Anastasia's Chosen Career (3 page)

EXTRAORDINARY EXCELLENCE
EMILY EWING

and everybody voted for her. But Emily always forgot to go to the meetings. She only wanted to be Class Secretary because she wanted her picture in the yearbook. Anastasia would have been a much better Class Secretary, but she hadn't had the confidence.

Soon I will, Anastasia thought with satisfaction.

She read the final phrase at the top of the paper.
INCREASED MATURITY.

It didn't seem as important as poise and confidence. Anastasia's parents assured her often that she was very mature for thirteen. She read mature books, watched mature programs on TV, behaved in a mature way, not whining and fooling around the way her brother did. Sometimes she
sulked,
true; but mature people sulked now and then. Her mother had sulked all evening the time that she spent hours making a casserole with a whole lot of fancy ingredients and then practically no one in the family would eat it. Anastasia had started to eat it, until she found out that it contained liver, which she hated. Her father had started to eat it, until he saw an artichoke heart, which he hated. Sam ate it, because Sam ate just about anything, but Mrs. Krupnik had sulked anyway. Anastasia had acted very maturely on that occasion, going to the kitchen to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for herself and her father.

It was the small print, farther down, that Anastasia really liked; and she read it now, again and again.

videotaping
hair styling
make-up instruction
posture clinic
voice modulation
diet modification
fashion consultation

She wasn't quite sure what "modification" or "modulation" meant. But since the whole $119 week was called "Junior High Models Workshop," she figured that they had to do with modeling. Weird. Maybe you modeled clothes and modificated your diet and moduled your voice. She would learn about all that stuff when she took the course.

Of course, if she became a fashion model, there would be a whole new set of problems, Anastasia realized. She propped up her notebook again, ducked her head, and whispered, "Sonya?"

Sonya lifted her notebook and looked over from her desk. "What?"

"Would you pose for nude photographs if they asked you?" Anastasia whispered.

"New photographs? Of course. Especially if I lost weight. I'd throw my
old
photographs away. They're all
fat
"

"Not new.
Nude,
" Anastasia whispered.

Sonya looked puzzled. "
Noon
photographs?" she asked.

"
NUDE,
" Anastasia said aloud.

Everyone in the study hall burst out laughing. Mr. Earnshaw stood up, straightened his glasses, and aimed his eagle eyes at Anastasia.

"Anastasia Krupnik," he said, "I'll speak to you here at my desk privately, as soon as the bell rings." Then he smiled a pinched, sarcastic smile. "Fully clothed, of course," he added.

Blushing, Anastasia began to arrange her books. Poise and confidence: she thought hard, willing those two qualities into herself as she prepared to explain to Mr. Earnshaw. Poise and confidence.

"I have to confess I'm a little nervous about modeling school," Anastasia said to her parents that night. Sam was in bed, and they were sitting in the study in front of the fireplace. Her father had put one of his favorite records on the stereo. His eyes were closed, and he was directing the music with his hands in the air.

"Ta da dum, ta da dum," he sang softly, with the record. "Hear that phrasing? Mozart was a genius."

Anastasia nodded politely, even though her father still had his eyes closed and couldn't see her. He was so weird when he got involved with Mozart. Her mother just smiled and continued knitting.

Anastasia didn't know a single kid who knit, or who listened to Mozart. She wondered how those things came about. Did you wake up one morning, suddenly, at age seventeen or so, with a sudden urge to knit mittens? And when did Mozart happen? Her father had once told her that he had loved the Beatles when he was young. What had gone wrong? Had he, years before, maybe when he was in college, had an overwhelming desire one day to turn off
Sergeant Pepper
and replace it with a symphony? She would have to ask him. But not, she knew, while the record was playing.

"Of course you're nervous," her mother was reassuring her. "You were nervous when you began your job last summer. You were nervous the first day of school. Everybody's nervous when they set out on a new venture."

"Actually," Anastasia reminded her, "I have
two
new ventures going on at the same time. When I go to Boston, I'm not only going to go to the modeling course; I'm also going to do the Bookstore Owner interview...."

Her mother looked at her warily. "Anastasia,
promise
us that you will go directly to the bookstore. And to the modeling course. And to and from that bus. No fooling around in the city."

"Fooling around?
Moi?
"

The music stopped, and Dr. Krupnik stood up to turn the record over. "I want you to listen carefully to the third movement," he said.

"Myron," Anastasia's mother said, "do you have any advice for Anastasia about the interview?"

"You could ask her why my book sold only three copies in her store," he suggested.

"Ha ha," Anastasia said sarcastically. "I wouldn't ask something like that. It's important to be super-polite during the interview. We have this sheet of instructions. Also we're supposed to ask open-ended questions."

"What's an open-ended question?" asked Mrs. Krupnik.

Anastasia remembered the instructions their class had been given. "Well," she explained, "if you just ask, 'Do you like being a bookstore owner?' she could just say yes or no. And it would be boring. So, instead, you ask, 'What exactly do you like about being a bookstore owner?' Then she has to
say
something. That's an open-ended question."

Her father frowned. He was holding the arm of his stereo turntable carefully in his hand. "Now pay attention, you guys. This third movement is incredible," he said.

"Dad," Anastasia asked, "what exactly do you like about Mozart? That's an open-ended question."

"Shhhhh," said her father.

Anastasia Krupnik

My Chosen Career

After a lot of careful thought, I have decided that for my chosen career I am going to be a bookstore owner. To be a bookstore owner it is necessary to have increased poise and self-confidence. So as part of the educational requirements it is probably a good idea to take a modeling course.

The bus will be late, Anastasia thought, stamping her feet in the snow. I know the bus will be late. The bus will be late, and then I will be late, and I'll be the only person in the whole class who is late. How humiliating. They'll probably kick me out, before I ever start. And they'll make me pay the money anyway. I'll have to pay the whole $119, and they won't even let me take the course because I'm late the first day.

But then she heard the hiss of brakes and looked up, and the bus was there.

Waiting in line behind a lady who had to wrestle two small children up the slippery bus steps, Anastasia looked at her watch.

I'm going to be early, she thought. Good grief. I'm going to be a whole half hour early. I'll be the first one there, and they'll all laugh at me. How humiliating. The earliest one there. You're not
eager
or anything, Krupnik?

The bus lurched, starting up, and Anastasia stumbled toward an empty seat after paying her fare. I hope this is the right bus, she thought nervously. What if I got on the wrong bus? What if this bus is headed to New York or something? Oh, great. I should have asked the driver if this was the right bus.

She looked toward the front and studied the back of the bus driver's head. He was a middle-aged man with a mustache, and he was staring straight ahead as he drove, squinting against the bright sunlight reflected off the snow.

That looks like a New York bus driver, Anastasia decided. I am on the wrong bus. Good grief, I am going to New York. I always
wanted
to go to New York someday, but I sure didn't want to go to New York all by myself, wearing jeans. How will I get home?

"You going shopping?"

Anastasia was startled when the woman beside her spoke. She glanced over at an elderly woman in a tweed coat, clutching a fat green pocketbook in her lap.

"Excuse me?"

"I asked if you were going shopping. I'm going to Filene's Basement. I go to Filene's Basement every day. The only way you can get bargains is to go every single day. Are you headed for Filene's?"

That was a relief. Filene's was in downtown Boston, so she was on the right bus. Anastasia shook her head and smiled politely at the lady. She had promised her mother and father that she wouldn't speak to strangers, but she figured that shaking her head and smiling politely was okay.

The woman kept on talking. "Half the people on this bus are going to Filene's Basement. Right now you see them all in coats and hats, right? Half an hour from now, they'll all be standing around Filene's Basement in their underwear."

Anastasia stared at her. "I beg your pardon?" she asked.

"No dressing rooms," the woman explained. "So you have to try things on right out in the open. That woman over there—you see her, in the blue hat? She always wears two slips, one on top of the other."

Anastasia blinked her eyes and looked straight ahead. Ten minutes after I promise my parents that I won't talk to strangers, she thought, and here I am involved in a conversation about underwear.

"So," the woman continued, while she opened her pocketbook, took out a compact, opened it, and examined her lipstick in the mirror, "are you going shopping?"

"No," Anastasia said uncomfortably, "I'm going to modeling school."

The woman snapped the compact closed. "Oh," she said, "Of course. I should have guessed."

"Guessed? Why?"

"Because you're tall," the woman said. "And thin."

Anastasia slouched down in the bus seat gloomily. Thanks a lot, she thought. You
could
have said "because you have such great cheekbones."

The woman droned on and on, talking about the bargains in Filene's Basement, but Anastasia stopped listening. She began to picture herself at the end of the week, getting on this same bus Friday afternoon, maybe sitting beside this same lady. Ha. The woman would look exactly the same—green pocketbook, frizzy gray hair—but Anastasia would be entirely different. Tall, yes. Thin, yes. But poised, confident, with—she thought about the small print on the paper—a new hair style, a modificated diet, better posture, a moduled voice, and an entirely revised sense of fashion.

She remembered that it had said make-up, also. Anastasia had never worn make-up. Well, not
really.
Occasionally she had
tried
wearing make-up, but it never seemed to work. She didn't seem to have the hang of it. But of course modeling school would teach her that.

Now the bus was entering the city. Anastasia peered through the grimy window and watched the tall buildings pass. She watched all the poised, confident people striding briskly along the sidewalks. Soon she would be one of them—well, not
that
one, she thought, as she spied an obese woman waddling along, bellowing at a small child scurrying by her side.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the yellow slip of paper on which her father had written the address of the bookstore and its name: pages.

What a neat name for a bookstore, Anastasia thought:
Pages.
The owner had probably agonized for hours and hours before she thought of the perfect name.

Anastasia thought about some questions she could ask the owner.

"Was it fun, choosing just the right name for your bookstore?"

No. That wasn't open-ended. The owner could just say, "Yes."

Anastasia tried to rephrase the question. "What thinking process did you go through, choosing just the right name for your bookstore?" There. That was just right.

Maybe, she realized, in order to be super-polite, she ought to include the woman's name in the question. "What thinking process did you go through, choosing just the right name for your bookstore, Ms.—" She looked again at the paper and read the name of the owner.

BARBARA PAGE.

Oh. Well, maybe she
hadn't
agonized for hours and hours before she thought of the perfect name for her bookstore.

The bus slid to a stop and interrupted Anastasia's thoughts. They were here: downtown Boston. She could see the Boston Common on one side of her and the State House, with its gold dome, beyond.

She waited while the people around her stood and made their way to the front of the bus: women, mostly, with shopping bags, umbrellas, and pocketbooks. They looked like housewives, grandmothers, schoolteachers; Anastasia found it hard to believe that within a few minutes they would all be standing around Filene's Basement in their underwear.