Instead of laughing along with me, concern washed over the boy’s face, like he was worried I was going a little bit crazy.

Was I crazy? My head was swimming. If this was a fantasy, it was a strange one: this wasn’t the Oz that I had read about or seen in the movie. It was as if someone had drained out some of the Technicolor and introduced some serious darkness.

Where were the good witches, the fields of enormous poppies? Where were the jolly Munchkins? I guess even in my concussion-induced fantasies, I’m not creative—or cheerful—enough to come up with all that. Instead, I’d conjured up something that looked suspiciously like Dusty Acres right after a nuclear explosion.

I spun around to take it all in—a little too quickly in my excitement—and began to wobble at the edge of the cliff. My rescuer was there with a hand on my wrist, pulling me onto the brick road just in time to save me, yet again, from plunging to my death.

It took me a second, but I recovered my balance and stepped forward, getting my bearings. As I set one foot and then another onto the road, the bricks themselves seemed to almost pulse under me. Like there was a current running through them. “It feels like there’s something under there,” I said, looking down at my sneakers.

“The road wants you to go to the city.”

“The road? Wants . . . me?” I rubbed my head in confusion.

“It wants everyone. That’s what it’s for. The road’s been here longer than any of us. There’s deep magic in there—magic even she doesn’t understand. Some people think it has a mind of its own. It wants you to go to the city, but it doesn’t like to make the trip easy.”

It figured. Nothing was ever easy, in my experience.

“Who’s ‘she’?” I asked.

The boy reached out and tugged at a lock of my hair. The way he did it wasn’t romantic, but more curious really. It was tender, too, but it was a sad kind of tenderness. No one ever touched me, anyway, and I flinched automatically. “There is so much you don’t know. So much you have to learn. I wish you didn’t.”

Learn what? I wanted to ask. Or maybe I didn’t want to know.

Then I felt a wriggling at my hip and looked down to see that Star was poking her head out of the pocket of my hoodie and was sniffing the air, looking just as confused as I felt. I pulled her out and placed her on the bricks, and she jolted. I guess the road had given her the same feeling it had given me.

“Easy, girl,” I said. “You’ll get used to it in a second.” I looked back up at the boy. “If this is Oz . . . ,” I trailed off, searching for the question that was on the tip of my tongue. Then I found it. “What happened here?” I asked.

I was waiting for him to answer when, out of nowhere, a look of panic crossed his face. For a moment, he looked disoriented, like he’d forgotten who he was. Something around the edges of his body seemed to flicker.

“Are you okay?” I asked. He didn’t answer. He hadn’t moved; now he seemed to be looking right through me.

I reached out and touched him on the shoulder.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Go?” I didn’t understand. He just got here. I just got here. What the hell was happening? “Where are you going?”

He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s getting late. I’ve never left for this long. I have to get back before . . .”

“Don’t,” I said, maybe a little too desperately. Maybe this was a dream and maybe it wasn’t, but either way, I didn’t want to be left here, in the middle of nowhere, all alone. “Before what? What are you talking about? Who are you?”

“I’m no one,” he said, turning away and walking toward the pit.

“Please,” I begged.

He turned back to me one more time.

“This is where it all began for her, you know. I don’t know why you’re here or who brought you, Pink Hair, but if you’re here, it means it’s all beginning for you, too. You’re like her in so many ways, but I can tell you’re different. I can’t help you. I’m not powerful enough. But you can help yourself. Prove me right. Don’t make the same mistakes she made.”

“But . . .”

“Be brave,” he said. “Be angry. Don’t trust anyone. I’ll see you soon.”

He stepped to the edge of the road, to right where the bricks crumbled away into the black. Then he jumped.

“No!” I screamed, lunging forward, catching myself just in time before I followed him. Below me, the darkness looked relentless and unforgiving. The road wanted something, he had told me, and now I knew the pit did, too. It was hungry. It was already infinite and still it wanted more.

There was no sign of him. The boy was gone.

I looked down at Star, who was perched on her haunches at my feet. “So what do we do now?” I asked, half expecting her to say something back.

She didn’t need to. I knew the answer already: what I was going to do next was the same thing I’d been doing my whole life.

I turned back. Just put one foot in front of the other. Nothing had changed except the color of the road.

Star and I walked, following the road, and when she seemed to get tired, I took her and placed her on my shoulder, where she perched patiently and looked out into the distance. She knew just as well as I did that we were very far from home.

Despite my crash landing in Oz, my body was surprisingly free of bruises, aches, and pains. Actually, I felt pretty good. The headache I’d had when I’d first landed had subsided, and now I felt full of energy.