Siblings' Quest |Phineas and Ferb Story|

Part Six: Avoiding the Issue

"Kids! I'm home!" Linda called out as she entered the house, setting her purse down on the counter. She looked around, seeing no sign of any of her children. "Hmm, where are they?" She asked herself.

But then she saw her son, Phineas, walking down the stairs. It was odd to see him without a smile, and instead a blank expression, but nonetheless it was relieving to at least see him. "Hey, Mom." He said quietly, walking over to the fridge.

"Hey, where're Ferb and Candace?" She asked curiously.

Phineas avoided making eye contact while he grabbed a carton of orange juice from the fridge and poured himself a glass. "Um, upstairs in their rooms. They're uh, taking naps I guess." He half-lied. He knew Ferb was napping, since he had tried going back in the room a moment ago only to find his stepbrother sound asleep. But Candace was her in room avoiding any confrontation with her mother.
He knew that his sister was unhappy. He was unhappy.

But he couldn't show it to their mother. He was much better at faking a smile than Candace was, so she chose to drown her sorrows in her room for a while rather than to attempt to hide them behind a grin.

"Well, I'm gonna go ahead and start making dinner. Your father should be home soon." Linda said, walking over to grab a pan from the cabinet.

Phineas lightly grimaced at the word "father". He knew she meant Lawrence. But he just couldn't imagine it. All he could see whenever he heard that word now was the picture of a man with orange hair and freckles engulfing his skin—a picture of a man who left him before he was even born.

The redheaded boy nodded and took a long, slow sip of orange juice before deciding he wasn't thirsty anymore. He quickly left the kitchen without saying another word to his mother, which she found odd. Normally, he would've offered to help set the table or even make a suggestion on what she should make for supper. But instead, he just left after only saying two sentences to her. Something was clearly wrong, but she couldn't figure out what.

The 17-year-old hurried upstairs and walked into his room, not bothering to be quiet for his brother. Ferb was a heavy sleeper, at least when taking daytime naps. But honestly, Phineas was annoyed with him and didn't care if he woke him up or not. He walked over to sit at his desk, deciding to check his social media for a while.

He saw nothing that interested him (aside from Isabella's posts). He never used his account for much, other than when he was bored and it was an absolute last resort. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get his mind off of what had happened in the past two hours.

Phineas still didn't even know his own dad's name, he only knew what he looked like in 1992, and that was it. He knew that his dad must've been a good person, considering his sister seemed to have happy memories of him, and was going through the trouble of trying to find him in a yearbook. But why did he leave the family before seeing his son for the first time? Why did his mother divorce him? And what was with the box hidden in the closet?

He could barely even keep up with all the questions running through his head. But his thoughts were interrupted when he heard a bit of movement from behind him. He looked over to see Ferb sitting up and rubbing his eyes, stirring awake from a 'peaceful' nap.

The two made eye contact, but said no words (which wasn't unusual for Ferb). Phineas wanted to say something, but worried that it would just lead to more awkward silence, since he knew Ferb wouldn't respond with anything but a blink maybe. What was going on with him? It was very hard to get through to the quiet boy. Almost no one could ever get anything out of him. Phineas thought that Ferb trusted him, since he was the only one that his brother told anything to.

But now he wasn't. Now he was just shutting him out like he did to everyone else.

Phineas opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off when Ferb raised a hand in the air, silently telling him to stop. The green-haired boy stood up off the bed and walked out of the room, making his stepbrother frown disappointedly.

"Damn, I'll never know what's going on with him." The redhead murmured to himself. "If only I could read minds. I mean, I could try building a machine that can, but this doesn't seem like the situation to do that. I don't know, all I know is that if I don't get answers soon, I'm going to go crazy."

Ferb walked up to his sister's bedroom door, lightly knocking on it so no one would hear but her. A moment later, it opened and Candace poked her head out. "Ferb?" She asked, wiping away a couple tears from her face.

Ferb put his hand in his pocket as he spoke in a serious tone, "We need to talk."

"About what?" She asked suspiciously.

"Your dad." Her brother said, "I— I know what happened."