No Place Like Oz Read online

  Once you’ve seen castles and Munchkins and roads of yellow brick, once you’ve faced down monsters and witches and come face-to-face with true magic, well then, no matter how much you might have missed it while you were gone, the prairie can seem somewhat dull and—truly—downright dreary.

  All I wanted to do upon my return was tell my aunt and uncle everything about what I’d seen. The whole time I’d been in Oz, I’d imagined Aunt Em’s amazed face when I told her about the fields of giant poppies that put you right to sleep, and I’d thought about how Uncle Henry would sputter and spit his coffee back into his cup when he heard about the town where all the people were made of china.

  They hadn’t given me quite the reaction I’d been hoping for. In fact, they’d hardly reacted at all. Instead, they’d just exchanged a worried glance and told me that it must have been some fanciful dream I’d had when I hit my head during the cyclone. They warned me not to repeat the story, and to get some rest. They said nobody liked a tale-teller.

  Never mind that a bump on the head didn’t explain where the house was now, or why no one had ever found it. And it didn’t explain how I’d gotten home. When I told them about the magical Silver Shoes that had carried me back across the Deadly Desert, they seemed even less convinced than ever. After all, the shoes had slipped from my feet somewhere along the way.

  I can see why some people might have thought I was crazy, or a liar, or had made the whole thing up. Around here, they don’t believe in anything they can’t see with their own two eyes.

  Aunt Em and I brought the cake into the living room and set it on the table by the modest spread of food she’d already laid out. As I looked at the room, all spruced up and decorated with a careful, loving hand, I reminded myself of how much they were doing.

  The birthday party had been my aunt and uncle’s idea—I’d overheard them talking just a few weeks ago about how blue they thought I’d seemed lately, and how a big birthday party might be just the thing to cheer me up.

  I’d asked them not to do it, of course. I knew we didn’t really have the money to spare.

  Even so, I must admit that I was secretly pleased when they insisted on doing it anyway. As my “wild ride”—as so many people called it—had begun to recede further into memory, I was growing eager for something to break the monotony of the farm and school and then the farm again.

  “Dorothy, what is your scrapbook doing out?” Aunt Em asked, noticing the book with all my newspaper clippings sitting on the table next to the buffet. “Your guests will be here any moment.”

  I quickly picked the book up and moved it aside so that it didn’t fall victim to any smudges of icing or stray crumbs. “Oh,” I said. “I thought someone might like to look through it at the party. A lot of people who are coming were quoted in the articles about me, after all. It might be fun for them to see their names in print.”

  Aunt Em didn’t appear to think that was a very good idea, but she didn’t try to dissuade me. She just shook her head and started humming one of her old songs again as she scurried around, busying herself with last-minute tasks.

  I sat down and began to flip through the pages of my scrapbook myself. Toto hopped up into my lap and read along with me. At least I had him. He knew it was all real. He’d been there, too. I wondered if he missed it the same way I did.

  THE GIRL WHO RODE THE CYCLONE.

  That headline, from the Star, was my favorite. I liked the way it made me seem powerful, as if I’d been in control rather than just some little kid swept up by forces of nature.

  In Oz, I hadn’t been just some little kid either. I’d been a hero. I had killed two witches and freed their subjects from tyranny; I’d exposed the humbug Wizard and restored order to the kingdom by helping my friend the Scarecrow, the smartest creature I’ve ever met, claim the throne.

  If only those things were in my scrapbook!

  Here, I knew that I would never, ever make as much of myself as I did in my short time in Oz. It just wasn’t possible. Here, it wasn’t even considered proper to think about such things.

  And yet I had wanted to come back here. All those brave things I’d done: I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I was just trying to get home.

  It would have been too cruel to leave Uncle Henry and Aunt Em all alone here, thinking that I was dead. It wasn’t all to spare their grief either. I would have missed them terribly if I had stayed. All the magic in the world—all the palaces and beautiful gowns and fields full of magical flowers—all the friends I’d found—could never have replaced the people who had taken me and raised me as their own after my parents had died. I would never have been able to be happy with them here and me there.

  But sometimes I still wondered. Could there have been another way? Was this really home at all?

  “Oh, Toto,” I said, closing the cover of the scrapbook harder than I intended to and tossing it aside onto the couch, where it landed just next to Aunt Em’s embroidered throw pillow. Maybe the words on that pillow were more right than I knew. Maybe you couldn’t go home again.

  Either way, it would have been a nice consolation if I’d gotten to keep those shoes.

  Three

  “Here,” Mitzi Blair said, thrusting a small gift into my arms as soon as I opened the front door and found her standing on the stoop. “Happy birthday. Is Suzanna here yet?”

  I eyed Mitzi uncertainly and she gave me the same look right back, but with a hint of a question, like Well?

  I don’t know what had come over me. Mitzi was my best friend and here I was treating her like a stranger at my birthday party. Luckily, I caught myself in my momentary rudeness, smiled brightly, and ushered her inside.

  “Thank you!” I exclaimed, placing her present on the little table that Aunt Em had set aside for that purpose. “Suzanna and Jill are by the—”

  I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence. “My mom says happy birthday, too,” Mitzi said over her shoulder, already making a beeline for the corner, where snobby Suzanna Hellman was slumped against the wall, looking straight out of a magazine ad in her brand-new dress with a fashionable wide collar and a bright pink sash while her sister, Jill, helped herself to Aunt Em’s signature potato puff balls from the snack table.

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” Suzanna said, her face cheering in relief when she saw Mitzi approaching. “I was beginning to wonder if Jill and I would be the only people under a hundred. Not counting Dorothy, of course.”

  I giggled at the barb—probably more enthusiastically than I should have—and tried to pretend that it wasn’t at my expense.

  It would have been easier to let it roll right off me if Suzanna didn’t seem so right. The sparse crowd milling around the living room was almost entirely made up of Uncle Henry’s friends from neighboring farms, and none of whom were a day under forty, if that. I had been hoping for a few of the handsome farmhands, at least, but I guess they’d all been left behind to keep an eye on the livestock.

  “So, Dorothy,” Suzanna said, turning her gimlet-eyed gaze in my direction. “Been in any good parades lately?”

  This time, there was no sense in pretending she wasn’t poking fun at me. Suzanna couldn’t bear to see anyone else getting more attention than her, and was always acting like the one little parade they’d thrown for me after I’d survived the tornado made me some sort of spotlight-hogging monster. It had been years ago, but she would never let me forget it.

  Frankly, I hadn’t wanted snobby, mean-spirited Suzanna Hellman at my party in the first place, but Mitzi had insisted that there was no point in throwing a party if you weren’t going to invite the richest girl at school—the only rich girl at school, actually—and so I’d relented.

  Now I looked over at my friend, expecting to see her indignant, but she just averted her eyes to the floor, her face flushing. If I hadn’t known better, I almost would have thought she was stifling a laugh.

  Fine. I might as well admit it. When I say that Mitzi Blair is my best friend, what I mean
to say is that she used to be my best friend. For most of my life, the two of us had been inseparable, but that had all changed after I’d ridden the cyclone.

  Mitzi was the only one—other than my aunt and uncle—who I’d told the truth about my adventures in Oz after I’d come back. It hadn’t gone well. Instead of marveling at everything I’d been through, Mitzi had called me a liar and a show-off.

  We’d made up a few weeks later, but that didn’t mean things had gone back to normal. These days she was spending more and more time hanging around with awful Suzanna Hellman, not to mention with Marian Stiles and Marjory Mumford. As for me—I was spending more and more time by myself.

  Oh, I didn’t care. This was my birthday, and Aunt Em had put so much effort into it, not to mention money that we couldn’t well afford, with the farm doing the way it was. If she and Uncle Henry were kind enough to throw me a party then I was going to enjoy it whether Suzanna Hellman wanted me to or not.

  If only there were a few more people to talk to.

  Of course, Uncle Henry had already warned me that not everyone I’d invited would be able to make it. It was harvesting season, after all, the busiest time for anyone on a farm, and anyway, most of my classmates lived too far away to easily make the trip all the way out here. Still, I had been hoping that a few more girls my own age would be able to make it.

  So, even though I’m not exactly their biggest fan, I breathed a sigh of relief when Marian Stiles and Marjory Mumford walked through the door. I was happily greeting them when Mitzi tapped my shoulder. Suzanna’s little sister was at her side, hopping impatiently from one foot to another.

  “Excuse me, Dorothy?” Jill asked innocently. “When do you suppose the cake will be?”

  “After the presents, I think,” I replied. “It’s one of Aunt Em’s best.”

  “Well, when are presents, then? Mother said we had to stay till the cake.”

  Suzanna snorted back a laugh and shhh-ed her.

  I sighed. The truth is, I had been planning on waiting for the reporter from the Carrier to arrive before opening the presents. He’d told me that my Sweet Sixteen would make the perfect story for the Sunday edition. People were still interested in my doings, even if they weren’t throwing me any more parades.

  But the reporter was nowhere to be seen and people were starting to seem bored. Maybe one gift wouldn’t hurt. It would make it feel more like a party. Plus—I had a feeling I knew exactly what my gift from Aunt Em would be. “I guess I could do a little preview,” I said.

  “Aunt Em,” I said, wandering over to where she was sitting alone on the couch. (Aunt Em has never had Uncle Henry’s gift for chatter.) “I think I should open your present. So everyone can see it.”

  “Of course, dear—if you say so. But . . . don’t you think you should open some of the others first, though?”

  “I’ll get to them,” I said. “I just can’t wait for yours.”

  “Okay, dear. I’ll ask Henry to bring it down.” My aunt set her tea down and went to fetch Henry.

  I’d been dropping hints for weeks that I wanted a new dress more than anything, and from the way my aunt’s eyebrows had shot up into an arch every time I mentioned it, I had a feeling I’d be getting my wish. I didn’t know how she was going to manage it—they’d already spent more money than they could really afford on the party itself—but if anyone could pull it off, it was Aunt Em.

  Suzanna Hellman wouldn’t be so smug once she saw me descending the stairs in a dress that was sure to put hers to shame. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like just the thing to turn the party around.

  A few minutes later, Toto was wagging his tail excitedly and racing around the room as Uncle Henry came out of the kitchen carrying a large, floppy package wrapped in tissue paper. There was no box and the paper was crinkled and creased in all the wrong places, but I didn’t mind.

  It’s what’s on the inside that counts. And it certainly looked like what was on the inside was exactly what I thought it was.

  Henry placed the present with the rest of the gifts, and everyone began to gather around. I picked it up and held it to my chest, and as I did, my eyes met Aunt Em’s. She looked away with an expression that almost seemed worried.

  “Well?” Suzanna urged me. “Are you going to open it or not?”

  I peeled away the wrapping as Suzanna leaned in close, eager to get a good look. I heard her stifle a snort as heavy twill fabric came into view. My heart stopped.

  The rest of the paper crumpled to the floor and the dress swung loose.

  It was long and brownish green. Not sparkling green, or forest green or even blue green like the ocean. It certainly wasn’t Emerald City green. No. It was green like . . . well, it was green like Aunt Em’s old dress.

  That’s because it was Aunt Em’s old dress. She’d tailored it to my size, fixed it up to make it look new by cinching the waist, giving it a fuller skirt, and adding poufy ruffles to the shoulders.

  There was no getting around it. The dress was hideous.

  The whole room knew it. Even Mr. Shifflett from the next farm over had a look of shocked horror on his face, and I’d never seen him wear anything fancier than a pair of clean coveralls.

  My cheeks burned in embarrassment. The only sound in the room was coming from Suzanna, who was fighting to conceal outright laughter.

  Toto snarled loudly at her, ever faithful, but that only made her suppressed giggles louder.

  The worst, though, was the look on Aunt Em’s face—a crushed mixture of hopefulness and humiliation that broke my heart.

  She had tried—there was no question about that. Just like she’d tried with the cake. But I could see what she had done: the color of the dress was faded and the edges of the fabric were worn. The red embroidery on the sleeves looked out of place, and I knew it was there to hide the tear from when she’d caught it on the chicken coop.

  Suzanna gave up all attempts to cover her snickering once the dress was fully unfurled. “Oh, how nice,” she said. “It’ll be sure to keep you warm when you’re working out in the fields. And you won’t need to worry about getting it dirty!” At that, her sister burst out laughing and buried her face in her hands.

  If I’d had a bucket of dirty water to throw in Suzanna’s face, I would have. If I had, I’m curious whether Suzanna, like many a witch before her, would have melted right before the eyes of me and all my guests. I for one would not have been astonished. It wouldn’t have been anything I hadn’t seen before.

  But I was empty-handed, and I knew the only way to stave off the angry, hot tears that were prickling at the corners of my eyes was to maintain my dignity. “My, what a dress!” I exclaimed jubilantly to no one in particular, least of all Suzanna.

  “You have to try it on,” she singsonged mockingly. “Go ahead. Show it off.”

  At that, Marian Stiles began to giggle into her hands, too, and then Marjory Mumford. When Mitzi began laughing along with them—like the Benedict Arnold that she was—I realized the sad, final truth: I had no friends.

  None of these people belonged at my birthday party. The people who belonged here were the ones who really cared about me: the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Lion and Glinda and all the other people I’d met in Oz. They were my true friends.

  “Well,” Suzanna prodded me again. “When’s the fashion show?”

  I had had more than enough. I was Dorothy Gale. I was The Girl Who Rode the Cyclone. Not to mention the girl who went to Oz, and defeated two real witches on my own pluck alone. She was nothing compared to them.

  And now I was angry. It was one thing to be cruel to me. I could take it. But I didn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt my aunt.

  “I don’t think you know who you’re talking to,” I said to Suzanna with every ounce of imperiousness I could muster. Which happened to be quite a lot.

  Suzanna just hooted, and Marian looked as if she was about to burst.

  “Oh, I know,” Suzanna managed to re
ply through her giggles. “You’re the Fairy Princess Dorothy. I wonder, though: why aren’t your fairy friends here? Is it because you made them all up? It’s too bad—a straw man and a big tiger at your birthday would probably fetch you another newspaper article for your precious scrapbook, now wouldn’t they?”

  I turned on Mitzi, whose face, redder than Glinda’s ruby castle, betrayed her guilt. She had told them.

  That was enough. Without another look at anyone, I whirled on my heels.

  “Never mind. I’ll go try it on right now.”

  It was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. But what other choice did I have? Give in to them? Let them get the best of me? I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  When I reached the stairs, though, each step seemed more hopeless and daunting than the last as I made my way to my bedroom, the awful gown draped heavily over my arm and Toto following right behind me.

  In my room, I stood in front of the mirror and held the dress up to my chest.

  It was a perfectly respectable dress. It really was. I could see how Aunt Em would have been pleased at her ingenious scheme to refurbish it, could see her happily sewing and cutting, congratulating herself for her thriftiness and creativity and pioneer spirit.

  That was when all my anger and resolve fell away, leaving only a sense of sad, empty hopelessness.

  Because of course it didn’t matter at all. Even the finest dress money could buy—a dress befitting Her Majesty Suzanna Hellman herself!—wouldn’t have been the dress I’d been dreaming of.

  The dress I’d been dreaming of would have been magical. It would have come from Oz.

  “I know you’re disappointed,” Aunt Em’s soft voice said from the doorway. “I’m sorry those girls were mean to you. I surely don’t know what’s come over Mitzi Blair. But we did tell you not to share your tales. . . .”

  I looked up at her.

  This was the moral of the story, to her? This was my fault, for telling my friend the truth about what had happened to me?

  “They’re not tales,” I snapped. “And I’m not disappointed. I just . . .”