Inciting Investigations

Chapter 4

Birdy Anders

“Hola, chica bonita!” Cora and Dora’s voices were in complete unison as the two of them leaned against the lockers. Cora winked at her flirtatiously, but Birdy knew that it was just friendly flirting.

“Hola, do you remember if that math test was tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?” Birdy asked her friends while they walked off to their first class of the day together.

“Girl, that’s today.” Dora’s voice infiltrated her thoughts and seemed to echo those words.

Birdy had to actively tell herself not to stop in her tracks when she said that and instead to just take a deep breath and try not to overthink immediately. She had done some studying the previous couple of nights, but not nearly as much as she had wanted to get done. She had fully planned to finish up going over, reviewing, and practicing everything that she hadn’t already that night, and it was a lot. But apparently, she wouldn’t get to do that.

Her friends looked slightly concerned. They were looking at her with those types of eyes more and more nowadays. The type of eyes where they were trying to keep calm so that they wouldn’t rile her up further, but she could tell there was stuff going on behind those eyes.

They were thinking about how they could help her when she didn’t even need help, nor had she ever asked for it. They were like that a lot. She had shared some of how she felt about her life and people and herself with them in the past, which she regretted so much now. They always looked at her like she was fragile and thought twice about making jokes in front of her now because they thought that she might get mad about what they said.

She knew that they were just trying to be good friends, and she felt so lucky that she had people that cared so much for her, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t get annoying sometimes. Their worry, in turn, made her worry about every little thing that she did because she was worried that they might take it as a sign that they were doing something wrong.

Which wasn’t true in the slightest. They almost never did anything wrong at all, almost, really. The only time that she could really think of, off the top of her head, that they had said something that completely messed with her and made her really mad at them was when they had brought up her taking pills or going to therapy. Things she also didn’t need.

She always got so tired when they brought up those things, but she never felt like they were wrong in being concerned or that they should stop caring about her. She just wanted them to understand that she didn’t need that type of treatment, it kinda ticked her off.

But, instead of showing her annoyance at the actions of the two only friends she actually had at this point, she simply nodded and tried to force a smile to sit upon her mouth.

“Okay, that’s fine. I think I did enough studying already.” She had not done enough studying already.

“Oh, great! You made me worried there for a second.” Cora replied, but Dora elbowed her.

Birdy reminded herself not to roll her eyes at her friend's actions even though she thought that it was a bit of overkill. It wasn’t like she didn’t know that her friends were constantly concerned for her well-being. It was actually kinda shoved in her face most of the time.

She still decided not to bring anything up, though, just because she knew it was best to avoid having to have a talk with them about her mental health, again. So she just kept her mouth shut and asked Cora about her cheerleading tryouts that the girl had been excited for.

“Oh my gosh, thanks for reminding me. I have to tell you both about what happened!” Cora started.

“You’ve already told me five hundred times what happened.” Dora sighed exaggeratedly.