Anastasia on Her Own by Lois Lowry

"What can we talk about when she calls?"
    "I'll talk about my trucks," Sam said, and pushed his yellow dump truck across the floor.
    "And I'll ask her about recipes," Anastasia said, "since I'm in charge of the cooking."
    "And I," said Dr. Krupnik, "will talk about the weather, and maybe the car."
    They all sighed with resignation. "We sure are going to be boring conversationalists," Anastasia pointed out.

    Anastasia dumped a can of baking powder into Sam's bath water. Sam watched with interest.
    "It's burping!" he said.
    And it was. The water bubbled and made small explosions here and there. "Well," Anastasia said, "I guess it's supposed to do that. Climb in, Sam. It'll make your itching go away."
    Sam giggled and climbed into the tub. "I'm having a burp bath," he announced.
    "Well, stay in there and soak real good. I have to make some phone calls."
    Anastasia kicked off her shoes and stretched out on her parents' bed beside the telephone. First she called Steve. She knew it was poor taste for a girl to call a boy, because Ann Landers had said so, and generally Ann Landers gave pretty good advice. But she called Steve anyway.
    "Well," Steve said, after Anastasia had explained (although she didn't go into detail about Annie), "I guess I could come for dinner. What're you having for food?"
    Anastasia was quite sure that Ann Landers would consider that a rude response. But she didn't want to louse up her date with Steve by commenting on his manners. And she knew that food was important to Steve; he always gave special instructions for his Big Macs.
    "I don't know yet. But it'll be good. I'm going to spend the rest of the week preparing for Friday night, since I can't go to school anyway. Did anything interesting happen in school today?"
    "Yeah," Steve said, "you got a new name. Anachronism. Anachronism Krupnik."
    "Thanks a
lot.
What does it mean?"
    Steve chortled. "Look it up in your dictionary," he said, using the English teacher's high-pitched voice. "Use it three times and it will be yours."
    Anastasia glowered. "I'll see you on Friday night," she said, "at seven."
    "Sure," Steve replied before he hung up.
    Anastasia lay on the bed, listening to Sam singing a song he had just composed about burping, as he splashed in the tub. It was weird, thought Anastasia, her very first date. She liked the
idea
of it. But Steve was obnoxious. Somehow it wasn't what she had envisioned. Being picked up in a taxi, having a corsage pinned to the shoulder of a shimmering gown, listening to violin music in a dimly lit restaurant, and clinking champagne glasses together while gazing into each other's eyes was what she had always daydreamed about. "What're you having for food?" didn't seem to fit into her daydream. "Anachro———" What was that word? It didn't fit, either. "Darling" was what you should be called on your daydream date.
    Then she remembered something that her mother had once told her. Her mother had said that people have to make their own daydreams come true.
    Anastasia tucked that away in her mind to think about some more. She still had three days left before her first date. If she worked at it, maybe she could create the scene that she had daydreamed. Also, she would have to create a new housekeeping schedule in order to prepare.
    She reached for the phone again and called Daphne. It was important, in talking to Daphne, to be supercool. After some casual chat about school ("Marlene Braverman has mono," Daphne announced; "Boooring," Anastasia replied), she said, "I gotta go. I have to call Sonya and Meredith, still. Oh, by the way, I have a date Friday night."
    Gleefully she heard Daphne's stifled gasp. Daphne had been hanging around with Eddie Fox all year, but they had never had a real date.
    Then Daphne pulled herself together. "With who?" she asked in a bored voice.
    "Whom, Daph," Anastasia corrected. "With
whom.
It's with Steve."
    "That turkey."
    "Yeah," yawned Anastasia.
    Next she called Sonya. You didn't have to be