Read Seven Year Switch (2010) for Free Online Page B

the first year or so after Anastasia and I moved in, I’d made my bed every day, so happy to actually own the room that surrounded it. But it got harder and harder to care about a room that no other adult saw. Now dirty clothes littered the floor, and two half-full glasses of water kept each other company on my bedside table.
    Anastasia had made her bed this morning, as she’d done pretty much every morning since we’d moved in. Three evenly spaced purple and pink fake fur pillows, and a throng of stuffed animals, rested against her headboard.
    I checked under the pillows, peeked under the twin bed, and found Anastasia’s diary wedged between the mattress and the box spring. I could feel the hard plastic eyes of the stuffed animals on me.
    â€œ What ?” I said.
    They stared back, silently judging me. I looked around the room, wondering if it were possible that my daughter had somehow gotten her hands on a hidden camera. Maybe Cynthia’s kids had given her one of their extra nanny cams.
    I couldn’t handle staying in Anastasia’s room, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from snooping either, so I carried the diary out to the hallway.
    The diary was locked. I went back to my bedroom office and grabbed one of the paper clips I kept in a mug with a broken handle. I sat down at my desk, straightened out one end of the paper clip, and wiggled it around until the lock gave. It was ridiculously easy. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse.
    To dispose of the evidence, I buried the paper clip in the wastebasket under my desk. I stayed in my office chair and started flipping back to front through the little pink diary. I closed my eyes when I got to the poem I’d already seen. It was just too painful to read it again.
    I skimmed an entry about how Anastasia wanted to sit with Becca on the bus, but she couldn’t because Becca was already sitting with Alle, who usually sat with Storie. I breathed a shallow sigh of relief, then flipped to another page.
    I wish my father was President O’Bama , the first line said.
    I smiled. So cute that she’d made the president Irish with that apostrophe. I breathed a half sigh of relief. It was starting to look like Anastasia was simply in the throes of some kind of normal, developmental daddy stage. Every ten-year-old in the country probably wished the president could be her father.
    I kept reading. Then Melia and Sasha would be my sisters and we could share things. My room in the white house would be pink. Unless it had to be white. That would be ok if I could keep my pillows and stuff animals. My mom would have servents to answer the phone.
    My eyes teared up. I wasn’t sure where we would stash Michelle O’Bama, but how sweet that Anastasia had thought to give me someone to answer the phone. Although maybe thatwas more about her being embarrassed by my headphone than about me being overworked.
    I slid down to the floor of the hallway and turned a few more pages until I came to this:
    Â 
    F orgot all about me
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    A way in the Peach Core
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    T eaching kids who need him more
    Â 
    H elping kids in Africa get
    Â 
    E xtra help on their home work
    Â 
    R eally need him to come home and help me do mine
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    I jumped up as if I’d been stung by a bee. I slammed the little pink book closed and locked it, while I jogged out to the hallway and back into Anastasia’s room. I shoved the diary under her mattress as fast as I could and raced through my house. I pushed my screen door open so hard it crashed into the side of the house.
    I grabbed one of my old rusty metal railings with both hands and yanked.
    It didn’t budge.
    I kicked it with one foot, then the other, like some psycho mom practicing her karate moves. Nothing happened, so I just kept kicking until I couldn’t kick anymore. Then I grabbed the railing with both hands and started rocking it back and forth, and back and forth, as hard and as