"Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose."

Density seemed to be a very common thing in men, no matter what the age and sometime in her short ten year old life Isabella Garcia Shaprio had already figured this out. This density only thickened with it came to anything pertaining to love. Getting men to touch upon feelings or to notice these feelings was like pulling teeth, upside down, in extreme jet turbulence.

And Phineas Flynn was no exception to this rule, though there was willing argument Phineas could very well invent something efficient in pulling teeth in the above circumstance. Isabella was stuck in the position every female finds herself in sooner or later when a particular fancy took hold of her. That position: trying to get the guy of her dreams to notice she was in that position. Naturally, that had failed since day one but the leader of the Fireside Girls hadn't given up hope. She'd make him see, let him know how much he-

"Isabella, are you listening?"

Phineas' voice invaded Isabella's train of thought and promptly hi-jacked it, throwing it off the tracks. The female blinked before coming back to reality, finding she was in the Fletcher-Flynn Family's backyard (not that that surprised her) and she felt all four pairs of eyes on her.

"Yes," she replied automatically, making sure her expression didn't betray her inner race to figure out what Phineas had been talking about before.

Phineas looked dubiously at her but continued nonetheless, "Like I was saying, we should tune it down a bit and just make simple Valentine's, you know like when we were little before our minds had a chance to realize how ridiculous they were."

"That sounds a little lame," Buford folded his arms to further show his dislike for the idea. "Well, for you two anyway," he added after glancing at Baljeet before looking back at Phineas and Ferb.

Phineas shook his head. "Not really. After all, they say true love, or in our case friendship, can only come from hard work and determination," he continued much in the way of one who had expected such an objection and had come prepared for it. "Hard work, determination and a ton of glue. Besides," he added reasonably. "Building giant tree house robots or a million cyborgs of ourselves doesn't have the same heartfelt feeling a handmade card does."

There was an unsure silence, debate clear on everyone's faces.

"Sounds like a challenge." Buford said at the end of it, then paused for all of two seconds before saying, "I'm in."

"As am I," Baljeet agreed, then put a finger to his jaw thoughtfully. "But don't you think we're a little old to be making Valentine's?"

"No. Not we're not." Phineas said after some minour thought. "Now let's get started."

While it hadn't seemed like a good idea, or a particularly fun one at that, everyone soon got sucked into the laborious love that making Valentine's came with. Phineas had been right, with every card they finished the five of them feel a sense of accomplishment they usually only got from seeing a big, fat, red A+ on their report cards. That, and they were out of glue before too long.

Isabella was the first to finish, having that Fireside scout advantage on her side and the habit of getting things done as fast and efficiently as she could played a majour part in that. As she wrote the last of the names on her cards in ranging reds and pinks, she glanced up to see how the others were doing. Each of them had taken a corner of the backyard for themselves to get what secrecy they could and, with the exception of Isabella, were still working diligently. They had, for the most part, been unbothered by anyone else during this time mostly because Candace was spending the day with Jeremy (not that she could bust them for making harmless little Valentine cards) and the only other one in the yard was Perry (currently watching Phineas work with his normal off-in-the-distance stare).

She stared at Phineas, trying to figure out which card he was working on without being too obvious (failing on both counts) before feeling her phone vibrate. Jumping slightly, she withdrew her phone and saw that she had received a text from her mom. Knowing that could only mean one thing she opened it and found that her suspicion had been right. Her mom wanted her home.

"I gotta go," she announced, gathering up her own handmade cards.

"Already?" Ferb asked, sounding only mildly interested by manner but handed the female a light pink paper in the shape of a heart. Isabella thanked him and took the offered cards from Buford and Baljeet before looking hopefully at Phineas, who didn't even acknowledge the fact everyone else had stopped to bid her farewell and was intently focused on a piece of yellow construction paper with the kind of look he got when trying to make a simple object into something five times as great as it really was. Isabella sighed and handed a second card to Ferb, who took it in understanding while giving her an apologetic look, and she waved a final farewell before walking out of the yard and to her own house.

It was nearly night by the time Isabella got back home from running errands with her mother, and by then it was far too late to do much else but go inside and wait until she was tried enough to fall asleep. A task that would have been a lot easier if her mind hadn't been full of what could best be described as a mix of frustration and self-pity.

She hated density. It was a devil of a thing that she could gladly live without, and she was willing to bet a ton of other people felt the same way somewhere out in the universe. How long had she tried to get Phineas to notice her? Far more times than she could count on her fingers and toes combined surely, and still her neighbour showed the same thick shroud of obliviousness he had in the beginning of the summer

Isabella sighed and dropped onto her bed, spread-eagled over the sheets as she stared soundlessly at the ceiling. Sometimes she wondered why she tried so hard, especially in Phineas' case. He was worst then most when it came to noticing things that didn't immediately relate to a project at hand or one to come in the future. He was always absorbed in created some spectacular and amazing that he never really paid attention to the simpler things that surrounded him.

And that included her.

He hadn't even noticed when she left, and that hadn't even been all that unnoticeable either. Hadn't said goodbye, or handed her a Valentine or anything. Isabella felt something prick her nose and she blinked furiously to stop uninvited tears from coming to her eyes. She was used to being thought of as invisible to Phineas but that didn't mean she liked it, who would? Briefly, the female wondered how it was that Ferb could read her so clearly (and be so peculiar at the same time) but the person he spent so much time with could be the complete opposite.

Guess opposites do attract...She thought dully. If that was the case, how opposite were her and Phineas?

She was just about to come to some hopeful conclusion when someone knocked on her bedroom door, and her mother walked in. "Someone's at the door for you," she said and, thinking that statement alone wasn't exciting enough, then added, "It's Phineas."

Isabella froze, shocked. It was practically unheard of for Phineas to come to her house, especially not this late (they didn't live far from each other, but it was rare for any part of the neighbour to visit at night mostly because it was an everyone-knows-everyone-else's-number kind of place) and Isabella descended the stairs leading straight to the front door with a whirlwind of thoughts and possibilities spinning through her head.

"Oh, hey, Isabella," Phineas said the second she appeared at the door, raising his gaze from the sidewalk he'd been staring at intently for some time. "Sorry to bug you so late but you left before I could give you this." He reached out and handed her a small, paper flower. It was obviously made with the shape of a rose in mind (though whether it actually resembled one was up for debate) and constructed mainly of green and yellow paper.

Isabella felt her heart skip as she took it from him, looking at it through a wave of euphoria. "You made this for me?" She asked, like she couldn't quite believe it (and she couldn't).

"Yeah, sorry it doesn't look much like a flower," he shrugged. "Buford was right, making things like Valentine's by hand is alot harder than you'd think. I guess we can't all be as talented as you when it comes to that kind of thing."

"I think it's beautiful," Isabella stated truthfully, hugging the flower to her chest as if it were about to run away, and was delighted when Phineas smiled at her.

"I thought turning things down a notch would be a good thing, you know?" Phineas told her, in the tones of one who knew they had failed a particular task but was glad for the outcome. "I mean, we live with the motto of making the most out of everyday but that's only half of the whole adventure."

Isabella looked at him, puzzled, before asking, "Then what's the other half?"

"The friends who help us along the way," Phineas replied wisely then, upon hearing his mom call him from home, gave Isabella a curt wave before racing off.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" She heard him call back. Isabella stood there for a while and watched him leave, still clutching her Valentine like a lifeline and smiling like a love struck loon.

Perhaps, one could always build up an immunity to the irritation they called density.

YELLOW: Symbol for joy and friendship