Anastasia Has the Answers by Lois Lowry

Author:Lois Lowry
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

7

"Rats," said Anastasia gloomily, "it didn't work. I'm sorry to say this, but your mother really acted like a jerk, Daphne."

"I think she's mentally disturbed," Daphne said matter-of-factly. "She used to act fairly normal. But now she's rude to everybody, the way she was to your Uncle George. Boy, will she be mad when she gets her sanity back and realizes she was rude to someone who looks just like Clark Gable."

They were in Daphne's bedroom in the apartment. It was smaller than her old bedroom had been, with just a tiny closet and one window. And it had hideous wallpaper: pale green, with ladies in hoop skirts, holding parasols beside a lake. But on the whole it wasn't a bad bedroom. Daphne had moved all of her stuff, so that the atmosphere hadn't changed; her posters were there on the walls, and her big stuffed dragon still sat on her bed, the way he had in the old house.

But it was true that Daphne's mother had changed. A lot. Back in the old days, when she was the wife of the Congregational minister, she really acted like the wife of the Congregational minister. Daphne and Anastasia had both thought she was pretty boring. She sang in the church choir; she served tea to the Altar Guild; she played bridge; she even taught Sunday school for a while. That was weird, Anastasia thought; Mrs. Bellingham had probably attended Sunday school teacher meetings with the very woman who was going to become her husband's girlfriend.

She flopped down on Daphne's bed beside the stuffed dragon and said, "I just had a weird thought. Your mother taught Sunday school right along with the woman who was going to become your father's girlfriend. And she didn't even know it."

Daphne flopped down beside her, on the other side of the dragon. "Yeah, they were friends. So what? Why is that weird?"

"Well," Anastasia said slowly, "it has ramifications."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that you and I, at this very moment, could already know the people who are going to play a role in our future. We might know the people we're going to marry, for example."

Daphne made a face. "Speak for yourself. I'm not ever going to get married."

"You might change your mind. You used to have a crush on Eddie Fox."

"A crush, sure. Marriage, that's something else again. Look what happened to my parents. Of course, a lot of it was my fault." Daphne stood up and wandered over to the bureau. She picked up a bottle of nail polish. "You want to paint your toenails? I'm going to."

"Okay." Anastasia began unlacing her hiking boots. "What shade is that?"

Daphne read the label. "Fatal Apple."

"That's cool. I used that once before. It has matching lipstick. But I look gross with lipstick on."

They passed the little bottle back and forth and began to paint their toenails. "Don't shake the bed," Daphne said. "I always smear nail polish anyway, and it's worse if the bed jiggles."

Silently, meticulously, they did one toenail after another.

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