The Twins

chapter 2: That Which They Hid

Part 2: Blue

The strange young girl, who Matthew had found out was named Kelsie, had refused to tell Matthew much more about how she knew about Amani. She mentioned something about "seeing" what happened to the teen but had refused to say anything more. What was funny was that she looked kind of scared in a way and something told Matthew she was trying to protect him from something. That was a weird feeling. A little girl no more than 9 years old trying to protect him. But from what?

Those questions almost immediately disappeared once the class was over and Matthew was finally able to go into his room and onto the computer. The blue home screen shone calmly bathing the room in a peaceful glow, a stark contrast to the still roiling emotions inside of Matthew. He had to know what happened.

First Matthew looked at news articles. Anything about a teen disappearing would do but there was nothing to be found. Even the conspericy articles said nothing about foster children suddenly disappearing. To make matters worse Matthew quickly realized he knew nothing about Amani. He didn't know where his friend lived, exactly how old they were, their gender, nothing. Matthew found himself grinding his teeth together out of frustration and anger.

Matthew sighed and leaned back in the chair staring at the ceiling. An idea slowly formed and he turned back to the computer again.

"Two criminals sent to surface for creating illegal weapons"

The search prompt brought up multiple results and Matthew slowly sifted through them. He was glad he remembered what Amani had told him about his parents. Hopefully this would provide him the answers he needed. He continued to look through the articles switching back and forth between the sides of the internet until he found a photo. It was of an important looking family. Matthew found his eyes focusing on a teenage boy with dark skin an haunting brown eyes. It was Amani.

Matthew had no real reason to think that the boy was Amani. Nothing in the article mentioned the identity of the boy in the photo, only that he was the criminals son. Matthew just......knew. He continued to read the article.

It was around 3 years old. Apparently Amani's parents had been making and selling guns and bombs on the black market for around 2 years before they were caught. Matthew looked at their faces. They seemed like kind and compassionate people, certainly not what you would expect them to look like from the way the article described them. The same feeling he had when he knew the boy was Amani spread over Matthew. Something wasn't right about this. Sure criminals can be all shapes and sizes so It's possible for someone to look innocent when they really aren't, but this seemed different.

The blond looked at the two adults for a while puzzling over their faces. The feeling stayed. But this wasn't the time to get distracted. Matthew sighed and saved the article to refer to later. He went back and searched amani's full name, Amani Carmin, getting a handful of results.

Still, there was nothing relating to his friend's disappearance. The most recent article was from over a year ago, when Amani got an award for a science project he did. Matthew remembered Amani telling him about the project. He had been rather proud of it And had just gotten the award 3 months before the two began talking, which was about 9 months ago.

9 months of chatting and getting to know one another. It surely hadn't felt like it.