A/N About a year back, I started a series of song-based drabbles. Calling the series "Shuffled," I ran it for a few months before stopping to work on other projects. Well, I'm restarting it. These will be one-shots of varying lengths and genres, based on either song titles, song lyrics, or both. This series will update whenever I'm bored and have the time to write one. But just because I can, I'll start you guys off with one today. Oh, and unless otherwise stated, each story exists in its own universe.

Yesterday (Marianas Trench)

Dear Phineas, It began. Isabella read the letter in her head over and over. Even after it was secure in a little pink envelope, she still read the memorized message in her mind. This was not the first letter she had sent confessing her feelings for her best friend, but it was the first that she wasn't planning on taking back.

Isabella decided that, at fifteen years old, she had waited long enough; that she needed to tell him. But seeing as she was still scared to death of confronting him directly, she chose to confess in a written letter. Unlike her previous letters, she spent many days writing this one. She made sure to use clear and concise wording that even Phineas Flynn's romantically ignorant mind could understand, and tried her best to leave out any childish, overly-girly phrasing. In the end, she had to rewrite it on a second sheet of paper, her first draft being more eraser marks than anything else. It was the perfect letter. The perfect confession.

She stuck it in an envelope, stamped it, and sent it off. As soon as she closed the outgoing mailbox, a feeling of relief came over her, followed quickly by feelings of fear and anxiety. However, she knew that what's done is done and that there was nothing she could do about it.

So she waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Every time she saw Phineas walk by her in the halls, or sit down next to her at the lunch table, her heart raced. She hoped that he would suddenly take her hand, confess, or even just kiss her.

But he never did. Two weeks passed by, and nothing happened. Eventually, she just asked him. She waited for him at the lunch table, and as soon as he sat down, she blurted the question out. "So have you gotten my letter?"

"Hmm?" Phineas said, unprepared to be asked a question.

"My letter," Isabella repeated. "I sent you a letter two weeks back. Did you get it?"

"Umm... No. Sorry. I guess it got lost in the mail." This answer stung in Isabella's heart. "What was it?"

Isabella hesitated, knowing that he had just given her an open invitation to confess. "Oh, it was nothing," She said a few moments later, turning the invitation down. She returned to her food and stayed quiet the rest of the day. But while her mouth remained silent, her mind wouldn't shut up. Thoughts of fear, of denial, of hope all raced through her head. Maybe he'd get it in a couple of days. Maybe he got it but doesn't like me back.

It wasn't until late that night that the final thought went through her head. Maybe this is a sign. It had been eight years since her crush on him emerged. Eight years of hinting and waiting, hoping and imagining. Eight years of failing to lift the veil of his obliviousness. Maybe it was all a sign. A sign that they weren't meant to be; that they could never be.

After a while, the "maybe's" disappeared from her thoughts. She decided that the lost letter was a sign. That day, she decided to stop chasing after a man that she could never catch.

It took almost a year, but she eventually got over him. And for two years after, she looked at him not as a crush, but as a friend. She was content. By the time she was eighteen, the letter and all it represented, were gone from her mind.

–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–

A small bell rang out as Phineas Flynn walked through the front door. "'Afternoon, Mr. Flynn." The worker at the counter greeted him. As populated as the tri-state area was, everybody knew the famous Phineas Flynn by name.

"Hey." He greeted back. "I hear you guys have a package for me."

"I believe we do." The postal worker retreated to a back room for only a moment before returning with a large brown box in her hands. She set it, along with a clipboard, down on the counter. "Sign here please." As Phineas signed his name, another voice called out from the back room.

"Is that Phineas?"

"Yep." The worker yelled back.

"Well don't forget to give him the thing."

"The thing?" She repeated quietly to herself.

"There's a thing?" Phineas asked, curious.

"Oh right, the thing," She said, suddenly remembering what she had found days earlier. "We were doing some redecorating when I found a letter addressed to you. It was hidden behind a cabinet. Sorry. Anyway, here it is." She held out a small pink envelope.

Phineas took the letter and checked the return address. "It's from Isabella. I wonder why she'd send me a letter. Oh well. Thanks." He put the letter in his pocket and carried the large box out to his car.

–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–

"Hey Ferb, I got the new robot head," Phineas called to his step-brother after entering the house. Ferb came out of their shared room and descended the stairs. "I also got something odd."

"Odder than a robot head?" Ferb asked.

"Different kind of odd," Phineas replied. He put the large box down, and dug the envelope out of his jeans and presented it to Ferb. "It's a letter from Isabella. Which, under normal circumstances, wouldn't be considered odd. But apparently it got lost in the post office a while back. Think I should open it?" Ferb shrugged. He noticed the envelope's abnormal color scheme and remembered the crush he still believed Isabella had on his brother. "Maybe I should ask Isabella about it."

"Letters were meant to read." Ferb pointed out, before picking up the large box and taking it to the garage.

"I guess he's right," Phineas said to himself. He walked up the stairs and into his room, the whole time staring at the name written in small print calligraphy in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope. As much as he was sure it was nothing, his natural curiosity burned inside. Quickly taking a seat on his bed, he grabbed his brother's pocket knife from the bedside table and cut open the envelope. Inside, folded perfectly in thirds, was a single sheet of white notebook paper. While the outside envelope was worn and covered in dust from many years behind a cabinet, the letter inside was perfectly preserved.

He carefully removed and unfolded the letter. The first thing he noticed was that it wasn't dated. The neat, cursive handwriting implied that the author was at least ten when it was written while the calligraphic addresses implied that Isabella was a teen when she sent it. He could've figured out exactly what year it was written if he spent enough time on it, but it was not the age of the letter, but its contents, that interested him most.

Dear Phineas, He began reading it in his head, just as the author had many years prior. As he read further and further, his eyes widened. He could barely believe what was right in front of him. The letter confessed, in great detail, the crush that Isabella had had on him. It told how she had waited for so long, how happy she was to finally confess to him. He read it and re-read it. He pinched his arm to confirm his consciousness and read it again. Halfway through his fifth re-reading, the door creaked open to reveal Ferb, smiling in the doorway. Phineas immediately placed the letter behind his back, out of Ferb's view.

"You should go see Isabella," He told the red-head.

"You knew?" Phineas asked, completely surprised and a little appalled that his own brother would keep this from him.

"I may have."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I wasn't going to take that moment away from her." Phineas jumped up from his bed, ready to run out the front door and straight to Isabella's house. "You might want to take the letter with you." Ferb reminded him.

"Right," Phineas replied sheepishly. He grabbed the letter, placed it carefully in the pink envelope, and ran out of his room and out his front door.

When he got to the curb, he stopped. Staring dead ahead, the tan house across the street seemed to stare back, daring him to come closer. While he was reading the letter, moments kept flashing in his head. Moments that he should've recognized as hints, but failed spectacularly to do so. The trip to Paris, the cruise, the picnic, the card from his thirteenth birthday. Feelings of love were the only things that had occupied his mind. But now, all he could think about was their friendship. The two had been friends since the moment they met. He couldn't help but wonder what would happen if this, if they, didn't work. He had no doubt that the chances of this happening were low, but the thought stayed in his mind nonetheless.

He continued across the street, his enthusiastic sprint reduced to a hesitant stroll. He reached the door, completely unprepared for what he knew would come next. He hid the letter behind his back and knocked on the door. His already racing heart went into overdrive as he waited for the door to open. He knew that he didn't have much to worry about, as the letter confirmed her mutual feelings for him, but there was something about love, something about her, something about the entire situation that completely scared him. A few moments passed before he heard the doorknob began to move. The wooden entrance crept open. Phineas simply stood there, paralyzed with anxiety.

"OH! Hello, Phineas. How are you?"

The young man didn't know whether to feel relieved or even more anxious that it was not Isabella, but her mother, that answered the door. "Hello, Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro." He hesitated again, knowing that this was his last chance to back out. "Is Isabella home?"

"Isabella!" A raven haired girl poked around a corner, just enough to see who was at the door. When she recognized the red-head smiling back at her, she emerged and began making her way towards him.

"Hey, Phineas. What's up?" She greeted as she walked down the hallway.

"Hey. Umm... how do I put this?" He asked under his breath. "I kind of, well, got your letter."

"I didn't send you any-" Her sentence stopped short when she saw the pink envelope Phineas had just pulled out.

Phineas didn't know exactly what to expect from Isabella's reply. He knew it would probably be something like a kiss or a hug. At the very least, he'd get a quippy remark about how it took him long enough. The one thing he didn't expect was the answer he got. "Oh no." It took him a couple seconds to understand her reply.

"What?"

Isabella moved to the side of the doorway, making an opening for Phineas to enter. "You should probably come in and sit down." The sheepish smile turned into a worried look as he entered the house. Once he was in, Isabella closed the door behind him and followed him into the living-room.

They sat down on her couch and turned so that they were facing each other. Isabella looked down. "Phineas. I wrote that letter three years ago. I wrote it as a way to finally confess the feelings I had for you." The word "had" hit Phineas like a bullet. "When you never got it, I took it as a sign. A sign that we weren't meant to be."

"What are trying to say?" Phineas asked.

"My crush on you lasted eight years. That was eight years I spent waiting day after day for you to get it. I just couldn't take it anymore. I just..." She paused, looking for the right words. "couldn't wait anymore. So I stopped. Phineas, I don't have feelings for you anymore."

Every word she said stung him like a needle. He had no idea how to feel. Part of him wanted to get angry, both at himself for being so stupid, and at her, for dragging him along like this, for not confessing sooner. Part of him wanted to cry. To run out, sit down in the corner of his room and just stay there forever. Somehow, it seemed that they were breaking up before they could've ever been together.

"But what about this?!" He asked, his voice cracking and catching in his throat as anger and sadness clashed in his tone. "Isn't this, me finally getting your letter, a sign too? A sign that we can be? You were always waiting for me to finally get it. Well, now I have. Doesn't that mean something?"

"If you had gotten it only a month, or even a year, after I sent it, then maybe. If we were still in your backyard, wondering what we would do that day, then absolutely. But we aren't." She stood up and waited for him to do the same. "I'm sorry. I'll walk you home." She tried her best to smile, but couldn't muster more than a small one.

"Thanks, but no." Phineas denied her invitation. "I think I need to be alone for a while." He walked out the door and went home, never looking back.

Isabella wondered if she had just spoken the last words she'd ever say to Phineas. She sat back down and noticed the small pink envelope sitting in Phineas' place. Everything that had just happened, happened because of this letter. This one stupid piece of paper she'd written three years ago.

She wanted to shred it.

She wanted to frame it.

But she did neither. Instead, she picked it up, removed it from the envelope, and began reading.

Dear Phineas,

A/N Well, that was the first one. I hoped you all liked it. So before you ask, no they won't all be romantic or dramatic. And no, they won't all center around Phineas and Isabella. It'll all depend on what song I get.

Also, I'm doing a new thing where if you review, you get a preview of the next chapter in the form of the first 400 words (rounded up to the nearest whole sentence) in a PM as soon as they're written. So... yeah. Keep in mind that guest reviewers will not get previews since I can't PM them.