Second Fiddle by Rosanne Parry Read Free Book Online Page B

instead of taking them back outside to the boot box. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. His hands were three-pots-of-coffee jumpy.
    “Hungry?”
    Dad shook his head. He never ate when he was worried. “How was your day?”
    I could have told him about the wounded soldier then. I should have. Dad would have fixed everything. He’dsaved lives before, twice in Vietnam and once in a training accident last year. It could have all been different. Later, in a room full of very unhappy grown-ups, I said I didn’t tell him about the body in the river because he was tired and distracted. That was a lie. I didn’t want Dad to fix this for me. I wanted to save that soldier all by myself. I wanted to matter.
    “Busy day,” I said, which was not technically a lie.
    “What have you got there, homework?”
    “Um, no, it’s houses.”
    “Hey,” Dad said, looking from me to Mom’s desk and back. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
    “Gee, Dad, I was totally thinking we were going to move into an igloo when you retire. I’m so disappointed now.”
    I got the look from Dad. Sass was not on the list of things I was allowed to do at home. But actually, so long as I wasn’t setting a bad example for the boys or hurting Mom’s feelings, Dad kind of liked a snappy answer.
    “I never promised no igloos,” he said, putting his feet up on the coffee table and closing his eyes.
    “Come on, Dad, where is your sense of adventure? None of us has had frostbite yet. You never know, it might be fun.”
    This was what Dad always said right before all our family catastrophes. He said it before our trip to Seoul, the vomiting capital of South Korea. He said it before we moved to Georgia, the cockroach state. He said it when we moved to Fort Drum and all my clothes and all of my brothers’ LEGOsgot shipped to Fort Huachuca more than two thousand miles away.
    “It is going to be fun,” Dad said. “Our own house; we can paint the walls whatever color we want, and Mom can have her garden, and I can have a real workshop in the garage, and the boys can have a dog and a tree house, and …” Dad stopped like he was frozen.
    He didn’t know what I wanted in my life.
    I looked at the real estate ad for the tree-house house in Killeen. Halfway down the page it said Bluebonnet Elementary, Meadowlark Middle School, and South Killeen High School. “I want an orchestra,” I blurted out. “Is there an orchestra at the high school?”
    “I don’t know, Jody, probably. Don’t most civilian schools have one?”
    “I want to be sure before we pick a house that there’s an orchestra.”
    “I’m sure there will be, and if there isn’t, we can find you another music teacher like Herr Müller. That I can promise. You’ve been happy with him.”
    “No, I’ve been happy with my trio. I don’t want private lessons anymore, Dad. I want to belong to a real orchestra.”
    Gee whiz, what got into me? You save one little life and you think you deserve to ask for anything you want.
    “Okay, Jody, we’ll put orchestra on the list, but you know Tyler wants to move somewhere with dinosaurs, so you’ve got competition.”
    “Great.” Second fiddle again.
    “We have to find a place where I can get a job, Jody. Everything else comes second.”
    I got up from the sofa. On the way back to my room, I stopped at the bookcase and ran my finger across the green-camouflage volumes of Dad’s army manuals.
    “Can I take this one to school?” I asked, pulling out the
Army Field Guide to First Aid
.
    “Are you planning on injuring someone?”
    “Dad!”
    “Is something going on?”
    “Like what?” I said, praying Dad wasn’t a mind reader.
    “Like somebody bullying you. Jo, self-defense is your right. If one of those boys at school gives you trouble, you can use those judo moves I showed you.”
    “Nobody’s bothering me, Dad.” None of the boys even looked at me at school.
    “Well, you should be prepared.”
    “Can I practice on Ty and