Free Odessa Again by Dana Reinhardt Page B

Jennifer said.
    More than anything, at that moment, Odessa wished her mom was there. She’d know what to say to make the room expand, and cool down, and feel normal again.
    Odessa looked at the clock above the sofa. They weren’t going home until tomorrow evening, and that would be too late. She couldn’t fix a thing.
    Jennifer walked out of the room. Dad sat by Oliver and all at once Odessa felt that water tank inside herself filling up, not with tears, but with rage.
    If Dad hadn’t left their old house, if he hadn’t de-hyphenated the family, they wouldn’t be in this apartment, and there wouldn’t be an almost stranger named Jennifer in the other room, and Oliver wouldn’t be looking so miserable because he wouldn’t have screamed, and anyway he wouldn’t have even been given a hamster who died, because when Dad and Mom lived together they said no to rodents.
    Odessa went and took her brother by the hand. It had been so long since she’d held it she could feel that it had grown bigger, and she pulled him into their bedroom. They spent most of what was left of the weekend in there. Odessa wrote in her journal. Oliver played with his Legos.
    When Dad dropped them off on Sunday evening he honked, Mom came to the door, and they smiled at each other. As she walked up the steps, Odessa thought again about their smiles and about all the things she couldn’t fix.

Still 9 Hours
    Odessa’s tenth birthday was approaching, and she found herself wondering if this was what it meant to grow up. Did the world just get more and more mysterious? More confounding? More bewildering ?
    There was the attic floor, of course, and then the door with no handle under her desk. There was how your best friend could step out of the way and let you split your head open, yet continue to be your best friend. There was the way two people could smile at each other, and then one could go and re marry somebody else.
    She wished she could just live in Dreamonica, where she got to make every decision—how many puppies, how big a mansion, even what color hair and eyes she had.
    And speaking of eyes, there was Sadie Howell, who had turned her attention to Theo Summers, big-time.
    Odessa could not compete with those pale blue eyes; she couldn’t even match their shade when she designed her online self.
    Smile, blush, giggle. Smile, blush, giggle.
    That was Sadie Howell. Hovering over Theo’s desk. Sitting next to him at assemblies. Running up to him at recess.
    Smile, blush, giggle.
    Odessa couldn’t believe this sort of thing worked. It made Sadie look kind of dumb, or—as Uncle Milo liked to say—one fry short of a Happy Meal.
    But Theo seemed to fall for it. Without his shaggy hair to hide behind, Theo had no choice but to stare right back into Sadie’s eyes.
    All this time Odessa had thought the secret lay in math! If she could show Theo how good she was at solving equations, he’d see that she was worthy of his love.
    It seemed so stupid now. Maybe Odessa’s Happy Meal was the one missing the fry.
    She needed a plan. Solutions to mysteries didn’t fall from the sky. They didn’t materialize out of thin air or show up in the bottom of a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. Library books didn’t unravel mysteries, and you couldn’t buy answers with a one-hundred-dollar bill. Asking the grown-ups in your life a whole bunch of questions wasn’t any help either.
    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