I spent a long time doing my makeup. I’d never cared about it before, but my mom loved girly stuff, and I knew she’d know I was doing it for her. I remembered suddenly the way Nox had looked at me what felt like a million years ago, when Glamora had taught me how to glam out with magic, and felt a quick, sharp pang. I tugged the brush through my hair with one last savage yank, pulled on the dirty clothes I’d been wearing, and opened the bathroom door. My mom’s smile was so bright and so genuine that I was glad I’d gone to the trouble of borrowing her mascara and lipstick.
Of course there was no mall in Flat Hill. There wasn’t even a place to buy clothes, unless you counted the overalls they sold at the feed store. There was a bus, though, that ran once an hour to the biggest nearby town, where you could stock up on slightly outdated ensembles at one of those giant box stores that also sold kitchenware, hunting rifles, and kids’ toys.
The bus ride passed quickly enough, and soon we were walking in the front door. I let my mom pick out the clothes she wanted to buy me; I didn’t care what I wore. As she flipped through a rack of pastel sweatshirts with rhinestone slogans like CUTE and FLIRT, I said casually, “I guess I should start back to school tomorrow.”
She stopped short. “School?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like I can get out of going forever.”
“Honey,” my mom said, “you just got home. I think you can take a week or two to settle in.” She paused. “I don’t know if you remember,” she said delicately, “but before you disappeared—I mean, before the tornado picked you up—you got suspended. We’ll probably have to deal with that, too.”
Suspended? I had no idea for a moment what she was talking about, and then it all came rushing back. Madison. The fight she’d picked with me the day the tornado hit—how she’d pretended it was my fault and told the assistant principal, Mr. Strachan, that I’d assaulted her. After battling Dorothy, Madison Pendleton seemed like a pretty pathetic enemy. It was hard to believe I’d once lived in terror of her. Poor little Salvation Amy had gone to ninja camp. Now that I thought about it, I was kind of looking forward to seeing Madison again.
“Right,” I said. “I forgot about that.”
“I can go talk to Mr. Strachan tomorrow before I go to work,” my mom offered. “I’m sure we can figure something out if you’re sure you’re well enough to go back. I know you missed a lot of school, but I’ll ask if you can make up the work you were absent for and still graduate on time.” Graduate? Right. That, too, was something from a life that seemed so far away I could barely even think about it. In every way that really mattered, I had already graduated.
“Sure, thanks,” I said. My mom gave me a thoughtful look, but she turned back to the rack of clothes.
She ended up buying me a couple of T-shirts and sweatshirts, and one pair of jeans. She didn’t say it out loud, but I knew that was all she could afford—and she couldn’t really afford even that. She didn’t say anything about money later that night either, when we ordered an extra-large pizza with extra pepperoni from the chain store a couple of blocks over—what constituted fine dining in Flat Hill. My mom flipped through channels on the beat-up old TV she told me she’d gotten from the Salvation Army.
So maybe it was true. Maybe I always was going to be Salvation Amy.
So what? I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything here anymore, except finding those stupid shoes and going back to Oz. Somehow, without really thinking about it, I’d decided already: I didn’t belong in Kansas anymore, no matter how happy my mom was to see me. I couldn’t just go back to being the same person I’d been before. Not after everything I’d seen and done. I couldn’t go back to a place where no one would believe anything that had happened to me was real. I’d watched people I cared about die. I’d risked my life. I’d used magic. I’d fallen—okay, fine, I’d fallen in love. And there was no one in Kansas I could share any of that with. It was as if Oz had made the decision for me. Or maybe I just didn’t have much of a choice.
“Oh, look!” my mom said happily. “The Wizard of Oz is on. Remember how we used to love that movie?”
I almost dropped my slice of pizza on the sad shag rug. There she was, in all her glory—Judy Garland singing her heart out as the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow skipped along behind her. Everyone looked so happy, and not scary at all. Dorothy was a young, innocent girl with a cute little dog. The Tin Man was an actor in silver makeup, with a silly funnel on top of his head. The Scarecrow was a dopey guy in burlap, and the Lion was just a man in a plush suit with a bow in his fake mane. I remembered the real Lion, swallowing Star in one gulp, and shuddered. “It’s all wrong,” I muttered under my breath.
“You’re telling me,” my mom said. “You know Judy Garland was already on pills when they were shooting this? The things they did to that poor girl. If you think I was a bad mother, you should have seen hers.”
That was a point I wasn’t about to argue. “I’m kind of sick of this movie. Do you mind if we watch something else?”
“Fine by me,” my mom said. “It’s not quite the same when you know the truth, is it?”
I wished I could explain myself to her. My mom was finally being honest with me, for the first time ever, and it sort of sucked that the shoe was on the other foot now. But if I told my mom the Cowardly Lion was real—and I knew because I’d killed him myself, after he ate her beloved pet rat—she’d do a lot more than go talk to Assistant Principal Strachan tomorrow. She’d go straight to a psychiatrist instead, and I’d be going to the mental hospital, not back to high school.
When it was time for bed, I hugged my mom good night. She smelled like she’d smelled when I was a kid, before the accident and the pills and the Newports: sweet and flowery, like springtime. She hugged me back. I looked over her shoulder into her room, taking it in without really thinking, and then something clicked. “Where’s your bed?” I asked, releasing her.
“Oh.” She laughed, giving a little shrug. “I couldn’t really afford two, so I’ll just sleep on the couch. A couple more paychecks and I should be able to get myself a bed, too.”
“Mom, come on. I can sleep on the couch. You take my bed.”
“I’ve been selfish for way too much of your life,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. “I can handle a few weeks on the couch.” Guilt welled up in my heart like blood from a paper cut. My mom had transformed her life in the hopes I was coming back, and all I could think about was how I was going to leave her again. What would it do to her when I disappeared again?
You can’t think about that and you can’t get used to this, I told myself. You’re only here to get the shoes. It was easier for everyone if my mom and I didn’t get too close. If I closed myself off, the way I’d learned to do in Oz. Caring too much only meant you were that much easier to hurt. And if I was going to leave Kansas for good, I couldn’t let my armor crack for a second.
“Suit yourself,” I said, making my voice hard and cold, and I closed my bedroom door to the look of hurt on her face. But all I could think about as I tossed and turned in the unfamiliar, narrow bed was the tears welling up in her eyes as I’d shut her out. Nox, my mom . . . who was going to be next on the list of people I had to hurt in order to survive?
SEVEN
My mom left the house early the next morning, and I got busy. I dragged out her battered old laptop—you could practically hear the gears turning when I logged online. Before I looked up the history of Flat Hill, I couldn’t resist. I had to Google it. A video called “Tornado Girl Tragedy” popped up instantly. On one side was Nancy Grace, the CNN reporter who always covered big trials and missing person cases. And on the other, my mother’s best friend, Tawny. Nancy had a habit of lambasting bad mothers who happened to be nowhere to be found while their kids were going missing.