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 exp
ected. “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.
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.