for•bid•den dop•pel•gäng•er
/fər'bidn/ ~ /'däpəl,gaNGər/
adjective ~ noun
((not allowed; banned)) ~ ((an apparition or double of a living person))
•a banned living double
•an apparition or double of a living person that was not allowed to exist
Aly...
Elena and I sat on the porch of our house. Elena had her journal on her lap and a pen in her hand while I sat on the swing, watching my thumb twiddling with the handle of my coffee cup. We just sat there, silently, not wanting to talk about our recent events.
Eventually, Elena picked up her phone and put it up to her ear. "Hey Bonnie, it's me just checking in, seeing how you're doing. We miss you here. Don't let your aunt drive you too crazy." Elena pauses, Jenna's footsteps could be heard walking up towards the porch to us. "Come home soon. We love you."
"What are you doing out here?" Jenna asked us, once Elena hungs up. "It's cold."
I was deep in thought to even look at her. "Thinking."
"Writing," Elena added, as she glanced down at her journal. "The, uh, funeral for Bonnie's grandma, it brought back a lot about mom and dad. We were wondering...you said that you would do some digging about them, the adoption."
"Right," Jenna said.
"So did you?" Elena asked. "Dig?"
"Come on inside," Jenna said to us. Both of us stood up and followed her into the house. We went straight to the kitchen, Jenna sat at the counter, opening her laptop. Elena and I stood across from her, removing our jackets.
"Your dad kept everything from his medical practice -- records, logs, old appointment books," Jenna tells us. She pulls out a journal and opens it, showing a page to us. "I found an entry from the night you two were born. Patient and a birth date. Isobel Peterson."
"Do you think that's her real name?"
"Pregnant teenage runaway? Probably not. First name, maybe. But where'd she get Peterson? Classmate? Best friend? So I binged it." Jenna's fingers began to type on her laptop as we walked to stood behind her. "I searched for all the Petersons in this area born the same year as Isobel, found 3 - - 2 men and a women, Trudie, who lived in Grove Hill, Virginia."
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"That's not far from here."
"Well, watch this." Jenna types something else into her laptop, then turns the screen our way. There was a picture of two teenage girls; one had raven black hair dressed in a cheerleading uniform.
"Isobel," Elena said, smiling slightly at me. "She was a cheerleader."
"Trudie still lives there," Jenna said, as she scribbles something on a sticky note. "Here's her address."
"What about Isobel?" I asked as I grabbed the sticky note from Jenna.
"I couldn't find anything about her," Jenna said, I give an disheartened sigh as we sit down at the table. "Listen. There's something else. Mr Saltzman, Ric, his wife was from around here, and her name was also Isobel."
"Wait," I frowned, looking at my aunt. "'Was,' as in..."
"She died."
Later in that day, Elena was putting her clothtes away, facing her drawer, while I sat on her bed handing her folded clothes. Stefan was standing behind her, listening intently to everything we were telling him about Isobel.
