Friends Forever #9, Kristy and the Kidnapper Part 2
Previously: major Abby-Kristy flirting, and the mysterious David/Terry got kidnapped.
http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/281917.html#cutid1
Ch.6
The kidnapper gets away without David, and the police take them back into the hotel to get their statements. Are you ready? We’re about to hear the big secret!
AHA! David did used to be Terry Hoyt, back when he lived in Stoneybrook. His dad is a Secret Service agent who was working undercover, and now he has a regular posting in DC. Okay, clearly I missed whatever book that was in. Now I need to know what was so important in Stoneybrooke that someone had to be UNDERCOVER to deal with it. Oh, wait, that’s pretty much the plot of every mystery.
David tells Kristy not to tell the police what the man said about making his father pay - he wants his father to hear about it first.
The police get their statements, David’s dad (Mr. Hawthorne) comes in, Kristy almost wants to run into Ms. Simon’s arms when she comes in but wants to seem grown-up and unafraid. Aw, that’s actually kind of sweet. If I had been chased by a kidnapper at that age I probably would’ve wanted to do the same thing.
Afterwards, Mr. Hawthorne asks them more questions and says he’s taking David home. David refuses to go, saying that he wants to stay for the convention and that the whole reason Mr. Hawthorne gave up the undercover work was so that they could live a normal life (or as normal as you can get for a Beltway insider). Mr. Hawthorne relents and says he can stay as long as a security team watches him.
“And that’s how I ended up with my own Secret Service agent.” End of a chapter, or the start of a porno? You decide.
Ch.7
Agent Melendez and Agent Sanford. Clean-cut men with dark suits and shiny black shoes. Hotties. Even Kristy acknowledges it: “But how easy is it to ignore guys who look like that?” Okay, okay, she wasn’t checking them out per se, just commenting on how they told her to ignore them.
Oh no, now it’s time to inflate Kristy’s ego some more because the other hotel guests are staring at them, perhaps wondering if she’s the president’s niece or something. She even half-expects people to ask for her autograph. Oh, Kristy.
Kristy invites David in to her room, which is allowed because it’s only 9 and apparently the policy is that boys and girls are allowed to fraternize behind closed doors until 10. Um, NO. When I went on an 8th-grade science trip, we weren’t even allowed to be within 5 feet of the boys’ doors. If we wanted to talk to them we literally had to knock, then quickly step back so we could get the chaperones to stop glaring at us. And this was so we could talk to the friend that was actually gay. They kept a tight leash on any boy-girl interactions, but apparently SMS trusts 13-year-olds to hang out in hotel rooms alone. Has Ms. Simon SEEN Melissa and Lucas?? I would be changing the rules in a jiffy after witnessing their constant romantic mushiness! STD’s and middle-school vacations are not a good mix. How do you explain it to the parents?
Kristy wonders if she’s supposed to invite the agents into the room with them to fulfill her teenage fantasies, but they decline. Very professional.
Kristy and David talk a bit, and he mentions that he’s had 10 different identities. Holy cow! How is someone who’s not even in high school supposed to deal with all that? It seems like once Mr. Hawthorne made the decision to have a family, he should have stopped the undercover work. David clearly hated moving around all the time, he says he wishes they’d stayed in Seattle when he was there (Go Seattle!). It seems like they moved more than a military family even.
Of course Stacey knew about David’s secret identity. That slut. Keeping secrets from Kristy, Supreme Commander of the BSC!
Abby, Melissa, and Lucas all come in then wanting to know what happened. Now everyone knows about David’s dad, and his hopes of being a normal kid for once are crushed.
Ch. 8
W00t. Team DKK won another round, putting them a step closer to the finals. David scores with this line to Kristy, “You have the big mouth, Kai has all the brains, and I supply the charm and charisma. How can we miss?” Ha! Great diss! As Kristy says, “Only people I know and trust can call me a bigmouth and get away with it.” There’s where you’re wrong, Kristy, I’ve called you that for years! Also, of course it’s the Asian that has the brains.
Kai comments that he bets the secret agents enjoyed the debate. I’m thinking not. A bunch of 8th-graders “debating” whether cats or dogs are better? I can think of better ways to spend my time. Kristy wonders that they never have newspapers or anything with them. Uh, no, that kind of defeats the purpose of a secret agent whose ONLY TASK is to watch out for your safety 24/7.
Apparently Kristy thinks David’s charm and charisma would make him a good candidate for office someday. Yes, that is what we need most in our politicians. Charm and charisma. I think she’s forgetting boyish good looks. We also need that.
Ohhh, trouble coming! Abby’s team won their round too, and she says that she heard the team Kristy had to debate wasn’t that good, so it’s not surprising they won. This is the problem with competitive people! Both people in a relationship/friendship can’t be competitive! This is why, when I lose at Trivial Pursuit, I get grumpy for the rest of the evening. Kristy and Abby are going to have a lot of fights ahead of them in their tumultuous relationship.
While DKK are practicing some more, Mr. Hawthorne stops by and is annoyed that David lets him in without checking to see who it is. David sensibly points out that the agents are out there, so there’s not much reason to check. Mr. Hawthorne has them go through some photos to try and identify the would-be kidnapper, and they realize that it was Lance Dibdin, a guy who was part of a computer hacking ring Mr. Hawthorne busted a few years ago. Wow. I just typed that name into Google and discovered that it is an actual name. Here I thought it was just gibberish.
Abby and Kristy go to watch Melissa in her Extemporaneous Speaking event, where the contestants are given a statement and then have to defend it without any preparation for 10 minutes. Holy shit that sounds hard. I would just be like, “ummm….uhhh….” the entire time. Of course, Melissa is awesome at it with her ability to prattle on about absolutely anything in the universe.
Ch. 9
Confrontation is imminent! Abby and Kristy’s teams both won their rounds, so now they’ll be facing each other in the finals. Melissa and Lucas will be competing in the Extemporaneous Speaking finals. Of course all of the major characters are like pros, none of them did just okay, they all were AMAZING. When I went to the NOSB finals, we did AWFUL despite winning the state competition, but we still had a great time just being at the competition. Not everyone has to win at everything all the time always, BSC-Land!
Kristy and Abby are worried that Melissa will throw the debate so that her Mookie can win. They decide to talk to her, but Melissa is more mature than they thought, because she acts like they’re retarded to think she would lose on purpose. To the contrary, she hopes that Lucas won’t be too heartbroken when she walks away with the trophy. Now this I did not expect. Good message to send to impressionable young girls, but weird way to do it. It’s great to win, but it’s also okay to hang onto your boyfriend all day long and act like a doofus? (Apparently Microsoft does not recognize the work doofus? I always thought it was a word. And I am NOT a Claudia when it comes to spelling).
Everyone except David heads over to the Smithsonian after lunch, where they gush over a phaser from the original Star Trek series (circa 1960’s), a statue of Charlie Chaplin, and Dorothy’s ruby slippers. I only knew what one of these items was when I was 13.
Abby and Kristy start arguing so loudly about the presence of dogs (Toto) v. cats (Cowardly Lion) in the Wizard of Oz that a guard has to shush them. Is this a catfight? Or merely the dog days of the debate?
They return to the hotel to some upsetting news. You guys. I don’t know how to say this without breaking your hearts, but David is missing.
Ch. 10
DAVID IS MISSING!!! He disappeared while Agent Sanford was supposedly watching him. Agent Sanford has now been “taken off duty” which I can only assume means that he’s being waterboarded in a dark basement somewhere for failing to keep an eye on one teenage boy.
Kristy & Co. want to help find David, but the agent in charge assures them that they don’t need their help, and to “please, leave this in the hands of the professionals.” Makes sense! Get these teenagers, one of whom is also a potential target, out of the danger zone!
Of course, the junior detectives try to search for David anyway. They all agree to check different places in the hotel and return in 45 minutes, under the assumption that “there may be places the agents missed.” Really. The agents who are trained in this type of reconnaissance, and they might have missed a boy hiding somewhere in a hotel? Although, why is this hotel not on lockdown? They should be blocking all the exits, making absolutely sure that David is not anywhere in the hotel. They should also be forcing Kristy to go to her room, any room, to stay safe and so they know where she is. Maybe Kristy has a point and these agents don’t know what they’re doing. Melendez just follows her around while she looks in the debate rooms for David. Again, why does she have a personal agent if he’s not even going to take precautionary measures??
Wait! Who is that brown-haired boy with sunglasses sitting in a chair in the main lobby? It couldn’t be David, because he was kidnapped, right?
Well, yes it could be David. He wanted be alone for just five minutes to prove that he could elude Agent Sanford, so he told him he was going to take a nap, then checked in the hallway, saw that the agent was gone, and snuck out. Why was the agent gone?? Wouldn’t he need to get a replacement before he went to the bathroom or anything?
The agents are surprisingly okay with David disappearing and shaming them and don’t beat him to a pulp like I would have. Mr. Hawthorne, however, is not so forgiving and demands that David go home with him right away. David pleads that his team needs him to win during the finals, and Mr. Hawthorne somehow decides that that is a good enough reason to let David stay, and that he himself will be David’s guard until the competition is over. Hell no. If I had a kid that did that, I would tell them too bad, and too bad to your team, but your safety is way more important than a junior debate competition. That kid would be grounded for 5 years.
Kristy is also pissed, and it’s only when she tells David how scared she was that he was actually kidnapped that he starts to feel bad. Does this kid just not care about other people at all??? Why do kids do this? It’s not just a crazy BSC thing! This summer, at a camp I worked at, this one kid just didn’t feel like showing up one day and the entire camp was searching for him. One of my co-workers was even getting ready to search the bottom of the swimming area in the lake for his body when it was discovered that he was safe at home. Seriously, kids. Think before you make everyone else have a mini-heart attack.
There was a disappointing lack of Kristy/Abby innuendos in this section . Hopefully the rest of the book will be more fruitful!
Coming up: More jealous flirting (I assume, haven’t read that far yet), and another kidnapping? Perhaps of Kristy herself?! I don’t know!