I’d never thought much about the diorama before, but it had a whole new significance now—especially since I’d found the scrap of article. Even though I knew Dorothy was real—she’d almost killed me enough times—it was still sinking in that Dorothy was real. She’d been a farm girl on this very patch of land. Her enchanted shoes were probably—hopefully—still here. But if the witches were right, how was it that no one knew? I’d found the article without much trouble by doing a basic internet search. Everyone knew about Dorothy’s story. So how was it possible that in a hundred years no one had figured out it was true? Had someone tried to cover it up? It was the only explanation I could come up with, but I couldn’t imagine who—or why.
There was no point in worrying about that now; I had way bigger problems. If the shoes were really here, I’d have to figure out a way to search for them without getting caught, stay out of trouble, keep Assistant Principal Strachan happy, and convince my mom that everything was okay. And I couldn’t help but think about what he’d said in his office about all three of us knowing that I’d lied about being in the hospital. Was that why my mom had accepted my totally implausible story—because she’d known all along I was making it up? Did she think I had just run away? Had she pretended to believe me because she thought the truth might hurt too much for her to hear? I filed that under “things to figure out later” and ran back to chemistry. I had a lot of work to make up, and I needed everyone to believe I was happy to be home until I had another chance to escape.
ELEVEN
After they’d ditched me in the cafeteria, I wasn’t expecting to see Madison and Dustin waiting for me on the front steps after school, just like I’d asked them to. I did a comical double take, and Madison grinned. “I don’t know what your deal is,” she said, “but you’re the most interesting thing that’s happened in Flat Hill since some dumbass thought a hill could be flat.”
The feeling of relief that overwhelmed me took me by surprise. I wasn’t totally alone—at least, not for the moment. If you’d told the old Amy Gumm that she’d be hanging out after school with Madison, Dustin, and their drooling newborn, I’d have said you were completely nuts. But then again, a lot had happened to that Amy Gumm. I could take this in stride, too.
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said, thinking fast. I had to come up with something to convince them Dorothy was real, but I couldn’t tell them anything close to the whole truth.
“So let’s go get ice cream downtown and talk it over,” Madison said. She laughed at the expression on my face. Madison? Eating food with calories? It really was a whole new world. “What? So maybe I never got over my pregnancy cravings. That thing about pickles is totally true, too.”
“She eats, like, a pint of rocky road a day,” Dustin said.
“Shut up,” Madison said, hitting him.
“Lead the way,” I said.
Flat Hill’s downtown drugstore was like something straight out of the 1950s. It probably was straight out of the 1950s—and no one had bothered to clean since then either. The long old-fashioned lunch counter was always sticky, the bar-stool upholstery was cracked and peeling, revealing the gross yellow foam padding underneath, and they only served three flavors of ice cream—vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. But there was nowhere else to go. Kids from school were already piling into the booths by the window, giving me and Madison dirty looks, but Madison held her head high and ignored them, settling regally onto a bar stool with Dustin Jr. in his baby wrap and Dustin Sr. on her other side.
“Okay, so,” I began, once Madison had ordered a triple-decker chocolate sundae—“With extra syrup!” she barked—and was busy spooning ice cream into her mouth. “You know how in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Dorothy is from Kansas?”
“Yes, Amy, we know that,” Madison said drily.
“I found part of this newspaper article from 1897,” I explained. “It was by L. Frank Baum, the guy who wrote the original books, and it was an interview with a girl named Dorothy who survived a tornado that struck Flat Hill that year. She talked about having crazy visions of a wonderful place.”
Madison and Dustin looked at me expectantly. “And?” Dustin asked.
“Well, that proves Dorothy was real, right? So her shoes must be real,” I said. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t quite worked out the most convincing argument.
Dustin’s forehead creased and Madison smiled. “That’s his thinking face,” she said affectionately. He gave her a dirty look.
“Amy,” he said slowly, “even if this thing you found proves that Dorothy was real, Oz isn’t real. She was just a girl who hit her head during a tornado and hallucinated. So her shoes can’t be real, because in the story she got the shoes in Oz, and Oz doesn’t exist.”
“Right,” I said. “It’s, uh, I want to like—metaphorically look for her shoes. I mean . . .” I thought fast. “I mean, we can prove she was real if we find the rest of that article. And then we’ll, uh, be famous!” I added brightly. “Totally famous. We’ll go viral. It’s our ticket out of Flat Hill.”
Madison stared at me, her eyes narrowed. “So what’s the part you’re not telling us?”
“Which part?”