Anastasia at This Address by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online

wear falsies," Anastasia said quickly and firmly. "Absolutely not. I
know
it might make the dress fit better, but it would be
fake,
and I won't do it."
    "I will," Daphne said. "I think it'd be neat to wear falsies. Remember, Anastasia, the time you stuffed pantyhouse into a bra, and—"
    Anastasia blushed, and all four of them giggled. Frank flicked his tail in disdain.
    "It's not about falsies," Meredith explained. "It's about
boys.
"
    "Boys?"
    "Yeah, the opposite sex, the one we renounced, remember?"
    "What about them?" Anastasia asked. She wondered for a second whether the mail had arrived yet. Not that the mail had anything to do with
boys.
    "Well, last night we—me, my mom, and Kirsten—were addressing wedding invitations. They made me promise to use my very best handwriting before they let me do any."
    "You have pretty good handwriting, Mer," Anastasia remarked. "Mine stinks. Mr. Rafferty made me rewrite my whole entire paper on
Johnny Tremain
because he couldn't read my handwriting."
    "Yeah, I know. Yours is awful. Mine's not so bad, though. Anyway, we were doing the invitations last night. I did the ones for your families. We put Sam in, Anastasia, so he's invited, too. But we only did your parents, Sonya. You have too many brothers."
    "That's okay," Sonya said, munching on a cracker. "I hate my brothers, anyway."
    "You didn't invite my mom and dad together, did you?" Daphne asked in a horrified voice. "They don't even
speak
to each other since they got divorced."
    Meredith shook her head. "Of course not, stupid," she said. "Your dad's the minister. He's
doing
the wedding. What do they call it? He's performing the wedding."
    "Officiating," Daphne said.
    "Right. He's officiating. So we didn't send him an invitation since he'll automatically be there. I addressed one to your mom, though."
    Daphne rolled her eyes. "She won't come. Not if my dad's there. If that's the moral question, forget it. She won't come."
    "If you'd just let me finish, please?"
    "Sorry. I know she won't come, though." Daphne reached over and took a Ritz cracker from the box on Sonya's lap.
    "Here's the moral question," Meredith said in a serious voice.
    The other three girls were all silent, waiting.
    "There are four invitations set aside, not addressed yet. There'll be dancing at the reception, and my mom thought we'd each like to invite a, well, a you-know-what."
    "A boy," Sonya said. "Like Norman Berkowitz."
    "A boy," Daphne said. "Like Eddie Cox."
    "A boy," Anastasia said. "Like Steve Harvey."
    "Yeah," Meredith acknowledged. "A boy. Like Kirby McEvedy."
    They all sighed and were silent.
    "We did give them up, you know," Sonya said.
    In a slow, thoughtful voice, Anastasia pointed out, "We only gave up
chasing
them."
    "This wouldn't be chasing them, would it?" Daphne asked. "Sending an invitation wouldn't be
chasing,
exactly."
    "Well, that's what I thought," Meredith explained. "But I wanted to check with you guys. We
will
need someone to dance with. I don't want to end up dancing with my father and my grandfather."
    "I sure don't want to dance with
Sam
" Anastasia said.
    "This is a toughie," Sonya said in a serious voice. She reached into the box for another cracker. "Rats. It's empty already."
    Anastasia twisted around in her chair, reached into a desk drawer, and handed Sonya an open box of animal crackers. "Sam left these here," she said. "He ate all the elephants."
    "Thanks." Sonya tossed the empty Ritz box into the large wastebasket and started on the animal crackers. "Will there be any other guys there? People we could dance with?" she asked.
    Meredith shook her head. "Just old guys," she said. "Friends of Kirsten and Jeff. And my uncle Tim is coming from out of town, to be an usher—he's real good-looking. But he's old, too. He finished college already."
    "Well," Daphne said slowly. "It looks to me as if we have to make a sacrifice here."
    "Sacrifice dancing? Not dance at all, at a wedding reception, with a live band, and we have those