“So where was your friend, Tornado Girl’s mom, when the tornado hit?”
“She was with me—we were at a tornado party,” Tawny said dramatically, and then burst into guilty tears.
“Tornado party,” Nancy repeated, her southern drawl wrapping around the words, making it sound even more awful.
At the word party, I clicked on the X to close the screen. I had seen enough. I turned to my real mission.
For hours, I looked through websites about prairie history, old farmers’ journals, and black-and-white pictures of the people who had come to Kansas back in Dorothy’s era to make a better life for themselves. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for; I just knew I’d know it when I saw it. And after reading about a million articles on devastating blizzards, crop failures, droughts, disease, and poverty, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Dorothy. Whatever she’d turned into in Oz, her life in Kansas had been harder than anything I could imagine. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz might have portrayed her life with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em as idyllic, but it didn’t take much reading for me to realize that life on a Kansas farm as a dirt-poor orphan probably hadn’t been a walk in the park.
And then I found it—on a historical website dedicated to printing techniques in old newspapers. I sat up straight on my mom’s couch with a gasp. “Area reporter interviews Kansas tornado survivor.” It was a scan of a yellowing, torn newspaper article from the Daily Kansan, dated 1897. The paper was so faded I could barely make out the words, and most of the article was missing. But I saw enough to know what I was looking at. “Miss D. Gale, of Flat Hill, Kansas, population twenty-five, describes her experiences in the tornado as ‘truly wondrous,’ but the most wonderful aspect of her story is that she survived the devastating tornado that destroyed her home. Miss Gale reports extraordinary visions experienced during the storm, including wonderful creatures and an enchanted ci—” The page was torn off there, so neatly that it almost looked as though someone had done it on purpose. And then I saw the author’s byline: Mr. L. F. Baum.
“Holy shit,” I said out loud into my mom’s empty apartment. Dorothy had been real. She had lived here in the very town where I’d grown up. And L. Frank Baum had interviewed her. How did no one know about this? I didn’t know much about the history of Baum’s books, but I was pretty sure that I would have heard about it if people realized Dorothy was based on a real person. She’d told him the whole thing, everything that happened to her, and he’d taken her entire story and turned it into a book. She’d come back to Kansas, just like I had, dumped back into her ordinary, crappy life. No one could possibly have believed her—not even Baum himself.
But if Baum had put Dorothy’s shoes in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, that meant she’d told him about them. And the rest of the article might be a clue to where they were now. Dorothy might not have looked for the shoes the first time she returned to Kansas, but she hadn’t hesitated to take up the offer of a second trip to Oz. If she hadn’t looked for them then, they had to still be here. And if I could find the rest of the paper, I’d be that much closer to figuring out where they were.
Extraordinary visions, all right. How had no one else found what I’d just stumbled across? How was it possible that no one else had realized Dorothy was real? There was something else going on here. Something big. I had to find the rest of that article. But how?
I heard a key turning in the lock, and I scrambled to delete my search history. I’d barely managed to return the computer to where I’d found it—under a pile of papers and magazines on the table by the couch—when my mom walked in. She looked startled to see me there, standing in the middle of her apartment like an idiot. “Uh, hi,” I said. “I just, uh, woke up.” I shot a glance at the wall clock in the kitchen. It was four in the afternoon. Oh well, let her think I was lazy. It was better than trying to explain myself.
“Hi, honey,” she said. Her voice was cautious, and I remembered what I’d done to her the night before. I felt another flash of guilt and shoved it aside.
“Good news,” she said. “I talked to Assistant Principal Strachan. He says since the circumstances are so unusual, you can consider your suspension over.”
“Great,” I said. “So I can go to school tomorrow?”
She shot me a strange look. “Are you sure you want to, honey? You’ve been through a lot. I thought you might want to take a few days to rest up before you went back. We could even see if there’s a way for you to finish out the quarter at home.”
“I have to get out of here,” I said without thinking. She flinched visibly. “I mean, I really just want to—to get back to normal,” I added quickly. “You know, jump back into things. I think it’s the best way.”
My mom sighed. “Whatever you want, Amy. I just . . .” She trailed off and then shrugged helplessly. I knew I’d hurt her again, but there was no way around it. “Assistant Principal Strachan wasn’t happy about it,” my mom warned. “You’re going to have to be on your best behavior. And Amy—Madison will still be there. I know she picks on you, but you have to get better at dealing with it.” She looked down at the ground. “I can help you, if you need me.”
I almost laughed. At this point, there wasn’t much Madison Pendleton could say to me that would bother me at all. But I realized immediately I’d hurt my mom’s feelings—again. Of course. She’d been offering to help, and now she thought I was laughing at her, instead of Madison. I felt awful, and then I felt awful for feeling awful. It would be better for both of us if I kept my distance. But she was trying so hard—and I was starting to believe the change was real and not just an act. I’d miss my new, improved mom. But my mom wasn’t enough to keep me in Flat Hill. Right? I couldn’t afford to let myself think any other way. I’d made up my mind to go back to Oz. Which meant I had to find those shoes—and I had an idea of how to do it.
EIGHT
The next morning, dressed in my new jeans and one of the shirts my mom had picked out for me, I was once again a senior at Dwight D. Eisenhower Senior High. The halls were the same dull linoleum, smelling of mop bucket and ancient cafeteria tater tots. The lockers were the same dull gray metal that even a fresh coat of paint couldn’t make look new. The lights overhead flickered like mood lighting in a prison camp. But this time, everything was different. Before, I’d been nobody. Salvation Amy, trailer-trash nobody. If people bothered to look at me, it was only with scorn in their eyes. This time around, I was a celebrity. And I definitely didn’t like it.
Everywhere I walked, whispers followed me, and people turned to stare as I passed. More than a few of them said hi in sickly sweet tones that made me want to roll my eyes. They’d never talked to me before in their lives; they just wanted to be close to the drama. My disappearance and miraculous return was the most interesting thing that had happened at Dwight D. Eisenhower Senior High since Dustin knocked up Madison Pendleton. I wasn’t dumb enough to fall for the fake warmth. I knew who my real friends were in Flat Hilclass="underline" nobody.
Go ahead and look, I thought. They should look. Because whatever they thought happened to me while I had been gone, the truth was so much crazier. And anyway, I wasn’t here to run for prom queen. I was here to save the Whole. Damn. World. The only annoying thing was that these people would never even know it.