Read Online Anastasia on Her Own by Lois Lowry - Free Book Online

orange-and-white-striped plastic tablecloth, which they used in the summer when they ate on the picnic table in the yard. Obviously that wouldn't do.
    But the only other tablecloth was white. White was not a passionate color. Even the article pointed that out; it had rated white very low on the passion scale.
    She decided to think some more about tablecloths. There would be some solution, she knew; she only had to think of it.
    She glanced through the article again, and read what it said about flowers. There had to be flowers. Flowers were a MUST for a romantic evening.
    But the yard around the house was covered with snow. She would have to think more, to come up with a solution to the flower problem.
    Music. That was essential, too; but that would be easy. Her father's record collection covered almost an entire wall in the study, and it was arranged alphabetically. The article listed several extremely romantic pieces of music, and she found one with no trouble at all: Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. She put it on the stereo and listened for a few minutes. PERFECT. It was so romantic—so
passionate
—that Anastasia almost passed out, listening to it. No
wonder
she'd never heard it before; her father had probably been saving it until she was old enough to understand passion.
    And now, of course, she was. Now she was having her first date.
    Sam sauntered into the dining room, in his pajamas, while Anastasia was still looking at the table with its two purple candles.
    "You shouldn't be barefoot, Sam," Anastasia said. "You'll catch cold."
    "No, I won't," Sam said. "I have chicken pox instead. When do I get my bath in that other stuff, so I won't itch?"
    "In a minute, after I figure this out."
    "Figure what out?"
    "How to create a purple tablecloth. All we have is this white one."
    "You could color it," Sam suggested, and fished a purple crayon out of the coffee can of crayons that Anastasia had taken off the table.
    "It wouldn't work. Thanks, Sam, but that's not a good solution." Suddenly she thought of something. The word
solution
had been the key. "I'll dye it!" Anastasia said. "They have all these bottles of dye at the grocery store, and when I call in the order of groceries to be delivered, I'll have them send some purple dye!"
    "I itch," said Sam.
    "Okay. Come on, and I'll fix you a bath with baking soda in it."
    Sam trotted behind Anastasia while she went to . the kitchen and found the box of baking soda. This time she looked at what was written on the box. "Hey," she said with satisfaction, "look at that. It says, right on the box, 'soothes minor skin irritations.' If I'd read the boxes yesterday, I wouldn't have used the wrong stuff last night."
    "But then," Sam pointed out as he followed her up the stairs to the bathroom, "I wouldn't have had that burping bath."
    "True." Anastasia emptied the box of baking soda into the tub and turned the water on. When the bathtub was full she stripped Sam's pajamas off and helped him in. "Now soak for a while," she said, and handed him some plastic boats, "while I call the grocery store."
    At the kitchen telephone, Anastasia consulted the cookbook that she had studied after breakfast. Her magazine article had suggested veal as a romantic dinner, so she had found a veal recipe called Ragout de Veau aux Champignons. Even the name sounded passionate. It looked somewhat complicated, but she had three days to work on it, she figured, and undoubtedly she could master it in that time.
    "Hi, Mr. Fortunato," she said when the grocer answered the phone. "It's Anastasia Krupnik. I'm in charge because my mother's away, so I want to order some stuff and have it delivered."
    "Sure thing," he said. "Your mama told me you might be calling. What do you need?"
    Anastasia looked at the recipe. "Three pounds of boneless lean veal cut into one-and-a-half-inch chunks," she said. "Wait a minute, Mr. Fortunato; it says 'see notes preceding recipe.'"
    "Take your time."
    Anastasia flipped the page back