Odessa Again

by Dana Reinhardt

  Odessa stood there, rehearsing what she’d say when Mrs. Grisham finally made it to the door, but all she managed to blurt out was “Here’s your paper.”

  Mrs. Grisham looked at Odessa the way Oliver looked at the various creatures he’d find in the backyard.

  “It was sitting on your porch,” Odessa added. “I didn’t want anyone to take it.”

  “Has there been a rash of newspaper thefts in the neighborhood I don’t know about?” Mrs. Grisham asked.

  “Um, no. I just … I’m Odessa,” she added, because she wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “I know who you are. You live in my house.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You didn’t look too happy about living there.”

  “It’s fine now,” Odessa said. “I live in the attic.”

  Mrs. Grisham looked her up and down and then turned and went back inside. She didn’t slam the door exactly, but she did close it rather abruptly.

  The next afternoon Odessa noticed the paper on the porch again, and again she delivered it to Mrs. Grisham.

  This time their exchange lasted longer.

  Things continued this way. Most afternoons Odessa would pick up the paper from the porch and ring Mrs. Grisham’s bell.

  “Why are you always talking to that old lady?” Oliver asked. “She’s weird.”

  “You’re weird,” Odessa snapped back. She gave him a shove in the direction of their house, as if she were urging him home rather than just enjoying the pure pleasure she got from shoving him.

  Odessa had never noticed Mrs. Grisham’s paper on her porch before, but one thing was certain: since that first day she’d delivered it, Mrs. Grisham never seemed to go out and get the paper herself.

  During their afternoons Odessa tried out all of her theories about the house.

  She asked if magicians had built it.

  “No,” Mrs. Grisham answered.

  Odessa asked if it had been struck by lightning.

  “Nope,” Mrs. Grisham said.

  Odessa asked if, to the best of her knowledge, ghosts had ever been known to haunt her house.

  “Not to the best of my knowledge,” Mrs. Grisham sighed. She seemed to be growing tired of Odessa’s line of questioning. “Look, don’t worry about the house and just enjoy living there. Sometimes houses, like people, are peculiar. And sometimes they come along at just the right time. Now stop asking me so many questions. Do you want a cookie?”

  Of course Odessa wanted a cookie.

  So Mrs. Grisham started feeding Odessa homemade treats on her visits, and they sat in her front parlor, where she kept her enormous collection of owl figurines, and Odessa stopped asking questions. Instead she mostly talked about school, sometimes exaggerating details to make her stories more interesting.

  And then, one afternoon, when Odessa rang the bell with the paper tucked under her arm, Mrs. Grisham took even longer to get to the door than she had on that first afternoon. She opened it only halfway. She wore a long floral thing with buttons that must have been a bathrobe.

  A housecoat? A dressing gown?

  Odessa wasn’t sure what it was called, but she knew that even old women didn’t go out in public in something that looked like that.

  Mrs. Grisham managed a weak smile as she took hold of her paper.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  It was the first time she’d ever called Odessa anything.

  Mrs. Grisham started to close the door, without stepping outside for one of their chats and without offering any treats. Odessa grabbed the handle.

  “Um, are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. Just a little … oh, shall we say … blue.”

  Odessa loved the word blue. It said so much more than sad or unhappy. It was a word you could see. A word that painted a picture.

  Odessa wasn’t used to grown-ups telling her how they felt, unless they were feeling fed up or out of patience.

  “Why are you blue?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s my birthday.”

  Her birthday? Birthdays were the happiest days of the year. Birthdays were the opposite of blue.

  “So why aren’t you … jovial?”

  “Jovial?”

  “You know, happy.”

  Mrs. Grisham smiled, and that made Odessa feel a little jovial herself.

  “Oh, I suppose because when you get older, birthdays aren’t all clowns and carousels and cotton candy.”

  Odessa thought Mrs. Grisham was closer to describing a carnival than a birthday, but still, she appreciated all those hard-c words strung together one after the other.

  “Didn’t you get any good presents?” Odessa asked.

  Mrs. Grisham turned the newspaper over in her hands. “You brought me this,” she said. “That’s something.”

  “It’s not much of a present. I mean a real birthday gift, with paper and ribbons and everything.”

  “I’ve never been much for presents,” she said. “Mr. Grisham used to give me a bunch of orange dahlias every year on my birthday. That was the best.”

  “Dolleeyas?”

  “Yes, dahlias. My favorite flowers.”

  Odessa was about to ask what happened to Mr. Grisham and his dolleeyas, but then she stopped herself. She used logic, like Benedict. Mrs. Grisham was blue. She didn’t have any dolleeyas. Therefore, there was no more Mr. Grisham.

  “I have to go.” Odessa turned and started to run.

  “Thanks for the paper,” Mrs. Grisham called.

  “Happy birthday!” Odessa shouted over her shoulder as she raced home. She lived right next door, but still, she ran as fast as she could.

  She found her mother in the kitchen, grating cheese.

  “What’s for dessert tonight?” Odessa asked, breathless.

  “Please don’t run in the house.”

  “Dessert,” Odessa barked. “What is it?”

  Her mother stared at her. “Melon,” she said, drawing out the word.

  “Water?”

  “Are you thirsty, honey? What’s going on?”

  “No, I mean is it watermelon?”

  Her mother shook her head. “Cantaloupe.”

  Cantaloupe was definitely not worth sticking around for.

  Odessa grabbed a fistful of grated cheese and shoved it in her mouth, dropping bright orange shreds of it on the kitchen floor.

  “Odessa!”

  Odessa knew grabbing cheese by the fistful would make her mother fed up, but she also knew it didn’t much matter. She was already gone, running upstairs to the attic.

  When she woke again, after the jump, it was 1:27 a.m. She pulled her comforter up to her chin, and she smiled because she had five more hours of sleep ahead of her.

  Odessa loved sleep.

  In the morning she ate her breakfast, and before she went out the door to catch the bus she handed her mother a note.

  Odessa knew that sometimes she had better luck getting her mother to pay attention when she wrote down what it was she wanted to say. It hadn’t worked with her move to the attic, but it had worked with other things.

  She also knew it helped to use the word please as many times as possible.

  Dear Mom,

  Please can you buy a bunch of orange dolleeyas? And please put them outside Mrs. Grisham’s front door. And please ring the doorbell so she knows to come to the door. But please don’t stay around so she knows you left them.

  Sincerely,

  Your daughter, Odessa

  P.S. Please!

  When Odessa left for school that day, a day she had lived most of already, she felt the opposite of blue.

  It was Mrs. Grisham’s birthday, and she would find orange flowers on her doorstep. Her favorite. She’d have no idea who left them there, because she’d have no idea that she’d told Odessa how much she loved them. Maybe this would frighten her. Maybe she’d think it was the ghost of her husband. Or maybe she’d just gather them up in her arms and take a big whiff of them and shrug, knowing that there are s
ome things in this world that don’t make sense.

  When Odessa delivered the newspaper that afternoon, it took Mrs. Grisham no time at all to come to the door. She opened it wide and grinned broadly. She didn’t wear a long floral thing with buttons that must have been a bathrobe.

  She wore a pretty red dress and shiny shoes.

  Sofia was right. The mysteries were boring. And they didn’t do anything to help Odessa understand what was happening in the attic.

  Mrs. Grisham had told her to stop worrying, and Mrs. Grisham was an old person, so Odessa figured she must give good advice, because why else would you bother getting old?

  That was just what Odessa was trying to do: she was trying to stop worrying and just enjoy the attic’s strange powers.

  She returned the boring, useless mysteries to the library and went back to the series about the new girl at school. There was no mystery as to how things would turn out for her—things always turned out just fine for this type of character, and given the twists and turns in her own life lately, Odessa liked this sort of predictability.

  She also checked out a graphic novel, thinking that maybe if she held it in her hand as she boarded the morning bus, Claire would offer Odessa the seat next to her.

  Odessa had given up pretending she didn’t care that Claire had stopped speaking to her. That wasn’t working. And anyway, she did care.

  She and Claire hadn’t known each other forever like Odessa and Sofia, but they’d become friends last year in third grade and Odessa didn’t understand what had happened since. At first she thought it was just that they didn’t have the same teacher anymore, but then the backpack started showing up on Odessa’s bus seat.

  Claire didn’t seem to have had any real friends before Odessa came along. She was skinny and knobby-kneed, and too eager to agree with whatever was said. It’s hard to pinpoint why some kids are targets for the cruelty of others, but there was no denying that Claire Deloitte was a big, fat bull’s-eye.

  “Claire, did you see that movie about the aardvark and the pelican that opened this weekend? Everyone’s talking about it,” one of the girls might say at recess.

  “Yeah,” Claire would answer. “It was funny.”

  “Ha! Ha! Ha! There is no movie about an aardvark and a pelican!”

  Or:

  “Claire, don’t you love that song ‘Dream Detectives’?”

  This song Claire had to know was real; it played anytime a radio switched on.

  “Yeah. It’s awesome.”

  “Oh my God! That song is sooooo stupid. It’s, like, the stupidest song ever.”

  Or this:

  “Claire, when’s your birthday?”

  “It’s on Oct—”

  “Who cares!”

  Maybe it was just because Odessa didn’t pull any of these cruel jokes on Claire that Claire had attached herself to Odessa by the third week of third grade.

  When it was Odessa’s turn to stay in at recess to wipe down the desks, Claire would stay and help. If Odessa chose quiet reading time over working on the geography puzzle, Claire would read alongside her. Once Odessa opted to skip out on the birthday cake brought in by Sienna. Carrot cake. Yuck. Claire declined her piece too.

  At first Odessa wondered about Claire.

  Why didn’t she stand up for herself? Why was she such a follower? But she stopped wondering, because she liked to be with Claire. Claire was smart. And she was funny. And despite the fact that she preferred books with cartoons, she too was a lover of words.

  Now Claire spent most of her time at school with Maya, and that made Odessa feel jovial for Claire, because she didn’t want her to be friendless.

  So Odessa got on the morning bus with the graphic novel in her hands. She’d stayed up too late reading it cover to cover, and she was surprised by how much she’d enjoyed it.

  She displayed the front of it as she approached Claire, who rested her arm on the dreaded backpack. Odessa took the seat in front of her.

  As the doors closed with a whoosh and the bus lurched forward, Odessa turned around. She held the book out. “Have you read this?”

  Claire glanced at the cover and then down at her lap.

  She nodded.

  “Did you like it?”

  Claire didn’t respond. She probably thought Odessa was trying to catch her in a trap—asking for an opinion only so she could mock it.

  “Well I read it last night and I thought it was awesome,” Odessa said. “I totally didn’t get why anyone bothered with graphic novels, like I thought they were going to be Calvin and Hobbes or Garfield or something, you know, baby stuff, but this book was really, really good.”

  Claire shrugged.

  The bus stopped to pick up Mick McGinnis, and when it started up again, Odessa fell forward in her seat and dropped the book. As the bus climbed up the hill, the book slid back into Claire’s row.

  Claire picked it up, and for a moment Odessa thought she might shove it into her own bag or maybe toss it over her shoulder or out the window, but she held it out to Odessa.

  “If you liked this one,” Claire said, “you should try The Windchaser.”

  Odessa took her book back, feeling encouraged. Bold. “Would you mind putting your backpack on the floor so I can sit next to you?”

  “No switching seats once the bus is moving,” Claire shot back.

  She pointed to the rules posted at the front of the bus. Right above No Chewing Gum and below No Shouting it said Pick Your Seat and Stay There.

  Claire knew Odessa followed rules. It was something they had in common. But Odessa was obviously desperate. Desperate enough to switch seats on a moving bus.

  “C’mon,” Odessa whispered.

  Claire shook her head no. She reached for her backpack and started digging around. Odessa knew this meant: Don’t talk to me.

  Odessa could feel opportunity slipping through her fingers.

  “Listen, Claire,” she blurted out. “I don’t know why we aren’t friends this year, but maybe if you just told me what I did, then I could apologize.”

  Claire looked at her. “What would be the point? You’d just say ‘I’m sorry,’ but you wouldn’t really mean it. Apologies don’t mean anything when you make someone apologize.” She shrugged. “That’s what my mom says.”

  Odessa’s mother said this too. Their mothers must have read the same book about raising children. Mom never made her apologize to Oliver. Instead she’d make her ask, “What can I do to make you feel better?”

  She tried this out on Claire.

  Claire just sighed.

  “I guess you could make me feel better by knowing what you did in the first place. But since that isn’t going to happen, I’ll just tell you, and then you can give me a fake apology and go back to hanging out with your real friends and leave me alone.”

  Odessa’s stomach did a flip. Something like the upside-down, over-under feeling she got when falling. Odessa’s stomach flipped because it was one step ahead of her brain.

  She suddenly knew what Claire was going to say.

  This was about that afternoon last summer when she and Sofia ran into Claire at the mall.

  She asked what they were doing, and Odessa said they were going to see a movie, and Claire asked which one, and Sofia drew her finger across her throat behind Claire’s back, letting Odessa know: Do NOT invite Claire.

  Odessa’s mom walked over and said hi to Claire and asked what she was up to. Odessa said that Claire was busy and couldn’t come to the movie with them, even though Claire had said nothing of the sort.

  Claire walked away fast, almost running, saying she had to go meet her babysitter at the food court, and there was something about the way she almost-ran that made Odessa sad for Claire, but then she and Sofia went to see the movie, and it was really funny because this humongous dog talked with this New York accent and Odessa managed to block out the whole thing until just now, sitting on the morning bus.

  Or did she really block it out?

 
If Odessa had really forgotten about that day, then why did she remember it so clearly right now?

  Claire began to tell Odessa about that afternoon at the mall. How happy she was to see Odessa, because they hadn’t seen each other since school got out.

  Odessa was listening to Claire but at the same time she was cursing her attic floorboards. Why did it have to be a matter of hours? Why couldn’t she go back months? If she could return to that day last summer, she’d have ignored Sofia’s silent warning and asked Claire if she wanted to come to the movie, which she was hearing now from Claire would have been impossible anyway, because Claire had to be at her sister’s play.

  But of course that wasn’t the point.

  “I’m really sorry,” Odessa said. “And you aren’t making me say anything. I’m saying I’m sorry myself.”

  Claire sighed. “I wish that were true.”

  Odessa turned and faced forward. Her eyes stung with tears. She’d tried to be a good friend to Claire, and she’d tried to be a good best friend to Sofia. But she’d done every thing wrong.

  She shoved the graphic novel into her backpack. How stupid to think that a book could fix things. The book was not the answer. The answer had been right there in front of her all along.

  Odessa couldn’t go back to the summer. But she could go back to this morning. She could leave the book at home and she could get on the bus with a letter in her hand.

  It was easier to get people to pay attention when you wrote down what it was you wanted to say.

  Odessa would do what she should have done months ago. She’d write a letter of apology, and she’d write it before Claire ever brought it up.

  Odessa wrote the best letter she’d ever written. It took her three whole drafts.

  Claire took it and shoved it in her bag without looking at Odessa.

  But that afternoon, when Odessa got on the bus, Claire’s backpack was on the floor, the seat next to her empty.

  Odessa sat with Claire and rode the bus home.

  Odessa had to admit that there were benefits to moving from a house you loved so your father could remarry someone who was not your mother, and the main benefit was that you got to have two Christmases.

  At Mom’s, Uncle Milo cooked breakfast while Odessa drew with her new artist’s pencils and Oliver played with his new hamster.