Free Odessa Again by Dana Reinhardt

her.
    “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”
    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 house 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—Oliver is too scared after what happened to Truman to tell you—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.”

9 Hours
    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