“Oh, I know,” Suzanna managed to reply through her giggles. “You’re the Fairy Princess Dorothy. I wonder, though: why aren’t your fairy friends here? Is it because you made them all up? It’s too bad—a straw man and a big tiger at your birthday would probably fetch you another newspaper article for your precious scrapbook, now wouldn’t they?”

I turned on Mitzi, whose face, redder than Glinda’s ruby castle, betrayed her guilt. She had told them.

That was enough. Without another look at anyone, I whirled on my heels.

“Never mind. I’ll go try it on right now.”

It was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. But what other choice did I have? Give in to them? Let them get the best of me? I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

When I reached the stairs, though, each step seemed more hopeless and daunting than the last as I made my way to my bedroom, the awful gown draped heavily over my arm and Toto following right behind me.

In my room, I stood in front of the mirror and held the dress up to my chest.

It was a perfectly respectable dress. It really was. I could see how Aunt Em would have been pleased at her ingenious scheme to refurbish it, could see her happily sewing and cutting, congratulating herself for her thriftiness and creativity and pioneer spirit.

That was when all my anger and resolve fell away, leaving only a sense of sad, empty hopelessness.

Because of course it didn’t matter at all. Even the finest dress money could buy—a dress befitting Her Majesty Suzanna Hellman herself!—wouldn’t have been the dress I’d been dreaming of.

The dress I’d been dreaming of would have been magical. It would have come from Oz.

“I know you’re disappointed,” Aunt Em’s soft voice said from the doorway. “I’m sorry those girls were mean to you. I surely don’t know what’s come over Mitzi Blair. But we did tell you not to share your tales. . . .”

I looked up at her.

This was the moral of the story, to her? This was my fault, for telling my friend the truth about what had happened to me?

“They’re not tales,” I snapped. “And I’m not disappointed. I just . . .”

I trailed off. I didn’t know how to end the sentence without hurting her feelings more.

“You know that things have been tough,” Aunt Em said. “We just have to get through this rough patch. I promise, there will be a new dress someday soon. A dress and a bigger cake, and—”

“How?” I asked before I could stop myself. “How will we get any of those things? What’s going to be different about tomorrow or the next day? Every day is the same!”

Aunt Em’s face fell even further than it already had, further than even seemed possible.

“Our luck will turn,” she said. “Maybe next year will be a good crop, and we’ll be able to go into town and buy you whatever dress you want.”

It all came rushing out. “It’s not about a dress or a cake, Aunt Em. It’s about this whole place. Nothing ever changes around here, and everyone likes it just the way it is. But I’m sixteen now, and I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life here. Doing the same thing every single day, never wanting more.”

I was starting to cry now. “I just wish you could see what it’s like,” I said. “Then you’d understand, and Uncle Henry would, too. There’s magic out there in the world, Aunt Em. There’re things so wonderful that you could spend your whole life trying to think them up and you’d never come close.”

The tears in Aunt Em’s eyes evaporated in an instant. Her gaze went steely. It’s a trick my aunt has. She’s not as much of a pushover as she first appears. I had to get it from somewhere, didn’t I?

“Dorothy Gale,” she said. “You are indeed sixteen now, and it’s time you put your tall tales aside. There is no such thing as magic.”

There was just no arguing with her like this. “I’m not feeling well,” I said, turning away from her. “Could you give my apologies to my guests? I need to lie down.”

She just shook her head in frustration as she closed the door behind her.

I didn’t need to say anything to Toto as I pulled him up into my arms and collapsed into bed. He understood. His big, wet eyes said as much. They said he missed it as much as I did.

As angry as I was—at Mitzi and Marian and Suzanna and even at Aunt Em and Uncle Henry—I knew that Aunt Em was right about one thing.

It didn’t matter that it had been real. I was never going back there.

Kansas may not have felt like home anymore, but it was where I lived, and it was where I was going to live. I knew I had to put everything else in the past where it belonged.

I knew all those things, and yet there was a part of me that couldn’t let go.

“There’s no place like Oz,” I mumbled, pulling Toto even closer to my chest. I barely knew I was saying it. I might have already been asleep.

Four

When I woke up, the sky outside my window was black. I didn’t know how long I’d slept for or what time it was, and Toto was licking my face.

“Oh, Toto,” I said sleepily. “I was having the nicest dream—let me go back to sleep.”

My dog wasn’t listening. He was spinning in circles on the old quilt that Aunt Em had made for me right after I’d come to live with her and Uncle Henry after my parents died, when I was just a baby.

He was trying to get my attention.