Anastasia at This Address Read Online Free PDF

it a little better, of course, but
still:
"friend"? Come on.
    416 wasn't
that
many. He could have written everyone's name in personally, she thought, even if he had to take a day off from work to do it.
    She felt a little annoyed at—Anastasia looked at the signature again, to see SWM's name. She had thought of him as SWM for so long now that a different name felt oddly unfamiliar.
    Especially a name like Septimus Smith.
    Nothing wrong with Smith. But
Septimus?
What the heck kind of name was that?
    Was he named after a month? Did he have brothers named Octimus and Novimus? Anastasia giggled.
    Well, she decided, she would just have to get used to it.
    Anastasia Krupnik-Smith, she said to herself.
    Not too shabby.
    Maybe, if she never got used to Septimus, she could call him by a nickname. Smitty was a nickname, sometimes, for Smith. Maybe she would call him Smitty, or something.
    "Good evening," she said in a sophisticated voice to her goldfish, "I'm Anastasia Krupnik-Smith, and this is my husband, Smitty."
    Frank Goldfish stared at her with a nonplussed look.
    Whoops. For a minute there, she realized with an embarrassed giggle, she'd been thinking about marriage, something she had renounced.
    Rereading the letter, Anastasia realized that he had singled her out, even if he had begun the letter badly, with "Dear friend." She decided to forgive him for "Dear friend" because farther along he had actually mentioned her specifically. Out of the 416 people who had sent letters, only one had sent
three
letters.
    Obviously Septimus Smith was already just a little bit fascinated with Swifty.
    She read on. Siamese cats. No prob. Anastasia hadn't had a cat for years, not since she was about six years old. Her father—just like Septimus Smith—was allergic to cats.
    Sitka, Alaska? Too bad, lady, thought Anastasia. You're out of the running. Back to your dogsled and igloo—Septimus Smith isn't interested.
    His address was New York City. Boston was only an hour away by plane. Heck, they could have what magazines like
Cosmopolitan
called a commuter marriage—
    Whoops. She'd done it again. Forgotten that she had renounced marriage. Anastasia laughed self-consciously.
    She read on.
    He was very interested in the lady who had her own sloop. What the heck was a sloop?
    Here was where the problem came. Although Septimus Smith had singled her out—"the person who has so far written to me three times"—he clearly was
very
interested in "the person who has her own sloop." He had come right out and said so.
    Anastasia didn't know if she had her own sloop or not because she didn't know what a sloop was.
    She looked around her room, thinking about the kind of stuff she had. She had neat wallpaper, with people riding old-fashioned bicycles. She had a terrific chair, which had once been in the study until its stuffing began coming out. Her parents had given it to her for her room, and she had covered the torn places in the upholstery by spreading a bright yellow beach towel over the chair.
    She had fourteen interesting sweatshirts, which her mother said was a disgusting number of sweatshirts when one considered the people in Ethiopia, who had no sweatshirts at all.
    She had a pretty good bike, down in the garage.
    She had hundreds of books; a gift certificate from Benetton, saved ever since her birthday; a fantastic-looking goldfish; a pair of 14-karat gold earrings that had belonged to Aunt Rose (Uncle George had given them to Anastasia after Aunt Rose died, and Anastasia had not had the nerve to ask whether Aunt Rose had been wearing them
when
she died, but maybe it didn't matter); and she had boots from L. L. Bean.
    She had programs from several Red Sox games, and one of them had Marty Barrett's autograph on it.
    Anastasia realized, looking around, that she had a whole lot of valuable stuff.
    But she had a feeling that she probably didn't have a sloop.
    Also, she had a funny feeling about Septimus Smith's request for a photograph.
    She sighed