Kiana Cruise

by Jody Studdard

  “I guess I won’t be playing softball for a while.”

  “Softball is the least of our concerns right now. We’ll worry about that later. For now, we need to start picking a new home. The agency is going to get us a new one, and they’ve given us two choices: Seattle or Boston.”

  Amanda’s heart stopped. She was a sophomore in high school and the last thing she wanted to do was move to a new school and leave her friends and classmates behind.

  “We have to move?”

  “We have no choice. We can’t stay here in Anaheim, or for that matter anywhere in Los Angeles. We would be too easy to locate. It would completely defeat the purpose of giving us new identities.”

  “I wanted to finish high school at Anaheim. I only have two years left. We’ve never had to move before.”

  “We’ve never had anything like this happen before. My cover has never been compromised.”

  All was silent for several long minutes. James clearly wanted to say something more, to alleviate the tension and help her feel better, but he was at a loss for words.

  “Why Seattle or Boston?” she asked.

  “Both cities have USIA offices that are in need of agents. The agency wants to assign us to one of them. They considered the San Francisco office, too, but they’re fearful San Francisco is too close to LA and wouldn’t provide a good enough cover. So it’s either Seattle or Boston. Do you have a preference?”

  Amanda was silent. She had never been to either of those cities so she knew little about them. As such, she had no real preference and she didn’t want to move to either.

  James saw her hesitation.

  “Don’t rush your decision. There’s no need to decide now. We can talk about it some more later when you’re feeling better. Myself, I’d prefer to stay on the west coast so I’d prefer Seattle, but after what you’ve been through these past few days I’m willing to let you make the decision.”

  At that point, something caught Amanda’s attention. Something he had said earlier that seemed odd to her.

  “What did you say?”

  “You can choose whatever city -”

  “No,” she said, interrupting him. She was trying to remember his exact words (which wasn’t easy, given her mental and physical condition at the time). “Did you say they’re going to assign us?” She put special emphasis on the word ‘us.’ “Did you mean you?”

  James smiled. “No, I meant us. It’s up to you, because of course nobody can force you to do anything, but the agency wants to add you to its ranks. They’ve actually wanted to for quite a while now but I’ve resisted because I wanted you to have a normal life for as long as possible. I didn’t want you to get mixed up in all of this espionage stuff. Trust me, it’s not as glamorous as it seems.”

  Now Amanda had heard it all. Clearly James was playing a joke on her, or, at a minimum, just trying to be funny. “How could I be an agent? I’m only sixteen. I haven’t even graduated from high school yet.”

  “We have several agents who are still students. Jones’s daughter, for example. And they come in really handy at times. Especially for undercover missions when we need an adult agent to play a particular part. A lot of times, the part is much more convincing if the agent has a ‘daughter’ along. Foreign agents never expect someone of being an agent if they have a child with them.”

  “I don’t know how to be an agent. I’d probably get shot on the first day. Look at me. I barely survived my first car chase.”

  James smiled. “The USIA has a training program for its agents, both adults and teens. You’d be required to complete the training before being sent on any missions. And your missions would be carefully chosen, and highly limited, to prevent exposing you to any unnecessary danger.”

  “Why me? Why not some other kid? There must be someone out there who is more qualified than me.”

  “Doubtful. Your current situation is perfect, since supposedly you’re dead. You can basically join the agency with no prior attachments or commitments. In addition, since I’m your father, there are no issues there. With other kids, we’d have to deal with their parents, get legal waivers and liability releases, etc. It’s more red tape than it’s worth. And finally, the agency wants you because you’re so far ahead on your training.”

  “What? I haven’t started any training yet.”

  He grinned. “Actually, you have. I never really wanted you to become an agent, but to be honest, deep down I knew it was going to happen eventually. So I’ve been informally training you for years now, helping you develop the skills you would need when it did happen.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’ve never done any training.”

  “The ski trips every year. Mountain climbing. SCUBA diving. Sky diving.”

  “Those were vacations. We were having fun. Especially that time in Aspen when we went off the main course and raced to the bottom.”

  “That’s what I wanted you to think. I wanted you to think the trips were nothing more than vacations, but really I was preparing you for the future. Developing the skills I thought you would need when you became an agent.”

  There was a brief silence as Amanda tried to digest what she had been told. She found it hard to believe, and more than a little far-fetched, but at the same time she did have to admit there could be some truth to it. After all, they had done a lot over the years, and many of those things had been activities that had given her distinct skill sets that many people never developed their entire lives, even as adults. Amanda was only sixteen, but already she could ski, snowboard, SCUBA dive, pilot planes (small ones only), sky dive, ride motorcycles, rock climb, ride horses, and fight (she was a fourth degree black belt in taekwondo and had been fighting competitively in tournaments (usually against boys) since she was five).

  And then there was one more thing she could do that few people (especially Americans) could. She could speak four languages: English, Spanish, French, and Italian. James had hired instructors for her almost as soon as she could speak, and over the years the two of them had taken numerous trips to locations where she could use and perfect her skills. The year before, they had gone to Barcelona and Guadalajara to practice her Spanish, Montréal to practice her French, and Milan to practice her Italian (Milan was so awesome – Italian boys were so cute. One boy, named Luciano, had really caught her eye but James had chased him away as soon as he saw them talking).

  Like most men with teenage daughters, he wasn’t a fan of teenage boys at all.

  “So all of these things we’ve done over the years,” she said, “they’ve just been training sessions?”

  “Of course not. Primarily they were vacations for the two of us. A good chance for a father and a daughter to unwind and have some quality time together, especially since I always felt bad for leaving you behind so much when I went on missions. But also they were a way for me to keep my skill sets sharp and to train you. And that reminds me - I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now about that Aspen trip. I still want to know how you beat me to the bottom of that ski run. I was so far ahead I couldn’t even see you behind me. I actually contemplated stopping and going back to make certain you hadn’t fallen and gotten hurt but then I saw you come out of nowhere and there was no way I could catch up to you.”

  She laughed. “I cheated. I knew a shortcut, so I waited until you got to that stretch with the moguls, where you would be preoccupied going over them, and when you weren’t looking I took it.”

  His eyes were huge with realization. “I knew it. You’re a great skier, Amanda, but I knew there was no way you could have gotten to the bottom of that run that quickly.”

  She waited for a second, wondering if she was going to get in trouble for cheating but no punishment was forthcoming. Instead, James was all smiles and he was clearly impressed with her ingenuity and creativity.

  But then something else came to mind. “What about that time at Yosemite? When we were rock climbing. Did you cheat that time, too? You made it up that
cliff face awfully fast.”

  She smiled. “Nope. I won that one fair and square.”

  He nodded. “Well done. You’re getting really good at things. A couple more years and you’ll probably be able to beat me at everything.”

  They were both silent for a second. But then a devilish smile formed on his face. She had seen it before, a few times, usually when he wanted to tease her about something.

  “But there is one thing you’re terrible at.”

  Oh my god, she thought. Here I am in the middle of a hospital, with a concussion, a broken arm, and three cracked ribs, facing the possibility of moving to another city and leaving my school and friends behind, and he’s going to tease me about something?

  “You’re horrible at picking boyfriends.”

  She was flabbergasted.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “It’s true. Remember that Billy Sullivan kid? What a creep.”

  Amanda cringed. She hated to admit it but he was right. Billy Sullivan had been her boyfriend for a portion of her eighth grade year. He had turned out to be a real loser, and she’d even caught him smoking marijuana on more than one occasion.

  “And what about Ricky Smith?” James said.

  Amanda cringed again. Ricky Smith had been her boyfriend for several months during her freshman year. They broke up when she found out he was seeing another girl, a trampy blonde named Miranda Mavins.

  “But the worst of all,” James said, “was that kid with the stupid nickname. You know, the one who wore all of the gold chains and wanted to be a white rapper. What was his name? Vanilla-T?”

  Amanda knew he was teasing her, but anyway, she had heard more than enough. She turned to the nurse, who was on the far side of the room sorting through some supplies in a medical cabinet and said, “I think I need my father to leave now. I’m tired and need to get some rest. And I definitely don’t need to hear about my ex-boyfriends anymore.”

  She didn’t really want to go back to sleep for fear of having more of the frightening dreams of the car accident, but at the same time she did not want to continue the conversation about her ex-boyfriends any longer.

  James laughed. He knew he had worn out his welcome and he did want Amanda to get some more rest (the more the better), so he hopped up and started to head for the door.

  “Take care, kiddo. I’ll be back to check on you soon. In the meantime, start thinking about your new name. Make it something good. And it better not be something silly like Vanilla-T.”

  The last thing he saw as he walked into the adjacent hallway was Amanda’s tongue as she stuck it out at him.

  Chapter 5

  After James left, Amanda tried to go back to sleep, since she felt tired (which was somewhat ironic since she had slept the majority of the past three days), but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fall asleep. Her mind was racing, trying to make sense of all of the information she had been told. She couldn’t believe how much her life had changed in so short an amount of time. Just three days before, she had been a normal teenage girl, living a normal teenage life in southern California, with (what she thought) was a normal dad. But then, just three days later, she was on the verge of moving to a new city, a new school, and a new life as a secret agent.

  She didn’t like the idea of moving at all. Especially to Boston. That was just too far away, and she wasn’t certain she would like life on the east coast very much. Wasn’t it really cold in Boston in the winter? Amanda didn’t like that at all. As such, like James, she was already leaning toward Seattle, but really only because it was closer. She hated the thought of leaving her friends, her teachers, and her life in southern California behind. And she had no idea what life would be like in Seattle. Were the schools up there any good, would she meet new friends, and how would she fit in (or would she)? Were teenagers in Seattle the same as teenagers in Anaheim? Would they like her? Just thinking about it all made her head spin.

  At the same time, however, there was one thing that really intrigued her and she couldn’t stop thinking about it no matter how hard she tried. Being a spy. Or what had James called it? An agent. Amanda had always been the adventurous type and she loved trying new and exciting things. It didn’t get any newer or more exciting than being an agent in a top-secret intelligence agency. She wondered what her training would be like and how long it would take to complete. And after she completed it, what kind of missions would they send her on? Would she get to go to exotic, foreign locales, and meet other agents, and save the world from super villains like they did in all of the old spy movies she had seen? She doubted it, and James had said espionage work wasn’t nearly as glamorous as many people thought it was, but she was excited nonetheless.

  And there was one more thing that intrigued her, and it was actually the one thing she spent the most time thinking about. Her new name. She had never really liked her name. Amanda Anderson. It was so plain. So simple. She might as well have been named Amanda Williams, or Amanda Jones, or Amanda Smith. And her middle name didn’t help any. It was Beatrice. Ugh. She had never liked the name Beatrice at all. It was so formal and old fashioned. But now she was being given a chance to start all over and to change her name to something she liked. That was actually pretty cool, and how many people got to do it? Most people were stuck with the name their parents gave them their entire lives. So Amanda tried to think of some new names, and she wanted something that went well with the name Cruise, which apparently was the new last name they had been given. She would have preferred something other than Cruise, but at the same time, it was better than Anderson since it was a little less plain, and ultimately, she was more concerned with her first name.

  She asked the nurse for some paper and a pencil and she started a list:

  Chloe.

  Cassandra.

  Kristi.

  Hailey.

  She had always liked the name Chloe and it definitely sounded good with Cruise. Chloe Cruise. She liked the alliteration and it just seemed to roll off of her tongue. But so did Cassandra, and it even seemed a bit more exotic. At the same time, however, it was quite a bit longer so she wondered if she would get tired of writing it. In addition, people might shorten it and give her a nickname like Cassie or Cass. She didn’t like that at all so she removed Cassandra from the list. Kristi was good, too, but, like the name Amanda it was a little too common. Hailey got crossed out quickly because it made her think of Hailey Wetmore, a girl at her high school who was a complete witch. So Chloe was the frontrunner until she thought of a few more possibilities:

  Kristen.

  Jennifer.

  Molly.

  Maggie.

  Kristen sounded nice, especially combined with Cruise, but like Kristi it seemed too simple and too common. She wanted something more exotic, something with some flair. She thought about Jennifer, since her favorite softball player was Jennie Finch, but again it just didn’t seem exotic enough. Molly and Maggie met the same fate. They were good, but not good enough.

  And then it came to her. Seemingly out of nowhere. The absolute perfect name.

  Kiana.

  She loved it the minute she thought of it. It was short, exotic, and it looked great when you combined it with Cruise. Kiana Cruise. She kept saying it over and over in her head and finally tried it out loud a few times, just to see how it sounded. The nurse gave her a strange look from across the room so she put a quick end to vocalizing it. She then started working on her signature, and although it took quite a few tries to perfect it, she eventually got it just right, with a really fancy K, an equally fancy C, and a small heart above the ‘i’ in Kiana. She contemplated adding a second heart above the ‘i’ in Cruise but decided that might be a little too much.

  Picking her middle name, by contrast, was simple. She picked the name Danielle since that had been her mom’s name, and never a day had gone by that she didn’t think about her and miss her terribly. Especially days like that one, when she had no
thing to do but lay around in bed all day.

  Chapter 6

  Amanda spent another three days in the hospital before finally being released, then spent the next two months recovering. Her broken ribs were the worst part, and for at least two weeks she couldn’t move hardly at all. Even little things like sneezing and laughing hurt immensely. At one point she chided James and told him he couldn’t tell her any jokes or do anything to make her laugh until after she had completely healed.

  She wore a cast on her arm for several weeks, and when it was finally removed she spent four weeks in physical therapy teaching it how to move again. She was amazed how much it had atrophied during its time in the cast, but equally amazed at how quickly it returned to normal once she started the physical therapy. By the end of the second month she was pretty much completely back to normal, if not better since she had spent so much time working out as part of her recovery.

  In the meantime, she told James she had made her final decision, to join the USIA and become a teen agent, and she wanted to move to Seattle, not Boston. He was happy with her decisions and instantly made all of the necessary arrangements, and the USIA helped him locate and purchase a new home just north of Seattle. Amanda looked forward to moving to it because she was getting tired of living in the apartment they had been living in for the past two months (since technically they were dead, they were not allowed to go back to their old house in Anaheim for fear someone would see and recognize them). The apartment was actually quite nice, in a fancy area near Westwood, but Amanda was used to living in a house so she longed to return to one as soon as possible.