Odessa Again Page 3

  Over and over and over again, until it was time for breakfast.

  Downstairs, Mom gave her cinnamon toast again (luckily, Odessa loved cinnamon toast), and she climbed aboard the bus and watched Claire block the seat next to her with her backpack. She arrived at school, where Mr. Rausche said, “Best feet forward.” Sofia didn’t have to read her face. She wasn’t panicked. She took her quiz and aced it.

  There is no w in thorough.

  That afternoon she was sent home with a new packet of words to study.

  She was now a proud member of group N.

  Odessa Green-Light was no longer smack-dab in the middle.

  Imagine everything you’d do over if given the chance.

  That thing you said at lunch that made everybody laugh because it was stupid?

  Forgotten.

  The humiliating thwack of the dodgeball against your thigh and the red mark it left behind?

  Erased.

  The misunderstanding that sent you to the “take a break” chair, when you weren’t really talking during social studies, you were only asking Jeffrey Mandel to return your pencil?

  Over.

  These are the sorts of things that sent Odessa back to the center of her attic floor, the rug rolled up and stashed near the bookcase. She would shut her eyes tight, hold her breath, and jump.

  She jumped to undo something about her day that had gone a way she didn’t like.

  What power.

  How easy.

  Still, there were choices to make.

  What needed undoing?

  And was undoing it worth living the whole day over again? Worth using up another jump back in time?

  What about the things she would have to endure for a second time just to change the one thing she wanted to undo?

  Take the farting incident.

  Odessa knew that a loud fart could be a good thing if you happened to be a boy.

  If you happened to be a girl, farting was a whole different story. It was something to be avoided at all costs. Something to live in mortal fear of. But living in mortal fear of something doesn’t mean it won’t happen to you.

  Like vomiting. Odessa feared vomiting, but sometimes she’d get the stomach flu. Usually right after Oliver got it, because in addition to being a toad, Oliver was a walking germ-fest. Odessa feared shots. But she got them. She was afraid of thunder, but that didn’t keep storms from coming.

  Odessa feared farting.

  In front of other people.

  Especially farting in front of somebody who looked cute since he’d stopped cutting his hair. Somebody she like-liked.

  But still, it happened in front of Theo Summers.

  During math.

  Multiplication tables, to be precise.

  Theo looked at her and she looked away, but she could feel how hot her face was. She didn’t need a mirror to know she’d turned scarlet. Lobster-colored. This happened when she got embarrassed, and it was why her mother sometimes called her Odessa Red-Light. Like getting stuck with the hyphenated Green-Light wasn’t annoying enough—even her own mother teased her about it. Her own mother, who along with her father had de-hyphenated the whole family.

  Odessa waited for Theo to make some joke to Bryce Bratton. But he didn’t. And because of this, because he quickly looked down at the math problems on the hexagonal table between them, Odessa’s like-like blossomed into full-blown love.

  But Theo knew.

  He had heard.

  And he’d never forget.

  This left Odessa with no choice but to go home and jump through the floor.

  Still, there were parts of this day she didn’t want to relive.

  On the day of the farting incident, Odessa had a checkup after school at which she received not one, but three shots. And that night there was a terrible thunderstorm. The window-shaking kind. The kind that made her rethink wanting to sleep in a room alone.

  But neither shots nor thunderstorms seemed very big at all when stacked up next to the horror of Theo Summers hearing her fart.

  So that night, as the thunder rattled her bones and the lightning lit the darkening sky outside her window, Odessa rolled up her cheetah-print rug.

  They’d just finished dessert. Chocolate banana pudding wasn’t her favorite, but it was a close second. When she considered living through the shots and the thunder again, she thought: At least there’ll be pudding!

  Odessa tapped her toe on the exposed floorboards.

  The thunder crackled outside. Terrifying. A sound like the whole world splitting in two. It reminded Odessa of the time she and Oliver dropped a watermelon out their bedroom window onto the back patio just to see what would happen.

  What happened was that Mom got really mad.

  Hurry! Jump. Get away from the thunder. Wake up again, start the day fresh, and avoid that terrible Odessa Red-Light moment.

  But going back seventeen hours was different from leaving something behind.

  The shots and the thunderstorm were still in front of her because … tomorrow wasn’t really tomorrow.

  Once she jumped, tomorrow would become today all over again.

  Things might have continued this way, with Odessa correcting all of her awkward, embarrassing, unfortunate moments. The pesky happenstances that are a part of any fourth grader’s life.

  Things might have continued like this but for one simple fact: Odessa Green-Light was a curious girl.

  The type who sought to understand why certain things were so. It was this part of her that hated spelling and its nonsensical rules.

  So Odessa went in search of answers.

  She wished more than anything that Claire was still speaking to her. They were friends last year when they were both in Room 22. They weren’t best friends, but Claire was fun, and curious. She was logical and clearheaded too. Back in third grade they’d read a whole series of mysteries about a boy named Benedict, and Claire had always solved the mystery before Benedict did. She didn’t have to cheat and skip to the end to see how it all turned out, like Odessa.

  But now Claire put her backpack on the seat next to her on the bus, the seat that used to be Odessa’s, and they weren’t in the same class this year. Odessa was in Room 28 with Sofia, which was nice, but not necessary, because Sofia was her best friend no matter what classroom they were in.

  If Claire had still been speaking to her she might have been able to think three steps ahead like she had with the Benedict books and help Odessa find some answers about the attic floor. But no. Odessa was going to have to figure this out on her own.

  Like she often did when things perplexed her, she opened up her hummingbird journal. She wrote down the things she understood, underlining them for emphasis.

  Time is running out.

  Each time she jumped she lost one hour, one chance.

  There are only twenty-four chances.

  Twenty-four opportunities to redo something, and now, with only sixteen opportunities left, she started to wonder: Had she frittered away the first eight?

  I’ve been stupid.

  She had no regrets about the farting incident, but the “take a break” chair? The red mark of the dodgeball and its thwack?

  What a waste.

  She began to understand the need to hoard her remaining opportunities.

  Sixteen left. Sixteen!

  She made a final note in her journal:

  Don’t be impulsive. Make it matter. THINK!

  *

  Weeks went by.

  The air grew colder. The leaves went from green to red to brown before abandoning the trees altogether. The sky outside Odessa’s dormer window turned black before dinnertime.

  Dad and Jennifer were planning a spring wedding. Odessa’s every other weekend with them was spent tasting cake and looking at flowers and trying on dresses. Odessa finally picked out a lavender one with spaghetti straps, which meant Oliver would have to wear a lavender tie, and she was looking forward to seeing that. He never wore anything but T-shirts an
d cutoff sweatpants.

  Jennifer brought home samples of music for the reception. She’d play it full blast in the house and practice her dance moves. Dad would smile and shake his head. Jennifer knew how to make Dad laugh, which was good because sometimes Dad could be too serious. Sometimes Odessa would even dance with her.

  All the wedding preparation reminded Odessa of when she and Sofia used to play princesses. Neither of them really wanted to be princesses—who could stand itchy clothes and perfect posture all the time?—but it was still loads of fun to pretend.

  The only thing Odessa looked forward to with winter’s arrival was the freezing of the pond near Uncle Milo’s, where he took her ice-skating on Saturday afternoons. He took Oliver too, because Odessa never seemed to get to do anything, or go anyplace, without Oliver the Toad.

  On a particularly gloomy Saturday, Uncle Milo, Odessa, and Oliver went to check out the pond, skates in the trunk, hot cocoa in the thermos, but it hadn’t frozen over completely yet. Big shards of ice floated haphazardly, like pieces of a puzzle that would never fit together.

  Oliver thought he spied a rabbit and went bounding off after it, maybe thinking he could coax it into his hands like that field mouse, and Odessa took the rare opportunity afforded by this moment alone with Uncle Milo to ask him some questions.

  Uncle Milo was her mother’s younger brother. Once he’d told Odessa a story about how when they were kids Mom had convinced him to do a trust fall backward so she could catch him. He closed his eyes, crossed his arms, and fell backward, but then she stepped out of the way and he cracked his head open on the kitchen floor. Odessa thought this was pretty funny in the way things are funny when they’re the opposite of what you expect. She couldn’t picture her mother letting her brother fall on his head, because Mom was the one who always told Odessa how she needed to show Oliver more kindness.

  And she certainly couldn’t picture Milo as a toad.

  Uncle Milo was her favorite.

  “Uncle Milo?” she asked. “Has anything ever happened to you that you don’t really understand? I mean, like, something that makes no sense?”

  “Of course, O.” He smiled. Odessa loved his smile. And she loved when he called her O, except sometimes he called Oliver O too, and that she didn’t like one little bit. “All the time. Most things in life don’t make any real sense. That’s what keeps us on our toes.”

  Odessa thought of Milo as someone with all the answers, but there were things even he couldn’t figure out, which was surprising. And a little bit comforting too.

  “Cool,” Odessa said, though she was far from satisfied.

  He squinted at her. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m great.”

  “I know things haven’t been easy.…”

  “I said I’m great.”

  “I know you did. And I said I know things haven’t been easy.”

  Odessa bit the inside of her cheek. She thought about that lavender dress hanging in plastic in the closet at Dad’s. About Claire’s backpack on the bus seat. About Mom’s job interviews. About the word like and its different, confusing meanings.

  “Uncle Milo, I …”

  Just then Oliver came racing back, waving something in his hand. It was too small to be a rabbit. It better not be another field mouse, Odessa thought.

  As he grew closer, he shoved the object into his pocket. When he reached them, he bent over to catch his breath, hands on knees, cheeks bright red with cold. Odessa resisted the temptation to call him Oliver Red-Light.

  “You are never gonna”—gasp—“guess what I”—gasp—“just found.”

  Oliver was rarely right about things, but he was right about this.

  Odessa would never have guessed.

  Not if she’d had one hundred guesses.

  He stuck his hand back into his pocket and took something out slowly, grabbing it by both ends and pulling it tight. He held it up proudly.

  A one-hundred-dollar bill.

  “Would you look at that.…” Milo slapped Oliver on the back. “It’s your lucky day, O. You are one lucky little man.”

  Immediately, Odessa thought of her piggy bank and its twenty-seven dollars and eighty-three cents. She’d felt good about her savings. She’d saved six dollars and twenty-two cents more than Oliver.

  She couldn’t bear to do the math. She didn’t want to know by exactly how many dollars and cents Oliver’s savings now outnumbered hers.

  Plus, there were so many things she wanted to buy. So much she could do with one hundred dollars. There were things a fourth grader needed that a second grader did not.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “Where did you find it?” Odessa asked.

  Oliver lifted his thumb over his shoulder and pointed behind him. He was still trying to catch his breath.

  “Over there.”

  “Over where?” she asked. “Over where … precisely?”

  Odessa had never stolen anything in her life. Sofia stole lip glosses from her older sister, and Odessa had told her it was wrong, but Sofia had just laughed and dug her pinkie deeper into the one that smelled like mango.

  Now, as Odessa’s plan began to take shape, she worried that she was about to do something kind of … wrong.

  But how could it be stealing if she wasn’t planning to take something away from Oliver? What if she was planning to get to that one-hundred-dollar bill before he did? Before he even knew there was a one-hundred-dollar bill to find?

  “Over by that big boulder,” Oliver said. “The one underneath that Christmas-y tree.”

  Uncle Milo laughed. He put both hands on Odessa’s shoulders and squeezed. “You’re not going to find another hundred-dollar bill, no matter how hard you look. It doesn’t happen like that. Luck was on your brother’s side today. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be on yours.”

  Uncle Milo didn’t know everything. He’d even said so himself. He didn’t know that Odessa didn’t need any luck.

  She looked at her watch. All she needed was for Uncle Milo to take her home. Back to the magical attic that belonged only to her.

  Money can’t solve all your problems. This is something Odessa had heard adults say for most of her life. They also said that money doesn’t grow on trees, but they were wrong about that, because Odessa now had one hundred dollars from beneath a tree in the woods. Uncle Milo had given her a high five when she’d found it, and Oliver had stared at her in disbelief and with a familiar envy. She felt a little guilty about going back and getting to the money before Oliver, but only a little. She was rich. That helped with her guilt, though it didn’t help her figure out what was happening in the attic, because … money can’t solve all your problems.

  She continued her investigation by taking out mysteries from the library. Not the babyish Benedict ones any third grader could solve. She went looking for real mysteries. There were so many of them, so many books with spines of every width and color. Maybe reading some might help her solve her own.

  Sofia was not pleased.

  They’d both started the series about the girl who moves to a new town and has to make new friends at her new school, but then there’s this mean girl who will stop at nothing to destroy the new girl, and Odessa and Sofia were on book five when Odessa returned it unfinished at library time and checked out four mysteries.

  That was one of the cool things about being in the fourth grade. You could check out four books at once. Second graders like Oliver could only check out two, but it hardly mattered, because Oliver wasn’t much of a reader.

  “Those look boring,” Sofia said. “We don’t read mysteries. Or books about fairies. And we don’t like graphic novels.”

  Sofia had added this last category, Odessa knew, because that was the kind of book Claire read on the bus in the mornings.

  “Yeah, I know. But I guess I’m just in the mood for something new.”

  Sofia sighed and rolled her eyes. She started to say something about how Odessa wasn’t allowed to drop their series for a new one, b
ut then Mr. Bogdasarian, the librarian, rang the bell that meant they were all to line up quickly and quietly. He timed them, and although Odessa always raced to her spot in line tight-lipped, she wasn’t sure why she did. There never seemed to be any sort of prize for speediness.

  When Sofia sighed and rolled her eyes, Odessa thought again, for the millionth time, about confiding in Sofia about the attic. About the loophole she’d found in time.

  But something always stopped her.

  Maybe it was that she knew how it would sound coming out of her mouth. Impossible. Absurd. And Sofia had a way of looking at Odessa when she didn’t believe or understand or agree with what Odessa was saying—a sharp look Odessa could feel in the softest part of her center. She didn’t like that feeling at all.

  Or maybe it was that Odessa didn’t believe Sofia could help her solve her mystery. Help her understand the why.

  It wasn’t as if Sofia wasn’t smart.

  Sofia was in the level N word-study group too, which might have had something to do with how desperately Odessa had wanted to move up from the middle.

  Sofia’s math buddy, however, was Chester Spaulding, and everyone knew Chester wasn’t as good at math as Theo Summers.

  Anyway, Sofia didn’t have much of an imagination, or Claire’s detective skills, and she definitely didn’t know about Odessa’s house and its history.

  For that Odessa turned to Mrs. Grisham, their landlady, who lived next door in a house that looked almost the same except it was pink. Odessa used to love pink, but she’d outgrown it, and now she wondered if when she got really old, she might love pink again.

  Odessa hadn’t seen much of Mrs. Grisham since they’d moved in, and she felt uneasy about just walking up to her front door and ringing her bell. Old people made her nervous. She didn’t have any grandparents and she’d never had an older teacher, so she hadn’t spent any time around old people.

  Odessa picked up the newspaper that was sitting on Mrs. Grisham’s front porch and tucked it under her arm. It took a very long time for Mrs. Grisham to answer the doorbell.