Free Odessa Again by Dana Reinhardt Page A

Who Can Go Back and Correct Mistakes, Sometimes— a title that didn’t have quite the same ring to it.
    She told herself that she had never killed the hamster in the first place. Just believing, briefly, she that had caused Mud’s death … it didn’t fit with how she saw herself.
    She was a giver, not a taker.
    A fixer! Not a breaker.
    And now that she knew Mud was going to die anyway, she felt … well, better.
    Oliver, however, was not recovering speedily. He rarely smiled, and had no energy to be his pesky self.
    Mom offered to get him a new hamster, but he refused.
    “How about a guinea pig? They’re hardy!”
    “No thanks.”
    “I’d consider a ferret.”
    Oliver shook his head.
    “You know, we could always go back to being a cat family.”
    He didn’t even bother to respond.
    “Hey,” Odessa said. “Remember when your bike got stolen and then Dad went out and got you a new one and it was way better than the one you used to have?”
    Oliver looked at her. For a minute she thought he might tell her to shut up or ask why she had to be such a stupid butt-brain, but he just walked off and closed himself in his room.
    Odessa listened outside his door. Was he crying? Talking to his stuffed hamster, Barry? She heard nothing.
    This silence was maybe the worst sound of all.
    She thought of giving him the hundred-dollar bill. Maybe that would cheer him up. But she decided against it: money can’t buy happiness. At least, that was what grown-ups said.
    Oliver was particularly glum over the weekend. Because they shared a room in what was now Dad and Jennifer’s apartment, it was hard not to notice the depths of his blueness.
    She didn’t know how to cheer him up, but that didn’t stop her from trying. One attempt, a happy dance, ended with her twisting an ankle.
    He wouldn’t play Scrabble. Jennifer had picked up a deluxe version, the kind where the board spins to face the next player, and Odessa brought along her new grown-up dictionary with the purple underlined words, but Oliver shook his head. “No thanks.”
    Odessa set up a runway for a fashion show and Jennifer let her borrow her heels. She wore her lavender dress even though the wedding was months away, but Oliver refused to put on his suit with the matching tie.

    Jennifer tried too. She suggested a Lego challenge: Who can build the tallest structure in three minutes? Oliver took a pass.
    And then on Saturday morning, while they were watching TV, the only activity Oliver would engage in, his favorite commercial came on. It was for a car driven by hamsters in baggy pants and gold chains, hamsters that could break-dance. Every time Oliver saw this commercial he’d laugh until he cried, except for this Saturday morning when he started crying without any laughing first.
    Odessa sat across the room, stunned. She wanted to go comfort him somehow, but she took too long, and before she knew it Jennifer hurried to the couch and put an arm around the sobbing Oliver.
    That was when he shouted at her.
    “Don’t touch me!”
    Shy, timid Oliver roared like a lion.
    Dad came storming into the room. “What’s going on in here?”
    “Nothing,” Jennifer said. She stood, hands deep in her pockets. “Oliver’s just upset.”
    Dad looked from Oliver to Jennifer and back again, and then at Odessa, as if she could do anything other than keep her heart from pounding its way right out of her chest.
    The first thing she wanted to do was run upstairs to her attic. To turn back the clock and reach Oliver first. That way, if he’d shouted, he’d have shouted at her. That’s the way things were supposed to be. Brothers are supposed to shout at sisters. Not at the woman your dad is going to re marry.
    But Odessa couldn’t run upstairs, because she was at the Light House: Dad’s. Her attic was at the Green House: Mom’s.
    “Oliver?” Dad looked at him.
    The room felt like it was shrinking. It felt like someone had turned up the thermostat.
    “It’s okay, Glenn,”