right thing, not about the new house. What a horrible thought, a new house. Even thinking about Robert Giannini was better than thinking about a new house.
"What would happen," she asked slowly, "if we made
this list about what we want in a house, and then we couldn't find a house that had those things?"
"Well," said her father, "I suppose we'd have to give up and stay here. But I think we can probably find what we want. Look: we've put down a room for your mom to paint in, with lots of light. And a study for me, with bookcases. While your mind was drifting there, off in space somewhere, we added a yard, for Sam. Can't you think of anything that
you
want, Anastasia?"
"Yes," said Anastasia, realizing suddenly that she had solved everything, that they would not have to leave the apartment, not have to live in the suburbs after all. "A tower. I want a house where I can have a room in a tower."
To her surprise, her father wrote that down.
***
"The Mystery of the Girl Who Lived in a Tower," Anastasia wrote dreamily.
Then she looked at that title. Good grief. It sounded like a Nancy Drew title. Probably on the library shelf of twelve thousand Nancy Drew books, there was already one called "The Mystery of the Tower Room" or something.
She tore that page out of her notebook and threw it away. It was much harder to write a book than she had ever realized it would be.
3
"Telephone for you, Anastasia!" her mother called from the kitchen.
Anastasia put down her book and walked toward the kitchen, thumping her hand along the wall.
"Who is it?" she asked her mother,
"I don't know. I didn't ask,"
"Boy or girl?" What a dumb question.
Boys
never called her.
"Girl." Of course,
She took the receiver and stretched the cord so that she could take the phone into the pantry.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Anastasia. This is Robert."
"
Who?
"
"Robert Giannini."
"Oh. I thought it was a girl."
Good grief. What an incredibly dumb thing to say. It wasn't Robert Giannini's fault that his voice still sounded like a girl's. Anastasia sat down on the pantry floor and wanted to die on the spot.
"No, it's Robert." Maybe he hadn't noticed the incredibly dumb thing she had said.
"Hi, Robert."
"Hi."
If only she had paid more attention to the
Cosmopolitan
article on being a spritely conversationalist. It had had a section about Phone Flirtation. Not that she cared.
Robert wasn't very spritely at conversation either, for pete's sake. Now they had each said hi twice, and no one was saying anything.
"I was just wondering the other day," Anastasia said, finally, "what you do with your briefcase in the summertime." Good grief. What an idiotic thing to say. As if she'd been
thinking
about him, or something.
"I keep stuff in it. I collect stuff."
"Oh."
"You want to go collect stuff with me?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, do you want to go ride bikes and maybe go down by the river and see if there's any interesting junk lying around?"
"Oh. Well, okay."
"Today do you want to do it?"
"Yeah, okay."
"I'll meet you down at your corner. In about an hour, okay? I could come sooner but I have to take a shower first."
"Okay. Good-by."
Anastasia groaned after she hung up the phone. If only he hadn't said that about the shower. The absolutely last thing in the entire world that Anastasia wanted to know was that Robert Giannini was taking a shower, for pete's sake. It was the most embarrassing thing she had ever heard.
She wandered back into her bedroom, looked around at the clothes strewn on the floor, and had a horrible thought. She had nothing to wear. The jeans she was wearing had paint on one knee. Everything on the floor or the bed or the chair—or in the closet, for that matter—was either too small, or incredibly ugly, or else Robert Giannini had already seen her wearing it.
Maybe she should call him back and tell him she couldn't go. But then he would ask why, and she would have to say she had no clothes, and that would be too embarrassing.
She