Dorothy Must Die: The Other Side of the Rainbow Collection: No Place Like Oz, Dorothy Must Die, The Witch Must Burn, The Wizard Returns, The Wicked Will Rise (3 page)

I had to admit it looked a little scary outside: the darkening sky stretched out over the empty, flat plain—a muddy, pinkish brown I’d never seen before—and the air seemed eerily still.

Usually on a day like today, even with bad weather, the old guy next door would be out in the yard, blasting old-fashioned country songs—the kind about losing your car, losing your wife, losing your dog—from his ancient boom box while the gang of older kids I never talked to would be drinking neon-colored sodas from little plastic jugs as they sprawled out on the rusty green lawn furniture and old, ratty sofa that made up their outdoor living room. But today, they were all gone. There was no movement at all. No kids. No music. No nothing. The only color for miles was in the yellowed tops of the dried-out patches of grass that dotted the dirt.

The highway at the edge of the trailer park, where cars normally whizzed by at ninety miles an hour, was suddenly empty. Mom and Tawny had been the last car out.

As the light shifted, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection in the window and I saw my face, framed by my new pink hair. I’d dyed it myself and the change was still a shock to me. I don’t even know why I’d done it. Maybe I just wanted some color in my stupid, boring gray life. Maybe I just wanted to be a little bit more like Madison Pendleton.

No. I didn’t want to be anything like her. Did I?

I was still studying my face when I heard squeaking and rustling, and turned around to see my mom’s beloved pet rat, Star, going crazy in her cage on top of the microwave. Star has got to be the world’s laziest rat—I don’t think I’ve seen her use her wheel a single time in the last two years. But now she was racing frantically, screaming her gross little rat screams and throwing herself against the sides of her home like she was going to die if she didn’t get out.

This was new.

“Guess she abandoned both of us, huh?” I tried to ignore the twinge of triumph I felt at this. I’d always had the sneaking suspicion that Mom loved Star more than me. Now she couldn’t be bothered with either of us.

The rat stared right at me, paused, and then opened her mouth to reply with a piercing squeal.

“Shut up, Star,” I said.

I thought she’d stop after a second, but the squeal just kept coming.

Star didn’t stop.

“Fine,” I said when I couldn’t take it anymore. “You wanna come out? Fine.” I unlatched the top of her cage and reached in to free her, but as I wrapped my hand around her body, she thanked me by sinking her tiny teeth into my wrist.

“Ow!” I yelped, dropping her to the floor. “What’s wrong with you?” Star didn’t answer—she just scurried off under the couch. Hopefully, never to be seen again. Who even keeps a rat as a pet?

Suddenly the door of the trailer swung open.

“Mom!” I called, running to the open door. For a split second, I thought maybe she’d come back for me. Or, if not for me, then at least for Star.

But it had just been the wind. For the first time, it occurred to me that the impending tornado might not be a joke.

When I was twelve, when it all first started, I didn’t get it at first. I thought Mom was actually changing for the better. She let me skip school so we could have a pajama day. She took me to the carnival in the middle of the school day. She jumped on the bed. She let us eat pizza for breakfast. But pretty soon she wasn’t making breakfast at all, she was forgetting to take me to school, and she wasn’t even getting out of her pajamas. Before long, I was the one making breakfast. And lunch. And dinner.

The mom I’d once known was gone. She was never coming back. Still—whoever she was now—I didn’t want her out there on her own. I couldn’t trust Tawny to take care of her in a disaster. More than that, I didn’t want to be alone. So I picked up my phone and punched in her name. No service. I hung up.

I went to the door, still open and creaking back and forth on its hinges, and took a step outside to scan the horizon, hoping I’d see the red Camaro zooming back down the highway. A change of heart.

As soon as I put my foot on the first stair outside the trailer, I heard a whooshing noise as a plastic lawn chair flew through the air toward me. I hit the ground just in time to avoid getting beaned in the face.

Then, for a moment, everything was still. The lawn chair was resting on its side a few feet away in the dirt like it had been there all along. It began to drizzle. I thought I even heard a bird chirping.

But as I hesitantly got to my feet, the wind started back up. Dust swirled and stung my eyes. The drizzle turned into a sheet of rain.

The sky just overhead was almost black and the horizon was a washed-out, cloudy white, and I saw it, just like in the movies: a thin, dark funnel was jittering across the landscape and getting bigger. Closer. A low humming sound, like an approaching train, thrummed in my ears and in my chest. The lawn chair shot up into the air again. This time, it didn’t come back down.

Slowly, I stepped backward into the trailer and yanked the door closed, feeling panic rising in my chest. I turned the deadbolt and then, for good measure, pulled the chain tight, knowing none of it would do any good.

I pressed my back to the wall, trying to keep calm.

The whole trailer shook as something crashed against it.

I had been so stupid to think this might be a joke. Everyone else was gone—how hadn’t I seen this coming?

It was too late now. Too late to get out of town—even if I’d had the money to do it. I had no car to get to a shelter. Mom hadn’t even thought to ask Tawny to drop me off somewhere. I was trapped here, and whichever way you sliced it, it was my mother’s fault.

I couldn’t even lie down in the bathtub. We didn’t have a bathtub any more than we had a basement.

Al Roker’s voice on the TV had been replaced by the buzz of static. I was alone.

“Star?” I squeaked. My voice barely made it out of my chest. “Star?”

It was the first time in my life that I’d been desperate for the company of my mother’s rat. I didn’t have anyone else.

As I sank onto the couch, I couldn’t tell if I was shaking, or if it was the trailer itself. Or both.

My mom’s stupid Snuggie was rancid with the stench of her Newports, but I pulled it over my face anyway, closing my eyes and imagining that she was here with me.

A minute later, when something snapped on the right side of the trailer, everything pitched to the side. I gripped the cushions hard to keep from falling off the couch. Then, there was another snap, and a lurch, and I knew that we’d come loose from our foundation.

My stomach dropped and kept dropping. I felt my body getting heavier, my back plastered to the cushions now, and suddenly—with a mix of horror and wonder—I knew that I was airborne.

The trailer was flying. I could feel it.

Dreading what I would see, I peered out from under the blanket and toward the window, squinting my eyes open just a crack to discover my suspicion had been right: Pink light danced through swirling clouds. A rusted-out car door floated by as if it were weightless.

I had never been on a plane. I had never been higher than the observatory, the tallest building in Flat Hill. And here I was now flying for the first time in a rusty old double-wide.

The trailer bounced and swayed and creaked and surfed, and then I felt something wet on my face. Then a squeak.

It was Star. She had made it onto the couch and was licking me tenderly. As her soft squeaks filled my ear, I let out a breath of something like relief just to have her here with me. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Mom was probably on her third drink by now, or maybe huddled with Tawny in the basement of the bar, a stack of kegs to keep them happy for as long as necessary. I wondered what she would do when she got back—when she saw that the trailer was gone, and me along with it. Like we were never here. Would her life be better without me in it?

Well, I had wanted to be gone. I’d wanted it for as long as I’d known there was anywhere to go. I wanted other places, other people. Another me. I wanted to leave everything and everyone behind.

But not like this.

I scratched my index finger against Star’s furry spine and waited for the falling part. For the crash. I braced myself against the cushions, knowing that my tin-can house wasn’t going to protect me when we hit the earth. But the crash didn’t come.

Up and up and up we went. More white-pink light, more pink clouds, and every kind of junk you could imagine all swirling around in the surreal air blender: an unbothered-looking Guernsey cow. An ancient, beat-up Trans Am. An old neon service-station sign. A tricycle.

It was like I was on the world’s most insane amusement park ride. I’ve never liked roller coasters. Going up would be fun if you didn’t have to think about what always came next.

When I came to, the first thing I saw was the spongy gray floor of the trailer above me. Star was scampering around my achy body like it was a racetrack, trying frantically to wake me. It took me a second to realize that I was lying on the ceiling.

Light streaked through the dirty windows—normal, bright, white light again, not the blushy pink I’d seen during the tornado or the watercolor brown just before it.

I was alive. And someone was talking to me.

“Grab my hand,” he was saying. “Step lightly.” I turned my head and looked up to see a torso leaning in through the open door, half-in, half-out, and an arm reaching for me. It was a he, silhouetted by light pouring in from behind. I couldn’t make out his face.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Just take my hand. Try not to make any sudden movements.”

From my side, Star squeaked and scrambled into the pocket of my hoodie.

I rose slowly to my feet and dusted myself off. Nothing seemed to be broken. But everything hurt like I was a rag doll that’d been thrown around in a giant tin can. When I took a step, the double-wide lurched beneath me. I rolled back on my heels, trying to get my balance, and it rocked with even more menace. I stopped.

“Just two steps and you’re home. Hurry,” he said. The distance between his hand and me seemed farther than two steps. I wanted to move again. But I didn’t.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t panic. Just move.”

I took another step, careful not to upset the equilibrium, and then another. I put my hand in his.

As my skin touched his, I saw his face, and I felt electricity shooting through my body. His eyes were the first thing I noticed: They were emerald green with flecks of something I couldn’t even describe to myself, and they seemed to be glowing, almost floating in front of his face. There was something about them that seemed almost alien.

Was he a rescue worker? And if so, how far from home was I, exactly?

“Am I dead?” I asked. It certainly seemed possible. Likely, even. It was hard to believe that I had survived any crash.

“Of course not. If you were dead, would we be having this conversation?”

With that, he gave my arm a sharp, strong yank and pulled me through the tipped doorway. We fell backward, tumbling onto the ground outside.

I scrambled quickly to my feet and turned around to see that I was standing on the edge of a deep ravine. My poor little trailer was barely holding on, teetering on the precipice.

The chasm was more like a canyon: it was as wide as a river and stretched on for as far as I could see in either direction. The bottom was all blackness.

“What the . . . ?” I whispered.

My trailer heaved, and then, with a final, aching creak, it lurched backward, letting go.

“No!” I screamed, but it was too late. The home that had once been mine was spinning down and down and down into the hole.

I kept expecting to see it crash and shatter into a million pieces, but it just kept on falling as I stood there watching it disappear into the abyss.

It was gone without even a sound. I had almost gone with it.

Everything I owned was in there. Every piece of ugly clothing. Every bad memory.

I was free of all of it.

“I’m sorry about your house,” my rescuer said. His voice was soft, but it startled me anyway. I jumped and looked up to find that he was standing at my side. “It’s a miracle you made it out. A few inches to the left and you’d have gone straight into the pit. Lucky, I guess.” The way he said it made it sound like he thought it had been something more than luck.

“Did the tornado do that?” I asked. I stared back into the pit, wondering how far down it went. Wondering what was down there. “I didn’t know tornadoes made giant holes in the ground.”

“Ha. No.” He laughed, but he didn’t seem to think it was all that funny. “The pit’s been here for a long time now.” He didn’t elaborate.

I turned to face him, and when I saw him standing there in the pale, blue-gray sunlight, my breath caught somewhere beneath my ribs. The boy was probably my age, and about my height, too. He was slim and sinewy and compact, with a face framed by dark, shaggy hair that managed to be both strong and delicate at the same time.

His skin was paler than pale, like he’d never left home without sunscreen or like he’d never left home period. He was part rock star, part something else. I couldn’t put my finger on what the something else was, but I knew that it was somehow important.