Anastasia Forever

by Joy Preble

  I think this is why last Sunday I used the magic again. Like saving Anastasia regardless of how it eventually turned out, sometimes there are things that we just have to do. I don’t know why I did it exactly, except that my dad had grilled steaks and suddenly there the three of us were, remembering how much David had loved my dad’s famous rib-eye marinade. These are the moments that happen when you’ve lost someone—one second you’re chomping on steak and salad, and the next you’re having this flashback to the way things used to be. We don’t lose people all at once, I guess. They disappear in stages.

  Later, after Dad had gone back to the apartment, Mom fell asleep on the couch watching TV. I watched her lying there in shorts and a T-shirt, still too thin, too fragile. And I thought about all those nights she’d spent sitting in David’s hospital room. About the look on her face out there in our yard that night when Lily came to her.

  I didn’t think about the rest of it. Just pressed my hand to her forehead, and as gently as I could, I took us both back. April 5. David’s twelfth birthday. I was just ten, still in middle school. We’d come downstairs for breakfast, and my mom had put twelve candles in David’s waffles—six in one and six in the other. This was our tradition as far back as I could remember—birthday breakfast candles.

  My dad was late and rushing, and I had done something really geeky to my bangs with the curling iron and Mom’s hair spray. But we all gathered around the table while David made a wish and blew out his candles. My mom kissed David on both cheeks and my dad patted him on the back. Later we’d all go out to dinner. On the weekend, David would take his friends paintballing.

  None of us had any idea what was coming. I guess you never do. This is what I showed my mom. Let her put those candles in the waffles one more time. Let her hug my brother and bury her nose in his hair and have no fear that this might be the last time. One small moment. One ordinary day.

  Why had I possibly refused when she had asked? Many reasons, I suppose. But as Ethan reminds me, it does us little good to look backward.

  In her sleep, my mother smiled.

  The Swedish Film Festival, One Month and Three Days Later

  Anne

  “Vats of coffee,” Tess says. “Do you think they serve it in a bucket? I mean seriously, I need a caffeine IV. Who watches crap like that? Unhappy blond people yapping in Swedish. Plus, the subtitles. I can’t watch and read at the same time. Was anyone else getting dizzy?”

  Because of a certain set of events a little over a month ago, the Art Institute has postponed its Swedish Film Festival until today.

  The Swedish Film Festival, let me add, should be renamed the Narcolepsy Film Festival. Tess is right. Ten minutes into the first movie, the subtitles had lulled me into a semiconscious state. Somehow we’d managed to sit there—me and Tess sandwiched between Ben on Tess’s left and Ethan on my right—for two films in a row: the first about some guy who lives on a farm in rural Sweden and falls in love with his next-door neighbor’s wife. They spend most of the movie casting longing looks at each other until finally she ends up moving to Stockholm to run a pastry shop and he throws himself into his thresher and dies.

  The second one seemed happier—something about a street musician and his dog. Honestly? By then I was focused on Ethan’s lips and how his hand was resting on my knee.

  We leave the museum and head out to Michigan Avenue. It’s the first time I’ve been back since what we all have decided to call “the incident.” So far we’re all in one piece. The Swedes can jump into their threshers. Ethan and I and Tess and Ben are going for coffee. Maybe pastries too. Those pastries looked good in the movie.

  “Do you know any place that makes cream puffs?” I ask the group. We’re at the stoplight, waiting to cross. There’s a place that makes great lattes a couple blocks away.

  The light turns and we start to walk, and that’s when we see her. A girl about ten years old, walking with her mother. She’s slim and pretty, and she’s got eyes as blue as cornflowers and light brown hair. Her nose is straight and so is her posture, and I notice that she looks an awful lot like her mother. She says something to her mom that makes them both laugh.

  In her hand is a little wooden doll with a painted face.

  “Anne,” Tess says. “Do you see that?”

  “Yup,” I say. “I do. Ethan, do you see that?”

  He turns so he can look with his good eye. “Oh,” he says. “Hmm.”

  “Not again,” Ben humphs.

  “Is it possible?” Tess asks.

  Is what possible? I think. Did Anastasia really take my warning when we visited the past and somehow escape the massacre and live happily ever after, and these people are her descendants? My fingers give a suspicious little tingle.

  “Nah,” Ethan and I say in unison. We hurry across the street. On the other side, I tilt my face and encourage him to kiss me. Ethan kisses very, very well.

  The girl and her mother go somewhere I don’t see.

  I hook my arms around Ethan’s neck. His strong arms lift me, twirl me in a circle. A happy dance.

  “I think Anne just told destiny to suck it,” Tess tells Ben.

  “You’ve got that right,” I say against Ethan’s lips.

  And then I kiss him again.

  Acknowledgments

  As usual, this cannot be done alone.

  Jen Rofe, my wise and wonderful cowgirl—chai lattes for life.

  The Sourcebooks team: intrepid editor Leah Hultenschmidt, Kelly Barrales-Saylor, Kristin Zelazko, Kay Mitchell, and Derry Wilkens—a million zillion cupcakes. And even more thank-yous.

  Critique partners Dede, Kim, Bob, Suz—red boas all around.

  My tribe of fellow writers and artists: agent sisters, 2k9ers, Houston YA crew, Austin gang, and more—my life is fuller, my writing stronger, my heart happy.

  My readers for everything else. It is always about you and telling you a story. Without that, there is nothing.

  Rick, Jake, Kellie—for cheering me on always and always and always.

  About the Author

  Joy Preble grew up in Chicago where—possibly because she was raised by an accountant and a bookkeeper—she dreamed of being a backup singer, but instead earned an English degree from Northwestern. Eventually, she began to write books so she could get paid for making up stuff. She now lives in Texas with her family, including a basset-boxer named Lyla who never met a shoe she didn’t want to eat. Visit Joy at joypreble.com.