Inciting Investigations

Chapter 17

Birdy Anders

Birdy looked eagerly at her phone, her hands itching to pick it up and dial Sarah’s number again. It was currently nine o’clock and she was alone in her room after having finished up all of her homework for that night. She wanted desperately to call her back, but she didn’t want to seem desperate. Birdy had no idea why, but she felt a need for the woman to see her as cool. She had talked to her once and already kinda looked up to her a bit.

After another five minutes of waiting, Birdy just simply couldn’t take it anymore. She snatched her phone off of her nightstand and dialed in the number that she had already memorized.

She held the phone up close to her ear and waited impatiently while the classic ringing started going through as she waited for Sarah to pick up. After a little while of waiting, she heard an automated woman’s voice say, “I’m sorry, but the person you are trying to reach is unavailable at the moment. You may begin to record a message at the beep.”

Birdy hung up, feeling defeated. She laid down and put her phone beside her. She had gone through so much to get just this tiny piece of information, and it all went down the drain. Maybe Sarah had changed her mind and decided that she really was too young to handle this.

Was she too young to handle this?

She kept thinking about those self-deprecating thoughts until she heard a small chime out of her phone. She looked into it to see that Sarah had texted her with an explanation for the missed call.

(***)-***-****: Hey, sorry about missing your call. Theo was sitting on my phone 🙄

(***)-***-****: Theo is my cat, btw.

(***)-***-****: I’ll call you back rn.

Then Birdy heard ringing emitting from her phone again, except this time it had been Sarah who had called her. She immediately picked up and said, “Hey, how are you?”

“I’m good, what about you, kid?” Sarah’s voice came through with a crackly quality.

“I’m great. Can I ask you some questions now?” Birdy hurried to grab a pen and a paper to take notes with.

“Sure kid. I’m assuming that you want to know about my brother.”

“Yeah, mostly. Is that okay?” Birdy asked hesitantly.

“Of course. I wouldn’t have called you back if it wasn’t.”

“Okay then. Let’s start. Do you know anyone who didn’t like your brother or who argued with him a lot?”

“Haha, everyone. He was a bit of the confrontational type, you know?” Sarah replied with a laugh.

“Okay, uh…ugh. I’m sorry, I’ve never questioned anyone before like this. I don’t know what to do.” Birdy felt slightly embarrassed by her lack of preparation for this. Why hadn’t she written down questions beforehand? That would’ve made all of this way easier.

“Kid, it’s fine. How far along are you in catching this person?” Sarah asked the question casually.

“Um, not very far along. But we’re working on it.” Embarrassment swelled in her again.

“Okay, that’s fine. I’ve actually been doing a bit of research on my own these past couple of years. Maybe we could exchange notes?” Birdy wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

On one hand, she probably shouldn’t. From what she knew, Sarah was in her early twenties and getting super involved with an adult past just asking some questions over a call, seemed a bit risky. On the other hand, this could completely turn her investigation around.