A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries by Kaylie Jones

sisters, that none of the brilliant expressions she spewed out were her own.
    I decided after a few weeks that if Mary-Ellen was jealous of me it was because I was not the plain one between two gorgeous and supposedly brilliant sisters; I only had a normal brother who was as gentle and nice as could be. And maybe she was a little jealous because I was thin as well and could speak French. I could tell Mary-Ellen was dying to learn French because she practiced words when no one was listening.
    “I WANNA COME TO THE BOARDWALK TOO,” Gillis screamed at the dinner table. “I WANNA DRAAG!”
    “Here.” Cassandra handed her the cigarette. “Just one drag, now,” she said. The little Princess Child with the long golden hair and cherubic face puffed on the cigarette, turning the coal bright red, and inhaled deeply. She blew smoke rings into the air.
    “Ay, ay, ay,” Candida said, muttering in French in her Portuguese accent, “that littla one es only ten jears old!”
    “MY GOD, Cassandra, I swear this time I’m telling!” Bethany, their nanny, said in dismay. Bethany’s hair was all frizzed out and she wore too much makeup.
    “Then I’ll tell Mom you smoked pot with Fred in the garage and I caught you,” Cassandra said.
    “You’re horrible,” Bethany said.
    “Oh, come on. I won’t tell,” Cassandra said coyly. She pulled her chair closer to Bethany’s and started to caress her arm, begging her to let them go down to the boardwalk. Even if Bethany said no the two oldest would go, because the parents never came home until after midnight. Bethany, it seemed, never contradicted the Smith girls because she was as terrified of Mr. Smith as Candida was of our father.

    That night, in my darkened room, I watched a tree swaying in the silver moonlight outside the window and thought of the boy in the tree house. A strange shiver crossed my body. My brother had defended me and offered not to play with him anymore, but the thing I wanted most in the world at that moment was to return to the tree house and allow the strange boy to kiss me again. I hugged Christmas Bear to my chest. He was huge, beige, and soft. I’d had to throw a major tantrum and forsake all my other toys to be allowed to bring him in the car from Paris. Christmas Bear knew all my thoughts. He knew I was not thinking of him that night, but of another boy, and I whispered to him to forgive me as I pressed my ear against his furry chest.

    The next day my brother had to go to the doctor to have a boil removed from under his arm. I asked if I could go along but my parents thought I might start to cry and frighten Billy. So I stayed home and watched the Smith girls play croquet on the lawn.
    Thoughts of the boy kept sending chills down my spine. I wandered off toward the woods involuntarily. It was the same strange urge I’d had when at three I’d walked into the deep end of a pool and almost drowned.
    The boy was there, waiting. He was leaning with his arms outstretched against the fence.
    “Où est ton frère?”
    “He had to go to the doctor’s.”
    We stared at each other in silence for a while. Without talking we walked, each on our side of the fence, to the place where the hole was. My brother’s red handkerchief was still there. The boy held the chicken wire up and I passed through to his side. He took my hand in his big rough one and pulled me through the thickets toward his tree house. I watched carefully, feeling like Gretel without Hansel, for a tell-tale tree, a certain flowering vine, so that, in an emergency, I could find my way back to the fence.
    “Go ahead, climb up first,” he said.
    Today I was wearing a skirt.
    I thought about this for a second, feeling quite coy. With only a moment’s hesitation I shimmied up the ladder. I sensed his eyes looking up at me from below and strange, uncomfortable shivers clambered up my spine.
    I threw myself into a corner and turned so that I would be facing him. Soon he was beside me, peering at