Anastasia Has the Answers (9 page)

CRASH.
Anastasia's daydream ended abruptly because she had stumbled on the back steps of her own house. Two months of math homework papers had flown out of her notebook into the rhododendron bushes. She had ripped one knee of her jeans, and her elbow felt scraped. The best sticker on the cover of her notebook was torn.

Hastily, from the spot where she was sprawled on the steps, Anastasia glanced around. Next door, Mrs.
Steins curtains were drawn. Good. She hadn't seen it. No one was passing in the street or on the front sidewalk. The Krupniks' kitchen windows were empty; the garage doors were closed; Sam's tricycle was parked in a corner of the driveway, but he was nowhere in sight.

What a relief. No one had noticed what a colossal fool she had made of herself. Anastasia began to pick up the scattered books and papers quickly, before anyone could come along and ask what had happened. Just as she had thrust the last of the math papers back into her notebook, the kitchen door opened and Uncle George looked out.

"Oh, hi, Anastasia," he said. "Is everything okay? I was listening to your dad's Billie Holiday records and suddenly I heard a thump."

Anastasia stood up and smiled, even though her elbow and knee both throbbed. "Everything's just fine, Uncle George," she said. "I was just practicing a little precision marching routine that we do in gym class."
Thump, thump;
Anastasia held her head up high and marched firmly up the back steps and through the door, which her uncle was holding open.

"That's pretty good," Uncle George said in an admiring voice. "It reminds me of when I was in the Marines thirty-five years ago."

"Yes, well, I owe it all to my gym teacher," Anastasia replied. She continued marching right through the kitchen and into the bathroom to apply some wet Kleenex to her bleeding elbow.

***

That night, despite her still-aching wounds, alone in the garage, Anastasia did it. She got to the halfway point, the way she had the previous afternoon, and she just kept going. Somehow it was suddenly easy; her feet grabbed the rope just right, and her hands moved one after the other the way they were supposed to, and she didn't panic and didn't slow down—and it worked. She went all the way to the top, touched the beam up there by the ceiling, and lowered herself back down.

"I did it!" she shrieked, dashing into the kitchen where her parents and uncle were lingering over their after-dinner coffee. "Look!"

She held up her index finger, covered with dust from the top of the old beam. "I got all the way to the top!"

Her mother hugged her. "Congratulations!" she said. "I knew you could!"

"A-plus," her father said proudly. "I knew you could, too."

Uncle George shook her hand.

"I have to call Daphne," Anastasia said. "Excuse me." She went to the telephone in the study.

"
Great,
" Daphne said when she heard the news. "I really felt sorry for you in gym, Anastasia. It's really crummy when everybody else can do something and you can't. I felt that way once at summer camp before I learned to swim. I was still in Advanced Beginners and every single other person my age was in Junior Lifesaving."

"Do you think I ought to call Ms. Willoughby and tell her, so that I won't have to do the whistle tomorrow when all those visitors are there?"

"Call a teacher at home? That's kind of a weird thought. I suppose you could, if she's in the phone book, but—hey, Anastasia, I have a better idea!"

"What?"

"Surprise her, and everybody. Just wait till everyone else has done it, and then—heck, you've got the whistle—just announce one final event, and it'll be
you!
That'll blow Willoughby's mind; she thinks you're so uncoordinated."

It was just like Anastasia's latest daydream. Imagine that, thought Anastasia: a daydream that can turn into reality. Boy, there aren't very many of those!

"Do you think she'd get mad?"

"Willoughby? Mad?" Daphne hooted. "She never gets mad, Anastasia. She'd
love
it."

Anastasia decided that Daphne was probably right. Maybe she would do it.
Probably
she would do it. Just like the daydream.

For once, Anastasia didn't wear jeans to school. The students hadn't been told to wear anything special on Wednesday, but most of them did anyway. The boys seemed to be wearing chinos instead of jeans, and sport shirts with creases ironed into the sleeves. Many of the girls were wearing dresses or skirts.

Lesley Ann Roth, who always, always,
always
wore the same Jordache jeans and a Brown University sweat shirt to school, was wearing a Laura Ashley dress. Anastasia looked with surprise at Lesley Ann's legs, and whispered to Daphne, "She actually has skin! I thought she was completely made out of denim!"

Daphne whispered back, "That dress cost ninety-something dollars. I tried it on once at the store, but my mother wouldn't buy it for me. She said that ninety Ethiopians could eat for a month on that."

Anastasia giggled. She pictured Ethiopians munching on the flower-sprigged Laura Ashley dress, even though she knew that wasn't what Mrs. Bellingham had meant.

Anastasia didn't really like dresses herself. They made her feel self-conscious. But this year, in seventh grade, she had been observing Ms. Willoughby's layered look very closely; and at home, secretly in her room, she tried to imitate it. So far it hadn't ever worked. When she put on a leotard, and over it a denim skirt, and over that a paisley wraparound skirt (sneaked out of her mother's closet), and on top a turtleneck shirt, with a cotton blouse over that, and a suede vest (sneaked out of her father's closet) on top of that—well, she groaned when she looked into the full-length mirror on the back of her door. She looked like a bag lady. She looked like a sausage. She looked like a person wearing six layers of clothing—which was exactly what she was. But why did Ms. Willoughby look so glamorous when
she
wore six layers of clothing?

It was simply one of those life mysteries that Anastasia had begun to think might never be solved. Today she had given up her experiments and was wearing only her boring denim skirt with a boring striped blouse.

But she felt terrific. She felt terrific because she was somebody who was going to recite a terrific poem in front of a group of very important visiting European educators, and after that she was somebody who was
maybe
—if she decided to do it—going to surprise an entire gym full of people, including Ms. Wilhelmina Willoughby, by climbing a rope. "'O world,'" Anastasia murmured to herself, smiling, "'I cannot hold thee close enough!'"

There was no sign of the visitors in the school, no hint of their presence in homeroom while attendance was being taken. Maybe they didn't come, Anastasia thought anxiously. Maybe their plane was late.

But then the intercom crackled and the principal's voice began an announcement. "Good morning, students," she said much more politely than usual. "I know you all want to join me in welcoming today's visitors, the International Commission for Educational Excellence. Just think: two days ago they were in Brussels, Belgium, visiting a school, and tomorrow they will be in Indianapolis! Aren't we
fortunate
that they've chosen
our
school as their only stop in the New England area!"

Quit gushing, Mrs. Atkins, Anastasia thought. Go back to being your own normal sarcastic self. How about your usual big lectures about litter in the halls or graffiti in the bathrooms? How about announcing the lunch menu: canned wax beans and cold pizza slices, so that the International Commission for Educational Excellence might consider sending nutritional aid?

But Mrs. Atkins had disappeared from the intercom, and it was time for Anastasia to gather her books and go to English class.

Even Mr. Rafferty had dressed for the occasion, and instead of his usual rumpled, ink-stained clothing, he was wearing a neatly pressed dark suit and a necktie with tiny sailboats on it. "Good morning, class," he said nervously as the seventh graders filed in.

In the back of the room, against a little-used blackboard, six strangers, four men and two women, were standing. They were holding notebooks, exactly as they had in one of Anastasia's fantasies. But they weren't wearing uniforms. They were wearing ordinary clothes. They looked like ordinary people. Anastasia smiled shyly at one of the women, who seemed to be looking at her, and the woman smiled back.

"Today, class," Mr. Rafferty announced, "instead of our usual work on grammar and punctuation, I believe we will try some poetry recitation."

Several students snickered. Mr. Rafferty was trying to make it sound as if he had just casually decided on poetry. Actually, he'd been browbeating them for three weeks to get those assigned poems memorized.

"O world—" thought Anastasia. She knew the poem absolutely by heart. She could almost say it backwards. She hoped that Mr. Rafferty would call on her first.

But he didn't. "Emily Ewing?" he said.

Teacher's pet, straight-A, flawless-skinned, gets-to-go-to-Bermuda-every-Easter Emily Ewing went to the front of the room. Her long, straight dark hair was absolutely smooth and shiny. Once Anastasia had read an ad in a magazine, an ad for some strange religion run by a guy in California. R promised "Perfect Happiness." Anastasia remembered thinking, when she read it, that she didn't need to go to California and join that religion; she would have Perfect Happiness if only she could make her hair look like Emily Ewing's.

Emily Ewing smiled politely at the visiting educators grouped in the back of the room and began to recite her poem.

"
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though...
"

Anastasia yawned surreptitiously, cupping her hand over her mouth, while Emily went on and on through the verses of the poem. It was, actually, a pretty good poem. Anastasia wouldn't have minded if Mr. Rafferty had assigned it to her instead of "O World."

Emily did what Mr. Rafferty had suggested, speaking almost in a whisper since the poem was about snowy, quiet woods.

"'And miles to go before I sleep,'" she whispered at the conclusion. "'And miles to go before I sleep.'" Then she smiled again at the back of the room—good grief, Anastasia thought; she almost
curtseyed
—and went back to her desk.

Now maybe he'll call on me. Krupnik, Krupnik, Krupnik, Anastasia thought, attempting to use ESP on Mr. Rafferty.

But Mr. Rafferty didn't get a chance. One of the visiting educators—one of the men—spoke, in what sounded like a German accent. His
w
's all came out like
v
's.

"Ve vould like to qvestion Miss—vat vas it, Youving?"

Mr. Rafferty looked startled. Emily Ewing looked even
more
startled. She turned, in her desk, toward the back of the room.

"Vould you stand, please?" the man asked.

Emily Ewing stood.

"Tell us, please, vhy you tink dis poet repeated dat last line. Am I correct, no odder lines are repeated in dis poem?"

"Yessir, that's right," Emily said.

The man waited for her to respond to his question. Emily looked panic-stricken. The six educators all had their little notebooks and their pens poised.

Mr. Rafferty looked suddenly pale. His mouth formed a wan and sickly smile. "Emily?" he said.

"Well, ah, I guess Frost repeated that last line because all the other stanzas had four lines each, and if he hadn't said that line twice, then there would only have been three lines in that last..." Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

"But don't you see," the man went on, "dat makes for a different rhyme pattern in dat final stanza? Vhy vould he do dat? Maybe—" the man gave an odd little chuckle "—he vas a stupid poet?"

"Oh, no, I don't think so," Emily said miserably. "But I don't know why he did that with the last stanza."

"Tank you," the man said. He looked at his colleagues. They all nodded. They all made notes in their notebooks. Emily sat down.

Call on me, call on me, call on me, Anastasia ESPed to Mr. Rafferty. She could see that he was looking around the room, trying to decided whom to call on next. I know my whole poem perfectly, she tried to signal to him telepathically, and I can answer any question they ask me. I
know
I can.