A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries by Kaylie Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

pad. His lips pulled back, exposing two rows of dangerous-looking teeth. Billy looked on in mute fascination.
    “NON! NON! Don’t do it, please!” I cried out and hid my face in my hands.
    I heard the soft pock of the stone hitting wood. He’d missed! But a second later he had another stone aimed at the tree. I started to cry.
    “Don’t,” my brother said in a quiet, determined voice. “You’re upsetting my sister.”
    I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and kiss his juicy red cheek.
    “We’d better go home, anyway,” Billy said. “It’s getting late.”
    “Well I’m staying here,” Stephane said. “Go ahead and find your way by yourself.” He let out a strange laugh. “You won’t! You’ll be lost for hours in the dark.”
    “I don’t think so,” Billy said in his equable voice. “You follow me,” he said, setting out down the ladder. Just as his head disappeared Stephane gripped my wrist in his hard fingers.
    “I like you,” he whispered, and kissed me on the corner of the mouth. “You’re so pretty.” I was not able to speak or push him away. My heart was beating too fast and confusing thoughts raced through my head. His stranger’s breath felt sweet on my face, his lips were soft as they touched mine so delicately. As soon as he relaxed his grip I became terrified and scrambled down the ladder, away from him.
    “I’ll meet you two tomorrow, by the fence!” he called down after us in the friendliest of tones.
    “We don’t have to play with him anymore,” Billy said, trying to reassure me as I ran wide-eyed through the brambles which got caught on my clothes and hair and scratched at my bare arms. He gingerly held back the prickly vines for me as he led the way back to our lawn.
    “But it’s too bad ‘cause he sure has a nice tree house,” he added with longing.

    “WELLSOMEWHEREINTHEBLACKMOUNTAINSHILL-SOFSOUTHDAKOTATHERELIVEDAYOUNGB OY-NAMEDROCKYRACOOOO-OOOOON!” The three Smith girls were shouting at the top of their lungs at the children’s dinner table in the pale kitchen that looked out onto the sunny green lawn.
    “Ay, ay, ay,” our nanny Candida said, covering her ears after she flipped the steaks in the frying pan.
    “ANDONEDAYHISWOMANRANOFFWITHANOTHERGUYHITYOUNGROCKYINTHEEEEYE…”
    “You sing terrible,” Billy said, gazing uncomfortably at his soup.
    “It’s the Beatles , you fool.” Cassandra lit a cigarette and pushed her bowl toward the middle of the table. As soon as the parents went out she started smoking in the house.
    “I’m bored,” she said. “I’m so boooooored.”
    “We can walk down to the boardwalk after dinner and see if those cute guys are there again tonight,” Mary-Ellen said enigmatically. Mary-Ellen was a little fat, her hips were too wide, her face too flat and round. But her eyes were big and had long red lashes, and she had the prettiest hair of anybody, long and golden red. She had a tight little mouth which told you that she disapproved of everything but would never lower herself to speak out.
    Mary-Ellen had ignored me since the first day, with a practiced vehemence I found hard to swallow. She snorted every time I spoke and looked at me through her long lashes as though I were a dead bird one of my mother’s cats had dragged in. She hated me more than the other two put together. I could not figure out why.
    “She’s jealous of you,” Billy would say as though it were the simplest thing in the world.
    Jealous of me? I could not imagine why Mary-Ellen would be jealous of me. I could understand if she were jealous of her older sister, who was thin as a willow and very grown-up and always right about everything, and of her younger sister who was adored by everyone. The grown-ups thought Gillis was brilliant because she said such grown-up things. I thought the grown-ups were completely stupid because it only took me three days to realize that Gillis was only parroting her older