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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