“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.”
SIX
I took a long, hot shower in my mom’s new bathroom. She’d even bought a bottle of the strawberry body wash I liked, although now the glitter suspended in the thick pink liquid, so reminiscent of Glinda, made me want to puke. I’d had enough of glitter for the next few lifetimes. I shampooed my hair twice. Maybe the real thing was more effective than magic. I wondered how witches and princesses dealt with scalp buildup in Oz, and collapsed into near-hysterical giggles on the bathtub floor while the hot water turned slowly cold. Okay, maybe I wasn’t handling this return-to-Kansas thing with as much badass attitude as I’d thought. I’d have to look for a post-travel-to-a-fictional-kingdom PTSD support group. But the fact that I might be this close to falling apart was just one of the many things I couldn’t tell my mom about what I’d been up to in the month of Kansas time I’d been gone. Mom, I really need therapy—between literally turning into a monster and killing a bunch of people in a magical world you only think is made up, I’m not feeling too great? Yeah, right.
Come on, Amy, I told myself, picking myself up off the floor of the tub. Get it together. If I lost it in front of my mom, there was no telling what she might do or where she might send me. I couldn’t talk about anything that had happened to me and I couldn’t let what I’d been through show. I had to keep being a warrior. This was what I’d practiced for. This was what I’d trained for. And this was no time to forget that.
As I brushed out my long hair—no invisible magic stylists in Kansas, sadly—I saw myself as my mom must have seen me, standing on her threshold. There were dark circles under my eyes that no amount of sleep was going to erase anytime soon. I looked about ten years older than I had before that tornado had plucked me out of Dusty Acres. Mostly, I just looked sad. Without magic to hide behind, I was going to have to do my best with concealer.