Odessa Again (7 page)

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 for 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, stop worrying 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.

She 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 water-melon?”

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 onto 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 some 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 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.

14 Hours

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 had figured she must give good advice, because why else 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 on 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.