Chapter Text
Visiting Vanessa’s dad’s house is always an experience, to say the least. Vanessa always tries to herd her away before her dad can embarrass her -- a tactic Candace has used around her brothers more times than she can count -- but it rarely works. Today, for instance, as they were sneaking off to Vanessa’s room, Dr. Doofenshmirtz mentions that he’s working on a “melt-inator,” to get revenge on the local ice cream man. Candace has to admit, she’s a little disappointed that Vanessa drags her away before she can learn what the ice cream man did to him.
Much like the rest of the building, Vanessa’s room is very bland, but she makes the most of it. It must be the punk in her, Candace reasons, because she would never be able to turn this dark purple room into anything livable. She mentions it, just an off-hand comment as they’re pulling their schoolwork out -- who would have thought they’d share a biology class? -- that doesn’t warrant much of a response, but she gets one anyway.
“You think this is bad? You should see Norm’s room,” Vanessa says with a snort. “It’s basically a glorified closet.”
“Norm?” Candace raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“He’s a robot,” Vanessa says casually, like living with a robot is completely normal. Although, Candace reasons, living with someone as eccentric as her father, it probably is. After that mess with the do-over-inator, she wouldn’t put anything past him.
“Right, naturally,” Candace mutters. “Alright, let’s get to work.”
“Can I just point out,” Vanessa remarks, “that we are in high school, and we were assigned partners just to put together and color a poster board?”
Candace shrugs. “Beats putting in actual effort.”
She pulls out her pencil case and rifles through it -- taking a moment to admire the number of full and sharp pencils she has, because she knows it won’t last long -- to find her markers. She and Vanessa came to the conclusion in class that drawing straight on the board in marker would be the quickest way to get this assignment over with, because she has an internship to get to, and Candace has a date with Jeremy. Unfortunately, despite her best effort, the markers are nowhere to be seen.
Vanessa stands up and makes her way to the closet without being asked. “I’m sure I have some markers up here somewhere from my old art phase.”
Candace watches warily as Vanessa climbs up on an old, rickety stool to rummage through her closet. Though Vanessa herself doesn’t fall, digging through a shelf that’s likely been undisturbed for years doesn’t end without consequences, and a picture frame tumbles to the floor.
“I got it,” Candace says, already on her way to pick it up. The frame itself is still intact, though the glass covering the picture can’t say the same. She grabs the picture and holds it up to her friend, but it catches her eye and she pauses at the last moment to look.
The little girl in the blue tutu, no matter how out-of-character it looks, is unmistakably a young Vanessa. Though her sparkly wings and magic wand would give off a different impression, she’s obviously miserable. Her dad, on the other hand, is beaming with pride with his little ballerina.
“You were such a cute kid,” Candace remarks.
Vanessa takes the picture back to look at it. “God, I forgot I even had this.” She slides the picture out, and another one, previously hidden behind the first, takes its place. “I was never big on ballet, but I used to love tap class.”
She turns the picture frame around to reveal another photo of a young Vanessa, this time in a red sparkly dress and tap shoes. This photo is with her mom, and while they’re both smiling, Vanessa doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself.
“You didn’t look very happy,” Candace says, handing the picture back.
“Yeah, well, my dad’s a pretty shitty audience member,” Vanessa says with a shrug. “He’s the reason I stopped taking dance lessons in the first place.” She looks down at the photo for a few moments. “Sometimes I regret it, because the classes themselves were really fun, but what can you do, right?”
“You should take tap classes this year,” Candace suggests. “I’m sure they have lessons for teens. And it’s still the beginning of the year; worst comes to worst, you missed the first few weeks.”
Vanessa shakes her head. “I don’t think so. My dancing days are long over.” She puts the ballet picture back on top of the tap photo and places the broken frame back on her shelf. “Ah, here we go. Markers.” She pulls a box of markers out and climbs down off the stool.
“Should we clean up the glass?” Candace asks warily.
“Nah, I’ll have Norm take care of it when we’re done,” she says. “Perks of having a robot ‘brother.’”
Candace and Vanessa both sit on the floor, a large white poster board in between them. They begin discussing specifics, where they’re drawing each part of their cell and how they’re going to label them. It’s not very entertaining, but as far as projects go, it’s fairly uncomplicated.
There’s a loud BAM from the lab Dr. Doofenshmirtz spends most of his time in, and Candace jumps to her feet. Is he okay? Did the melt-inator somehow blow up? What’s going on?
“You know,” Dr. Doofenshmirtz says, his voice coming out muffled through the wall that separates them, “I gave you a key for a reason, Perry the Platypus.”
Candace scoffs. “Perry?” What’s he doing here? And what use could he possibly have for a key?
Vanessa gets up and grabs her arm before she can go anywhere. “Not your Perry. I mean, your Perry doesn’t do much, right? So he’s not -- it’s -- you know what?” Vanessa cuts past her and stands in front of the door. “I was thinking, and maybe you were right. Maybe I should pick up tap again.”
“Uh… yeah…” Candace raises an eyebrow. “Should we go check on your dad?”
“Oh, no, he’s fine,” Vanessa assures him. “He gets blown up all the time, so whatever’s going on right now, he’ll be fine. We, on the other hand, probably would not.”
“So you have no idea what that noise was, and you’re not even the littlest bit curious?” Candace says skeptically.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living with my dad, it’s that you don’t check out loud noises in the lab,” Vanessa replies. “Now, about that tap class --”
“I really, really think we should go make sure he’s okay,” Candace insists.
Vanessa pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. “Look, he’s just having a bit of an ‘evil relapse,’ and someone showed up to stop him from melting a bunch of kids’ ice creams or whatever. To protect what little dignity I have left, I’m gonna make an executive decision and say that no one leaves this room until my dad is done getting his ass handed to him by a two-foot-tall platypus.”
Candace stares at her. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear.”
“At this point in my life, every sentence is a sentence I expect to hear,” Vanessa replies. “Now let’s get back to work.”
And work they do, to the soundtrack of many off-topic conversations. They discuss everything from their new classes to their families -- Vanessa seems mostly interested in Ferb, and Candace has a lot of questions about her robot brother -- just to kill the time, making their project a little more bearable.
“So,” Candace says, “are you really thinking about taking tap classes again?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Vanessa says. “I mean, it’s been, like, ten years since the last time I tried dancing -- like, real dancing. And I don’t really want a repeat of last recital…” She shudders at the thought.
“Personally, I think it would be worth it,” Candace says. “I mean, you get to make music with your feet. What more could you ask for?”
“Eh…”
“You enjoyed it as a kid,” Candace reminds her. “I bet you’d enjoy it now, too.”
“I don’t know…” Vanessa purses her lips together as she thinks. “Tell you what. I’ll do it, but only if you do it with me.”
“No way,” Candace says immediately. “I am not a tapper.”
“But I don’t want to do it alone,” Vanessa whines. “Come on, it’ll be fun! We can go for, like, one class, just to try it out.”
“I don’t think so,” Candace says.
“I’ll give you all the answers to the bio homework for a week,” Vanessa offers.
“Well…” There are about a million things she’d rather be doing with her life than homework, she has to admit.
“Two weeks,” Vanessa says, upping the ante.
Candace hesitates, then sighs. “Alright, fine. But just for one class.”