Summer Birdie

D for...

After dinner, you take a long bath and head for bed. The house was always so quiet with just you and your mother at home. Your father and brother snored very loudly when they slept and you hated how most nights you couldn't sleep but throughout all of summer, now that the noise was gone, you felt uneasy. You open the window letting the sounds of the shrilling cicada's into your room, your wind bell gently chiming in the cool night breeze. You look up at the hill, where you could only assume was Birdie's house as a little window light turns on in the distance. The sky was clear tonight, the stars glistening like pinpricks in curtains. The moon waning into it's cresent form. 

You hope your mother knew what she was doing, you shake your head violently, perishing the thought - you trust her.

Looking at your discarded English homework on your desk, you notice a thick, worn book beside it with a note 'to help with your english homework, love mama xXx'. You take the note and rummage around in your bag to find your little leather bound planner and you stick it onto the inside of the cover. You remember your father getting this notebook for your birthday, it made you feel so grown up having one, as you've noticed both your parents having one to keep themselves organised for work. However, flicking through the lineless pages, you've barely wrote in it all year. With your friends not even remotely close, you feel like they had wasted this lovely little planner on you. Opening your bag, you look at the neatly folded handkerchief, taking it and laying it flat on your desk as you begin to clear your bag of old wrappers and food crums. From the corner of your eye you see something moving from underneath your handkerchief, grabbing a pen, you prod at it. Is it a mouse? IS IT A COCKROACH?! Clutching the notebook in one hand and your pen in the other, you're ready to move away the handkerchief. In one quick sweep, you slam the book onto the desk. Hesitant to lift the book, you peer around it and to your relief, it wasn't either of those things. Is this...Birdie's feather? You pick it up by the feather's calamus and gaze at the crimson feather in the dim lamp light on your desk. The feather moves of its own accord and taps on your desk.

You realise he was trying to communicate with you but you didn't have any ink and quickly wrap a pen to the feather with a piece of string. You open your notebook and the feather begins writing to you.

"Is...it...working?" You read. "Yes!" You write back aloud.

You spend the night writing back and forth to each other, how he'd never thought of this before was beyond him until today and that he was scared that your mother now knew about his situation. You insist on trusting your mother as much as you trusted her but that wasn't what he was worried about, but didn't want to explain either. The two of you swap stories and doodle around the page of your notebook until you fall asleep.

The next day, in the late hours of the morning, you come downstairs to find your mother completely dolled up, with fruit baskets and other homemade goodies.

"What's this for?" You ask her, the card on the basket reads 'Welcome to the neighbourhood'.

"All part of the plan to save your friend of course." She winks at you, her red lips glossy and shimmered like the light waves in her hair. "As much as I want to believe you and help your friend, I'll need evidence first." She says standing firmly with her hands on her hips.

"Evidence?"

"Things for adults to know if you're telling the truth or not." She winks at you again and begins packing up the car, "you coming or what?" Frantically, you stumble around for some jeans and a shirt leaving your bed hair to sort itself out. Grabbing the feather, you stuff it into the back pocket of your jeans. Slipping on your sandals and hopping into the passenger side of the car, you feel the butterflies in your stomach fluttering violently. Ascending the hill and around the bend, you see the house coming into view. You point it out to your mother as she parks in front. You quickly get out and go around the corner of the hedge pulling the feather from your pocket and pressed it to your lips mouthing the words "we're here".