What do you want to be when you grow up? (200-500 words, use cursive).

In 4th grade, nobody takes the answer seriously. And why should they? Those who had an answer ready at hand filled out their lined exam sheets with outlandish occupations, like "Pirate" or "Acrobatic", listing adventure, fame, and fun as motivations. In the real world, jobs didn't work that way. You need money to afford your house, food, electricity, and clothes. Fame or adventure might bring you some of that, but it could also land you in trouble, like that man they learned about in history class last week. They said he was famous because he started the fight with the military in Pendleton 13 years ago, and more than a thousand people died.

And fun? Well, in the real world, you had to buy fun, too. It was one of the few things Berthold espoused that Riza could agree with.

Riza Hawkeye tapped the old eraser nub on the desk, trying hard to think through the hectic scratching of pen on paper. Julie had already written two sentences on why she wanted to be a famous singer just like Stephanie Silver who sang on the radio every weekend. Maybe Riza just needed to think like her, be a kid for once like her teachers and Mr Bailey always lamented she wasn't.

"When I grow up," she carefully wrote, keeping her vowels neat and even, "I want to be"...

"... a ballerina!" read Ms Haraway out loud. "Why, Riza, I didn't know you could dance! We'll have to put you in the talent show next year so you can show us all your graceful moves!"

Riza's cheeks flushed. She fought to not let herself sink lower in her chair against the tittering giggles and whispers of her classmates - showing shame only gave them more power. The joke wasn't cruelly intended. Ms Haraway only wanted to see her lighten up more. She didn't know she was just handing ammunition to her irreverent wards.

Besides, being singled out for the class' mockery was irrelevant. They always found something to laugh at no matter what anyone did. It was the assignment that was the problem. School was supposed to help you learn, and how could you learn if you were lying?

The graded assignments were distributed before the class break. The circled 'A' on the top corner of the page hypocritically replaced the usual C- Riza earned for most of her creative writing homework. She lied, and it got her first A in years of Ms Haraway's class. How was that even fair, anyway?

She stuffed the incriminating report into her bag, making up her mind to burn it tomorrow on the way home.

The lake shed was a little out of the way, but school was out early the next day so Riza could afford to stop there for a few minutes before rushing home to do the laundry and prepare supper. Berthold had given the report a lackluster glance at the dinner table last night before telling Riza she needed to study harder and get better grades if she wasn't going to apply herself to alchemy, obviously not seeing the bright red letter. Riza tore the A off first and watched the flames in the tin bucket devour it greedily.

The rest of the report followed it. Sitting on the ground in front of the small fire, arms wrapped around her knees, Riza's thoughts drifted back to the original assignment. It wasn't a good question, she decided. After all, she was already many things: a cook, a laundry maid, a logger, a handyman, a gardener, a student. She'd probably keep being most of those things, too. There was a better way to answer the question.

An idea struck her. Riza grabbed her school bag and dug into its depths for a spare sheet of paper. Not finding one, she turned to the small shed for something she could turn into a substitute. There was an old carton of plaster powder in one of the crooked shelves. She set to work, drawing a little water from the lake, and turning a handful of powder into a thin, white tablet. A sharpened twig standing in for a stylus, she scratched the new question into the top.

Who do you want to be when you grow up? she wrote, leaving out the dictate for cursive. She paused after the question mark, tapping the stick lightly in an off-kilter rhythm as she mulled over how to begin her answer.

"I don't know who I want to be yet," Riza etched, "but I know who I don't want to be.

"I don't want to be a liar. People say lying is easy - Berthold says sometimes lying is good. He lies all the time, to the grocer, to the landowner, and to himself. He says he was sick so he couldn't work, or that the money from mom's inheritance never came in the mail, and those lies make sure we can keep living in our home. But sometimes, he lies to me, too, and he thinks I don't know. It makes me think he's stupid and untrustable. I don't want anyone to think that about me.

"But most of all, I don't want to lie to me."

Riza put the stick down and blew the plaster dust away from her neat script. The words seemed heartfelt and poetic when she wrote them, but seeing them carved into the tablet, she was dismayed by their childishness. Like a kid playing King's scribe.

The shed door creaked. "Riza, are you in here?" Jenny asked hesitantly, her matter-of-fact way of speaking twisting the question into a statement.

Quick as a flash, Riza flung the tablet behind the small log pile where it shattered with a tinkling sound on the wooden floor and looked over her shoulder to the door. Jenny's dark braids swung from her silhouetted head on the doorway.

"Hello Jenny," said Riza, scooting over to make space for her. "Done at the store?" Jenny was two years older than Riza but she sat in the 3rd-grade classes. Her parents worked the farmland and provided fresh groceries for over 100 families. They were always short on field workers during the four seasonal harvests so Jenny rarely showed up at Yiug's only elementary school. Sometimes, Riza sat with her for lunch or walked with her to her parents' grocery store after school.

"No, I snuck out," admitted Jenny. She looked serious. "You should go home. Someone from the military was at the shop asking where your dad lives."

"A soldier?" asked Riza, scrambling to her feet.

"No, this man was definitely more important than that," Jenny told her gravely as Riza stuffed her school books back in the bag. "He was very polite, but he also called your dad a sneaky shut-in."

Riza bristled, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Berthold wasn't a nice man, and Jenny's mom was probably right when she said he was a bad father that one time, but who was this military man to call him names? Waving her thanks to Jenny for the warning, Riza took off towards the rundown stone mansion she and her father called home.

What had he done this time? The gravel kicked up in her wake spattered like little pinpricks on the back of her calves. He sent that super hard-lined apprentice from the lawyer family back home after only three months of his contract (a little over 10 weeks, actually, but that wasn't the argument Berthold made at the semiformal inquiry). They said could burn him to the ground and he'd been stupid enough to laugh in their faces like a maniac. Ugh, why did he have to be so... so...

She rushed up the shambles stairs - the boot tracks were starting to get noticeable, she'd give it a wash tomorrow after school, if Berthold wasn't going to prison. The thought sobered her. She slowed her gait and walked in as calm and dutifully as she could.

"Father, I'm home," she said, careful to pitch her voice the same as she always did every day while slowly looking to the two sitting rooms on either side of the entrance foyer.

A thin, balding man was sitting in the armchair Berthold usually filled with books he was still reading, and the man himself was standing, arms crossed defensively by the fake rest chemistry set he put in the sitting room to fool anyone who happened to get a look at his precious research. Their conversion came to an abrupt halt.

Berthold's shoulders slackened. "Oh," he said, looking at her like he had forgotten she was supposed to be home. "Riza."

"Father, I... I'm home." Her eyes slid to the stranger. His deep blue uniform was crisp and vibrant. Riza suddenly realized how faded and tattered everything in the room was.

"So," the strange man said leaning forward, reminding Riza that the sitting room was also discomfortingly crowded, "this is my granddaughter." A thin, veiny hand extended to her. Riza stared at it. His granddaughter?

"Are you really that cruel!" Berthold insisted with nervous anger. "There's no reason to overwhelm her." The phrase snapped Riza right out of it. She heard some of the moms talking while at the grocery store about how the government sometimes takes pity on children from bad families who can't take care of them properly and puts them in 'better' homes. If this man thought Berthold wasn't a good dad, they'd take her away.

She instantly put her hand in the stranger's and shook it. His hand was strong and firm, more than she expected from his skinny fingers. It didn't hurt like the handshake Mr Kyle from metrics gave her on his birthday. "Are you in the military?" she asked because kids her age were supposed to be curious and unfiltered. Besides, he'd understand if she was worried. State officials didn't usually make house calls.

The man chuckled. "I am. I'm General Grumman. Have you heard about me?"

Riza glanced at her dad, who was beginning to fidget with the elbows of his shirt. "I don't know. We don't really talk about the military a lot here. It's..." she paused, wondering if it was the right thing to say.

"Hm," General Grumman, stroking his greying mustache. "I suppose I should have started off with a letter or two... Oh, wait, I believe I did send a post a couple months back."

"I already told you," Berthold grumbled. "It gets lost all the time, either in here or on the way. Yiug is a remote place."

"It certainly is," agreed the general.

His eyes, they were the same blue as Riza's! His hair was already going grey, but that blond might have been close to hers once, too! Riza never knew a lot about mom, except that she was a casualty of war. A grenade, hidden in the bushes along, left forgotten for years by the side of the road on one of the less frequently used passes. Maybe this man... really was her grandfather.

The general was looking at her, too. He was far more subtle about it, but Riza caught the way his eyes kept shifting back to her. Now, he winked and turned back to Berthold.

"Anyway, I do apologize for dropping by unannounced. But I wanted to meet my granddaughter." General Grumman smiled again, blue glinting over the rims of thin, half-moon glasses.

"And?" said Berthold gruffly.

"And I have a proposal for you." Grumman didn't seem to mean any harm but Berthold bristled anyway.

"I'm not working with the state, Grumman!" he said, cold and unrepentant. "And I told you after Eleanor died, if you're still a dog of the military, then I don't want you around my daughter."

The man who was, apparently, her grandfather let out a sigh and hung his head. That was weird. This man felt like a complete stranger. An interesting one, of course, but he was also a husband, a father, and a general, at least. He'd clearly had a full, busy life. It must have taken hard work and sacrifice to build and maintain that life - he even lost his daughter to the consequences of his career. So, it wasn't such a big deal he didn't know his granddaughter. It wasn't like Riza could ever really get to know him anyway after the military killed mom.

He stood up and extended a hand to Berthold, who looked like he would rather have left it hanging though he begrudgingly shook it. Grumman offered the same to Riza. "I hope we'll be able to get to know each other one day," he said with another pleasant smile.

"Thank you for coming by," Riza said, bowing slightly in apology for her father's brittle method of bringing the visit to a close.

He straightened his jacket and walked out the door. Berthold sank into the armchair wearily. His tired eyes looked at Riza and after a moment he sat up. "How are your friends at school? Are you still playing with Sonya and, uh, Judy?" he asked.

Riza hovered in the doorway. "No, Sonya's family moved North City last fall. I still see Jenny sometimes, when she's at school."

"Ah, right, right." Berthold nodded. His bony hand reached out and encircled her. "Riza. I want you to know I'm not being unfair or stubborn this time. Grumman is a dangerous man. It's his job to order young men and women to kill."

Riza took his hand in both of hers. There was nothing she could say to her father to let him know she understood. The only outcome of war was dead people. That was another belief Riza shared with her father, though she sometimes dreamt that his hatred for Amestris Blue was more about mom than principle. But she could agree that the government sending soldiers in to kill their own civilians even if they were rioting was a terrible thing.

Berthold smiled broadly at his daughter. "You're a good daughter," he said, patting her head.

Riza smiled back. He may be a rude, grouchy person who used lies like bread for breakfast, and he wasn't all that present and available to do the stuff good fathers do for their children, but if there was one thing Berthold never lied about, it was his beliefs, and for that Riza could put up with all the rest. After all, how many people could say their father was an alchemist, who worked for the people, who only taught students willing to do the same, and who unfailingly stayed true to his convictions?

Ridiculous, stubborn, so ground in his own myopic concrete ideals that he couldn't even consider broadening his own mind for one second to see anything from her perspective!

Riza fled the house, her eyes stinging with angry tears she refused to shed.

"Get back here young lady!" her father's voice blasted across the front porch but she'd already cleared the tall grass opposite the road. The line of trees that marked the end of the Hawkeye estate was only 500 meters away - Berthold never chased her so far.

He was so selfish! All Riza wanted to do was sign up for the long-range firing competition. 5 months of working in Mr Bailey's mechanic shop in exchange for the use of his rifle and makeshift target range wasn't an easy thing to manage! She'd had to wake up even earlier to get the chores done - did Berthold even see her chopping the wood or darning his socks by candlelight at 4:30 in the morning? Did he even care that her grades hadn't fluctuated one bit? That she had dinner ready on time, that the food cabinet was always stocked, that the mess of old bits and bobs he refused to throw away were always clean and organized?

Sure, she'd expected him to forbid her from the competition, but who was he to tell her she wasn't allowed to work for Mr Bailey? She wasn't 10 anymore! She was almost a 9th grader!

Berthold didn't care. She could be 30 and he'd probably still scream and shout spittle at any decision she'd make that even so much as breathed the wrong way near one of his principles.

Jenny was already at the shed, but she hadn't gone inside. Instead, she was sitting relaxed, playing with a beheaded reed against the wall; she quickly stood when Riza came crashing through the underbrush. "So, how'd it... oh." Jenny looked disappointed, reading the thunder on Riza's face. "I guess he won't let you play."

"He also quit my job for me," Riza fumed.

Jenny's eyes bulged. "But why?" she gaped, mystified. "I thought he'd be glad you got a job!"

"He said, 'guns are the same as the military and no daughter of mine is ever getting caught up in that traitorous cult.'" Riza plonked on the ground and Jenny followed her, making a sympathetic grimace. "When I'm old enough, I'm going to leave," Riza told her. "I'll get another job, for money this time, save up and go to North City."

"What will you do then?" whispered Jenny conspiratorially.

Riza remembered the images in the daily newspapers and the magazine stall of ladies working with large radio boards, in simple but stylish plain dresses and smiles on their faces. by the old factory. "I'll find a job working for a phone company," she decided. "I heard there are small houses in North City, with just enough space for one person or hostels that only provide room and board to single women. I could live there. And I could go a real gun range."

Jenny grinned. "I can see you as a hunter," she said, rocking back and forth distractedly. She hunched down and put on a masculine scowl, scrunching her upper lip up to her nostrils, "'I'm Riza Hawkeye, and I can hit that there deer from a thousand meters!'"

"Actually, a regular rifle has a 400-meter range, on average," Riza corrected her, but Jenny had made her grin despite herself, so she lent her a real smile to soften it.

Jenny waved her amendment away. Her face grew sober, making her look older than her 16 years. "I'm actually pretty impressed with you," she said, giving Riza a strange look.

"Really?" If she thought about it, Riza was impressed with herself, too. She'd taught herself how to shoot in only 5 months, with a lousy gun and less than that same amount of hours of sleep per night.

"Of course," said Jenny emphatically. "Your dreams were just shattered and you're not even crying or all that angry, really."

Riza blinked at her own confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you just treat it like a piece of chalk that broke because a kid dropped it," continued Jenny, oblivious to Riza's growing displeasure. "Like, it's no big deal, it's just a part of life. Then you make a plan, and it's problem solved. See? You're not even angry at your dad anymore."

"You're wrong."

Jenny looked surprised and a little hurt, so Riza threw her a brighter look to reassure her it wasn't meant to be mean. The lake was grey and cold, the evening fog beginning to creep over the water and up the banks. "I am angry at him. I'm so, so angry at him." But even as she said the words, Riza understood why Jenny had that impression. She didn't speak with the same passion Jenny or the rest of her classmates did when they were excited or angry, and she was often told by adults that she was a bossy, but pleasant going girl although Berthold always complained about her attitude. She didn't mean to look emotionless all the time. It was just that showing excitement or sadness in her face gave the bullies power.

Besides, what was the point of just staying angry? It didn't change anything. If you wanted something to change, you had to make it change and that took effort. Being angry took effort, too. So, change the situation so you don't have to get angry again.

She took the reed from Jenny's fingers and twisted it into a thin ring. "I just... I should go home."

Jenny sighed. "Yes, it's getting darker so fast these days. It didn't get dark so early last year."

It did. There was absolutely nothing different at all this year. It always got darker earlier as the autumn turned into winter.

"Yes," Riza lied. "How strange."

The next day in class, while Mr Kyle was busy writing sums on the board, she drafted a letter. Shooting was her hobby, she wrote, and she wanted to build her own rifle but she didn't know how. Would the recipient have any suggestions for which parts were the best for a beginner, and where she could procure them all the way out in the northern countryside? She addressed it to General Grumman and handed it off to the postman the next day when he came to drop off the usual load of bills, fragile packages of chemistry equipment, and letters from potential clients. It had been 4 years since she first saw the old man who claimed to be her mother's father. If he really was her grandfather, he'd probably send a reply back.

Was it lying if Berthold didn't know?