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on.
    "How old is Sam now—three?" the doctor asked. "Let me get his chart out. Here it is. Three years old, like I thought. Does he go to nursery school?"
    "Yes," said Anastasia. She told him the name of Sam's school.
    "I should have guessed. Half the kids in that nursery school have it. The other half will by next week. Except for a few. There are always a few who for some reason seem to be immune. We've never been able to figure that out. And then sometimes the ones who don't get it when they're three suddenly come down with it as
adults,
for some reason, even though they were undoubtedly exposed to it when they were young—"
    "Exposed to
what?
"
    "Chicken pox," the doctor said. "Sam has chicken pox."
    Anastasia's father came into the room and looked at her quizzically. He pointed to his watch at the same time.
    "I don't need to see him, unless he has special problems," the doctor was going on. "Give him a little baby aspirin for the fever. And if he itches—well, that was a foolish thing to say; of
course
he itches—add some baking soda to a bath and let him soak in that. He'll feel fine in a day or two. But of course he'll have to stay out of school until the lesions heal. Well, that was a foolish thing to say, too; they're probably going to close that school down for a couple of weeks. Can't run a school when everybody has chicken pox, now, can you?" He chuckled.
    Anastasia looked up at her father and mouthed the words "chicken pox."
    "
Chicken pox?
" her father mouthed back.
    "Now, let me just get out
your
chart and see if you've had chicken pox, Anastasia," the doctor was saying.
    "I had it when I was—"
    "Here we are. Krupnik, Anastasia. You were right in the filing cabinet next to your brother. Let's see, you're thirteen now. Pretty soon you won't even need a pediatrician. For heaven's sake, look at this—"
    "I had chicken pox when I was—"
    "I'd forgotten all about that time we had to pump your stomach when you were two. You ate ant poison. Well, that's nothing compared to what
some
toddlers eat. I had one who drank a whole bottle of Windex once. Wouldn't you think it would taste terrible? Now, let's see, you had an ear infection that same year, and—"
    "I had chicken pox when I was four years old."
    "Here we are. You had chicken pox when you were four years old, Anastasia."
    Anastasia sighed.
    "Well, kiddo," Dr. Nazarosian went on, "I'd love to chat with you a bit longer, but you know how it is. Duty calls. Half the mothers in this town are trying to get me on the phone right at this very minute, and you know why?"
    "Because their kids have—"
    "Because their kids have chicken pox, that's why. Now you call again if Sam has any complications. But he should be just fine, maybe a little irritable until the fever goes down, that's all."
    Anastasia heard a sound and glanced over. Sam had wandered into the room, still naked, holding a Magic Marker. He was carefully drawing green lines from one pink spot to the next across his chest. He looked up and grinned. "Follow the dots," he said.
    Anastasia said good-bye politely to the doctor and hung up.
    Sam handed her his underpants and socks. "Help me get dressed for school," he said.
    Anastasia sighed. "We can't go to school," she told him. "You can't go to school because you have chicken pox, and I can't go to school, unless—" She looked hopefully at her father.
    But he shook his head. "I'm sorry, Anastasia," he said, "but I have a lecture scheduled at nine o'clock, and a department meeting after that, and I'm giving an exam at one, and—well, I'll try to get home early. I'm sorry."
    Sam's face puckered and he began to cry again. "There's a
law
that you have to go to school!" he wailed. "I
want
to go to school! I want to show everybody my dots!"
    "Well, you
can't,
" Anastasia said irritably. She wandered into his room and picked up his clothes from the floor. She began to pull the wet sheets off his bed.
    "I guess I'll do laundry this morning," she muttered. "And