Inciting Investigations

Chapter 5

Birdy Anders

Birdy rubbed at the circles under her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping more than two hours a night the past week, and she was really relying on stealing some of her mom’s coffee in the mornings to keep her going through her life. Which probably wasn’t healthy, but whatever.

Why had she been staying up so damn late and not getting any rest whatsoever? Great question. It was because of Mr. Jenkins. He had handed her back her test that day with a big fat D+ written across the top of the paper. She wasn’t really surprised, though. She hadn’t understood any of the material that had been introduced to her, and she had been rushing to get it done in class while she was simultaneously fighting the losing battle of breathing.

He had told her that he was very disappointed in her and he expected her to be putting much more effort into his class from now on. Otherwise, he would be forced to contact her parents. Now that had gotten her to get to work. She didn’t want her parents to know how bad she was at one of the most important subjects. She didn’t want them to be disappointed.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t put in any effort for her Algebra II before because she had actually put in a lot of work. She knew that it was her worst subject so she had often spend nights in the past studying for hours on end and trying every single practice problem out so that she could try and get better, now she was just taking all of that up a notch.

She got out of school every day at three thirty, but most days, she stayed after school for either a club meeting or a swim practice. Swim practice every monday, wednesday, and friday from three forty-five to five thirty. Year book club every tuesday and thursday from three forty-five to five. Next, she would head over to Badger’s house to work on the project for two hours. Then, she would get home and spend an hour or two doing her homework from all her other classes first. Then she would eat dinner and shower, with skincare and haircare, that usually took about two hours. After that, she would end her day and night by studying math until four am. and going to sleep. Wake up at six am the next day and repeat all over again. It was a long day, she knew, but it was what it was.

She yawned heavily before raising up her hand to the creepy knocker and banging it loudly against the door. She had once been worried that if she hit it too hardly, then the whole house’s structural integrity would fail and completely collapse in on itself, but that had changed.

Over her time coming over to the Pasternack residence, which had admittedly only been a couple of days, she had very quickly learned that the home was much stronger than its appearance let on. This place could probably survive a tsunami, not that she was worried about that happening where she lived. Still, the point was that she was completely free to use their door for her anger management, which was a really good thing.

She didn’t have many outlets for her emotions, she never really had in her whole life, so if she hadn’t found something, she might’ve just started randomly hitting people. Which would not have gone over well with anyone, including herself. So she just banged the knocker.

Badger happily opened the door just before she was about to hit it again. He had a smile on his face like always. He was wearing his signature red hoodie along with some sweatpants. His hair was tousled around, and his face was all red, not to mention his breathing was hard. He had either been making out with someone or doing a very intense workout.

“Hey Birdy! Come on in. Do you wanna drink?” Badger asked her like he always did. If there was one good thing that she would say about him, it was that he knew how to be a host.

“No thank you.” She said curtly with a small grin that was dropped the second she turned away to take off her shoes and hang up her coat. Maybe he was growing on her just slightly.