Anastasia's Chosen Career Read Free Page B

Anastasia would have been a much better Class Secretary, but she hadn't had the confidence.
    Soon I will, Anastasia thought with satisfaction.
    She read the final phrase at the top of the paper. INCREASED MATURITY.
    It didn't seem as important as poise and confidence. Anastasia's parents assured her often that she was very mature for thirteen. She read mature books, watched mature programs on TV, behaved in a mature way, not whining and fooling around the way her brother did. Sometimes she
sulked,
true; but mature people sulked now and then. Her mother had sulked all evening the time that she spent hours making a casserole with a whole lot of fancy ingredients and then practically no one in the family would eat it. Anastasia had started to eat it, until she found out that it contained liver, which she hated. Her father had started to eat it, until he saw an artichoke heart, which he hated. Sam ate it, because Sam ate just about anything, but Mrs. Krupnik had sulked anyway. Anastasia had acted very maturely on that occasion, going to the kitchen to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for herself and her father.
    It was the small print, farther down, that Anastasia really liked; and she read it now, again and again.
videotaping

hair styling

make-up instruction

posture clinic

voice modulation

diet modification

fashion consultation
    She wasn't quite sure what "modification" or "modulation" meant. But since the whole $119 week was called "Junior High Models Workshop," she figured that they had to do with modeling. Weird. Maybe you modeled clothes and modificated your diet and moduled your voice. She would learn about all that stuff when she took the course.
    Of course, if she became a fashion model, there would be a whole new set of problems, Anastasia realized. She propped up her notebook again, ducked her head, and whispered, "Sonya?"
    Sonya lifted her notebook and looked over from her desk. "What?"
    "Would you pose for nude photographs if they asked you?" Anastasia whispered.
    "New photographs? Of course. Especially if I lost weight. I'd throw my
old
photographs away. They're all
fat
"
    "Not new.
Nude,
" Anastasia whispered.
    Sonya looked puzzled. "
Noon
photographs?" she asked.
    "
NUDE,
" Anastasia said aloud.
    Everyone in the study hall burst out laughing. Mr. Earnshaw stood up, straightened his glasses, and aimed his eagle eyes at Anastasia.
    "Anastasia Krupnik," he said, "I'll speak to you here at my desk privately, as soon as the bell rings." Then he smiled a pinched, sarcastic smile. "Fully clothed, of course," he added.
    Blushing, Anastasia began to arrange her books. Poise and confidence: she thought hard, willing those two qualities into herself as she prepared to explain to Mr. Earnshaw. Poise and confidence.

    "I have to confess I'm a little nervous about modeling school," Anastasia said to her parents that night. Sam was in bed, and they were sitting in the study in front of the fireplace. Her father had put one of his favorite records on the stereo. His eyes were closed, and he was directing the music with his hands in the air.
    "Ta da dum, ta da dum," he sang softly, with the record. "Hear that phrasing? Mozart was a genius."
    Anastasia nodded politely, even though her father still had his eyes closed and couldn't see her. He was so weird when he got involved with Mozart. Her mother just smiled and continued knitting.
    Anastasia didn't know a single kid who knit, or who listened to Mozart. She wondered how those things came about. Did you wake up one morning, suddenly, at age seventeen or so, with a sudden urge to knit mittens? And when did Mozart happen? Her father had once told her that he had loved the Beatles when he was young. What had gone wrong? Had he, years before, maybe when he was in college, had an overwhelming desire one day to turn off
Sergeant Pepper
and replace it with a symphony? She would have to ask him. But not, she knew, while the record was playing.
    "Of course you're nervous," her