Chapter I

It was the end of another eventful afternoon, and the dynamic duo of Phineas and Ferb were sitting under the huge tree in their backyard. Phineas sighed happily.

"Today was a great day... Don't you think, Ferb?" he asked the boy beside him. His stepbrother silently nodded his affirmation, reading a book from the library. Phineas shifted his gaze beside him when he heard a familiar chattering noise.

"Oh, there you are, Perry!" Phineas exclaimed happily as he stroked his pet platypus. Both monotreme and boy smiled contentedly as the setting sun set the summer sky ablaze. Life was perfect.

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The ringing of a school bell wretched Phineas Flynn from his thoughts. Jolted back into reality, the redhead sighed as he put away his notebook, half listening to his teacher drone on a bout homework assignments, half continuing a storyline in his head. He gathered his various notebooks, sketchbooks, and writing utensils together, following the crowd of classmates out the door of their classroom to their lockers located outside. The rest of his fellow elementary school students babbled and gabbed to one another, talking about the upcoming weekend's prospects. He walked up to his locker, the outside relatively bare compared to the sticker-covered lockers beside his. His locker's door front's only decoration was his mandatory name plate, bearing his first and last name in a black, non-descript font. The inside, however, was a completely different story.

The inside of Phineas's small metal locker was plastered with drawing and sketches, most of two cartoon boys; a redhead with a head shaped like a triangle, and a green-haired boy who's head was shaped like an F in profile. They were often surrounded by strange contraptions and inventions, sometimes accompanied by several other cartoon children. Only one child was depicted more than the red- and green-haired boys, ad that was a black-haired, pink-clothed girl with a half-circle head topped in a pink bow. An aqua-green, rectangle-shaped animal was the only other character to appear more than the girl; sometimes the animal was depicted on all fours with a vacant expression, sometimes on his back two feet, bipedal and wearing a fedora.

Phineas pinned up a new picture to his locker's door (one of the triangle-headed boy and the aqua animal) before depositing his books into his locker. He had just finished putting his History book away when the click of a locker opening next to him caught his ears. To an onlooker, it would've seemed impossible that Phineas could have heard such an insubstantial sound in the loud din surrounding him, but Phineas had subconsciously attuned his hearing for that specific click, for the locker to his right was special for him. It was her locker. Isabella's.

Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, the leader of their town's Fireside Girl's troop. Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, the only girl in the whole school to be in 90% of the school's extracurricular activities and still maintain 4.0 grade-point average. Isabella Garcia-Shapiro... the girl who was completely and utterly oblivious to the large rush Phineas harbored for her. He had tried to make it known to her on several occasions, tried to tell her his feelings, but she just didn't get it. She was almost always busy or distracted, and she just didn't seem to get the concept of romance, but that didn't stop her from being kind to the sky, lonely boy with the knack for drawing.

Despite her oblivion about Phineas's feelings and her busy schedule, Isabella was Phineas's closest -- and only -- friend. She was always there for him, and was always willing to set aside any one of her many activities should the need her help. Phineas enjoyed her company immensely, for her peppy, always-cheerful attitude was contagious, and for a boy with only a single mother and one lone sibling, his older sister who wanted nothing to do with him, he relished whatever happiness was thrown his way.

"H-hey, Isabella," Phineas stammered awkwardly, clutching his favorite sketchbook to his chest.

"Oh, hey, Phineas," she replied absentmindedly, placing books and folders into her Fireside Girl badge-covered locker.

"So, um... what'cha doin' this afternoon?" Phineas asked.

"Well, I'm going to the Retirement Center to help the folks there with my troop, I'll be stopping by my mom's booth at the mall to help her sell her necklaces, and then I'm going to my cousin's house to babysit his little brother," Isabella informed him with a smile. Phineas loved it when she talked about whatever charity event she was helping at, or whatever patch she was trying to earn next. Her blue eyes always sparkled, and her face lit up like one of the stars they were studying in Science. Realizing he had been smiling dumbly for the past few seconds, Phineas mentally shook himself and steeled his nerves again to ask her the question he had been meaning to ask her in the first place.

"Well, um, I was wondering if... you know, after you're done with your mom and before you babysit your cousin... or, maybe before if you want..." he blushed as he rambled. She sometimes just made him so nervous! Like right now, when she was looking at him with her big, beautiful eyes, her lips pulled into a sweet, small smile...

"I was wondering if you'd like to go to the fair with me!" Phineas blurted out. Blushing harder, he stammered on. "You know, t-to hang out and... stuff... "

"Sure!" Isabella grinned happily, completely oblivious to the boys' flush that matched his hair. "I heard they opened up an awesome new roller coaster: it flips you around upside down, and they even dump mud and rubber snakes on you! It'll be a blast!" she exclaimed. Her watch suddenly beeped. "Oops!" she said. "I'm gonna be late for piano lessons. See you later, Phin!" she called over her shoulder as she grabbed her backpack, shut her locker, and ran out the doors in one fluid movement.

"Bye... Izzy..." Phineas smiled softly, a hand halfway raised in farewell.


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"I'm home..." Phineas called out as he walked through the front door of his house. "... If anybody cares..." he sighed half-heartedly. He knew his mom, Linda, would be out at one of her three jobs, and his sister was either still at school, hanging out with friends, or upstairs in her room, blabbing on and on to her best friend about some boy she liked.

Phineas sighed and dumped his book bag by the door. He had finished all his homework in class, so he had the whole night to himself. And only to himself. He sighed again. How he wished for a brother to do stuff with... to do anything with. His sister Candace didn't want anything to do with him, and his mom was too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads to sit down and just talk with him. He was too shy at school to have a best friend he could romp around in the mud with, and his family didn't have any pets. For all purposes... young Phineas Flynn was alone in the world.


What he needed... was a stepbrother. A stepbrother, because having a real brother would mean that it would have to start out as a baby, and they didn't do much. Besides, he'd be ten years younger than Phineas, so by the time the baby was the same age as him, Phineas would be twenty years old, probably in collage and living on his own.

No, a real brother wouldn't do. A stepbrother, however, was the perfect option. If he was lucky, he'd be around Phineas's age, and if he was really lucky, he'd be into all the same things Phineas was into as well. He'd be his best friend, like a real brother in all senses of the word, without the awkward age difference.

The problem was that it didn't look like Phineas would be getting a stepbrother any time soon. Sure,  his mother had been dating, but no man lasted very long in his mother's life. They dated for a handful of weeks, but then they either found out about Phineas and Candace, or they simply 'fell out' of love. Not to mention every single one of them had no children whatsoever, which pretty much killed Phineas's stepbrother dream.

But despite all the hardship in Phineas's life, he was a very optimistic child. He knew that, out there somewhere, there was a man that would make his mother smile, a man who had a son the same age as Phineas, a man who would make all their lives whole again.


Phineas tromped silently up the stairs and entered his huge room. It was big enough for two boys to live in... but it was occupied by only one. Phineas had claimed the left half of the room as his own, decorating it to his heart's content, but the right half he left alone. That half he saved for his stepbrother, so that he could decorate it however he wanted without having to work around Phineas's knick-knacks.

The left half of the room was decorated with no definite sense of order, besides 'cool'. A large plastic replica of an Easter Island head sat in one corner of the room, while his bed that looked like a raft sat not too far from the window. On the walls were different pictures, some that Phineas had drawn, some that he had cut out from magazines or printed from the Internet. Above his bed was a large fist tank, though no fish resided in the large glass rectangle.

The right half was sparse and bare, Phineas making sure none of his decorations crossed over the imaginary line dividing his room in half. If the closet hadn't been on the right side, he would never even walk to that side of the room. Even then, he only kept to the left side of the closet, keeping his hangers on the left and making sure his shoes didn't venture too far to the right. He wanted his future stepbrother to be able to do whatever he wanted to with his half of the room.

Phineas sat down at the small computer beside his bed and opened his sketchbook, intending to scan in some of his better drawings, in case something happened to the originals. Before he could do that, however, he needed one thing...

"Hmm... Where's Perry...?" he mumbled to himself, glancing around his half of the room. He raked his eyes across the wad of blankets on his bed and spotted a familiar splash of orange. "There you are!" he exclaimed. Grinning widely, he grabbed the beaver-like tail and yanked the plush out from under his cloth prison. He gave the aqua-colored animal a squeeze before running a hand over its soft plush fabric body. The medium-sized rectangle toy, its body about the size of a loaf of bread, not including its bill or tail, was a platypus; and a very stylized platypus at that. It had been given to Phineas by his dad when he was just a baby, and he had slept with it even since.

Phineas sighed as what little memories of his father that he still retained danced though his mind. He couldn't remember much about his father's appearance, just red hair that matched his own, the largish nose that he inherited, and bright green eyes the color of grass in springtime. He remembered the rumble of his father's voice from when he would sing Phineas to sleep, laying his son's head on his chest. He remembered that his dad loved to draw, and invent, and sing, and dance, and to laugh and giggle like a child. What he didn't remember, however... was why he wasn't with them anymore.


Five years ago, he had asked his mother why his dad wasn't around. The other kids at his kindergarten class always spoke highly of their fathers, and young Phineas wanted to know why his wasn't around. His mother had sighed, trying to explain it in a way that a five-year-old might understand.

"Your father... had to go away..." she had finally said.

"Why, Mommy?" little Phineas had asked.

"Because... he needed to," she stroked her son's red locks. It was hard for her to tell her son this, and she tried to spare him from as much hurt as possible.

"But Mommy... Doesn't he loves us anymore?" he looked up at her with watery blue eyes. His mother had felt her heart wrench at the sight of her tearful little boy, and she drew him into a tight embrace.

"Oh, Phinny, he does love us! Very much so! He loves you and Candace so much that, if he could have had his way, he would still be here with you," she planted a kiss on Phineas's small head. "He tried very hard to stay here. He tried so very, very hard. But even though he tried and tried, he still had to leave."

"Does he thinks about us a lot, Mommy?"

"I'm sure he does, Phineas, all the time. Every day, and every night."

"What about goodnights?" Phineas had asked. "You goodnights me every night. Does Daddy?" She picked up her son and carried him to his bedroom window.

"Do you see the stars out there?" she asked, looking at the night sky. "Your daddy sends a message to those stars every single night, telling you 'Goodnight, and sleep tight!' He helps you say your nighttime prayers, and he tells the stars to watch over you every night while you sleep," she gave her son a soft squeeze.

"What abouts the nights with storms and frightning?" Phineas asked worriedly.

"He tells the stars to protect you during the storms and lightning too," she smiled softly. "Just like I'm only down the hall, your daddy is only a star away, Phineas. He'll always be there to protect you."

Phineas had smiled as he snuggled into his mother's arms. He had always liked the twinkly lights in the sky, and now he loved them more. He had waved his little hand at the stars and happily had told his father goodnight, and every night after that.

Of course, several years of schooling had passed since then, and Phineas had learned that stars were actually big balls of gas burning far out in space, incapable of sending messages to young boys from their missing fathers. However, the thought and sentiment still ran deep within him, and it still brought him comfort to look at the stars and speak to his father. Besides, at the very least, there was a chance that his father looked at the same sky, the same sun, the same moon that he did, so they were connected in that way.


Phineas shook his head to clear it of his thoughts, hugging his platypus to his chest for a moment before setting the plush down on his lap. He scanned his sketches in on the computer and spent the rest of the night coloring them in digitally and surfing the Internet, acutely aware of the empty space beside him in the room and in his heart, but pretending he couldn't feel either, if only for his own sake.