Read Online Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble - Free Book Online

tomorrow morning, as usual?”
    â€œSure thing,” I tell him. Then I sit back, pretend everything is normal, and listen as Tess and her father banter back and forth about nothing much in particular.
    â€œThanks, Mr. E.,” I say when we get to my house a little while later. “See you tomorrow.” I slide over to the door and grab my bag. Tess reaches over and gives my free hand one more squeeze. I look at her, and she smiles.
    â€œBe careful, Annie Bananie,” she says, using the name she used to call me when we were eight.
    â€œWill do,” I assure her, although I’m not sure why she’s said it. Do I really have something to be careful about?
    They drive off down the block, and I let myself into the empty house. Our tabby cat, Buster, races in from wherever he’s been hiding and meows hopefully, rubbing himself around my legs.
    â€œIn a minute, Buster,” I say to him. “Just let me put my bag down, and I’ll feed you.” I reach down and scratch his ears. He allows me a few seconds of petting him and then slips away and pads toward the kitchen. I follow.
    There’s a note on the fridge from my mother, detailing, in her slightly compulsive way, what’s available for dinner and how I should go about preparing it. The leftover spaghetti is in the blue Tupperware on the second shelf of the fridge. As though I’d be completely flummoxed if the note simply said, Spaghetti in fridge.
    I pour some Purina in Buster’s dish and then snap on the kitchen television to keep me company as I—phew!—manage the task of heating up leftover pasta in the microwave.
    A few minutes later, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, scooping the now reheated pasta primavera onto a plate. On the television, E! is showing part three of a special series about celebrity weddings—just the type of mindless distraction I need. Then, as I reach for my fork, I glance idly at my hand—and notice that it seems to be glowing. Yes, glowing—a distinctive, blue and white aura type of glowing. My fork clatters to the table, startling Buster, who runs from his food bowl, an angry look on his little cat face.
    I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them, my hand is—well, just a hand again.
    So I sit there while the E! reporter gushes over Angela Kurasowa, baker to the stars, and Buster edges cautiously back to his dinner, and my pasta cools and congeals on my plate. Either this is indeed the strangest day ever, or I’m losing my mind.
    Maybe a little of both.

The Forest, Midnight
    Anastasia
    At night, next to me, my matroyshka doll whispers. I am not Vasilisa, and this is no fairy tale, but still she talks, which is a secret that not even Auntie knows. She is the nesting doll my mother gave me—my mother, who believed, even until the end, that there was more to this world than we could see, although I think those thoughts were part of what destroyed us. Because in looking so intently at what might be, my mother did not always see what truly was.
    Like the parts of the matroyshka doll herself, the truth is sometimes hidden. Layered so deeply, each piece inside the other, that it’s often impossible to see. Even so, I do not question the idea of the doll’s speaking. I simply listen.
    Be sure to sweeten Auntie’s tea the way she likes it, she tells me. Three sugar cubes should be just right. Or, Be kind to Auntie’s black cat. Feed it tidbits from your plate when Auntie is not looking. Or what she tells me tonight, just as I am about to drift off to sleep, hoping the dreams will not come again.
    Listen carefully, Anastasia, she tells me, even though her red painted lips do not move. You must not sleep tonight. You must stay awake and watch Baba Yaga. Promise me, Anastasia. It is important that you know what she does. That you see what she sees.
    Ever so slightly, I turn my head. Across the room in her rocking chair, Auntie stares into the fire,