Odessa Again (13 page)

She needed to
do
something.

Odessa decided to start with the mystery that seemed the most solvable: the door with no handle in her attic. She needed to open that door. She needed Uncle Milo, because for one thing he was handy, and for another, if the door opened onto a secret world or an alternate universe, he was the person she’d want to take with her when she abandoned her old life for a new one.

But Milo hadn’t come around in a while, and when Odessa asked Mom why, she smiled a goofy smile.

“He’s been busy.”

“Doing what?”

Uncle Milo was famous for doing nothing.

Mom grasped Odessa’s hands and leaned in close, barely able to contain her excitement. “He’s been spending time with a nice young woman named Meredith.”

Meredith?
Meredith?

Odessa immediately pictured this Meredith with pale blue eyes.

Smile. Blush. Giggle.

“He’s bringing her to dinner,” Mom said. “Saturday night.”

Dinner was always better when Uncle Milo came over, but Uncle Milo always came alone.

Meredith? Odessa anticipated the evening with a combination of giddiness and dread.

She felt downright
griddy
.

What if Meredith didn’t like children?

What if she was a sour-faced adult with no sense of humor? What if she smelled funny or had horse teeth?

Or what if she was nice and friendly and pretty like Jennifer, but still a stranger who didn’t belong in the family?

Saturday morning was haircut day. It had been three months since the last visit to Snippity-Do-Dah, which only meant that Odessa’s long, straight hair was a little longer and a little straighter. Oliver’s short hair had grown shaggy, though not in a cute-shaggy way like Theo Summers’s—more in an I-just-crawled-out-from-under-a-rock-shaggy sort of way.

Odessa liked Snippity-Doo-Dah because they gave out lollipops, and not the tiny kind you could crunch your way through in two seconds. Their lollipops lasted.

Odessa stared at herself in her mirror. She pulled long strands of hair over her face and then folded them up to just above her eyebrows, so she could see what she’d look like with bangs.

Cute.

She turned her head away and then whipped it back around to the mirror, trying to catch herself off guard. She wanted her knee-jerk reaction.

Still cute.

She picked up the phone to call Sofia. Sofia would have an opinion on bangs. She was full of opinions. She would have an opinion about bangs in general, and about bangs on Odessa, but Odessa put the phone back down.

She didn’t totally trust Sofia. And she was still a little mad at her. Sofia didn’t know about the “Odessa liked you shaggy” comment or that she’d had a fit on the school steps, so she probably thought everything was fine between them.

But what about her reaction when she thought Odessa and Theo were hiding a secret boyfriend-girlfriend relationship? It was as if she couldn’t believe Theo would ever like Odessa in that way!

Odessa had gone back and fixed all that, but still, she knew … even if Sofia didn’t. That made it hard to trust her, though they were still best friends in real life and in
Dreamonica.

It was complicated.

In the car on the way to Snippity-Do-Dah Odessa said, “I’m getting bangs.” It felt good to have made this decision without Sofia’s approval.

“Oh, honey,” Mom said. “Are you sure?”

“Its just bangs, Mom,” Odessa shot back. Bangs were easy. Simple. Bangs were not at all complicated.

“Well, it’s up to you, I suppose, but I just want to make sure you’ve given it some thought.”

Sadie Howell had bangs. Odessa couldn’t go to Snippity-Do-Dah and ask for pale blue eyes, but she could ask for bangs.

Big mistake.

When she got home Odessa rushed to her room to see what she could do about her new, not-so-fabulous look. She stared at the mirror that only an hour ago had told her bangs were a good idea. Cute, even.

Stupid mirror.

Odessa grabbed her green crushed-velvet headband. Her favorite. She wore it most days anyway, so maybe nobody would notice if she used it to hold those horrible bangs up off of her forehead. But her hair just poked out and looked weird.

She had only nine falls through the floorboards left. Five fingers on one hand, four on the other. You don’t need to be a math whiz to understand that nine is not a large number.

Odessa had a feeling there were important things to do with these opportunities. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, but she knew she needed to make them count.

Should she use one to undo a haircut?

Probably not. After all, hair grows back.

But Odessa couldn’t afford to look not-so-fabulous. There was Sadie Howell. And Meredith was coming for dinner.

Bangs mattered. Bangs were important.

*

Back at Snippity-Do-Dah, sitting in the bright yellow swivel chair, Odessa looked at herself in the mirror.

Bangs. How stupid!

“Just a little off the bottom,” she said. “Thank you very much!”

8 Hours

Meredith did not have pale blue eyes or horse teeth, but she did have a good sense of humor. And she was a third-grade teacher, so she liked kids.

Odessa’s third-grade teacher had been Ms. Albright. Ms. Albright was the last person in the world Odessa could imagine Uncle Milo bringing to dinner. She also couldn’t imagine calling Ms. Albright by her first name, whatever that was.

She thought about the kids in Meredith’s third-grade class. What did they call her? What would they think about Odessa calling her Meredith?

Odessa wore her favorite outfit—her peace T-shirt, gray skinny jeans, and pink Vans. She brushed her bangless hair until it shone.

As usual, Oliver didn’t put any effort whatsoever into his appearance.

“You should change,” Odessa said.

“Why?”

“Because you look like a toad in that shirt. And Meredith is coming over. And if you act like you look—that is to say, like a toad—she may decide she doesn’t want to ever have children with Uncle Milo because maybe they’d get your toad genes.” Geez. Oliver could be so annoying. And so clueless. “Toad,” she said one more time before she slammed his door and walked away.

Odessa was glad she’d bothered with her outfit. Meredith had red hair and three piercings in each ear. She wore tall boots and a denim dress, and she looked much cooler than Ms. Albright ever did.

Meredith smiled at Milo a lot. And he smiled at her. Odessa was smiling too. It was a regular smile-fest. Except for Oliver.

Odessa felt something like guilt tug at her. Maybe she was responsible for Oliver’s mood. But what could she do? He looked like a toad in that shirt. And it was her duty as his sister to tell him so.

By the time Mom brought out dessert—chocolate mousse—Odessa loved Meredith. She was deep in an
I
want
you
to
be
my
aunt
sort of love, and because she loved Meredith this way, she felt really bad about having to do what she was going to do next.

She needed Uncle Milo’s help with the door with no handle, and she didn’t know Meredith well enough yet to know what kind of company she’d be in an alternate universe, if that was where the door led. She needed to get Milo alone.

“Can you come up to my room?” Odessa asked.

“Sure, O,” Milo said, and he grabbed Meredith by the hand. She had small fingers with perfectly manicured silver nails. “Let’s go.”

“Not her,” Odessa said. “Just you.”

Odessa knew how she sounded. But she couldn’t think of any other way to ask, and since she couldn’t come out and explain why she wanted only Milo, she was left with no choice but to come off as rude.

Uncouth.

Milo looked wounded. He turned to Meredith. She took her hand out of his and placed it on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, baby.”
Baby?
Meredith looked at Odessa and winked. “Sometimes a girl just needs a little alone time with her favorite uncle. I totally understand.”

Odessa didn’t know how to wink, so she didn’t wink back.

Milo followed Odessa up the stairs while Meredith used her third-grade teacher skills to try to interest Oliver in a game of Uno.

“What’s this all about?” Milo asked once they were safely in the attic. She searched his eyes for the twinkle they usually got when she and Milo were in the midst of conspiring.

No twinkle.

His eyes looked like Mom’s did when Odessa left dishes in the sink, or her shoes at the bottom of the stairs.

“I need your help,” she said. “I really, really need your help.”

Milo softened. “Talk to me,” he said.

Odessa reached for Clark Funds’s penlight and shined it on the door with no handle.

Milo got down onto his knees.

“It’s a crawl space,” he said.

“What’s that?”

It sounded fun. Like the indoor playground at the mall Mom used to take her to when she was little, before Odessa realized that there was cool stuff you could buy at the mall.

“It’s sort of like another attic. Sometimes it’s used for storage.”

Her
attic
had
an
attic?

“I need to get in there.”

Milo narrowed his eyes. She saw just the slightest hint of twinkle.

“I
need
to,” she pleaded.

He reached over and gave it a shove. It wouldn’t budge, but Odessa could have told him that.

“It’s painted shut,” he said. “We’ve just got to loosen up the edges.”

He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a Swiss Army knife, and ran it along the perimeter of the small square entry. White chips of paint fell onto the floor.

Milo gave it another shove. The door shifted slightly but still wouldn’t open. He worked his knife around the edges again, and this time he leaned against the door with his shoulder.