Anastasia's Chosen Career by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online

there in the corner and come on into the back room with me. I have some sandwiches there for us."
    Anastasia followed the woman, looking around at the cluttered, colorful store. Bookstores were among Anastasia's favorite places; maybe they were even first on her list, or at least tied for first with libraries. She sometimes thought that she would like to live in a library, not even having a kitchen—just going out to eat, and spending all the rest of her life surrounded by books.
    But maybe it would be even better to live in a bookstore. Heck, if you owned the bookstore you could even put a kitchen in the back—she could see now, entering the back room, that Barbara Page did have a coffeepot there, and a small sink—and you'd never have to leave at all. Just live surrounded by walls of bookshelves. Read and read and read, and sometimes stop to eat a little. What a great life.
    Suddenly Anastasia began to feel very happy about her chosen career.
    "Do you
live
here?" she asked.
    Barbara Page nodded. "Sort of," she said. "Actually, my husband and I live upstairs, in the house part. But I just come down that little staircase over there every morning—" she pointed, and Anastasia could see the bottom of a narrow staircase behind a partly opened door—"and voila! I'm at work."
    "That's neat."
    Barbara Page uncovered some sandwiches that were waiting on a paper plate. She poured Coke into two plastic glasses.
    "You're right," she said. "It
is
neat. Hey, how's your dad? I love your dad's books. Is he working on a new one?"
    Anastasia nodded. "Yeah, but it won't be done for a long time. He's right at the point where he says he's going to burn the whole thing up and start a new career, maybe as a tennis pro."
    "I didn't know he played tennis."
    "He doesn't. But it doesn't matter, because he's not
really
going to be a tennis pro. It's just what he says when he's in the middle of a new book. After he says that, it's usually about six months before the book is done."
    "Here. Eat." Barbara Page handed Anastasia half of a tuna fish sandwich, and Anastasia took a bite.
    The telephone on the messy desk rang. The bookstore owner swallowed her own bite of sandwich, picked up the phone, and said, "Pages, good afternoon."
    Anastasia listened while she ate her sandwich and sipped at her Coke. It wasn't really eavesdropping, she figured, because after all, she was sitting right there beside the telephone. And anyway, it was a business call, so it was a good way to get information about her chosen career.
    "Well, Mrs. Devereaux, I'm really sorry to hear that," Barbara Page was saying. "It got great reviews, and I thought it was exactly the kind of book you'd like."
    She listened for a moment, making a silent face at Anastasia, and then went on, "I wouldn't call it trashy, Mrs. Devereaux. The
New York Times
said it was hard-hitting and realistic, but they thought it was brilliant. And the author
did
win the Pulitzer Prize last year."
    Finally, after listening again, she said politely, "Of
course
you can return it. I'll just credit your account. You drop it off next time you're down this way."
    After she had hung up, she groaned. "That woman. Honestly. She buys books, reads them, and then returns them and asks for her money back. You'd think she'd go to the library instead.
    "This is the third one she's returned since September. And she always spills coffee on them, too, so I can't resell them."
    Anastasia was astonished. "But that's not
fair!
" she said.
    Barbara Page chuckled. "It's the breaks," she said.
    While Anastasia ate her sandwich and drank her Coke, she listened to Barbara Page answer the telephone three more times. She listened to her say to someone, "I don't carry cassettes, I'm afraid. But you could try Barnes and Noble."
    Then she heard her say to someone else, "I do
have
that book here, Mr. Phelps. But to be honest, I don't think it would be the right birthday gift for your mother. She's had trouble reading since her cataract