Lara Bergen: Runaway Hit

Jeremy shrugged. “Well… you like to sing, right?” he said.

Candace looked over at him. “Yeah,” she answered.

“Then you shouldn’t let your brothers’ fun ruin your good time. You know,” Jeremy went on, “if you get the chance to sing, you ought to sing.” He put his hand on Candace’s shoulder. “I gotta go,” he told her. “I’ll see you later.”

Candace smiled as he walked away. She stared happily after him until she heard someone else call out her name.

“Hey, Candace!” It was Phineas on the microphone, back up on stage. He had his guitar around his neck, and Ferb was beside him, ready with his keyboard and drums.

The band was back together again! And a crowd was rapidly gathering around them.

“You’re still the hundredth contestant!” Phineas went on. “Want to come up and help us out?”

Candace stood and squared her shoulders, thinking of Jeremy’s words as she did. She took a deep breath — Phineas wouldn’t have to ask her again. In an instant, she’d joined him onstage.

Each time it was Candace’s turn to sing, she gave it her all. She really did love being on the stage.

“That was great!” Candace exclaimed as the song ended. The audience whistled and cheered so loudly she felt like an honest-to-goodness pop star. It was almost too good to be true!

She held her hands up and let the audience’s adoration sink in.

“Thanks, you’ve been great!” called out Phineas, as he stepped up to the mic and waved. “This is the last time we’ll ever sing that song! We’re retiring. Good night!”

Candace froze, her arms still up, as she watched him and the rest of the Ferb-Tones turn and casually walk away.

CLICK. THWONK.

The lights went off, and an announcement came over the PA: “The mall is now closed and will reopen at nine a.m. tomorrow. Thank you for shopping with us.”

Retiring? She couldn’t believe it!

Candace had come so close to being a pop star! But, thanks to her brothers, she’d been foiled again!

It was another sunny summer morning. Phineas and Ferb were outside, and Candace was in her room practicing lines for her role in the fall drama-club production. Sure, it was still summer, but you couldn’t be too prepared. Candace had gone over the lines again and again… and again.

“To think, to dream. Whether ’tis nobler to love, I know not.”

She sighed and clutched her well-worn script to her chest in a tight hug.

“Ah, The Princess Sensibilities , my very favorite play…”

Grrrr. Growwwl. GAAAHHHH!

She frowned at the truly dreadful sounds coming from the backyard. She’d been hearing them all morning long. How was an actress to concentrate?

“What is going on out there?” she huffed. Whatever it was, she was going to stop it.

Rrroarrr! Grrrrr! RRAAAHHHH!

BAM! CRASH! BOOM!

Outside, Phineas and Ferb had built a miniature city, and Ferb was now happily destroying it with a fierce green monster marionette. Phineas was recording the whole thing with his video camera.

Hands on her hips, Candace stomped down squarely on the monster puppet (and a few cardboard houses, too) and glared at the puppet strings dangling limply from Ferb’s hand. Then she turned her stern gaze on her brothers.

“Would you keep it down out here?” Candace snapped. “You guys ruin everything! I am trying to practice the art of acting! And I will not be disturbed by your little movies!”

“Not so little anymore,” Phineas said brightly. He lowered his video camera and grinned. “Last week our Web site got a hundred and seventy-six million hits!”

A hundred and seventy-six million ? Before Candace could process the number, up walked her mother with her arms full of grocery bags.

“Sorry I’m late,” she told the kids. “They’re filming down the street.”

Candace’s eyes widened. “ Filming ? What? What are they filming?” she asked.

“A movie version of the play The Princess Sensibilities ,” said her mom casually, as she continued on into the house.

“Oh!” Candace gasped. “I would be perfect for that part!” She held up the script. “I’ve been practicing it for my drama club all summer,” she said excitedly. “I’m going to get discovered !” She dashed off and tossed her script into the air.

“That’s serendipitous ,” said Phineas, as he and Ferb watched her go. He glanced around the yard. “Hey, where’s Perry?” Their pet platypus had been out in the yard with them all morning but was now nowhere to be seen.

Of course, they didn’t know that Perry wasn’t really the mild-mannered, slow-moving, dim-witted pet he seemed to be. He was a supersecret agent, known to his superiors as Agent P. At that very moment, Perry was up on two feet, dressed in his signature hat, and sitting in his secret cave beneath Phineas and Ferb’s house, receiving orders via satellite from Major Monogram.

“There you are, Agent P!” said Major Monogram as Perry settled into the chair before the huge monitor displaying his image. “There’s something very strange going on with Dr. Doofenshmirtz.”

A picture of Perry’s nemesis in a lab coat, grinning goofily while relaxing on a sunny, tropical-looking beach, popped up on the video screen.

“He’s been very quiet lately,” Major Monogram went on gravely. “A little too quiet!”

He brought up a graph on the screen that charted a steep decline in the villain’s recent activity.

“I want you to find out what’s not going on,” he explained to Perry, “and, uh…” —he paused, realizing how unusual his request might seem— “… put a… stop… to it…” He shifted his mustache. “I s’pose.”

No mission was too illogical for Agent P. In an instant, he’d spun his seat around and pulled a lever on the side, sending the chair shooting up like a rocket toward the street.