“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.