Anastasia Has the Answers Read Free Page B

and beaming with pride. Caption: "'I always knew this girl could do it! She was my very favorite student!' says former gym teacher, now personal manager for famed athlete Krupnik."
    Anastasia threw the rope in the air toward the rafter. It went a few feet into the air and then thumped heavily onto the wooden floor of the garage and lay there in a heap.
    Okay. So she couldn't throw a big rope that high. Who could? Nobody but Superman. Time to use the old brains instead of the muscles.
    Anastasia draped the rope over her shoulder and climbed onto the hood of her father's car. The metal creaked ominously. Carefully she planted her sneakers and stood up, steadying herself by holding onto the radio antenna.
    She was still too far from the beams. She could tell without even throwing the rope this time.
    Okay. Onward to plan 3-C. Anastasia sat down on the roof of the car, with her legs in front of the windshield. Carefully she skootched backwards and over the luggage rack until she was sitting like Buddha in the center of the car roof. She could feel it give a little, as if the roof might be starting to sag.
    "Crummy Detroit cars," Anastasia muttered. "If we were rich he could buy a BMW and it would withstand anything."
    Very slowly she stood up, with her sneakered feet apart for balance and the rope still draped over her shoulder. She measured the distance to the beam with her eyes. It looked manageable.
    She uncoiled the big, bristly rope and arranged it in a throwing position. She aimed, watching the rafter high above her. Then she threw.
    And it worked! Now she had the rope up there, one end dangling over the beam. Very carefully she maneuvered the end she still held, shaking it gently so that the dangling end moved downward slowly.
    There was a shriek. "Anastasia!" The door to the garage burst open. "ANASTASIA! STOP! Suicide is never the answer!"
    Anastasia turned toward the door in surprise. The rope fell to the floor.
    "
Rats,
" she said, glaring at the tangled heap of rope. "Hi, Daphne."
    ***
    "Did you walk over?" Anastasia asked, when she and Daphne were in the kitchen, sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows. "Does your mom let you wander around like that after dark? Mine wouldn't."
    Daphne shrugged. "It's only a few blocks, and I told her I'd be back in an hour. She thought I was going to see my dad, so of course she let me go. She wants me to act as a spy and tell her everything that's going on."
    Anastasia felt sad. The house where Daphne used to live—the house where Daphne's father still lived—was right around the corner from the Krupniks. In the good old days—before the Bellinghams separated—Anastasia and Daphne had run back and forth between the two houses all the time.
    "Anyway," Daphne went on, "my mom's so depressed she hardly notices what I do. She says things like, 'Comb your hair' or 'Do your homework' the way all mothers do, but then she never checks to see if I've done it. I could go out with my hair a big disgusting mess and she'd never even—"
    "You did, Daph."
    "Did what?"
    "You went out without combing your hair. It's pretty gross, Daphne," Anastasia said, and giggled.
    Daphne felt her hair and laughed. "Yeah. Well, I forgot. My mom used to notice stuff like that, but now that she's so depressed—"
    "What about your father? Isn't he depressed, too?" Anastasia asked. She remembered that when her parents had a fight, as they did occasionally,
both
of them were pretty miserable until they made up.
    But Daphne shook her head. "Not really, because he's dating this woman. She teaches the fourth-grade Sunday school class. I remember she used to make really neat shadow boxes of Bible stories. Daniel in the lion's den and stuff, with little toy lions, all in a shoe box. She borrowed the plastic palm tree from my turtle bowl."
    "Is he going to marry her?" Anastasia asked. She tried to imagine what it would be like if her parents married other people. The thought of her father liking a woman who put plastic