Odessa Again (6 page)

And she certainly couldn’t picture Milo as a toad.

Uncle Milo was her favorite.

“Uncle Milo?” she asked. “Has anything ever happened to you that you don’t really understand? I mean, like, something that makes
no
sense
?”

“Of course, O.” He smiled. Odessa loved his smile. And she loved when he called her O, except sometimes he called Oliver O too, and that she didn’t like one little bit. “All the time. Most things in life don’t make any real sense. That’s what keeps us on our toes.”

Odessa thought of Milo as someone with all the answers, but there were things even he couldn’t figure out, which was surprising. And a little bit comforting too.

“Cool,” Odessa said, though she was far from satisfied.

He squinted at her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great.”

“I know things haven’t been easy …”

“I said I’m great.”

“I know you did. And I said I know things haven’t been easy.”

Odessa bit the inside of her cheek. She thought about that lavender dress hanging in plastic in the closet at Dad’s. About Claire’s backpack on the bus seat. About Mom’s job interviews. About the word
like
and its different, confusing meanings.

“Uncle Milo, I …”

Just then Oliver came racing back, waving something in his hand. It was too small to be a rabbit.
It
better
not
be
another
field
mouse,
Odessa thought.

As he grew closer, he shoved the object into his pocket. When he reached them, he bent over to catch his breath, hands on knees, cheeks bright red with cold. Odessa resisted the temptation to call him Oliver Red-Light.

“You are never gonna”—
gasp
—“guess what I”—
gasp
—“just found.”

Oliver was rarely right about things, but he was right about this.

Odessa would never have guessed.

Not if she’d had one hundred guesses.

He stuck his hand back into his pocket and took something out slowly, grabbing it by both ends and pulling it tight. He held it up proudly.

A one-hundred-dollar bill.

“Would you look at that. …” Milo slapped Oliver on the back. “It’s your lucky day, O. You are one lucky little man.”

Immediately, Odessa thought of her piggy bank and its twenty-seven dollars and eighty-three cents. She’d felt good about her savings. She’d saved six dollars and twenty-two cents more than Oliver.

She couldn’t bear to do the math. She didn’t want to know by exactly how many dollars and cents Oliver’s savings now outnumbered hers.

Plus, there were so many things she wanted to buy. So much she could do with one hundred dollars. There were things a fourth grader needed that a second grader did not.

It wasn’t fair.

“Where did you find it?” Odessa asked.

Oliver lifted his thumb over his shoulder and pointed behind him. He was still trying to catch his breath.

“Over there.”

“Over
where
?” she asked. “Over where …
precisely
?”

Odessa had never stolen anything in her life. Sofia stole lip glosses from her older sister, and Odessa had told her that it was wrong, but Sofia had just laughed and dug her pinkie deeper into the one that smelled like mango.

Now, as Odessa’s plan began to take shape, she worried that she was about to do something kind of … wrong.

But how could it be stealing if she wasn’t planning to take something
away
from
Oliver? What if she was planning to get to that one-hundred-dollar bill
before
he did? Before he even knew there was a one-hundred-dollar bill to find?

“Over by that big boulder,” Oliver said. “The one underneath that Christmas-y tree.”

Uncle Milo laughed. He put both hands on Odessa’s shoulders and squeezed. “You’re not going to find another hundred-dollar bill, no matter how hard you look. It doesn’t happen like that. Luck was on your brother’s side today. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be on yours.”

Uncle Milo didn’t know everything. He’d even said so himself. He didn’t know that Odessa didn’t need any luck.

She looked at her watch. All she needed was for Uncle Milo to take her home. Back to the magical attic that belonged only to her.

15 Hours

Money can’t solve all your problems. This is something Odessa had heard adults say for most of her life. They also said that money doesn’t grow on trees, but they were wrong about that, because Odessa now had one hundred dollars from beneath a tree in the woods. Uncle Milo had given her a high five when she’d found it, and Oliver had stared at her in disbelief and with a familiar envy. She felt a little guilty about going back and getting to the money before Oliver, but only a little. She was rich. That helped with her guilt, though it didn’t help her figure out what was happening in the attic, because … money can’t solve all your problems.

She continued her investigation by taking out mysteries from the library. Not the babyish Benedict ones any third grader could solve. She went looking for
real
mysteries. There were so many of them, so many books with spines of every width and color. Maybe reading some might help her solve her own.

Sofia was not pleased.

They’d both started the series about the girl who moves to a new town and has to make new friends at her new school, but then there’s this mean girl who will stop at nothing to destroy the new girl, and Odessa and Sofia were on book five when Odessa returned it unfinished at library time and checked out four mysteries.

That was one of the cool things about being in the fourth grade. You could check out four books at once. Second graders like Oliver could only check out two, but it hardly mattered because Oliver wasn’t much of a reader.

“Those look boring,” Sofia said. “We don’t read mysteries. Or books about fairies. And we don’t like graphic novels.”

Sofia had added this last category, Odessa knew, because that was the kind of book Claire read on the bus in the mornings.

“Yeah, I know. But I guess I’m just in the mood for something new.”

Sofia sighed and rolled her eyes. She started to say something about how Odessa wasn’t allowed to drop their series for a new one, but then Mr. Bogdasarian, the librarian, rang the bell that meant they were all to line up quickly and quietly. He timed them, and although Odessa always raced to her spot in line tight-lipped, she wasn’t quite sure why she did. There never seemed to be any sort of prize for speediness.

When Sofia sighed and rolled her eyes, Odessa thought again, for the millionth time, about confiding in Sofia about the attic. About the loophole she’d found in time.

But something always stopped her.

Maybe it was that she knew how it would sound coming out of her mouth.
Impossible. Absurd
. And Sofia had a way of looking at Odessa when she didn’t believe or understand or agree with what Odessa was saying—a sharp look Odessa could feel in the softest part of her center. She didn’t like that feeling at all.

Or maybe it was that Odessa didn’t believe Sofia could help her solve her mystery. Help her understand the
why
.

It wasn’t as if Sofia wasn’t smart.

Sofia was in the level
N
word-study group too, which might have had something to do with how desperately Odessa had wanted to move up from the middle.

Sofia’s math buddy, however, was Chester Spaulding, and everyone knew Chester wasn’t as good at math as Theo Summers.

Anyway, Sofia didn’t have much of an imagination, or Claire’s detective skills, and she definitely didn’t know about Odessa’s house and its history.

For that Odessa turned to Mrs. Grisham, their landlady, who lived next door in a house that looked almost the same except it was pink. Odessa used to love pink, but she’d outgrown it, and now she wondered if when she got really old, she might love pink again.

Odessa hadn’t seen much of Mrs. Grisham since they’d moved in, and she felt uneasy about just walking up to her front door and ringing her bell. Old people made her nervous. She didn’t have any grandparents and she’d never had an older teacher, so she hadn’t spent any time around old people.

Odessa picked up the newspaper that was sitting on Mrs. Grisham’s front porch and tucked it under her arm. It took a very long time for Mrs. Grisham to answer the doorbell.

Odessa stood there, rehearsing what she’d say when Mrs. Grisham finally made it to the door, but all she managed to blurt out was, “Here’s your paper.”

Mrs. Grisham looked at Odessa the way Oliver looked at the various creatures he’d find in the backyard.

“It was sitting on your porch,” Odessa added. “I didn’t want anyone to take it.”

“Has there been a rash of newspaper theft in the neighborhood I don’t know about?” Mrs. Grisham asked.

“Um, no. I just … I’m Odessa,” she added, because she wasn’t sure what else to say.

“I know who you are. You live in my house.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You didn’t look too happy about living there.”

“It’s fine now,” Odessa said. “I live in the attic.”

Mrs. Grisham looked her up and down and then turned and went back inside. She didn’t slam the door exactly, but she did close it rather abruptly.

The next afternoon Odessa noticed the paper on the porch again, and again she delivered it to Mrs. Grisham.

This time their exchange lasted longer.

Things continued this way. Most afternoons Odessa would pick up the paper from the porch and ring Mrs. Grisham’s bell.

“Why are you always talking to that old lady?” Oliver asked. “She’s weird.”

“You’re weird,” Odessa snapped back. She gave him a shove in the direction of their house, as if she were urging him home rather than just enjoying the pure pleasure she got from shoving him.