Not Without My Sister by Kristina Jones

Author:Kristina Jones [Jones, Celeste; Jones, Kristina and Buhring, Juliana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007369829
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2008-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Two years into our stay in Thailand, Celeste and I were suddenly moved to the Service Centre, a ‘selah’ or secret home where much of the Thailand leadership was based. I had no idea why we were moving; it all happened fairly quickly. Celeste and I were packed into the jeep and driven to a mall car park, where an uncle from the Service Centre home met us. Before we were transferred to another vehicle, he sat us on a ledge in the parking lot for a talk.

‘How would you like to pick a new name?’ he asked.

‘Um, no thank you,’ I answered politely. ‘I’m all right with my own name.’

‘Well, in this case you don’t really have a choice, honey, because you’ll now be living at a selah home where everybody takes on a new name as a security precaution.’

This was not entirely true, because only Celeste and I were made to change our names. She had already changed hers from Celeste to Joan and I did not see why she had to change it again.

‘So, what name do you think you’d like?’

‘Well, I’ve always liked the name Claire,’ Celeste offered.

‘That sounds good. It suits you. So you’ll be Claire from now on. What about you Julie?’

‘I don’t know.’ I wanted none of it. I had always been Julie, and it felt like a piece of my identity was being taken from me.

‘Well, if you can’t think of a name, we’ll have to assign one to you. How about Anna?’

That was the ugliest, plainest name ever. ‘Well, I don’t really like it much.’

‘Well, honey, we don’t have much time. If you can’t think of one, then you’ll have to be Anna.’

Claire and Anna, Anna and Claire. I never got used to the sound of our new names. I cried quietly in the back of the jeep. Everything was out of my control. Where I went, what I wore, who I was!

As we were driving, we were suddenly told we had to be blindfolded. Where we were going was a state secret!

The jeep finally stopped and our blindfolds were removed. ‘God bless you, Claire and Anna! Welcome to your new home.’

My time there was miserable and lonely. Yet again, I cleaned, cooked and washed the breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes. The other half of my day I did school work and had Word Time. As I was ten years old, and the next child under me was six, I had to spend my remaining time in the younger kid’s group.

It must have been obvious that I was unhappy, because four months later, I was allowed to return to the Training Centre. Celeste remained behind. She was too high a security risk to leave. I only found out later that the reason we had moved was because her mother had stepped up the search for her.

Much had changed while I was away. The school had been thrown into a state of red alert. The police had raided communes in Australia, Argentina

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