My mom’s new apartment was right downtown in Flat Hill—if downtown was the right word for a town that didn’t have an up. The downtown of my hometown consisted of four blocks of struggling businesses: an always-empty Chinese restaurant, a coffee shop that also sold dusty stuffed animals and sad-looking helium balloons with cheery slogans for holidays long since passed, three bars (luckily for my mom, since she’d been 86’d for life from two of them), a drugstore, a feed store, and a hardware store that still rented VHS tapes out of a curtained room in the back you had to be eighteen with ID to enter. I’d always known my hometown was a dump, but seeing it again after the magic and beauty of Oz was like being punched in the gut. How could anyone stand to live here? How had I managed to do it for sixteen years? I’d known there were other places—I’d just never been to any of them.
And then it hit me—of course. Dorothy must have felt the same way. And in Dorothy’s Kansas, they didn’t even have indoor plumbing. No wonder she’d wanted to go back to Oz, and no wonder she’d fought so desperately to stay. Everyone kept alluding to how the magic of Oz ended up transforming people from the Other Place—people like me and Dorothy. If she and I were alike in one way, did that mean I was destined to . . . No, I told myself fiercely. I wasn’t anything like Dorothy. I would never do the kinds of things she did.
You already have. I buried that thought so far down that I’d never be able to dig it up again. I had enough to deal with already.
Looking at Flat Hill made me strangely grateful for the tornado that had given me a free ride out of this hellhole. Sure, things had been tough in Oz, but at least a lot of the time they’d been beautiful, too. Most of the people I went to high school with wouldn’t ever see the next state over, let alone a flying monkey or a waterfall made out of rainbows.
Suddenly, I remembered one of the last things my mom had ever said to me. One second, you have everything, your whole life ahead of you. And then, boom. They just suck it all out of you like little vampires till there’s nothing left of you. She’d been talking about me.
Unexpectedly, I felt tears well up in my eyes, and I scrubbed them away angrily with the heel of my hand. I didn’t need this shit. Not now, not ever. I almost turned around right there. Gert and Mombi and Glamora could go to hell. I’d figure something else out. I always had.
But what? I couldn’t get back to Oz without Dorothy’s stupid shoes, and it’s not like I was going to set up a trailer of my very own in Flat Hill. So maybe my only option right now was my mom. That didn’t mean I had to like it. Or forgive her. I blinked away the last of my tears and kept walking.
The tornado had wiped out Dusty Acres, but it had missed most of the main part of town. Here and there I saw scattered piles of debris, and one house at the edge of town had had its roof lifted clean off, though the rest of the building was untouched. Someone had tacked blue tarps over the gaping hole where the roof had been. One of them was coming loose and flapped idly in the humid breeze.
Otherwise, Flat Hill was exactly as I preferred not to remember it. Balding, patchy lawns surrounded by picket fences whose white paint had peeled away years ago. Bedraggled flower beds overgrown with weeds. Televisions flickering behind closed windows, even though it was the middle of the day. The late-morning sun already baking down into the carless streets while a dirty-faced girl on a tricycle wheeled around in bored circles. Flat Hill was a place people took their dreams to die, if they’d had any in the first place. I’d never loved Flat Hill, but after Oz it looked even uglier, dirtier, and poorer.
My mom’s new apartment building hadn’t been fixed up much despite the fact that it was now housing people again, and it had seen better days. It was just four stories, and didn’t look like it had more than a dozen apartments. The siding was a shabby, sad gray that was falling off in places. Some of the windows were boarded up. From the looks of things, they had been that way since long before the tornado. The awning was torn and flapping in the wind, and the glass in the building’s front door was cracked. I ran one finger down the list of names next to the intercom until I found Gumm in grimy pencil next to apartment 3B. Maybe she at least had a prairie view. I took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer.
After a minute, the intercom crackled. “Hello?” The voice was cautious, but it was definitely hers. I cleared my throat.
“Hi, Mom,” I said finally. “It’s me. Amy.”
There was silence for a second—a long second—and then the intercom blasted me with a shriek so loud I covered my ears. “Amy? Oh my god, honey—don’t move, don’t do a thing, I’ll be right down—” The intercom crackled again and my mom was gone. A minute later, she was flinging open the front door of the building and sweeping me up in her arms. Instinctively, I stiffened, and she let me go awkwardly.
She looked just like she’d always looked on one of her supposedly good days—too-short skirt, too-low top cut to reveal way too much of her overtanned cleavage, too much cheap makeup hiding the fact that if you took away the tacky clothes and terrible eye shadow she was actually still pretty. But there was something different about her, too. Something sharper, brighter. More alert. She held me at arm’s length and looked at me hard, her eyes welling up with tears, and I realized what it was. They were red, but red from crying, not from pills. She didn’t smell like booze. Was it actually possible my mom was sober? I’d believe it when monkeys flew. Oh, right. Well, I wasn’t ready to believe it yet.
“Amy, it’s really you,” she said, still crying. “Where have you been?”
Oh, crap. Where had I been? I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to any of us to think up a story to explain my month-long absence. It’s not like I was going to tell my mom I’d been spending my time hanging out with a band of witches learning to cast spells, beheading the Cowardly Lion, and fighting a glitter-spackled chick no one in Kansas believed existed. “Uh,” I said, “I was—I was in the hospital. In Topeka. The tornado picked me up with the trailer and I, um, I got—hurt. So, that’s where I’ve been.”
My mom stared at me for a minute. “But I searched all the hospitals. When you disappeared—wait, what am I thinking?” she said suddenly, shaking her head. “Come upstairs. I still can’t believe this is happening. I missed you so much.” She gave me another fierce hug I couldn’t dodge and then beckoned me into the building.
Inside wasn’t much better than the outside, and I couldn’t help but notice a faint but unmistakable whiff of eau de cat pee in the hallway. I followed my mom up three flights of stairs to a short corridor lined with doors painted an industrial gray green. My mom opened the door to 3B and I followed her into the living room.
It was sort of depressing that this crappy apartment was way nicer than our trailer had ever been. It was twice as big, for one thing, and a picture window at the far end of the living room let in the afternoon sun. It was sparsely furnished with just a couch and a little card table with two chairs, but she had tacked a couple of cheerful prints on the walls and there was a bright rainbow-patterned rug on the floor. None of the furniture was the same as our old stuff, obviously—the government must have given her some kind of stash of emergency funds, because it’s not like we’d had money for new stuff before. But it wasn’t just that the apartment was nicer—it was clean.
Reflexively, I checked the couch for my mom’s usual nest of Newport cartons and takeout containers and blankets, but it was bare. The apartment didn’t even smell of cigarette smoke. Three doors lined one wall, suggesting that this apartment actually had bedrooms. Maybe even more than one. My mom was coming up in the world.
“It’s not much,” my mom said from behind me. “Just until I can save up enough to get something nicer. I lost everything in the storm.” She looked away for a second. “Including you,” she added quietly. I must have looked uncomfortable because her tone shifted and she brightened.
“Here,” she said, patting the couch. “Let me make you some tea. Sit. We have a lot to talk about.” I perched gingerly on the edge of the couch as she bustled around the tiny kitchenette, boiling water and putting tea bags into two mugs. I wasn’t sure my pre-Oz mom even knew tea existed. When we both had steaming mugs of tea, she settled into the opposite end of the couch as if she was afraid I’d run away if she got too close. Like I was a wild animal.
“I’m sorry you were so worried.” Looking at the emotion in my mom’s eyes, I was sorry. “I couldn’t leave the hospital,” I explained. “Because, um, I had amnesia,” I added in a fit of inspiration. “I lost my wallet and everything in the tornado, and I got hit on the head really bad. So I was in a coma for a while. When I woke up, I didn’t know who I was. The hospital kept me while they tried to find my parents. And then, um, I just woke up the other day and remembered who I was, and they—um, they must have contacted the emergency housing place, because they told me where you were, and here I am.” I took a sip of my tea.
It was an insane story with about a million holes—who had paid for the hospital visit? How on earth had I even survived being carried that far by a freaking tornado? Why hadn’t the doctors contacted my mom themselves? How had I gotten from Topeka to Flat Hill? I found myself holding my breath as Mom’s eyes drifted back and forth while she thought it all through.
“That must be why I never found you,” she said. “If you didn’t know your own name, you couldn’t have told the doctors.” She frowned. “But why didn’t they realize I might be your mother, if you were the only patient with amnesia? I made flyers and passed them out, I went to every hospital—”
It took everything I had not to scream at her to just shut up. How many times had my mother lied to me in my life? I’ll take you to Disney World next year. I don’t know where the cash in your underwear drawer went. Of course I haven’t been drinking. If I tried to make a list of every lie, it would take me a year. The least she could do for me now was just let it go.
Mom looked at me carefully. “Your hair’s different,” she said.
Right. Back in the caves, at the Order’s headquarters, Glamora had magically changed my hair from pink to blond. That definitely didn’t fit too well into my “I spent the last month in a hospital” story either. I opened my mouth to say something, and my mom shook her head.
It was like she knew exactly what I was thinking. It was like she could hear all my complaints. She might not have known everything that had happened, but she understood. If that wasn’t a first, it was close. She really had come a long way, I guess.
“All that matters is that you’re home now,” she said firmly, and I relaxed a little. She paused. “But . . . I should call your dad.”
I had not seen my father since I was a single digit. And I never wanted to see him again. I had thought that was one thing that Mom and I agreed on no matter what her blood alcohol level read.
Seeing the shock on my face, my mom scrambled to explain. “I had to tell him, Amy. I thought maybe he could help.”
I laughed. It felt—and sounded—bitter. “I’m sure he was out there combing Dusty Acres looking for me.”
“He sent a check,” my mom said simply. “Amy,” she went on, “I really owe you an apology. A big one. Not just for leaving you when the tornado came. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for that. But for everything before that, too.”
She was crying again, and this time she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’ve been a terrible parent,” she said. “For a long time. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I want you to know I know, and I’m sorry.”
I raised my eyebrows. This, I had not expected. “What happened to the pills?” I asked bluntly, and she flinched.
“When I”—her voice broke—“lost you, I realized what had happened to me. What I’d let myself become. I quit cold turkey, Amy. I knew I had to be there for you when you came back. I looked for you everywhere after the storm, but it was like you’d just vanished into thin air. Somehow I always knew that you’d come back to me, though, and I wanted to deserve it when you did.” She smiled through her tears. “I’m even working,” she said. “I got a job at the hardware store as a cashier.”
“You quit cold turkey?” I asked, surprised. “That must have been tough.”
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said, looking down at her lap. “It was awful.” Her tears spilled over, running down her cheeks. “But it was nothing compared to what it felt like when I thought I’d lost you.”
Some part of me wanted to reach across the distance between us and hug her, but I’d fallen for her promises one too many times before. If she’d quit using when the tornado hit, that meant she’d only been sober a month. And a month was nowhere near enough time to trust anything had really changed. But if she’d made flyers and searched frantically from hospital to hospital, that was the biggest effort she’d made for me—for anything other than a bottle of pills—in a really long time. Either way, it didn’t matter, I told myself. I’d already made up my mind that I was going back to Oz. There was nothing for me here. I’d learned to live without my mom. I could do it again. We were both silent for a minute.
“Mom?” I said finally. “I’m really sorry, but Star—um, she didn’t make it.”
My mom gave me a sad, are-you-kidding-me smile. “Honey,” she said, “Star’s a rat. If I have to choose between a rat and my daughter, I’ll take the kid every time.” She cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, with a note of false cheer in her voice, “do you want to see your room?”
“My room?”
“I had to fight for a two bedroom. They wanted to give me a studio. But I knew you’d be back.” She got up and opened one of the doors off the living room. I looked over her shoulder and my eyes widened in surprise. Like the rest of the apartment, the room had barely any furniture—just a narrow twin bed and a little bedside table and lamp. But my mom had painted the walls a pretty, pale pink, and hung bright white curtains over the window. She’d bought a bottle of my favorite perfume, too, and left it next to the lamp.
“This is nice,” I said cautiously. “Thanks.”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m going to get us something better really soon. Even though I just started at the hardware store, I’m already saving. You must be tired—do you want to rest?”
“No,” I said. “I’m okay.” I realized with surprise that I was telling the truth for once. Sleeping in had done me good, and I was feeling weirdly energized to be home. My mom clapped her hands together.
“Then today calls for a special treat. Why don’t you get cleaned up, and I’ll take you out to buy some new clothes. Tonight we can order pizza and watch old movies.”
Back in the pre-accident days, my mom and I had loved watching corny old black-and-white movies together. Our favorites were always the funny ones, where Audrey Hepburn or some other super-glamorous actress goofed around while rich, handsome guys fell all over her. Sometimes it seemed like things might not work out for her for a minute, but the handsome guy always came to the rescue at the end.
Part of me felt way too old for that now. No, not even too old. Too tired. Too experienced. I’d fought in a war. I’d seen too much of the world to believe in any of that crap, even for an hour.
But at the same time, being back home, and seeing my mom like this, was doing something funny to me. It was like everything that had happened in Oz was drifting away. It was like I was waking up and looking around and realizing, slowly, that it all had just been a weird, terrible dream.
It hadn’t been a dream. But I did need new clothes. If I was going to try being a high school student again, I needed something to wear. And it had been so long since I’d seen a movie.
“I don’t need anything new,” I said. “We can just go to the thrift store.” Salvation Amy strikes again, I thought bitterly. My mom might have changed, but nothing else in Kansas had. I tried not to think about the clothes I’d worn in Oz. My fighting gear, the way I’d been able to magic myself into a glittering, unrecognizable version of that sad, poor, trailer-trash girl I used to be.
“No,” my mom said firmly. “I want things to be different, Amy. I mean it.”
“Sure,” I said. “That sounds good.”