Odessa Again

by Dana Reinhardt

  Odessa tried to imagine someone paying her for loving all those things.

  “Sounds like a pretty good job,” Oliver said.

  Mom tousled his hair. “Stupid Universe,” she said, even though stupid was a word Odessa and Oliver were not allowed to use.

  “Stinky Universe,” Oliver said timidly. Mom smiled.

  “Contemptible Universe!” Odessa cried.

  Mom put one arm around each of them.

  Odessa had made up her mind, but there was no hurry to go to her attic and back to this morning to fix things. It was nice to just sit here like this.

  “You know what?” Mom said. “The Universe wants us to have some ice cream.”

  Odessa and Oliver jumped up and raced into the kitchen. Oliver went for the spoons, Odessa for the bowls.

  “Mint-chip or butter brickle?” Mom called as she headed for the freezer.

  What a silly question. Always butter brickle.

  “Well, would you look at that,” Mom said as she stood with the freezer door open, the cold rush of air blowing her hair off her face.

  “What?” Odessa and Oliver asked in unison.

  “The Universe has a very strange sense of humor,” Mom said as she pulled out her frozen car keys.

  Usually when Dad came to pick up Oliver and Odessa for their Wednesday-night dinners, he’d pull into the driveway and honk. Sometimes Jennifer was with him. Odessa liked the just-Dad nights, but ever since Christmas and the dictionary with the purple underlined words, she didn’t mind so much when Jennifer came along.

  On the Wednesday after Odessa had gone back to find Mom’s keys in the freezer so Mom could make the job interview, Dad came to the front door and rang the bell.

  Odessa opened it. “Why didn’t you honk?”

  “Is that a way to greet your dad?” He spread his arms out wide and she stepped into them. He pulled her close.

  “That’s better,” he whispered into her ear. He smelled like his minty tummy tablets. Odessa missed that smell.

  “OLIVER,” she shouted up the stairs. “LET’S GO!”

  “Wait a minute!” Dad said. “Let’s go inside and talk a little.”

  Odessa didn’t like any sort of conversation that adults announced you were having before you had it. First there was the “talk” about how Mom and Dad decided it would be better to live apart, and then the “talk” about how they were going to sell the house, and of course the “talk” about Dad getting remarried.

  “Can’t we just go to dinner?”

  Mom walked up and Dad put his arm out. It was sort of like a handshake, but a little bit like a hug.

  “Come on into the kitchen,” Mom said.

  Odessa followed them.

  “How’re things?” Dad asked Mom.

  “Oh, you know, pretty good,” Mom answered.

  There they were, walking and talking like two old friends meeting each other on the street.

  Her parents could be so weird.

  Oliver came downstairs and took a look at the three of them around the kitchen table. Odessa could tell he was just as confused and uncomfortable as she was.

  “So your dad and I want to talk to you about some changes,” Mom said.

  “I know there have been so many lately,” Dad added, “and I’m sorry for that, I truly am, but sometimes change is good, and change can be exciting, and in this case you should be proud of your mother for getting a really great job.”

  And proud of me! Odessa wanted to yell. I’m the one who found her keys.

  “You got a job?” Oliver asked, shocked, like it had never occurred to him that one of her “meetings” might lead to that.

  “Yes, honey, I did. At JK Design Studio. I’m going back to interior designing. I’ll be doing some landscaping work too.”

  “That’s great, Mom.” Odessa tried her best to sound excited.

  “Yes, it’s great, but it means we have to make some new arrangements. I’ll be out of the house more than I’d like.”

  I’d like you to be out of the house not at all.

  Odessa didn’t say this out loud. She sat there fingering her necklace with the peace sign, imagining how a key might feel hanging from her neck on a shiny new chain.

  “I’ve talked to Mrs. Grisham next door,” Mom continued. “She’s agreed to watch you on the days you don’t have after-school activities.”

  “The landlady?” Oliver asked.

  “Do you know another Mrs. Grisham who lives next door?” Odessa snapped. Oliver’s face fell.

  “She used to be a teacher, so she can be of some help with your homework.”

  If Mom couldn’t be home, at least it would be Mrs. Grisham and not some stranger greeting her after school. Mrs. Grisham was her friend, even if she was old.

  “And you can always call me at work if you need anything at all,” Dad added.

  Odessa looked at her father. What she wanted to say was: Why are you even here? But she knew it might come out sounding mean, so she searched for better words.

  “Why are you even here?” she asked, because sometimes only certain words work.

  Dad cleared his throat and exchanged a look with Mom. “Because in spite of all the changes, we’re still a family.”

  If we’re still a family, why are you remarrying Jennifer?

  Odessa didn’t say this out loud.

  Instead she grabbed her coat and went to dinner with Dad and Oliver, just the three of them, and afterward Dad pulled into the driveway and honked. Mom came to the front door.

  They waved at each other and smiled as Oliver and Odessa walked into the house.

  Odessa thought about that smile upstairs in her room. The way her parents almost hugged. How proud Dad seemed of Mom for getting that job at JK Design Studio.

  She sat down and opened her new dictionary. When the world confounded her, words brought her peace. She read some of the words Jennifer had underlined in purple.

  She liked the ones that meant something other than what you’d think.

  Gumshoe: a detective. NOT a person who has gum on his shoes.

  And she liked the ones with meanings that matched the way they sounded.

  Enigma: something that is not easily explained or understood.

  *

  Mrs. Grisham started watching them the following Monday. Odessa and Oliver arrived home to the smell of something delicious that turned out to be made of something not delicious at all. Zucchini bread.

  Odessa knew few things with the sort of certainty that she knew zucchini does not belong in an after-school snack.

  Oliver took one look at it and went straight to his room.

  Odessa and Mrs. Grisham sat in the living room and talked, and it felt like those afternoons at Mrs. Grisham’s house, except that they weren’t surrounded by owl figurines, but by photographs of a family that didn’t include Dad.

  Later that week, the snack was pumpkin muffins. An improvement for sure, but still missing the mark.

  Odessa ate a muffin and polished off a glass of cold milk. Mrs. Grisham asked about her day, and she said it was fine. It was easier than telling her she saw Sadie Howell talking to Theo Summers at recess and that this wasn’t good at all because everyone knew that Sadie, with her pale blue eyes, was the prettiest girl in the whole fourth grade.

  Mrs. Grisham was a friend, but Odessa didn’t need to tell her everything.

  On her way upstairs to call Sofia, which she still did despite the “Odessa liked it shaggy” comment, she paused outside Oliver’s door. She could hear him talking quietly on the phone. Didn’t he know that she used the phone every day after snack?

  She put her ear to his door. Even though she hated when he eavesdropped, she had to listen.

  Who was he speaking to?

  He’d said he had no friends, but this couldn’t be true. Everyone has some kind of a friend, even shy kids like Oliver.

  “It’s okay,” he was saying. “You’re going to be okay. I know you feel bad, but I’m here. I’ll help
.”

  Odessa creaked open the door.

  “Oliver?”

  He sat on the floor with his back to her, holding something in his lap.

  “It’s Mud,” Oliver said. “He’s really sick.”

  Odessa sat down next him and watched as he stroked his hamster. His best friend.

  “His heart is beating really fast and his breathing sounds weird.”

  “Maybe you need to take him to the vet. Let’s go tell Mrs. Grisham.”

  “No,” Oliver blurted out. “No way.”

  Odessa looked at him.

  “Remember Truman?” he asked.

  Truman was their old cat. Mom had him since before she’d met Dad. They’d taken him to the vet one day because he wasn’t eating his kitty food, and he never came home again. Oliver was barely old enough to remember Truman, but he’d since been terrified of vets. And people doctors too.

  “But maybe the vet can help him.” Odessa touched Mud gently.

  Oliver shook his head no as a tear made its way down his cheek. Usually Oliver’s tears irritated Odessa. He knew how to cry at just the right time, in just the right way, so that he always looked like an innocent victim.

  Poor Oliver, she thought.

  Usually when someone said, “Poor Oliver,” it was immediately followed by “You’re older, Odessa. You should know better.”

  But today she really felt those words: Poor Oliver. The realness of that tear made Odessa want to help him.

  “Wait here.” Odessa went into Mom’s medicine cabinet and took out the grape-flavored chewable Motrin. Mom gave it to her in the middle of the night when she woke up with the feeling like her knees were on fire, or sometimes her ankles, and occasionally her feet. The doctor called these “growing pains,” but Odessa was never any taller in the morning.

  She also took chewable grape Motrin when she had a fever or her teeth hurt and that time she’d stepped on a bee when she’d gone outside in bare feet right after Mom had said, “Put some shoes on, you could step on a bee!”

  Odessa knew Mom’s medicine cabinet was off-limits. She knew never to take any medicine all by herself, without adult supervision—that was why medicine came in bottles most adults had trouble opening. But chewable grape Motrin came in a box, and anyway, giving it to a hamster was different from taking it herself.

  Odessa held the purple pill in her hand. She braced for the feeling of Mud’s nose and whiskers on her palm, but he had no interest in her offering.

  “Maybe we should crush it up and put it in his food,” Odessa suggested.

  Oliver shook his head. “He’s not eating.”

  When Truman needed medicine Mom would pry his mouth open, shove the pill down his throat, and hold his jaws closed until he swallowed it.

  She looked at the pill and at Mud’s mouth. The pill was almost half the size of his little face. She couldn’t see how this could possibly work.

  “Maybe put it into his water,” Oliver said.

  Odessa nodded. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, he did have brilliant ideas.

  Oliver crushed the pill into the top of Mud’s water bottle and gave it a good shake, then put it back on the side of the cage. He placed Mud in a patch of sawdust just under the small metal spout.

  He sniffed it.

  His whiskers twitched.

  He sniffed it again.

  Then Mud stuck out his tongue—so little and pink—and started to drink. Odessa couldn’t believe how small his tongue was. And his teeth! No bigger than grains of rice. She had to admit, he was sort of cute as he stood on his hind legs and held on to the drinking spout with his tiny little paws.

  Oliver breathed a sigh of relief as a third of the purplish water slowly drained from the bottle.

  He looked at his sister. “Thanks,” he said.

  Odessa smiled.

  She went up to her attic, her chest swelling with pride. It felt good to help someone, even if that someone was a rodent who belonged to a toad.

  She called Sofia, but Sofia’s mom said she was doing homework and that they could talk about Dreamonica later. Odessa didn’t say: I need to talk about Sadie and why she’s all over Theo, not my fake mansion with the waterslide!

  She sat at her desk and pulled out her folder. Perplex-ors: math problems disguised as word problems. They made her brain hurt. She put those back and took out her word-study sheet. The quiz, as always, was on Wednesday. Tomorrow. She looked over her list.

  neighbor

  brought

  tongue

  height

  weird

  believe

  And her favorite: misspell.

  It was nice to know that Mr. Rausche had a sense of humor.

  Odessa stretched her legs and caught the cord of her desk lamp with her sneaker, pulling the plug clear out of its socket and plunging her room into almost-blackness. That was one thing about living in the attic that Odessa did not love—her small window didn’t let in much light.

  She grabbed her pen that was also a flashlight and crawled underneath her desk. Her father had given her this penlight. It said Clark Funds on it. She’d always wondered why Dad had given her Mr. Funds’s pen, but now she was glad he did, because she’d have had a hard time finding the socket without it.

  Just as she went to put the plug in, Odessa spied a little door. Well, maybe it wasn’t a door, because it had no handle, but it was a small square-framed space, just big enough for somebody to crawl through.

  She shined the light of Mr. Funds’s pen on it.

  How peculiar, Odessa thought.

  She reached over to give the door a shove, and just as she did, she heard a bloodcurdling scream come from beneath her.

  “Noooo​ooooo​ooooo​ooooo​ooooo​ooooo!”

  Odessa scrambled out from under her desk and down her attic steps and threw open Oliver’s door to find him lying in his bed, curled around Mud’s lifeless small body.

  “He’s not breathing!” Oliver wailed.

  Mrs. Grisham raced in. She took the hamster from Oliver and looked him over carefully. She put him up to her ear as if he were a telephone.

  “Oh dear,” she said.

  Oliver began to sob uncontrollably.

  What came tumbling into Odessa’s mind just at that moment was a purple word from her new dictionary.

  Slipshod.

  It referred to something done in a sloppy way with poor attention to detail, and though Odessa understood it to apply mostly to the way things are built or constructed, she couldn’t help but feel, at that moment, that slipshod might also describe her whole feed-the-sick-hamster-some-chewable-grape-Motrin plan.

  Would it have been such a bad idea to read the label?

  “It’s her fault,” Oliver cried. “It’s all her fault.”

  Mrs. Grisham looked at Odessa.

  “W-w-well,” Odessa stammered, “I …”

  Then she ran from the room.

  *

  Ten hours earlier found Odessa standing on the sidewalk waiting for the bus to school. Oliver was saying something to her, but Odessa wasn’t listening. She probably didn’t listen the first time he’d said it either, but she wasn’t listening this time around because she was waiting for Mom’s car to turn the corner.

  She was going to save Mud, even though Oliver had been so quick to tattle on her. It didn’t seem fair to punish a poor hamster for her brother’s being a toad.

  To think she’d felt guilty about that one-hundred-dollar bill! Oliver didn’t deserve good luck. It was no wonder the kid had no friends. Who tattles on someone for doing what she thought was the right thing? For trying to be a decent sister?

  He babbled on and Odessa put her hands over her ears. No reason to be nice to him.

  Just then Mom’s car came into view.

  It was a new ritual since she’d started work. Odessa and Oliver walked to the bus stop, where they’d meet Ben Greenstein and his mother, who waited with the three of them until the bus arrived. Mom would leave the h
ouse right after the kids and honk and wave as she drove past on her way to work.

  Odessa flailed her arms wildly. “Stop!” she yelled.

  Mom pulled over.

  Odessa ran to the passenger door and opened it.

  She spoke without stopping to breathe. “You have to take Mud to the vet—it’s really important—he’s really, really sick—and Oliver is too scared after what happened to Truman to tell you—but if Mud doesn’t see a doctor he’s gonna die.”

  Odessa slammed the door, ran to the bus, and climbed on.

  She sat next to Claire and smiled. It was nice having her as a bus friend. She shut her eyes and took a silent vow never to enter her mother’s medicine cabinet again. Never would she bear the responsibility of taking another’s life, even if that life belonged to a smelly hamster with rice-sized teeth.

  She didn’t talk to Oliver once all day.

  Walking home from the bus stop that afternoon, Odessa thought about how she could get Oliver to repay her. He owed her big-time. The problem was, he didn’t know he owed her. He didn’t know she’d gone back and helped him. No matter. She’d figure out a way to make him pay.

  When they walked through the front door, Odessa did not smell pumpkin muffins. And she did not find Mrs. Grisham waiting for them in the kitchen.

  Mom sat at the table with a serious look on her face. A face that said: We need to talk.

  “It’s Mud.” Mom held out her arms to Oliver. “He isn’t going to make it. I took him to the vet, but there’s nothing they can do to save him.”

  Odessa had started to see herself as someone with limitless capabilities. Kind of all-powerful.

  Odessa Almighty.

  No more.

  As it turns out, going back in time can’t fix everything. Mud’s demise made that clear.

  Now she was just Odessa Who Can Go Back and Correct Mistakes, Sometimes—a title that didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

  She told herself that she had never killed the hamster in the first place. Just believing, briefly, that she had caused Mud’s death … it didn’t fit with how she saw herself.