Odessa Again

by Dana Reinhardt

  He closed the door behind him.

  Odessa sat still for a moment before grabbing Mr. Funds’s light and switching it on. She didn’t see the point of sitting around feeling guilty.

  She held the penlight in front of her. It only lit up one small patch of darkness at a time. If Odessa were more courageous, she might have climbed inside the crawl space. Instead she sat at the edge of the opening, shining the light’s small beam all around, illuminating wooden boards and cobwebs.

  Just as she was about to give up and figure out how to close a door with no handle, the beam caught something.

  She moved closer, holding the penlight out straight.

  A small owl figurine.

  Just like the ones that filled Mrs. Grisham’s front parlor.

  Odessa leaned in to grab it. She didn’t disappear into an alternate world, but she did get her lungs full of dust. She took the owl out and wiped it off with the hem of her T-shirt. She held it and stared at its gold glass eyes.

  Why was Mrs. Grisham’s owl in her attic? What had she been doing up here? Did she know more than she was letting on?

  Odessa placed the owl on her desk, right next to her cat-of-the-day calendar. She sat down in her swivel chair and looked at it.

  Owls were supposed to be wise, weren’t they? In cartoons they always had glasses and funny square graduation hats.

  Please, she pleaded with the small figurine. Help me. Solve my mysteries.

  And what she heard it say was: Whoooo.

  Whoooo.

  Whoooo do you have in this world?

  She had to hand it to the owl. It was an excellent question. Who did she have in this world?

  Dad was remarrying Jennifer. Mom had a new job. Sofia couldn’t be trusted. Claire was just a bus friend. Mrs. Grisham was probably hiding something from her. Milo was falling in love with Meredith.

  Oliver.

  Odessa had Oliver.

  Milo was right. He was her person in this world.

  Odessa reached for her dictionary.

  She needed the soothing power of words. She put her hand on top of it as if she were swearing on a Bible. She opened it and began to flip through the pages, slowly at first, then faster. She loved the sound of pages being flipped, the rush of air they gave off. She stopped, placing her finger randomly inside, and the word she was looking for found her. There it was, underlined in purple.

  Compunction: regret; the state of feeling sorry for something.

  Compunction. It was different from feeling blue.

  She thought of Oliver and how she’d spoken to him tonight and how he’d lost the power to smile and how he had no friends other than one dead hamster and one dirty stuffed one. How she’d stolen a hundred dollars from him, robbed him of his one triumphant moment.

  Compunction overwhelmed her.

  When Mom came knocking at her door saying “Come down right now, young lady, you’re being rude,” it was a relief. A big fist had reached inside Odessa’s chest and was slowly squeezing her heart and lungs tighter and tighter. She stood up, but that squeezing feeling held firm inside her.

  Without stopping to think, Odessa marched to the center of her room, rolled up her cheetah-print rug, and jumped.

  *

  After her third visit to Snippity-Do-Dah and her third lollipop she couldn’t crunch through in two seconds, Odessa brushed her hair shiny and went down to Oliver’s room.

  “You should change,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because that shirt is too small for you and Meredith is coming for dinner. And you want to make a good impression. It’s the first step toward making a new friend.”

  Oliver smiled at her. “Will you help me pick something out?”

  “Sure,” she said, and she reached over and touched his freshly cut hair.

  Suddenly it all made sense. The reason. The purpose. After all, people don’t just go falling through floorboards backward in time willy-nilly.

  Finally, Odessa had a mission.

  Project Oliver.

  She would use her power to help the most powerless person she could think of. She’d make up for not having always been the world’s greatest sister.

  Oliver didn’t know what to make of Odessa’s sudden attention. He eyed her with suspicion, the way any younger brother might whose previously mean or indifferent older sister started saying things like:

  “Time to lose the Power Rangers lunchbox. How about getting a Bakugan one?”

  Or:

  “Maybe you should take tae kwon do.”

  And:

  “Why don’t you see if that kid Jack can come over sometime? But don’t call it a playdate, that’s too babyish.”

  She tried not to be bossy; she knew from experience that it wouldn’t help Oliver see things her way.

  Everyone needs friends, especially shy kids, so Odessa decided she’d become Oliver’s first friend. If he had one, others were sure to follow.

  She started sitting next to him on the bus. Claire didn’t seem to mind. She would turn around in her seat to talk to them, and Odessa figured it couldn’t hurt Oliver’s reputation to be seen with two fourth-grade girls, even if one was his sister.

  A few mornings she walked Oliver to his classroom so she could give Blake Canter a look that said: Don’t mess with my little brother, even if you are littler than he is.

  After that, she wasn’t sure what to do. How do you help a toad become a prince when there’s no way you’re ever going to kiss him?

  *

  Odessa showed Mrs. Grisham the owl she’d found in the crawl space. Mrs. Grisham looked up from the honey spice cake she was slicing. It was a Wednesday, a dinner out with Dad day. Even if Odessa did want to spoil her appetite, she wasn’t sure she’d do it with a honey spice cake.

  “Oh, I remember that one. I haven’t seen it in ages.”

  “That’s because I found it in my attic. In the crawl space.”

  “Huh. I wonder how it got in there.” Mrs. Grisham turned it over in her hand, and then held it out to Odessa. “Here, it’s yours. Finders keepers and all that.”

  Odessa took it back. She’d already tried asking Mrs. Grisham all about the house and the attic, and she hadn’t gotten anywhere, but she decided to try again.

  “Did you ever spend time in the attic?”

  “Of course. It’s my house, after all.”

  “Did anything strange ever happen?”

  “Strange things happen all the time. Now eat your cake.”

  Odessa took a few bites, just to be polite. Then she went upstairs and looked out her small window onto Mrs. Grisham’s house next door. It looked the same, except pink. She knew from being inside that the rooms were similar, but darker and more filled up with stuff. And now she saw—it should have been obvious—that Mrs. Grisham’s house also had an attic.

  What if that attic had magic powers too? What if the answer to Odessa’s biggest mystery lay up a narrow flight of stairs in the house next door?

  Odessa waited until Saturday.

  Saturday afternoon was the one time Odessa knew for sure that Mrs. Grisham left the house. She went to the farmers’ market in town, where she’d buy fresh vegetables that she’d try to hide in Odessa’s and Oliver’s afternoon snacks. She’d buy herself a bunch of dahlias too.

  When she left, Odessa walked around the outside of her house, trying all the windows and the back door. Everything was locked. Odessa had never burgled anybody’s house, though she did so love the verb burgle.

  Stupid! Of course Mrs. Grisham locked her door and all her windows. Nobody wants burglars. Especially not old ladies who live alone.

  Odessa would have broken a window if she hadn’t been afraid of cutting herself. She’d have kicked down the door if she had known tae kwon do.

  She went back to her own house and up her attic stairs.

  *

  When she opened her eyes again it was 7:15 that morning. She scrambled for her bathrobe and slippers. Mom and Oliver wer
e still asleep, so she tiptoed out of the house.

  She’d never rung Mrs. Grisham’s bell so early. What if old people slept late? What if she turned off her hearing aids and didn’t hear the doorbell? What if she answered without any teeth?

  All these questions raced through Odessa’s mind as she stood on the porch, but they turned out to be all for nothing because Mrs. Grisham answered quickly, dressed and with a full set of teeth.

  “What brings you here at this hour?” she asked.

  “I can’t find my green velvet headband. Maybe I left it over here?”

  Mrs. Grisham let her in.

  Odessa made a show of looking around the room, all the while waiting for Mrs. Grisham’s attention to somehow get diverted.

  “And you need this headband at a little past seven in the morning?” Mrs. Grisham arched an eyebrow.

  “Hair emergency!”

  Odessa looked underneath the sofa.

  Mrs. Grisham stared.

  Odessa lifted up and then replaced a pile of books on the coffee table.

  Mrs. Grisham cocked her head.

  Then a miracle occurred. Miracles, like answers to mysteries, don’t usually fall from the sky or materialize out of thin air.

  But this one did.

  A teakettle whistled someplace in the back of the house.

  “I’ll be right back.” Mrs. Grisham turned to follow the sound.

  Odessa ran to the front window and undid the lock.

  At first, breaking into Mrs. Grisham’s house was exciting.

  Odessa the Gumshoe.

  After watching her neighbor leave for the farmers’ market, Odessa went to the front porch, heart pounding. The window she’d left unlatched that morning slid right open and she crawled inside.

  In the attic Odessa found boxes, musty furniture, and old-lady stuff. She shined Clark Funds’s penlight all around. Nothing interesting. She cleared a space on the floorboards and jumped, over and over, as hard as she could, waiting for that over-under, inside-out, upside-down feeling.

  Nothing.

  When she crept back down the attic steps and out that front parlor window, what she’d done suddenly seemed wrong. Inexcusable. It felt way worse than taking the one-hundred-dollar bill. She ran home and hid in her room and vowed she’d never burgle anyone ever again.

  *

  The next Monday she could hardly look Mrs. Grisham in the eye.

  She’d come home on the bus alone, because Oliver had gone to Jack’s house. He’d listened to her! And now he was going to play with a friend! Project Oliver was right on track.

  “I have homework,” Odessa said as she passed through the kitchen. She didn’t even pick up one of the oatmeal cookies still cooling on the rack.

  “Wait,” Mrs. Grisham said. “You might need this.”

  She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out Clark Funds’s penlight.

  “You seem to have left it upstairs,” Mrs. Grisham said. “In my attic.”

  This was a huge Odessa Red-Light moment. Maybe the worst ever.

  “I … I … I …”

  What to say? She wanted to run. Flee up to her attic and jump through the floorboards. Erase this moment. Wipe it off the map.

  But she couldn’t.

  There was nothing she could do to prevent Mrs. Grisham from finding her penlight and figuring out that she’d violated her trust by burgling her house. It was too late. Too much time had passed. She didn’t have enough hours left to go back that far.

  “I’m sorry,” Odessa said. “Really sorry. I just … I was just … I was just trying to figure something out.”

  “Did you?” Mrs. Grisham asked.

  “Did I what?” Odessa asked.

  “Figure it out?”

  “No.”

  “And does it matter?” Mrs. Grisham asked.

  Odessa thought about this. Did it matter? Did the why of it all really matter? She had to admit, now that she thought hard about it, that despite her desire to understand why and how things worked, it didn’t. What mattered was the what. What she did with her power.

  “I guess it doesn’t,” Odessa said.

  “Okay then.” Mrs. Grisham pointed to the cooling rack. “Cookie?”

  Odessa took two.

  *

  Odessa developed a Grand Master Oliver Plan.

  A GMOP.

  It came to her while she was sitting in the principal’s office. She’d never been to the principal’s office, but despite all the things she’d learned this year—three-digit multiplication, world capitals, how to apply deodorant—she still hadn’t figured out how to control her impulse to shove.

  It was a Thursday.

  PE day.

  This meant that the fourth graders ate lunch earlier than usual, overlapping with the second grade in the cafeteria.

  Odessa watched Oliver walk in. Before Project Oliver she would have pretended she didn’t know him, but today she waved to him from across the room.

  Odessa could see that his shoelaces were untied. He hadn’t mastered the art of tying his own laces. How a boy could be as skilled as Oliver at building with Legos and yet so ham-handed, Odessa could not understand.

  She stood on her chair so he could see her and she mouthed the words: Your shoelaces.

  He looked at her with befuddlement.

  This time she whisper-yelled: “Your shoelaces!”

  In addition to not being able to tie his shoes properly, Oliver apparently could not read lips.

  Odessa cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted: “YOUR SHOELACES!”

  He heard her.

  So did Blake Canter.

  Rather than stopping in his tracks and bending down to tie his shoes—rather than listening to his sister—Oliver took a step forward with his tray in his hands, and when he did, Blake Canter took her little hot-pink sneaker and stood on his dangling shoelace.

  Oliver’s fall was epic.

  The clatter of the dishes. The crashing of the silverware. The tray sliding ten feet across the cafeteria floor. It was a cacophony—but the laughter was the loudest sound of all.

  It echoed off the cafeteria walls.

  Oliver lay on the floor. Odessa could see that he wasn’t hurt, so she ran right by him and up to tiny Blake and gave her a shove, hard enough to knock her off her hot-pink feet.

  The evil little she-troll burst into tears.

  And now Odessa sat face to face with Ms. Banville, the principal.

  While Ms. Banville remarked on how surprised she was, how puzzled to see Odessa in her office, when Odessa had always been such a model student and blah, blah, blah—Odessa wasn’t listening.

  She was doing math in her head.

  If she went straight to the attic after school she’d have time to go back and catch Oliver before lunch and tie his laces for him.

  She saw no point explaining Blake Canter’s trolliness. Why bother, when Odessa would erase this visit to Ms. Banville’s office, Oliver’s epic wipeout, and the echoing laughter in the cafeteria?

  She’d wipe it all off the map.

  Odessa took stock of Ms. Banville’s office. Her big swivelly chair, the photographs of curly-headed children, the diploma on the wall, and the big banner above her window that said FEBRUARY IS PRESIDENTS’ MONTH.

  This meant many things. It meant that they ate cake for George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays. It meant a week off when some people did boring things like visit relatives, while others did awesome things like go to the Harry Potter theme park.

  And it meant that someone at school got to be President for a Day.

  It worked like this: they had an all-school assembly at which Ms. Banville would read a riddle, and whoever solved it first got to skip the next day of classes and sit in the principal’s office acting like the principal, or the president, which meant making announcements over the loudspeaker and signing attendance slips, and—most important—it meant you were cool for one day, and usually that coolness lasted for a long
time.

  As Ms. Banville rattled off Odessa’s various punishments—a written apology to Blake Canter, an essay on how words, not fists, are the way out of conflict, and no recess for two weeks—Odessa studied that sign.

  FEBRUARY IS PRESIDENTS’ MONTH.

  Her GMOP started to take shape.

  She would help Oliver win President for a Day! She would hand him a moment of triumph. Make up for the one she’d taken away.

  Odessa had some planning to do, but for now, she needed only to go home and back six hours so that she could start this day over and tie her little brother’s shoelaces in triple knots.

  When the time came to select the President for a Day, Odessa was so excited to begin her Grand Master Oliver Plan, so proud of herself for coming up with it, that she failed to account for the problem of the shrinking of time. Since there were only five hours left, and since the assembly took place first thing in the morning, Odessa couldn’t wait until she got home from school to jump through the floorboards. That wouldn’t leave her enough time to give Oliver the answer to Ms. Banville’s riddle.

  None of this was on Odessa’s mind that morning. She ate her cinnamon toast and rode with Claire to school, all the while picturing herself the hero. The one who saved her brother, who put his needs above her own. After all, Odessa wanted to win President for a Day herself. Who wouldn’t? All that attention! Even better than pale blue eyes.

  She was filled to the brim—to the very top of that tank inside her—with pride. She was such a good person.

  Odessa the Selfless.

  She arrived at school and filed into the gym along with everyone else.

  She took her seat and listened as Ms. Banville said: “I’m going to read this year’s riddle. Please don’t shout out the answer. Raise your hand and wait to be called on.” Then she leaned in close to the microphone.

  Slowly, and with a fair amount of drama, she read from a slip of paper:

  You can find me in darkness but never in light.

  I am present in daytime but absent at night.