Odessa Again

by Dana Reinhardt

  Oliver had always wanted a hamster. He’d begged, cajoled, and bamboozled, but her parents had said no, because parents know that hamsters smell foul.

  But now that the decision was Mom’s alone, Odessa knew she’d given Oliver what he wanted more than anything, just like she’d given Odessa the attic she’d wanted more than anything, because there were other things Mom couldn’t give them, like a Christmas in their old house with their father.

  And also, Oliver was lonely.

  Odessa had wanted her own room, but Oliver had not. He pestered Odessa and mimicked her and eavesdropped on her, but he hadn’t wanted her to move out. He didn’t want to sleep alone. Getting the hamster meant he wouldn’t have to.

  Milo suggested Oliver name him Mud, so that when people asked, Oliver could say, “His name is Mud.” They all thought this was funny, even if Odessa wasn’t sure why.

  They went to Dad’s apartment Christmas night. Dad and Jennifer had set up a tree twice as big as the one at Mom’s and covered in fake snow. Odessa used to beg for a tree with fake snow, but her dad said they were “cheesy.” Now Dad had one, and Odessa didn’t know if he’d gotten it for her, or if Jennifer liked the trees with fake snow too.

  There were other things Odessa and Jennifer both liked. They both liked radio 101.3, which played songs Mom called insipid. They liked sparkling lemonade, which Dad kept stocked in the fridge. They liked to do crosswords, and sometimes they’d work together on one from a book Jennifer had bought of not-too-easy/not-too-hard puzzles.

  That night there was a fire in the fireplace where the bulging stockings hung.

  Uh-oh.

  Normally, melted chocolate is one of the world’s greatest inventions, but on Christmas night at Dad’s the chocolate he’d put in their stockings melted all over the other things in there, like the animal erasers and the headbands and the tween magazines Mom didn’t like Odessa to read.

  They all laughed about it, and anyway, there were more presents under the tree with the fake snow.

  Oliver got a new Star Wars Lego set, and Odessa received a new dictionary.

  “Jennifer picked this out for you,” Dad said, giving her a look. Odessa knew the look meant: Give Jennifer a hug.

  Odessa looked away. “Thanks, Jennifer.” She wasn’t in a mood to hug Jennifer. Then she added, “I love it,” because this might make Dad happy, and also, it was true.

  Odessa opened the dictionary and inhaled its new-book smell. It was a grown-up dictionary with tiny print and no glossy photos. As she flipped through the pages, she saw that they were filled with purple marks.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I went through it,” Jennifer said. “I highlighted some of the unusual words I thought you might want to learn. It should help with the crosswords and Scrabble too.”

  Odessa had to admit, even though she didn’t want to hug her, and even though she didn’t want it to be true, that Jennifer had given her the best of all her Christmas gifts.

  *

  By the end of vacation Odessa was ready for school to start. She was tired of staying indoors. Tired of Oliver. Tired, even, of playing Dreamonica, in which she and Sofia now had more puppies and bigger mansions with swimming pools and waterslides and their characters were big TV stars. She was ready to leave the online world for the real world, but mostly, she was ready for recess.

  Theo had been teaching her how to shoot baskets, and she wasn’t half bad, but then Bryce Bratton had started saying they were in loooooove, so her lessons had come to an abrupt stop right before vacation.

  Maybe over the break Theo would have blocked out Bryce, the way she’d blocked out that day at the mall with Claire, and they could start shooting baskets again. That was what she hoped when she went back to school that first day.

  Odessa the Optimist.

  But then Theo showed up with a new buzz cut and everything went downhill.

  Odessa still thought he looked cute, because love means not caring if someone’s hair is shaggy or bristly. Love means caring about what’s on the inside and not on the top of someone’s head.

  So she was fine with the change.

  She was not fine with what Sofia did.

  During morning math Sofia sidled up to their side of the hexagon and said, “Oh my God, Theo, I can’t believe you shaved off all your hair. Odessa liked it shaggy.”

  Ouch.

  When Odessa had told Sofia she thought Theo Summers was cute since he’d stopped cutting his hair, she’d trusted Sofia not to tell anybody. Especially not Theo! That’s what it means to have a best friend, whether in the real world or in Dreamonica. Your secrets are supposed to be safe.

  What Sofia had done was no different from asking Odessa to trust her, and then stepping out of the way and letting her fall and split her head open on the kitchen floor.

  After school Odessa went straight to her room and cried the tears she’d been holding in since morning math. She liked to imagine a place inside her, a place like that water tower not too far from the pond where she went skating, a big tank that could store all her bad feelings until she was somewhere safe enough to unlock that place and let everything out.

  When she was done sobbing on her bed, she was still angry and wasn’t sure what to do about it. Sometimes shoving helped. Or throwing things. Also stomping.

  What a terrible mistake.

  And it was only the first of two terrible mistakes.

  What she had was precious, she knew this, only thirteen opportunities left, and she knew to take great care with precious things. But she was just so angry, so fed up, that she’d gone and stomped on her attic floor without thinking about the consequences.

  Mistake number one.

  The next thing she knew it was thirteen hours earlier, and she was going to have to relive a day she wanted to forget.

  It wasn’t something she could undo, because it hadn’t been her doing in the first place. And even if she could avoid it by knocking the hexagon over as Sofia approached or creating some other diversion, it wasn’t going to take away the fact that Sofia had said it, that she had stood by and let Odessa fall back and split her head open on the floor.

  Odessa decided, as she tossed and turned in her bed in the wee hours of a morning she’d already lived through, to be mature about it. To confront her troubles. To take Mom’s advice and talk about her feelings rather than going around stomping and shoving. She would catch Sofia at school, before the first bell, and ask her nicely not to say anything about Theo’s hair.

  That was what she did.

  Sofia wrinkled her nose. “Why would I say anything about Theo’s hair?”

  “Just don’t. Okay?”

  They were standing on the steps to school and right at that moment a bus pulled up. Theo climbed off with his new buzz cut, and Sofia’s jaw dropped.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  Mistake number two.

  “Odessa! Have you guys been talking on the phone? Have you been emailing? Did you see him over vacation? Is something going on with you guys and you aren’t telling me about it? Are you like boyfriend-girlfriend now? Geez! I thought we told each other everything.”

  She turned and ran up the stairs. Odessa watched her go while Theo, with his new buzz cut, walked right past her without saying a word.

  Odessa thought about walking away from school, from math, from recess, from Sofia.

  She might have if she’d had anyplace to walk to, but home was too far and she wasn’t allowed to cross many of the streets on the way.

  The first bell began to ring.

  She’d never been late to class. She hadn’t been late yesterday, because she hadn’t talked to Sofia out on the steps. She didn’t bother running. Late was late.

  The fourth-grade rooms were on the second floor, but the second-grade rooms were on the first, right by the stairwell, and as she approached Oliver’s room she was surprised to find him sitting out in the hall, his face in Red-Light mode.

  “Oliver?”

&nb
sp; The hall was for the bad kids, the ones the teachers couldn’t handle. Oliver was pesky, he was annoying, he was shy, but he wasn’t bad.

  “Go away,” he said. “Please. Go away.”

  She recognized his I’m about to cry look, and because Odessa knew she’d do anything to avoid crying at school, she left him sitting there.

  Without her asking questions, maybe Oliver could fill up his inner storage tank and hold it together until he got home and could be alone in his room.

  Odessa tried to remember how he seemed after school on the yesterday that was now today. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t, she realized, because she never bothered with how Oliver was feeling, especially yesterday, when she was so fed up. She’d sat next to Claire on the bus like she did every day now. She didn’t notice where Oliver sat, because she never paid any attention to Oliver. But this afternoon she sat next to him. Luckily, Claire didn’t seem to mind.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Sitting with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t I sit with my brother if I want?”

  “You never sit with me.”

  “I am today.”

  He turned and stared out the window.

  “Why were you out in the hall?” Odessa asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Did you get in trouble?” Stupid question. Kids don’t sit out in the hall just to breathe the fresh air.

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  In Odessa’s experience, most things were Oliver’s fault, but this wasn’t the time to say so.

  “Whose fault was it?”

  “Blake Canter is always picking on me, but I’m the one who gets in trouble.”

  Poor Oliver.

  It was one thing to be the kid who got picked on. It was another thing entirely to be the boy who got picked on by a girl half his size.

  “What happened?”

  Oliver bit the nail on his thumb. That was what he did when he was upset or scared. He’d been doing it since he’d given up sucking it, at the mortifying age of seven.

  “She took my hamster. Stole it from my backpack. She was waving it around and showing everyone and calling me a freak, and when I tried grabbing him back from her, Ms. Farnsworth told me since I can’t keep my hands to myself I should go sit in the hallway.”

  “You took Mud to school?”

  “Of course not. I took Barry.”

  Barry was the stuffed hamster Oliver had been sleeping with since forever.

  “Why did you even take Barry to school?”

  Oliver shrugged. “I don’t have any friends.”

  She wanted to tell him that he wasn’t helping matters by taking a worn-out stuffed hamster he refused to let Mom put in the laundry to school, that what he needed to do was be less shy and quiet, but she knew the damage was done. Once you’re known as the boy who needs his stuffed hamster, it’s a reputation that tends to stick.

  Odessa leaned back in the bus seat and sighed. This day had been only a little bit better than this day had been before, and yet she knew she had no choice but to go back and live it all over again.

  She thought about the randomness of things. Today had been a big mistake. It was her mistake number one. And yet … if she hadn’t mistakenly fallen through the floorboards and had that fight with Sofia on the steps, she wouldn’t have been late and she wouldn’t have ever known that Oliver was having a day that was probably even worse than hers.

  *

  On the third take of this not-so-great day, Odessa snuck into Oliver’s room while he was in the bathroom brushing his teeth, took Barry, and hid him at the bottom of Oliver’s hamper.

  On the bus she sat with Claire. Oliver was chewing his thumbnail. Odessa wanted to tell him that today would be a better day than it would have been had he found Barry, but she didn’t. She didn’t tell him for the same reason she waited for Theo to get off the bus before she asked Sofia, nicely, not to mention his hair.

  If Odessa had learned anything from her adventures in the attic, it was to never make the same mistake twice.

  It was another morning, with another one of her mother’s “meetings,” which meant that her mother was rushing Odessa to finish her breakfast (Chop-chop!) and to make some sense of the mass of tangles that was her hair (Are small animals nesting in there?) and to pick out something more appropriate to wear (It’s February, honey, not July).

  Odessa ate quickly, and she worked her hair with a brush, but she had no intention of changing her clothes. Girls in the fourth grade wore layered tank tops.

  Her mother was opening and then slamming shut every drawer in the kitchen.

  “Somebody needs her cof-feeeee,” Odessa singsonged under her breath to Oliver, who muffled his giggle with his hand.

  “Not today,” her mother muttered to herself. “Of all days, dear God, not today.”

  “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  “I just can’t …” She picked up her purse and dumped the entire contents onto the kitchen floor. “Where on earth are the keys to the van?”

  Mom always lost the keys to the van. Dad used to tease her that she should wear them around her neck like a “Latchkie kid.” Odessa had never heard of the Latchkies or any of their children. Then Dad explained that a Latchkie kid is actually a latchkey kid, which is a kid who comes home from school to an empty house and has to let herself inside, fix her own snack, and get her homework done all by herself.

  Odessa didn’t offer to help. She wasn’t much good at finding lost things, and even if she had been, the bus would be here soon, and even if the bus wasn’t coming soon, she wasn’t sure how she felt about Mom going back to work.

  It sounded sort of dreamy when Dad first explained it, but that was back when Odessa couldn’t imagine a life without Dad at work and Mom at home. That was before he moved to his apartment and Mom moved to the new house. And now that Mom was going on job interviews, Odessa imagined coming home to an empty house and fixing herself a snack, and she didn’t find it dreamy at all.

  She didn’t want to be a latchkey kid. The girls in fourth grade didn’t wear keys around their necks.

  Odessa went off to school, leaving Mom sifting through gum wrappers and receipts on the kitchen floor.

  Her day was uneventful.

  She came home and brought Mrs. Grisham her paper, which she hadn’t done in a while. Mrs. Grisham had baked ginger cookies, and Odessa wondered how many days she’d baked cookies without anybody stopping by to share them, so she ate four, but this didn’t make her feel any better.

  She went home and opened the front door. (She didn’t need a key; it was unlocked.) She called, “Hi, Mom.”

  No response.

  “Mom!” she yelled up the stairs.

  Nothing.

  She wandered through the kitchen, panic rising, and into the living room.

  Mom sat on the sofa. The TV was on.

  Some lady in a white billowy pantsuit was giving all the people in the studio audience some kind of prize, and then other ladies were jumping up and down and hugging each other, and while this should have been sort of exciting, or at least interesting, Odessa couldn’t concentrate on what was happening because … her mother was watching TV!

  In the middle of the afternoon!

  Rule number one in the Green House: No TV in the daytime.

  Okay, so maybe rule number one was No hitting or pushing. No TV in the daytime was definitely rule number two.

  “Mom?”

  Oliver was sitting next to her. He didn’t care about ladies giving away prizes to other ladies, but he would have been happy to watch anything, because he loved TV.

  “Hi, honey,” her mother said, eyes on the screen. “Good day at school?”

  “Um, yes. Good day at home?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you find the keys?”

  “No.”

  “So you missed your meeting?”

  “Yep.”

  “Mom?” Odessa reached for the
remote control. “Can I turn off the TV?”

  Odessa was a keep-the-TV-on type, but she clicked the power button. She sat down next to Mom.

  “I’m sorry you missed your meeting.”

  “Oh well, I suppose it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mom stretched out her legs and pulled the throw blanket up to her chin.

  “I mean if the job was the right job for me, then I would have made it to the interview. I wouldn’t have misplaced the keys. The Universe would have seen to it that it all worked out.”

  “So it’s the Universe’s fault?”

  The Universe. Why hadn’t Odessa ever thought to blame her mistakes on the Universe?

  Mom laughed. She nudged Odessa with her toe.

  “Maybe you should give the Universe a time-out,” Odessa said. “Send the Universe to its room.”

  Oliver jumped up and threw his arms out wide. “You should kick the Universe in the privates!”

  “Inappropriate,” Mom said, trying not to laugh. Then her smile disappeared. She pulled her feet back and curled them underneath her.

  “You don’t need a job,” Odessa said.

  “Yes, honey, I do. That’s just the way it is now that I’m on my own.”

  Odessa wanted to tell Mom that she wasn’t on her own. That she had Odessa and her toad of a son and Uncle Milo. But Odessa was quiet; she felt a sting in her eyes and didn’t want to cry.

  Mom looked at her. Mom knew how to see the sting even when the tears hadn’t come yet. She was tricky that way.

  “Oh, sweetie.” She reached out and brushed Odessa’s cheek. “Finding work is a good thing. I want to go to work as much as I need to. I’m ready to get back into designing. I miss it. I want to do something that puts me back out into the world.”

  “What was the job?” Odessa asked.

  Her mother sighed. “Oh, just the kind where you get paid to do what you love.”

  Odessa loved making pottery. She loved the color magenta, lollipops that were too big to ever finish, and the feeling of fresh-out-of-the-laundry pajamas. She loved the smell of newly mowed grass. Butter-brickle ice cream. Theo Summers.