Read Online Anastasia Has the Answers by Lois Lowry - Free Book Online Page A

feet would instantly find their grip. Up she would go: so smoothly, so lithely, so quickly that the audience would hold its collective breath. From high above them, she would hear the "
Ooooooh
" as she nimbly performed her most amazing feat, something never attempted before in the junior high gym. She would move from one rope to the next, and then the next: back and forth between the six ropes, like an acrobat, her toes pointed, twirling now and then, extending one arm gracefully, looking down with a poised smile.
    A sequinned outfit with pink tights would be better, Anastasia realized, than a royal blue gym suit. But no matter. The costume wasn't the important thing. The important thing was the skill, the daring, the absolute fearlessness and agility with which she dazzled the crowd below.
    "I dedicate this next stunt—" she would call. No, wait; "stunt" wasn't right. "I dedicate this next
feat
to that most illustrious gym teacher, Ms. Wilhelmina Willoughby!"
    Silence would fall upon the awed crowd. Anastasia would look down to see Ms. Willoughby's face, rapt with pleasure, pride, and delight, looking up at her.
    Let's see. What would the feat be? Maybe she could leap, no hands, from one rope—somersaulting in the air—over to the top of the basketball backboard, soaring through the—
    CRASH.
Anastasia's daydream ended abruptly because she had stumbled on the back steps of her own house. Two months of math homework papers had flown out of her notebook into the rhododendron bushes. She had ripped one knee of her jeans, and her elbow felt scraped. The best sticker on the cover of her notebook was torn.
    Hastily, from the spot where she was sprawled on the steps, Anastasia glanced around. Next door, Mrs.
Steins curtains were drawn. Good. She hadn't seen it. No one was passing in the street or on the front sidewalk. The Krupniks' kitchen windows were empty; the garage doors were closed; Sam's tricycle was parked in a corner of the driveway, but he was nowhere in sight.
    What a relief. No one had noticed what a colossal fool she had made of herself. Anastasia began to pick up the scattered books and papers quickly, before anyone could come along and ask what had happened. Just as she had thrust the last of the math papers back into her notebook, the kitchen door opened and Uncle George looked out.
    "Oh, hi, Anastasia," he said. "Is everything okay? I was listening to your dad's Billie Holiday records and suddenly I heard a thump."
    Anastasia stood up and smiled, even though her elbow and knee both throbbed. "Everything's just fine, Uncle George," she said. "I was just practicing a little precision marching routine that we do in gym class."
Thump, thump;
Anastasia held her head up high and marched firmly up the back steps and through the door, which her uncle was holding open.
    "That's pretty good," Uncle George said in an admiring voice. "It reminds me of when I was in the Marines thirty-five years ago."
    "Yes, well, I owe it all to my gym teacher," Anastasia replied. She continued marching right through the kitchen and into the bathroom to apply some wet Kleenex to her bleeding elbow.
    ***
    That night, despite her still-aching wounds, alone in the garage, Anastasia did it. She got to the halfway point, the way she had the previous afternoon, and she just kept going. Somehow it was suddenly easy; her feet grabbed the rope just right, and her hands moved one after the other the way they were supposed to, and she didn't panic and didn't slow down—and it worked. She went all the way to the top, touched the beam up there by the ceiling, and lowered herself back down.
    "I did it!" she shrieked, dashing into the kitchen where her parents and uncle were lingering over their after-dinner coffee. "Look!"
    She held up her index finger, covered with dust from the top of the old beam. "I got all the way to the top!"
    Her mother hugged her. "Congratulations!" she said. "I knew you could!"
    "A-plus," her father said proudly. "I knew you