Inciting Investigations

Chapter 6

Birdy Anders

Birdy Anders was exceptionally happy at the moment, which didn’t happen as often nowadays. She was so very happy because her older brother, Cyrus, was coming over to dinner that night. Which also didn’t happen quite as often nowadays, which made her sad.

Her brother had reentered the family when he was seventeen, so he only spent a couple of months back in the house before he decided to move out. She wasn’t exactly sure how he afforded the place that he stayed at because it was a fairly nice apartment, but then again, she still didn’t even know what he actually did for work. Past the fact that it had to do with science.

Her brother had always loved science, for as long as she could remember. Which was a pretty long time. From a young age, he had been putting different cleaning chemicals into bowls and making tiny explosions, and this fascination only grew as he got older. By the time he was a teenager, he had been in national and worldwide robotics and science interventions, and he won some pretty cool prizes. She remembered the one year that he had gotten together with one of his friends at school, and they had made a life-size robot of a child, which they named Hermione. They had been so proud of her. Hermione was practically their daughter.

Birdy smiled fondly while she remembered those times, things had been so much simpler back then before they had to deal with any of the stuff that Cyrus had gone through.

Even when he had come back to live with them, it had just been so off. Weird she guessed she could say, for lack of a better word. He had changed so much over the time that he had been gone, and she guessed that the rest of them had changed significantly as well. Even though she didn’t like to admit it, she knew that they had all done their growing apart.

Holiday had once been a tween girl who was picking up her penchant for mischief and rebellion. She had been in middle school and started to figure out what she liked to do and what she wanted or needed to do. Birdy remembered that she had known that she wanted to do something with a camera, so Holiday had joined the yearbook club. But, later down the road, Holiday realized that she wanted to be in front of the camera. She had started working on morning announcements, and now she was pursuing a job at the local news station whilst also beginning her journey into higher education. It was really impressive.

Monica was still pretty similar. She had always been a caring mom who wanted nothing more than to be able to help her kids succeed and to see them go on and lead their own lives. She had gone into a bit of a depression when Cyrus first disappeared and was pronounced dead. She even had to take time off of work to take care of herself. But, that had only meant that she bounced back ten times stronger for the kids that she still had and the husband she still had. Birdy thought it was nice. Her mother had always been amazing like that.

James was also pretty similar. He was still a bit of a joker, not like crazy though, just occasionally cracking a funny one-liner or something. He had also been devastated when Cyrus went missing, but he had channeled that into determination. He had demanded the search for his son keep on going even when everything seemed hopeless. He wouldn’t stop until his kid was found, and Birdy knew that that sentiment would’ve gone for any of them. However, after a couple of months, the police finally told him that they were calling everything off because they had found a body. They had tested some of the blood there, and it had come back as Cyrus’s DNA. Her father hadn’t wanted to accept it at first. He really hadn’t. But eventually, he learned to go back to his regular life.

Birdy herself was very different. She had once been a happy go lucky kid who knew how to make anyone laugh no matter what, but that wasn’t who she was anymore. She had changed big time. She was now a teenager, and she had learned through Cyrus not being there to pick her up whenever she felt that the world wasn’t quite as kind as she had once believed. So, she didn’t smile as much anymore. She was still respectful, but she didn’t really like people that much anymore. She knew that she wasn’t the same, but sometimes she really just wished that she was. She wanted to still be innocent and happy all the time.