking her onto her butt.

"AAAAAHHHHH!" Ginger screamed. "WOLF!"

"A WOLF? WHAT DO I DO?"

Before Ginger could answer, the wolf pounced! It landed on Ginger and started gnawing at her left arm.

"You have to warn the others! I'd do it myself, but this wolf is trying to eat me!"

The wolf then started pulling Ginger out of the room.

"It's up to you, Patti!"

Patti was shaking in fear, too afraid to do anything as the wolf dragged Ginger out, closing the door behind him. She could do nothing as she heard Ginger's final cries of anguish.

"He's eating me! He's SO eating me! In a matter of moments, I will be completely devoured by the wolf! I'm almost gone! I'm almost go-OW! Biting my ear was NOT necessary! Alright, alright, I'm wrapping this up! I'm going... going... going... I am now in the wolf's stomach!"

"AAAAAAHHHHHH!" screamed Patti, finally reacting to the situation. "What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?"

Her fight-or-flight instinct took over, as she scanned the room for a way out. Unfortunately, since it was an interior room with no windows, there was only one entrance and exit.

And the wolf was likely waiting for her on the other side of it.

Patti quickly got out of her chair and climbed onto the table. Good thing she did, because the door opened once more. The wolf had gotten it open, to Patti's dismay, and it looked like he had not filled his stomach yet. He was licking his lips, intending to eat her as well.

"Nice wolf," she began to plead. "Good wolf! You don't want to eat me! I'm from a family of vegetarians..."

The wolf began to approach the table.

"...that means we don't eat meat. So we're good, right? We're good?"

The wolf leaped up, trying to get onto the table. He mistimed the jump, though, and only got half of his body up onto it, with everything from his waist down hanging off of the end. As he struggled to push himself up, Patti did what any five-year old would do.

She tried to run for her life. And then the unfortunate happened.

She tripped over her own two feet at the far end of the table, and went flying off head-first. There was a thud, and then... silence. The wolf succeeded in pulling himself up and then ran to the other side. He looked ready to eat, but when he saw the unconscious girl lying on the ground, he stopped.

He then took off his headpiece. Or, rather, she, as it was Holly in the costume.

"Uh oh."

15 minutes later, two EMTs were checking out Patti, who was conscious and sitting on a gurney positioned on the sidewalk next to an ambulance. Charmaine and Lea were on either side, and both of them were showing concern for their friend.

A few feet away, Gretchen, Holly, and Ginger were talking about what went wrong.

"I don't understand," Gretchen said aloud. "She was supposed to run out of the room and trap you in it, Holly. Then she'd come find me and tell me that there was a wolf in the lodge. I'd say 'I don't believe because you've done nothing but lies all day' and then shove her back in the room, none the wiser. You'd go after her again, and just before you were about to devour, Patti was supposed to, as her last words, admit that she really has learned that lying is wrong and that she'd never, ever lie again. And we would've succeeded in teaching her something, just like the Chief said we'd do."

"Wow," said Holly, gasping after hearing all of that. "After the fact, I now understand why that only works in the movies."

"You mean I genuinely acted bad for nothing?" questioned an upset Ginger. "Aw, man!"

"That's not the worst of all of this!" Gretchen exclaimed. "When Chief hears about it, what are we going to tell her?"

"Apologizing for coming up with such an outrageous idea would be a good start..."

The trio gulped as they turned around and saw Isabella standing there. And she was not happy with the scene displayed in front of her.

So, in the end, the true lesson to be learned here is that, in trying to teach a lesson to someone younger than you, know that you probably shouldn't be scaring the daylights out of them to do so.

And the girls will each learn that lesson through a month's work of community service.

At the Fireside Girls' lodge...

"Hate to break it to you, Chief," Gretchen said, as she leaned in over Isabella's right shoulder, "but that's not fantasy."

"That's reality!" huffed Holly. "It actually happened! Well, except for the wolf part."

"And that's why it's fantasy, tee hee," Isabella exclaimed. "Because if that had actually happened, I would've kicked you all out of the Fireside Girls."

Gretchen and Holly laughed.

"Good thing we didn't then, huh, Chief?"

The two then backed away towards the trash can by the door. They each pulled out the checklist of mentoring ideas from their pockets, and promptly tossed them in.

End Entry

Author's Notes:
In the end, both of the reader-suggested concepts turned out to be quite a challenge to adapt. I think, though, for what they were worth, it was nice to get out of my comfort zone to try and make them entertaining for you guys. Do you guys agree? Do you think I should open it up to for fan ideas for next season? Let me know.

(P.S. And, yes, that's my official announcement that 'Fireside Diaries' will have a fourth season. Surprise!)

Meanwhile, 'Fireside Fantasy Month' concludes next week with another "What if?" look into the girls' future! Star high school newspaper reporter Holly accompanies her friends, a rag-tag team of detectives, as they tail a fellow classmate that they believe may be up to something inappropriate and illegal!