The Internet. Sigh. How did we ever live without it? Oh yeah, that's right. We were too busy worrying about staying alive to worry about getting the latest updates from Twitter.
While I was running a search on combat boots (Do you know how hard it is to find a decent pair of women's size 8½ combat boots? Didn't think so.) I saw who another bidder had been on the auction for the boots. Her screen name was "kenziekjonas" and she had a picture of herself (at least I assumed it was her) beside her screen name. That picture stopped me in my tracks. "kenziekjonas" could be my twin sister! She looked exactly like me, but her hair was more of a honey blonde than the chestnut brown mine was. I clicked her picture and it led me to a page on a social networking site. Apparently, kenziekjonas's name was McKenzie Kohler, and she had a major crush on Nick Jonas, as was apparent from the photo-shopped pictures of McKenzie and Nick. Each picture of her, her friends, her and some extremely hot guy I assumed was her boyfriend, made me catch my breath a little bit more.
This girl looked exactly like me. There was no getting over or ignoring that fact. I took a deep breath, and then shakily walked to Fang's room, right across from mine. He was looking at used guitars for sale on eBay. I shook his shoulder and said, "Fang. You have to come see this."
I'd known for a couple months now that I had a twin, which Jeb and Mom had no idea where she was. They had explained that she had not been injected with bird genes; that even though we were identical twins, we were not identical in the biggest way. I had wings and she did not. I'd searched for her briefly when I first found out, but the only information I had to work off of was the fact that she looked exactly like me. Mom didn't know anything about my twin except for what she told me. And now I'd found someone my exact age (her birthday was listed on the page, and it was the same as mine. Mom had told me that I'd had a normal human birth, except for the whole wings thing. So now I knew the exact date of my birthday.), who looked exactly like me. Quelle coincidence? I didn't think so.
I steered Fang towards my computer desk. He read through the profile and sighed, like, Not this again. "You want to investigate, don't you?" It was scary how well Fang knew me. Or maybe this was becoming routine to him, me finding new family members every time I turned around.
"Yeah, I do," I said. "If it were a lead on any of the others, we'd go for it too. You know that. Just because I've found my parents and the others haven't, that doesn't mean that this is any less a lead." I felt bad, since I'd found four family members (Dr. Martinez, Ella, Jeb, Ari) and the others had found next to none. Fang didn't have a clue about his parents; we thought we'd found Iggy's parents, but they tried to sell him out when they discovered his wings; Nudge thought maybe she'd found her mom in Arizona but wasn't sure; and Angel and Gazzy's mom had apparently sold them to the whitecoats for $10,000. I was freaking rich in the family department, as compared to their poverty in that area. God.
"We'll have to do some more research before we try to go find her. We can't just go looking for someone when we don't know where they are. Does it list any schools or something on her page?" I didn't think she'd be that stupid (after all, she was related to me, maybe), but I decided to humor Fang. We had to start somewhere.
I looked over her page and zeroed in on the pictures. The pictures of her friends and herself showed them in some sort of a navy blue uniform. Sure enough, the emblem on their shirts was for a private school. It showed a red and gold phoenix and the name of the school: Jeanne d'Arc Academy for Young Women. She went to a school named after Joan of Arc? Even if the rest of it sounded kinda stuck up, Joan of Arc was awesome.
Fang scooted me out of the computer chair and took my place as I landed on my unmade bed. He did a quick Google on Jeanne d'Arc Academy and found out that it was in Westchester, New York, about half an hour from New York City. Oh, so we really were dealing with rich ones here. Great. Just the kind of people I like dealing with on a regular basis. Right…
I have to admit that put me off a bit. The rich people I've been around have tended to use their wealth for developing genetic hybrids, so you see why I might have been a bit wary, to say the least. But I HAD to find out if she was my twin. I just HAD to. If I didn't, she would always be my biggest what-if.
I snapped out of my reverie to find Fang staring at me. "Max, you don't have to do this right now. She'll still be there in six months. If you're not ready, we can wait." As always, Fang saw straight to the white-hot center of the problem with me. Was I really ready to have a twin? I had just barely adjusted to the thought of having a basically ready-made biological family: mom, dad, half-sister, dead half-brother and all. It still kinda blew my mind that I got lucky enough to have the one person I would have wanted, would have chosen, as a mom. It didn't seem fair. However, Fate seemed to be making up for that stroke of fortune pretty well.
"Fang, the thing is we don't know what we'll be doing in six months. We could be on the run again; we could be still here, going to school in Arizona. But I think we should jump at the chance while we have time."