Anastasia's Chosen Career Read Online Free PDF Page B

voice, "I've already been on real TV. I was on
Community Auditions
last year."
    Anastasia could hear Henry, beside her, give a low groan.
    "Well, that's real nice, honey," Uncle Charley boomed. "It'll be real helpful to have someone with so much experience in the class." He walked to the doorway and called, "Vera? That last one show up yet?"
    Aunt Vera answered something, and Uncle Charley called back, "Good. Bring him on in so we can get started!"
    Him?
Anastasia looked at Henry in surprise. A
boy?
Henry rolled her eyes.
    Aunt Vera appeared in the doorway, smiling with her lipsticky teeth showing. "Find a seat, son," she said, and stood aside to let a short, stocky boy through. Anastasia didn't want to stare, so she glanced over quickly. She saw a pair of blue trousers. A white shirt and necktie.
Necktie?
That was weird. She and Henry and the other two girls were all dressed casually in jeans. She glanced again at the boy. He had something in his hand. A leather briefcase.
Briefcase?
The only boy she had ever known who carried a briefcase was—
    The boy looked at Anastasia and his face lit up. "Anastasia Krupnik!" he said.
    Oh, no. Oh,
no!
It couldn't be. But it was.
    It was Robert Giannini.

    Anastasia had known Robert Giannini since they were both five years old. They had gone to kindergarten together, and every grade through sixth, until her family had moved away from Cambridge the summer before.
    He had been a wimp even when he was five, even though he didn't have his briefcase then. He had had a little plaid bookbag in kindergarten, filled with pencils that had his name printed on them.
    He had always brought nutritious lunches to school, little salads in plastic containers and vitamin pills. He had brought nose drops—
nose drops!
—to school because he had allergies, and three times a day, for seven years, Anastasia had had to watch Robert Giannini sit at his desk, throw his head back, and stick a medicine dropper in each nostril. Talk about gross.
    He had always offered to be Monitor. Crayon Monitor, Paper Monitor, Hall Monitor: anything that needed a monitor, Robert Giannini had always volunteered. In fourth grade, in a science book, there had been a picture of a monitor lizard, and after that everyone had called Robert Giannini "Monitor Lizard" behind his back.
    In fourth grade he got his briefcase, which he had carried ever since. Each year he had become more and more of a wimp until, in sixth grade, he was a world-class wimp, no question.
    He wore orthopedic shoes.
    He wore galoshes when it rained.
    He watched Channel 2, the educational channel, every single night, and then gave oral reports in class on the programs he had seen, for extra credit. Once—Anastasia could hardly bear even to think about this—he had given a report on human reproduction. Right in front of the entire sixth-grade class, Robert Giannini had stood up and talked about human reproduction, actually saying the words "sperm" and "ova"
out loud.
It was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened in sixth grade.
    But since she had started seventh grade, junior high, in a whole different town, Anastasia had assumed that she would never see him again. She had
vowed
she would never see him again.
    Yet here he was, clutching his leather briefcase, shoving aside a chair so that he could—she looked up—yes; he was actually about to sit down next to her.
    Anastasia had spent her entire age-thirteen life, four months so far, trying to forget that she had ever known a jerk like Robert Giannini.
    And now Robert Giannini had enrolled in modeling school.

    "Now that we're all here, let's introduce ourselves," Uncle Charley announced in his booming voice from the front of the room. "You already know me and Aunt Vera. And you'll be hearing a lot from us this week. So let's hear a little from you. Your name, a little about yourself, and what you hope to get out of the course. Okay? We'll start with you, honey, right here in the front."
    The