5 Hours

When the time came to select the President for a Day, Odessa was so excited to begin her Grand Master Oliver Plan, so proud of herself for coming up with it, that she failed to account for the problem of the shrinking of time. Since there were only five hours left, and since the assembly took place first thing in the morning, Odessa couldn’t wait until she got home from school to jump through the floorboards. That wouldn’t leave her enough time to give Oliver the answer to Ms. Banville’s riddle.

None of this was on Odessa’s mind that morning. She ate her cinnamon toast and rode with Claire to school, all the while picturing herself the hero. The one who saved her brother, who put his needs above her own. After all, Odessa wanted to win President for a Day herself. Who wouldn’t? All that attention! Even better than pale blue eyes.

She was filled to the brim—to the very top of that tank inside her—with pride. She was such a good person.

Odessa the Selfless.

She arrived at school and filed into the gym along with everyone else.

She took her seat and she listened as Ms. Banville said: “I’m going to read this year’s riddle. Please don’t shout out the answer. Raise your hand and wait to be called on.” Then she leaned in close to the microphone.

Slowly, and with a fair amount of drama, she read from a slip of paper:

You can find me in darkness but never in light.

I am present in daytime but absent at night.

In the deepest of shadows, I hide in plain sight.

What am I?

A few hands shot up and then some came down just as quickly. Odessa leaned back into the bleachers. She didn’t even try to solve the riddle. She didn’t need to.

Ms. Banville called on a fifth grader.

“I don’t know … maybe dreams?” she said.

“Good guess, Rochelle,” Ms. Banville said. “But no, that is incorrect.”

She wandered over to a kindergartner who had both his hands in the air and was waving them so wildly they’d snagged the curls of the girl sitting next to him.

“Yes, Jeremy?”

She held the microphone to his mouth.

“Elmo?” he said.

The whole school laughed, but not the way they laughed in the lunchroom at Oliver. Or the way some girls used to laugh at Claire. They laughed because little Jeremy was adorable with his crazy hands and out-of-the-blue answer.

When do kids go from adorable to just plain weird in the eyes of everyone around them?

There were a few more guesses—an owl, a bat, an invisible friend. One third grader said “Big Bird” and then sulked when he didn’t get a laugh.

Ms. Banville read the riddle aloud again. She scanned the bleachers.

“Theo?”

Odessa turned around and saw Theo, her Theo, with his hand in the air.

Both Theo and Odessa were good at perplexors. “If Bob eats apples but not bananas and Bertha likes pears but not oranges” and those sorts of problems. But this one was different.

Theo dropped his hand into his lap and tugged at his T-shirt. “Um, the letter D?” he said.

Sofia grabbed Odessa’s knee and gave her a The boy you love is about to win! squeeze. It was the perfect moment between two best friends. Nobody knew. Nobody saw. Nobody embarrassed anybody.

Ms. Banville gave a sly smile and motioned for Theo to come down from the bleachers. He stood next to her.

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, there’s a d in darkness but not in light, and there’s one in daytime but not in night, and then, like, there’s one in the middle of the word shadows. So …” He shrugged.

Odessa had known Theo was smart, but she hadn’t known he was brilliant.

“Congratulations,” said Ms. Banville, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Tomorrow you will be President for a Day.”

Applause filled the gym, and nobody clapped harder than Odessa. She was so swept up in his victory, in his breathtaking intellect, in her sudden vision of Theo as the President, arm in arm with Odessa, his First Lady, that she almost forgot what she had to do.

Get home. Back to the attic. She looked up at the clock. Oh no! She couldn’t wait until after school.

Sofia looked at her. She sent a silent message: Are you okay?

Odessa nodded.

She thought of running home. Of all the streets she was forbidden to cross. Even if she had the courage, the house would be locked. Though she was happy she wasn’t a Latchkey Kid, right now it was very inconvenient that she didn’t have a key around her neck.

She needed a Plan B.

Vomit.

Her most feared thing in the world.

The fourth grade was lining up to go back to their classrooms. Sofia linked her arm through Odessa’s. A cluster formed around Theo with lots of back-slapping and high-fives and all those things boys did when what they really wanted to do was hug somebody.

Theo looked happy, in his bashful way. He wasn’t a bragger. He had humility.

Odessa felt a pang of regret. Of compunction.

Theo had won the contest fair and square. No luck, only his brilliance, which was the very core of why she loved him, long hair or short. And now she was going to snatch this victory right out of his hands.

He would never know, of course, but she hoped anyway that he’d find it in his heart to forgive her for what she was about to do.

She broke away from Sofia, ran to the front of the line, and grabbed Mr. Rausche’s sleeve.

“Uuuuggghhh.” She clutched her middle. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.” Even saying the words made her healthy stomach turn.

Mr. Rausche looked her over, making a face. “Odessa Light-Green …”

Come on, Mr. Rausche, is this the time for a cheapo name joke?

She made an overly dramatic groaning noise.

“Hurry,” he said. “To the nurse’s office. Go.”

The nurse kept her distance from Odessa as she speedily dialed her mother’s cell phone.

Voice mail.

“Have a seat,” she said to Odessa. “We have to wait to hear back from your mommy.”

Mommy. How embarrassing. Did this nurse realize she was in the fourth grade?

“I can’t wait,” Odessa said. “I have to go home NOW.”

“I’ve left a message. I’m sure she’ll call back when she gets it.”

“But,” Odessa said, “I’m running out of time.”

The nurse looked puzzled. How could Odessa make this woman understand? She had to get home so that she could jump back and give Oliver the answer.

Then … it came to her. Sometimes there’s another solution right under your nose, but you fail to see it because you’re too focused on the obvious.

“If you can’t reach my mother,” Odessa said, “can you call my father?”

The nurse nodded wisely, as if this were an unusually brilliant idea. She checked Odessa’s file, and dialed.

Odessa knew Dad would answer. He always had his BlackBerry within arm’s reach.

The nurse hung up. “He’s on his way.”

Odessa’s heart soared. It wasn’t that she’d be able to beat the clock, it was that Dad, with all his markets and stocks and trading and his new apartment and his new almost-wife, still could make time for her. His sick kid.

Or his fake-sick kid.

When she climbed into his car, he handed her a bottle of ginger ale and one of her favorite magazines. He put on 101.3, the station she and Jennifer both loved. Odessa was in a hurry, but still, she wished the drive would last forever. She tilted her seat back a little. Dad took her hand.

Just then the next wrinkle in her plan occurred to her.

“Dad,” she said. “You need to take me home.”

“Where do you think I’m taking you? I’m taking you home, so you can rest up and feel better.”

Odessa swallowed. “No, Dad, I mean home. To Mom’s house.”

Dad pulled the car over to the side of the road. He reached into his glove compartment and took out a roll of his minty tummy tablets.

“My apartment is your home too.” He turned to face her. “I know you don’t spend as much time there as you do at your mother’s, but that’s because of our schedules and my work, and we’re just trying to make things easier for you and Oliver. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel like you are at home with Jennifer and me.”

Why’d he have to look like he’d just lost his favorite hamster? And why’d he have to say Jennifer’s name?

Odessa stared straight ahead, out the windshield of the car that wasn’t moving. Even though it was her favorite station, a song she didn’t like played on the radio.

“I know, Dad. It’s just that I really need to go to Mom’s house. The Green House. I need to go to my room. My own room. My attic room. Please. I know you don’t understand, but I really need to go there. Can you take me there?”

“Your mother is at work. I don’t have a key.”

“Mrs. Grisham has a key. We can borrow hers.”

“Wait here,” Dad said. He climbed out of the car with his BlackBerry and paced up and down the sidewalk with it pressed to his ear.

“Fine,” he said as he started the car engine. “I talked to your mother. I’ll wait there with you until she gets home.”

Odessa’s feet felt heavy as she climbed the stairs to the attic. She told Dad she was just going upstairs to change into pajamas.

It was so nice to have him there. He was in his regular seat on their couch, waiting to start a movie on pay-per-view, one of the stupid comedies they loved watching together. It felt almost normal to see him there. She could imagine all four of them together, in this new house.

She didn’t miss her old house. She just missed her dad.

She looked at her clocks.

12:47

The assembly started at nine. She had some time to spare. Just enough for a movie she’d seen a billion times before.

She ran downstairs.

“What happened to your pajamas?” Dad asked.

She threw her arms around him. “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

“For what?”

“For picking me up. For the ginger ale and the magazine. For leaving work early. For taking me here. For watching a movie with me.”

“You don’t have to thank me, sweetie. I’m your dad.”

“I know, but I just feel thankful so I wanted to tell you, because if I don’t I may not get the chance again and I don’t want to live with compunction.”

Dad squinted at her, then reached over and put his hand on her forehead. “Did the nurse take your temperature?”

She grabbed the blanket and put it over the both of them. She rested her head on his shoulder and they watched their movie and Odessa dozed off for a minute and when her eyes snapped open again she thought, quickly, of two things.

One, that it wasn’t strange, not strange at all, to have Dad in Mom’s house. And two, that she’d better hurry upstairs or else her whole GMOP would fail.

“I’ve gotta go,” she said, jumping up and running to the attic with the sort of energy not typically possessed by a sick child. “I’ll be back,” she called.

She wished that she didn’t have to leave. That they could sit together until Mom got home. Mom would walk in and see Odessa and Dad on the couch, and maybe they’d smile at each other. Maybe they’d have dinner together. Maybe he could stick around until bedtime.

But she had to go back for Oliver—and there she was, filing into the gym with her class at 8:58 a.m.

The second grade had already arrived and taken their seats on the bleachers. Odessa broke from the line and ran over to her brother. She grabbed him by the collar and leaned close in to his face.

“The letter D,” she whispered.

He tilted away from her, as if he were protecting himself from an incoming slap to the cheek. “Huh?”

“Just listen to me for once, Oliver. It’s the letter D, okay? The letter D. That’s the answer. I know you’re shy, but you have to raise your hand and say ‘The letter D.’ That’s all you have to do. I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you just say ‘the letter D.’ ”

She turned and ran back to join her class, taking the same seat, one row in front of Theo.

Ms. Banville started in with her instructions about not shouting out the answer, and Odessa watched Oliver. She knew that look. Pure panic spread across his face.

She glared at him. The letter D, she mouthed silently.

He shook his head slowly: No.

His shoulders slumped and he looked down at his feet, refusing to meet her gaze across the bleachers even though she sent him the strongest telepathic message she could: Don’t wimp out. Do it. Raise your hand. Don’t be a toad. I wasn’t planning on giving you the money, but I will, I really will, if you just do it!

Finally, after answers of dreams and owls and bats, Ms. Banville called on Theo.

“Um, the letter D?” he said.

Oliver finally turned his eyes back to Odessa and shrugged.

Sorry, he mouthed.

You should be sorry, she thought. After everything I went through for you—you blew it! I tried to help you, but you, Oliver Green-Light, are a helpless toad.

Sofia squeezed her knee again—The boy you love is about to win!—and again Odessa enjoyed basking in Theo’s brilliance, but she was mad at Oliver. Really mad.

Once a toad, always a toad.

On the bus home she sat next to him for what she’d decided would be the very last time.

Before she could say anything he blurted out, “I don’t know how you knew the answer, but however you found out, it isn’t fair. I don’t want to be a cheater. And anyway,” he said, his eyes welling up with tears, “I don’t want to be President for a Day. Maybe you do, but I don’t.”

“What! You don’t? What do you want then, Oliver? Really. What do you want?” She was almost shouting at him now.

“I just want to be normal. I just want my old life back,” he said, sniffling. “I just miss my old life.”

A hole ripped in the water tower inside her and she could feel her anger draining from her body.

Of course. There it was.

Oliver missed his old life.

Odessa missed her old life too.

She reached into her backpack and took out her sweatshirt. She handed it to her brother so he could wipe his tears.

“Don’t worry, O,” she said. “I’ll get you your old life back. I promise. I can fix this.” Then, if only to convince herself, she added: “I have the power.”