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Isabella woke up bright and early, as she tried to do every morning. She hummed a Paisley Sideburn Brothers song to herself as she shook out her hair and put on her uniform, clearly in a good mood already. Once she got downstairs, she daintily perched her beret atop her head, grabbed a concha bagel for the road, waved good-bye to her Mom, and made her way out the door.
She nibbled as she walked down the sidewalk, pulling the sugar shell off the bagel in little bits and crunching on them one by one, adding in a sprightly skip every few steps when she felt so called.
After giving the secret knock on the front door of the Fireside Girl lodge and being allowed entry, she took in her favorite sight in the whole world (second only, perhaps, to Phineas reaching out his hand and inviting her to partake in their day’s adventures); her troops, eyes bright and uniforms without a single wrinkle or stain, geared up and ready for a good old Fireside Girl patch earning session.
“Hey girls! What’cha doin’?”
“Just a little practice for today,” said Adyson, holding up six strands of multi-colored Play-Doh that she’d braided into a miniature replica of a challah loaf.
“Excellent job! So I take it that we’re all ready to earn our artisan bread making patch?” Isabella asked, clapping her hands together enthusiastically. This was what she had been so excited about all morning – a new patch had just been added to the Fireside Girl compendium, and they, Troop 46231, were going to be the first to get it!
“We’re already working on it, Chief!” announced Gretchen, saluting proudly and then gesturing to a series of diagrams tacked to the log cabin wall.
“We just need to figure out some way to get to the bakery,” said Holly, tracing the distance between the two locations on the map.
Katie gently adjusted her finger to a new point. “The problem,” she said, “Is that the Tri-State Subway is down on that route today for crocodile removal.”
“ And the bus system is still out because of that juice flood,” pointed out Ginger.
“ And the patch doesn’t count if we try and get help from anyone who’s not a Fireside Girl,” said Milly, “So it’s not like our parents can drive us.”
They all sat in silence for a moment, mouths pinched and eyebrows furrowed, each trying to come up with a solution to the problem.
After a while, a snap came from Adyson’s direction. “Technically,” she said, drawing out each sound in the word with the practiced air of someone who’d interrupted her troop leader with conflicting information many times over, “There is one Fireside Girl in our troop who can legally drive.”
Eyes darted around the room, everyone squinting across at everyone else, as it slowly dawned on each of them exactly what Adyson meant.
Isabella rapped three times in quick succession on the Flynn-Fletcher’s front door.
“This is kinda weird, isn’t it?” Holly whispered to Katie, “We usually just go in through the backyard gate.”
“I went in the front door once before,” said Milly confidentially, “You know, that afternoon I came back after everyone else went home.”
Isabella turned her head around sharply and silenced them with a glance.
After a few moments, the door swung open to reveal Candace Flynn, looking down at her cellphone where she was rapidly composing a message to her mother rather than up at the Fireside Girls. “Phineas and Ferb aren’t here right now,” she said distractedly, “They took a pool table and some leftover jetpacks over to Buford’s a few minutes ago. Said something about needing to borrow his microwave. My bust timer’s set to go off in half an hour, but you can get over there and have some fun with…whatever they’re doing before I get over there, I’m sure.” Then she started to close the door without ever looking up.
“We’re not here to see Phineas, actually,” said Isabella, sticking her foot into the door frame to hold it open.
“Or Ferb,” Gretchen added helpfully.
“We’re here to see you,” Isabella continued.
Candace slowly stowed her phone in her pocket and blinked a few times, confused. “No one’s ever here to see me,” she said, self-deprecating and yet confident in her assertion, “Especially not you kids.”
“Well, today we are.”
“We need help with a patch,” Ginger explained quickly, before Candace could get her hopes up that the Fireside Girls had finally decided to take her up on her offer to help redesign their uniforms to “fit the 21st century style book”.
“Aren’t you and Stacy supposed to be shadowing your Mom at the hospital today?” Candace asked, regarding the younger Hirano suspiciously.
“Faked a stomach ache and then climbed out the window,” Ginger explained nonchalantly.
Candace pursed her lips, and, after a moment of thought, gave a grudging nod of approval. “Not bad, kid. Though minus a few points for leaving my BFF flying solo like that.”
“Who D'ya think unlocked the window for me? Stacy totally gets how important this patch is. Unlike some people.”
“Ugh, fine,” Candace groaned, “What do you need from me?”
The Flynn-Fletcher family’s station wagon could fit a surprising number of Fireside Girls. Isabella and Adyson were sharing the passenger seat, Milly, Holly, and Gretchen were in the back seat (Gretchen in the middle so Candace could see over her to look out the back windshield), Ginger was lying splayed across their laps, and Katie had volunteered to ride in the trunk.
(“Think of it as practice for my Overcoming Claustrophobia patch!” she’d announced excitedly.
“You don’t even have claustrophobia,” Holly had pointed out.
“Not yet! Maybe after this I will!”)
“If we get pulled over, I am so finding a way to blame this on my brothers,” Candace growled, pulling out of the driveway after triple-checking that everyone was, in some manner, buckled into a seatbelt.
Their drive to the bakery was uneventful, unless you counted a rather off-key group sing-along to the Betty’s latest single. When they arrived, Candace slowed the car down and squinted all around, looking for a parking lot.
“There’s a parking spot right there,” said Gretchen, pointing out the window.
“Ugh, road side parking, seriously?” Candace groaned, “I’d have to back in.”
“It looks like the best we got,” said Ginger.
“Besides, aren’t you, like, the total queen of parallel parking now?” asked Adyson.
“A tire-spinning, gear-grinding, clutch-burning, back-firing, paint-trading, red-lining, over-heating, throttle-stomping, truck-drivin' girl!” added Milly, in her best gruff biker voice.
Candace blushed, clearly flattered. “You know what? Yeah, I am! I am all of those things!”
“Parallel Park! Parallel Park!” Holly started shouting, beating her fists on her knees for emphasis. Quickly, all the other Fireside Girls joined in. Katie could even be heard smacking the roof of the trunk in rhythm. They hadn’t spent 12 hours practicing to earn their ‘Group Chanting’ patch for nothing.
Candace grinned in spite of herself, switched on her turn signal, and then smoothly and easily navigated the Station Wagon into the tight spot. Once she’d put the car in park and switched the engine off, the girls all cheered.
With only a quick diversion when Adyson hit her head on the roof while climbing out of the back seat, and another to tug Katie (not yet displaying any symptoms of claustrophobia) out of the trunk, they all congregated on the sidewalk, enjoying the scent of blueberry muffins in the air.
“Maybe after the artisanal bread making, we can do some artisanal muffin eating,” Milly suggested hopefully.
“Muffin time, muffin time, muffin time!” Katie and Holly began whisper chanting.
Isabella ran up the bakery’s front steps, swinging the door open eagerly and causing the entry bell to ring loudly.
The Fireside girls chatted amongst themselves while they waited for Isabella to return. Candace stared down over the tops of their heads, feeling an odd sense of pride in the fact that she’d been the one to get them there successfully. There were, as she saw it, so few successes in her life, that even the smallest ones deserved to be cherished. Sometimes, though she hated to admit it, she felt almost jealous of the Fireside Girls with all of their talents and physical representations of merit, things that they had in droves and she felt were lacking in her. It was probably pathetic to be jealous of kids six years younger than her, but helping them out, even in a small way, on one of their many adventures, made her feel a bit better about the whole thing. Like she was of some use after all.
In the middle of her self-reflection, she had to suddenly reach out and stop Gretchen from toppling over as she reached a dramatic peak in her argument for why IKEA would make an ideal zombie apocalypse survival shelter. When the girl beamed up at her thankfully, Candace didn’t even think twice about returning the smile.
Then, the entry bell rang again, a much slower and more muted sound this time. Isabella stepped back outside, head downcast and wringing her beret in her hands. “Bad news, girls,” she announced, sniffling a bit, “The bakery can’t help us out today.” A chorus of disappointed moans broke out from the assembled Fireside girls. “Apparently, a flock of birds broke in yesterday and ate their whole stock. They need a few weeks to regrow their sourdough starters.”
“Does that have anything to do with the flock of birds that ate the Rutherford B Hayes statue earlier this summer?” asked Adyson, stroking her chin inquisitively.
“Who knows?” Isabella sighed dejectedly and flopped down on the steps. “All I know is that this patch attempt was a big failure . Now some other Troop is gonna beat us to the punch and earn the patch first.”
“If it’s Troop 5634, I might actually scream,” said Ginger, clearly attempting a jocular attitude in response to the morning’s disappointment.
Isabella said nothing, just sank her face further into her hands. The Fireside Girls all glanced at each other awkwardly. They never knew what to do when their normally confident and energetic leader lost her spark. Candace, however, was intimately familiar with the feelings she saw in front of her, and knew exactly what she had always wanted to be told. So, after a few moments, she held up her hand, indicating that she would handle this, and shooed the other Fireside Girls away. They scurried back to the Station Wagon and began whispering among themselves.
“You know, Isabella,” Candace said, settling herself down on the steps next to the younger girl, “In life, you’re gonna end up failing. No matter how organized you are, or confident, or talented. You’re still gonna fail. A lot. If you’re like me, you end up failing a lot a lot a lot a lot. And you try really hard , every single day of the summer, for your Mom to see what your brothers are doing just one time , and it’s not even about busting them anymore it’s really just about proving to her that you’re not crazy, and no matter what you do she never believes you and it’s totally unfair and-”
“Is there a point to all this?” Isabella asked.
“Oh, yeah right. Anyway, failing a lot means…well it means you tried a lot too. Think about it: if I never tried to bust my brothers, I would never fail to bust my brothers, right?”
“Right,” said Isabella uncertainly.
“But that would also mean I never even had the chance to bust my brothers in the first place. Because I wasn’t trying. I would never even get close. I wouldn’t learn anything. If I never tried busting, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I wouldn’t have become Queen of Mars. I wouldn’t have visited the Himalayas. I wouldn’t have taught myself semaphore.”
“You know semaphore?” asked Isabella, completely ignoring the rest of the point.
“Heck yeah,” said Candace proudly, “Pages 1128-1131 of the Fireside Girl Handbook, right?”
“You actually kept it after your swearing-in ceremony?” Isabella’s eyes sparkled with joy.
“Pfft,” Candace demurred, evidently realizing that she was geeking out with her little brothers’ best friend, “There’s some useful information in there, I guess.”
Isabella smirked, and then directed her attention over to her troop, who were still gathered around the Station Wagon, chatting to each other a bit dejectedly and shooting frequent glances over at the two girls still on the bakery steps.
“I guess you’re right,” she told Candace, “With the whole failing means you’re trying thing. I just…I hate feeling like I’ve let them down. Like they shouldn’t have trusted me to be the troop leader.”
“You haven’t let them down,” Candace promised. “You faced a problem, you found a solution-”
“Technically, Adyson found it.”
“You demonstrated your usual leadership, and you achieved at least part of your goal,” Candace continued undeterred, “I mean, you got here, right? I think you do such crazy stuff with my brothers all the time that sometimes you forget to acknowledge the more ‘normal’ things you do. I know I have that problem. Like, oh, I got an A on my statistics text that I had to study really hard for? Well, it’s still no cheese-themed amusement park, ya know?”
Isabella nodded, comprehension dawning on her.
“Getting a group of seven kids across town within a few hours while all forms of public transportation are out is still, like, really cool. And I’m sure all your girls would tell you the same thing.”
“They’ll all still be disappointed though,” Isabella fretted, “Being the first troop to get a new patch would have been a big deal.”
“Is there no ‘first troop to go to space’ badge? Or ‘first troop to find pirate treasure’, or, I don’t know, any of the dozens of insane things you guys have done this summer patches?” Candace asked sardonically.
“Unfortunately not. The Official Fireside Girl Council doesn’t recognize the existence of Atlantis, either, so that’s out,” said Isabella, sense of humor evidently still intact.
“How about a Slushy Dawg on the way home? Would that cheer you guys up?”
“Maybe. Is the Slushy Cafe still open?” she asked, checking her watch, “I think we owe Milly a muffin. But don’t pretend it’s not just an excuse for you to see Jeremy.”
“Pssh, no it’s not,” Candace snorted, waving the accusation away with her hand like it was a particularly pesky mosquito, “What kind of girl would I be if I went someplace everyday just to visit the boy I liked?” She glanced down at her companion with the smile of like-recognizing-like.
“A cool one,” Isabella muttered under her breath, “Probably only a really cool and goal-oriented and, uh, determined girl would do something like that.”
“Well, then let’s go be cool and goal-oriented and determined somewhere with chili cheese fries.”
“And also your boyfriend.”
“And also my boyfriend,” Candace agreed, appropriately giddily, standing up and offering Isabella a hand up off the stone steps, which she took.
As they walked back to the car where the rest of the troop was waiting, smiles plastered on their faces despite the underwhelming events of the day, Isabella decided that if failing every once in a while taught her to be more like Candace Flynn, well, then that might not be the worst thing in the world.