And then it hit me—of course. Dorothy must have felt the same way. And in Dorothy’s Kansas, they didn’t even have indoor plumbing. No wonder she’d wanted to go back to Oz, and no wonder she’d fought so desperately to stay. Everyone kept alluding to how the magic of Oz ended up transforming people from the Other Place—people like me and Dorothy. If she and I were alike in one way, did that mean I was destined to . . . No, I told myself fiercely. I wasn’t anything like Dorothy. I would never do the kinds of things she did.

You already have. I buried that thought so far down that I’d never be able to dig it up again. I had enough to deal with already.

Looking at Flat Hill made me strangely grateful for the tornado that had given me a free ride out of this hellhole. Sure, things had been tough in Oz, but at least a lot of the time they’d been beautiful, too. Most of the people I went to high school with wouldn’t ever see the next state over, let alone a flying monkey or a waterfall made out of rainbows.

Suddenly, I remembered one of the last things my mom had ever said to me. One second, you have everything, your whole life ahead of you. And then, boom. They just suck it all out of you like little vampires till there’s nothing left of you. She’d been talking about me.

Unexpectedly, I felt tears well up in my eyes, and I scrubbed them away angrily with the heel of my hand. I didn’t need this shit. Not now, not ever. I almost turned around right there. Gert and Mombi and Glamora could go to hell. I’d figure something else out. I always had.

But what? I couldn’t get back to Oz without Dorothy’s stupid shoes, and it’s not like I was going to set up a trailer of my very own in Flat Hill. So maybe my only option right now was my mom. That didn’t mean I had to like it. Or forgive her. I blinked away the last of my tears and kept walking.

The tornado had wiped out Dusty Acres, but it had missed most of the main part of town. Here and there I saw scattered piles of debris, and one house at the edge of town had had its roof lifted clean off, though the rest of the building was untouched. Someone had tacked blue tarps over the gaping hole where the roof had been. One of them was coming loose and flapped idly in the humid breeze.

Otherwise, Flat Hill was exactly as I preferred not to remember it. Balding, patchy lawns surrounded by picket fences whose white paint had peeled away years ago. Bedraggled flower beds overgrown with weeds. Televisions flickering behind closed windows, even though it was the middle of the day. The late-morning sun already baking down into the carless streets while a dirty-faced girl on a tricycle wheeled around in bored circles. Flat Hill was a place people took their dreams to die, if they’d had any in the first place. I’d never loved Flat Hill, but after Oz it looked even uglier, dirtier, and poorer.

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. <