Anastasia on Her Own by Lois Lowry Page A

Good Times Dance Studio again," the man said. "You asked me to call you back. Have you thought about the tap-dancing offer? First lesson's absolutely free."
    "Well, I've sort of been thinking about it. But I have some questions. Is it important to be graceful? I don't seem to be a very graceful person. I bump into stuff a lot, and knock things over. Right when I was talking to you before, I tried dancing across the kitchen, and I bumped into the handle on the refrigerator door."
    "Sounds as if you're just the right kind of person for dancing lessons," the man said. "Dance lessons turn an awkward person into a graceful person, give self-confidence, increase poise."
    "Well, I
could
use an increase in poise. And I'm not real big on self-confidence, but my mother said that self-confidence is something that increases naturally with age."
    "We've had students who arrived for their first lesson absolutely quaking with shyness, and by the end of only
one
lesson, their inhibitions were lessened, their natural grace was enhanced—did I tell you that the first lesson is free?"
    "Yeah. Oh, HOLD IT! My onions are burning! Call me back later, would you?"
    Anastasia hung up the phone and ran to the stove to rescue her onions.
    She scraped at the bottom of the pan with a spatula. "Only the bottom ones are burned," she said. "And actually, I
like
the taste of burned onions."
    "Me too," said Sam.
    "Good. Then it doesn't matter that they got burned. The meat looks okay." Anastasia stirred the browning veal with a wooden spoon. "In fact, it looks much better, now that it's not pink."
    She read the next part of the recipe. "Now I add the veal to the onions, and I put the wine into the veal pan and mix it with the meat juices. Heck, that's simple. I wonder why people think gourmet cooking is hard."
    She transferred the meat to the pan where the onions were. She got out the bottle of wine that Mr. Fortunato had sent.
    In the corner of the kitchen, the washing machine clicked and changed from wash to rinse. Anastasia examined the bottle of wine. "Good," she said, "right on the label it says 'extra-dry.' Just what the recipe wants." She tried to remove the cap from the bottle.
    "That's weird," she said to Sam. "This cap won't unscrew."
    Sam glanced over. "Daddy uses that special thing," he said.
    "
What
special thing?"
    Sam sighed, climbed out of his chair, and went to the top drawer of the cupboard. He took something out, handed it to Anastasia, and went back to his elephant picture.
    Anastasia turned it over and over in her hands. Her index finger, she noticed, was still purple. "What is this thing, Sam?" she asked. "It looks like a lethal weapon. How does it work?"
    Sam shrugged. "I don't know." He began to color the elephant's left leg green.
    The telephone rang. Anastasia answered it with the weapon in her hand.
    "Did you save your onions?" the man asked. "This is Ralph, at the Good Times Dance Studio, calling back."
    "Yeah, the onions are okay," Anastasia said. "But I'm glad you called. Do you know how to open a bottle of wine?"
    "Sure. Do you have a corkscrew?"
    "Is that the thing with a curly metal part, and two weird handles on the sides?"
    "Right."
    "Well, I've got one right here. How does it work?"
    "You'll need both hands," said the man. "Can you wedge the phone on your shoulder?"
    "Yeah." Anastasia wedged the phone between her ear and her shoulder, and followed Ralph's instructions carefully. She screwed the corkscrew into the cork, and then carefully lowered the two raised handles. With a squishy
pop,
the cork emerged.
    "Hey, that's neat!" she said to the man on the phone. "Thank you. I bet I could do it all by myself next time."
    "See how with proper instruction, your self-confidence increases? The same thing is true, of course, with tap-dancing lessons."
    "Yeah, well, listen, I don't feel ready to make a decision about tap-dancing when I'm in the middle of all this gourmet cooking. Could you call me back in about an hour?"
    "Will do,"