I almost dropped my slice of pizza on the sad shag rug. There she was, in all her glory—Judy Garland singing her heart out as the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow skipped along behind her. Everyone looked so happy, and not scary at all. Dorothy was a young, innocent girl with a cute little dog. The Tin Man was an actor in silver makeup, with a silly funnel on top of his head. The Scarecrow was a dopey guy in burlap, and the Lion was just a man in a plush suit with a bow in his fake mane. I remembered the real Lion, swallowing Star in one gulp, and shuddered. “It’s all wrong,” I muttered under my breath.
“You’re telling me,” my mom said. “You know Judy Garland was already on pills when they were shooting this? The things they did to that poor girl. If you think I was a bad mother, you should have seen hers.”
That was a point I wasn’t about to argue. “I’m kind of sick of this movie. Do you mind if we watch something else?”
“Fine by me,” my mom said. “It’s not quite the same when you know the truth, is it?”
I wished I could explain myself to her. My mom was finally being honest with me, for the first time ever, and it sort of sucked that the shoe was on the other foot now. But if I told my mom the Cowardly Lion was real—and I knew because I’d killed him myself, after he ate her beloved pet rat—she’d do a lot more than go talk to Assistant Principal Strachan tomorrow. She’d go straight to a psychiatrist instead, and I’d be going to the mental hospital, not back to high school.
When it was time for bed, I hugged my mom good night. She smelled like she’d smelled when I was a kid, before the accident and the pills and the Newports: sweet and flowery, like springtime. She hugged me back. I looked over her shoulder into her room, taking it in without really thinking, and then something clicked. “Where’s your bed?” I asked, releasing her.
“Oh.” She laughed, giving a little shrug. “I couldn’t really afford two, so I’ll just sleep on the couch. A couple more paychecks and I should be able to get myself a bed, too.”
“Mom, come on. I can sleep on the couch. You take my bed.”
“I’ve been selfish for way too much of your life,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. “I can handle a few weeks on the couch.” Guilt welled up in my heart like blood from a paper cut. My mom had transformed her life in the hopes I was coming back, and all I could think about was how I was going to leave her again. What would it do to her when I disappeared again?
You can’t think about that and you can’t get used to this, I told myself. You’re only here to get the shoes. It was easier for everyone if my mom and I didn’t get too close. If I closed myself off, the way I’d learned to do in Oz. Caring too much only meant you were that much easier to hurt. And if I was going to leave Kansas for good, I couldn’t let my armor crack for a second.
“Suit yourself,” I said, making my voice hard and cold, and I closed my bedroom door to the look of hurt on her face. But all I could think about as I tossed and turned in the unfamiliar, narrow bed was the tears welling up in her eyes as I’d shut her out. Nox, my mom . . . who was going to be next on the list of people I had to hurt in order to survive?
SEVEN
My mom left the house early the next morning, and I got busy. I dragged out her battered old laptop—you could practically hear the gears turning when I logged online. Before I looked up the history of Flat Hill, I couldn’t resist. I had to Google it. A video called “Tornado Girl Tragedy” popped up instantly. On one side was Nancy Grace, the CNN reporter who always covered big trials and missing person cases. And on the other, my mother’s best friend, Tawny. Nancy had a habit of lambasting bad mothers who happened to be nowhere to be found while their kids were going missing.
“So where was your friend, Tornado Girl’s mom, when the tornado hit?”
“She was with me—we were at a tornado party,” Tawny said dramatically, and then burst into guilty tears.
“Tornado party,” Nancy repeated, her southern drawl wrapping around the words, making it sound even more awful.
At the word party, I clicked on the X to close the screen. I had seen enough. I turned to my real mission.