“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.