Anastasia Again! by Lois Lowry Page B

smoking cigarettes was gross.
    And some kids she knew occasionally drank beer in their rooms. But there was always beer in the Krupniks' refrigerator, and whenever her father drank a beer, he gave it to her first, so that she could sip off the foam, because he didn't like foam. So she was actually pretty bored with beer, and it never seemed like a big deal, the way it did to some kids.
    And of course lots of kids read dirty books in their rooms and hid them under the mattresses. But Anastasia's house had always been filled with books, and some of them had sex in them, and she had always been allowed to read whatever she wanted. Anastasia thought that dirty books were generally not as gross as cigarettes, but rather like beer: interesting now and then, in small doses, but no big deal.
    So there was not, really, anything private in her room except her private notebook, and she didn't even need to hide that. Her parents had told her once that they would never read her private notebook. So she had tested them a few times, by leaving it around the house conspicuously, with an almost-invisible hair on it, which would be dislodged if anyone opened the notebook. She had learned that trick from spy novels. But the hair always remained in place. Her parents really
hadn't
opened it. Sam had, once, and scribbled with crayons on a few pages. But Sam couldn't read yet.
    Still, even though she didn't need a private place for
subversive stuff, she did like having a room that was very private. It was quiet. It was a good place to read, or to think, or to daydream, or to be sad.
    Right now she was lying on her bed, wondering what to do next Saturday when Robert Giannini showed up in the suburbs.
    First of all, it was a problem because she didn't want Steve Harvey to know that the Other Man in her life carried an idiotic briefcase everywhere and wore a SeaWorld tee shirt.
    It was okay for Steve Harvey to know that there
was
an Other Man. In fact, it was probably a good thing. It made her seem
desirable,
at least, and according to
Cosmopolitan,
that was a good thing. "Keeping Him on His Toes" was the title of the article that had pointed that out.
    But keeping Steve Harvey on his toes was one thing; keeping him doubled over, laughing, when he
saw
Robert Giannini was something else again.
    She reached out and peeled another strip of old wallpaper from the wall, while she thought. Her wastebasket was almost full of crumpled bits of old wallpaper.
    Second—Anastasia almost groaned aloud—was the problem of what to do about Sam, when Robert Giannini came. Probably that jerk was going to show up with a get-well card and a March of Dimes contribution for Anastasia's poor crippled, deformed brother.
    Downstairs, she could hear the familiar padding sound which was Sam wandering around the big house in his little red sneakers. On his two very sturdy, healthy legs.
    Maybe she could just shut him in his room while Robert was visiting. But that wouldn't work, she knew. Sam never stayed anyplace where you put him. He was always popping out of doors, doing his Ed MacMahon imitation. "Heeeeeere's Johnny!" Sam would announce loudly and wait for applause.
    Maybe if she fed him a lot of beer, he would just go to sleep for a long time. But Sam didn't
like
beer. He didn't even like foam. It made him sneeze.
    Maybe she could convince him to just sit in his stroller with a blanket over his legs. But it was ninety degrees outside. Nobody in his right mind would sit in a stroller with a blanket over his legs when it was ninety degrees.
    Anastasia sighed and pulled off another strip of wallpaper. There were three layers of wallpaper. After she pulled off a piece of the top layer, she could see green flowered paper underneath. If she picked at that and peeled it off, there was a blue striped paper under that. Finally, behind the blue striped paper, there was bare plaster. It made kind of interesting designs, as she poked and peeled at the three layers.
    "Anastasia? You