Anastasia Has the Answers (2 page)

The test on
Johnny Tremain
was grim. Anastasia hadn't bothered looking at the book again the night before. Now, in school, she answered the questions as well as she could—but she knew it wasn't very well.

When she had finished, she leaned back in her seat and stared out the window of the classroom. Maybe, she thought, instead of a journalist, she should be an English teacher when she grew up. Probably there was a rule that seventh graders had to read a historical novel—that was why they assigned
Johnny Tremain
every year. But she, when she became an English teacher, would definitely assign
Gone with the Wind
in seventh grade.

She began to compose a test on
Gone with the Wind.
The short-answer questions were easy: the names of Scarlett's sisters, stuff like that.

Essay questions were tougher. But Anastasia had a good one:

"Scarlett O'Hara seemed to think that Ashley Wilkes was a wimp. Do you agree, or disagree? Give your reasons."

Anastasia sort of agreed. Ashley and Melanie were
both
kind of wimpy. But she wasn't exactly sure why. She tried to think of some reasons. If they had lived in current times, Melanie probably would have worn lace-up shoes. Ashley would have gone to the symphony instead of rock concerts—just like Anastasia's father, who was occasionally pretty wimpy himself, in a lovable sort of way.

"Anastasia?"

She jumped. It was Mr. Rafferty, standing by her desk and reaching for her test paper. Blushing, she handed it to him.

"Sorry," she said. "I finished a while ago, and I was thinking about other stuff."

"The poem you're memorizing for next week, I hope," Mr. Rafferty said.

"No sweat, I know it by heart already. I gotta go, Mr. Rafferty. I can't be late for my next class."

The other kids in the class were already out of their seats and heading for the hall. Hastily Anastasia grabbed her books and followed them. She caught up with her friends Sonya and Meredith on the way to gym.

"Where's Daphne?" Anastasia asked. Daphne Bellingham shared her gym locker, and they always went to the gym class together. But lately it had been hard to find Daphne a lot of the time.

Meredith sighed. "She's in the guidance office again. Poor Daph. I wish her problems would go away."

"Yeah, me too," Anastasia agreed. "But it would take a U-Haul van to haul them off, she has so many."

"Well," Sonya said optimistically, "at least she's getting Guidance. That's what the Guidance Counselor is for."

"Mrs. Farnsworth?" Anastasia said cynically. "You really think that Mrs. Farnsworth can do anything for Daphne?"

Meredith and Sonya chuckled. Mrs. Farnsworth was a wimp for sure. Compared to Mrs. Farnsworth, Melanie in
Gone with the Wind
was a punkrocker.

And Daphne did have big problems. Her parents had separated and were being divorced. Her father, the Congregational minister, was staying in the church rectory where the family had lived, and Daphne and her mother had moved to a small apartment. Daphne's mother had started a job as a secretary in a lawyer's office.

"Remember Alice in Wonderland, how she drank from that weird magic bottle and ate that freaky cookie and went from large to small and back again? That's how I feel," Daphne had explained to Anastasia. "Family, no family. House, no house. Money, no money. Surprises every day. I never know when I wake up in the morning what that day's surprise will be."

Anastasia hadn't known what to say. "I'm really sorry," was the best she could do.

Now, as she hurried to gym with her friends, she heard the latest news about Daphne. "Her father has a girlfriend, one of the Sunday school teachers at his church," Meredith explained in a whisper. "And Daphne can't decide whether to be nice to her or not. Daphne likes the lady okay, but of course her mother is sort of inclined to commit a really violent murder, maybe bashing the lady over the head with a Bible stories book."

"And Daphne wants to be supportive of her mother," Sonya went on, "so she doesn't really know what to do."

"Well," Anastasia said dubiously, "I don't know what to suggest. I don't even think I could write a newspaper article about Daphne's family. The whos and whats and whens and wheres and whys are too complicated."

***

In the gym, Anastasia stood in line with the other girls when Ms. Willoughby blew her whistle. But her shoulders were slumped. She wasn't even thinking about Daphne—who was still in the guidance office and hadn't shown up for gym—anymore. She was thinking about herself, and about the disgusting ropes hanging from the ceiling of the gym.

Everybody else in the class—even Sonya, who was overweight—could climb those ropes. But Anastasia couldn't. She could do everything else okay—all the gymnastics stuff, even the parallel bars and the horse—but she couldn't climb the ropes at all.

And Ms. Willoughby had just announced that they were going to do rope-climbing first, before playing basketball.

I love almost everything about Ms. Willoughby, Anastasia thought. I love her looks (Ms. Willoughby was a tall, lanky black woman); and I love her clothes (in gym class, Ms. Willoughby wore a Vassar sweat shirt and blue denim shorts; out of gym, she wore layers of high-fashion skirts and shirts and sweaters, sometimes several on top of each other—Anastasia thought it the most glamorous way of dressing she had ever seen); and I love her personality (Ms. Willoughby was witty and cheerful and funny); and I love her name (Ms. Wilhelmina Willoughby).

But I hate, hate, HATE her ropes.

Anastasia had even tried to think of a way to sneak into the junior high school gym after dark, when no one was there, and to climb up and take down those six hateful ropes.

But there was no way to do it. She couldn't climb them to begin with—that's why she hated them. So how could she climb up to take them down? Even if she could manage that,
she
would be left way up there perched in the rafters, about a million miles high.

"Six lines, ladies!" Ms. Willoughby blew her whistle and the seventh-grade girls formed six lines. Anastasia stood miserably at the end of one, waiting.

"
Phweet!
" The whistle blew, and six girls ran forward and climbed the ropes. Meredith was one, and she moved like a monkey all the way to the top and then back down again in no time.

It must be because her parents are Danish, Anastasia thought gloomily.

"
Phweet!
" Six more girls, squealing and giggling, climbed the ropes. Anastasia shuffled forward in line.

"
Phweet!
" This time Sonya was one of them. Maybe it's
because
she's plump, Anastasia thought—she would never even have thought the word "fat" about one of her best friends—maybe plump people get better leverage or something.

"
Phweet!
" Ms. Willoughby blew the whistle a final time, and Anastasia ran forward dutifully toward her enemy rope. She leaped and grabbed. Her grab was good and high because Anastasia was one of the tallest seventh graders. But her feet just dangled.

She looked to either side. The other girls had all managed to wind their legs around the rope the way they were supposed to. Ms. Willoughby had shown them how at least a billion times. But Anastasia's feet dangled. When she tried to grab the rope with her feet and legs, it began to swing in circles.

"Hold the rope for her, Sonya," Ms. Willoughby called, and Sonya ran forward and held the bottom of Anastasia's rope. But it didn't help. Her feet kicked in space and her arms ached. Around her, the other girls were already starting back down their ropes.

"
Phweet!
" Everybody landed on the floor, including Anastasia, who hadn't gone anyplace at all, who had simply dangled in the air. She flushed in embarrassment.

"Get the basketballs, girls!" Ms. Willoughby called. "Anastasia," she said more quietly, "come over here for a minute."

Anastasia walked miserably over to Ms. Willoughby. She was looking at the floor. The other girls were all at the opposite end of the gym, shouting and thumping and bouncing the basketballs.

"I can't do it," Anastasia said in a quavery voice. "I try, but I can't do it."

Ms. Willoughby put her arm around her. "Don't feel bad," she said. "You always try hard. That's the important thing."

"But everybody else can do it," Anastasia said. Embarrassed, she felt a warm tear slide down her cheek.

"One of these days you'll amaze yourself. You'll leap up there and you'll just keep going, all the way to the ceiling."

"You think so?" Anastasia asked, sniffling.

"Sure I do. I
know
so. And you're great at basketball. How about being captain of one team this period?"

"Okay," said Anastasia, beginning to feel a little better.

Ms. Willoughby blew her whistle once again, and Anastasia followed her to the other end of the gym to form the teams.

***

Sam was playing with Mrs. Stein when Anastasia got home from school. They had built a tower of blocks on the living room floor.

"Hi, Sam," said Anastasia. "Hi, Gertrude."

"Gertrustein and me are playing 'Bash the Castle,'" Sam explained. "Watch!" He ran to the other side of the room. "Ready, Gertrustein?" he called.

"Ready!" Gertrude Stein called back, and she moved out of the way. Anastasia stood back, too. She had played "Bash the Castle" with Sam herself and knew how lethal it could be.

"BASH!" Sam came zooming across the room, and the tower flew in all directions.

"Good one, Sam," said Gertrude. "But time to pick up the blocks, now. I'm going to start dinner."

"I invented that game," Anastasia said, as she knelt to help pick up the blocks. "I invented that game when I was three years old, just the age Sam is right now. I probably should have patented it and copyrighted it and sold it. I would be a millionaire by now."

"I invented blue milk from food coloring," Sam said. "Could I be a millionaire from that?"

Anastasia shrugged. "I dunno. What about you, Gertrude? Did you ever invent anything?"

Mrs. Stein thought. "Crawling on the floor playing with blocks at the age of seventy-six, as a cure for arthritis. How about that?"

"I don't think it'll sell," Anastasia told her regretfully.

Sam was asleep, and Anastasia had helped Gertrude with the dishes. Now that Gertrude was ensconced in front of the TV with her favorite program on, Anastasia went to the garage.

It was dark outside, and she turned on the light inside the garage and looked around. There was her parents' battered old car—they had taken a cab to the airport—and there was her father's workbench, with a few scattered tools.

Anastasia grinned. Her father was a terrible handyman. He hit his thumb if he tried to hammer a nail; and if he happened to hit the nail, it bent.
He had to squint through his glasses, aiming a screwdriver at the head of a screw, and even then, he rarely hit it right.

Once, they had decided that Sam would enjoy a tree house. So Anastasia and her father went to the lumberyard and bought wood.

The boards were still there, leaning against the wall of the garage.