Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page A

would like a fly-tying kit for her birthday?" asked Meredith. She held up a musty box.
    "No," said Anastasia. "She'd like an ashtray shaped like a pair of hands."
    "Here, Anastasia!" said Sonya, who was still looking through the bookshelf. She pulled out a thick blue book. "The complete works of Freud! Just the thing for you!"
    "I read it the other night," Anastasia said. She moved around to the end of the bookshelf and knelt to examine a box full of kitchen utensils on the garage floor. Suddenly there was a shifting noise; she glanced up and saw Sonya attempting to return the blue book to the crowded
shelf. Like dominoes, all the books began to tilt and lean; finally they fell to their sides, one after another. Above Anastasia, at the end of the shelf, where it had been placed as a bookend, something large and cream colored—something very solid looking—wobbled and fell.
    Anastasia jumped aside, but not quickly enough. The object whacked the corner of her forehead—she winced with the sharp pain—and then crashed to the floor.
    "Ow," muttered Anastasia. She rubbed her forehead, and could feel a bump starting to rise. "Am I bleeding?"
    Sonya examined her. "No," she said. "It's okay, I think. You should put ice on it when you get home. I'm really sorry."
    They looked down at the object on the floor. It was the head of a man, a plaster bust of an old-fashioned bearded man with solemn eyes. And no nose. His nose was lying beside him on the floor of the garage.
    The price tag taped to the man's head said $4.50.
    "Well," sighed Sonya. "There goes
Wuthering Heights.
I guess I just bought myself a noseless man."
    Anastasia picked up the nose and held it against the serious plaster face. "Hello," she said. He stared back at her with blank eyes.
    "I kind of like him," she told Sonya. "You know what? I think I'll buy him—then you won't have to, even though you broke him. I think Elmer's glue will reattach his nose."
    "Really? You really like him? You're not just saying that because you feel sorry for me?"
    Anastasia tucked the man under one arm and headed for the person who was collecting money in the nearby corner. "Nope," she said to Sonya. "It was like I said to Meredith. Something would strike me."
    She gave a five-dollar bill to the woman sitting at a card table with a box of change. She pocketed two quarters in return.
    "Young lady," said the woman, who had gray hair and large horn-rimmed glasses, "you got a great bargain. You just bought yourself Sigmund Freud."

    "Mom? Dad?" called Anastasia as she went in through the back door, clutching Freud under one arm. "I need ice cubes because I got whacked on the forehead."
    "And guess what?" she added. "I have a psychiatrist!"

    Half an hour later, after an ice-cube treatment, Anastasia's bump had disappeared, leaving only a pinkish bruise. And Freud, after a treatment of Elmer's glue, had his nose back. Anastasia carried him upstairs toward her room.
    She found Sam sitting unhappily on the stairs to the third floor. He was sucking his thumb, and his old security blanket was wrapped around his arm. Now that Sam was three, he rarely needed the yellow frayed blanket that had been his constant companion when he was younger. Anastasia knew that something must be terribly wrong.
    "Hey, old Sam," she said, "what's the matter?"
    He looked at her fearfully. "Don't go up to your room," he said.
    "Why not? I have to take my friend Freud up there."
    Sam sucked harder on his thumb.
    Anastasia knelt beside him. "Were you in my room?" she asked.
    He nodded miserably.
    "Did you do something bad?"
    Tears began to stream down Sam's cheeks. Anastasia set Freud on the step. "Tell me what you did, Sam."
    "I broke the gerbils," Sam sobbed.
    Anastasia started up the stairs. Behind her, Sam followed, still crying and trying to explain. "I just only reached in to pat them, and I was very very gentle like you told me to be, and they just
broke!
There are a million pieces of gerbil all over the