Authors: Danielle Paige
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 reply 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 . . .”
I trailed off. I didn’t know how to end the sentence without hurting her feelings more.
“You know that things have been tough,” Aunt Em said. “We just have to get through this rough patch. I promise, there will be a new dress someday soon. A dress and a bigger cake, and—”
“How?” I asked before I could stop myself. “How will we get any of those things? What’s going to be different about tomorrow or the next day? Every day is the same!”
Aunt Em’s face fell even further than it already had, further than even seemed possible.
“Our luck will turn,” she said. “Maybe next year will be a good crop, and we’ll be able to go into town and buy you whatever dress you want.”
It all came rushing out. “It’s not about a dress or a cake, Aunt Em. It’s about this whole place. Nothing ever changes around here, and everyone likes it just the way it is. But I’m sixteen now, and I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life here. Doing the same thing every single day, never wanting more.”
I was starting to cry now. “I just wish you could see what it’s like,” I said. “Then you’d understand, and Uncle Henry would, too. There’s magic out there in the world, Aunt Em. There’re things so wonderful that you could spend your whole life trying to think them up and you’d never come close.”
The tears in Aunt Em’s eyes evaporated in an instant. Her gaze went steely. It’s a trick my aunt has. She’s not as much of a pushover as she first appears. I had to get it from somewhere, didn’t I?
“Dorothy Gale,” she said. “You are indeed sixteen now, and it’s time you put your tall tales aside. There is no such thing as magic.”
There was just no arguing with her like this. “I’m not feeling well,” I said, turning away from her. “Could you give my apologies to my guests? I need to lie down.”
She just shook her head in frustration as she closed the door behind her.
I didn’t need to say anything to Toto as I pulled him up into my arms and collapsed into bed. He understood. His big, wet eyes said as much. They said he missed it as much as I did.
As angry as I was—at Mitzi and Marian and Suzanna and even at Aunt Em and Uncle Henry—I knew that Aunt Em was right about one thing.
It didn’t matter that it had been real. I was never going back there.
Kansas may not have felt like home anymore, but it was where I lived, and it was where I was going to live. I knew I had to put everything else in the past where it belonged.
I knew all those things, and yet there was a part of me that couldn’t let go.
“There’s no place like Oz,” I mumbled, pulling Toto even closer to my chest. I barely knew I was saying it. I might have already been asleep.
When I woke up, the sky outside my window was black. I didn’t know how long I’d slept for or what time it was, and Toto was licking my face.
“Oh, Toto,” I said sleepily. “I was having the nicest dream—let me go back to sleep.”
My dog wasn’t listening. He was spinning in circles on the old quilt that Aunt Em had made for me right after I’d come to live with her and Uncle Henry after my parents died, when I was just a baby.
He was trying to get my attention.
“What is it?” I sat up sluggishly and dropped my legs to the floor as Toto jumped down in excitement and scampered under the bed. When he came back out a few seconds later, he was huffing and puffing and dragging something in his mouth. It was a box.
It was wrapped in glittering, red paper that looked thick and expensive, with every corner perfectly creased. The package was tied with a bright green bow. “What in the world?” I gasped.
I took the box from him and carefully ripped through the paper to the box beneath. It was pink, the color of a perfect sunset.
Where had it come from? Was Uncle Henry trying to cheer me up? Had he snuck in here and hidden the box under my bed while I’d been asleep?
No. I knew instinctively that this was something else. The shade of pink looked so familiar. But there was no way . . . was there?
Or maybe there was.
I pulled the lid off and found myself looking at a pair of shoes. That was when I was certain.
Because they weren’t just any shoes. They were the most beautiful shoes I’d ever seen. They were red to match the wrapping paper and had sharp, pointy heels—the highest I’d ever seen, high enough that they would scandalize all of Kansas if I ever tried wearing them out of my bedroom.
They were lacquered and shinier than the glossiest patent leather, glowing with a warm radiance that seemed to come from within. No—not from within. It seemed to come from somewhere else. From another world.
I knew in my heart that that was
exactly
where it came from.
I reached down and ran my fingers over the heels. The shoes were smooth and strangely warm to the touch. These were the heels of a young woman who had never set foot inside a chicken coop. These were shoes fit for a princess. A
fairy
princess, if it would make Mitzi Blair happy to hear me say it.
I could barely breathe as I pulled them out of the box and set them on the floor, slipping off my worn, brown flats.
I heard a knocking at my door, but it sounded like it was coming from very far away.
I sat there, paralyzed, afraid that if I reached out to touch them again they would disappear, like food you try to eat in a dream. All I could do was stare at them in awe.
The spell was only broken when Toto barked one more time and dove into the box, emerging a few seconds later with a pink slip of paper in his mouth. He dropped it in my lap. It was a note written in fastidious cursive handwriting, the ink red and sparkly.
Dear Dorothy,
Happy birthday! I hope you like these. I thought about silver to match the ones you lost, but in the end I decided that red was more your color. I think you know what to do with them.
G
P.S. If anyone happens to ask, let’s keep this just between us girls.
When another knock came at the door, louder this time, I ignored it again.
Trembling, I lifted my feet and, one by one, slid them into the red heels. They fit perfectly. The warmth I’d felt when I’d touched them before now coursed through my body, rising up through my toes, into my legs, and beyond. A smile spread across my face. I felt like my heart was expanding by the second.
The knocking on the door got louder. “Dorothy? Everyone’s gone now.” It was Uncle Henry’s voice, anxious and urgent. “Can you open up the door, please?”
I rose to my feet. “Come in,” I said, my voice strong and commanding, reverberating through the room. The sound of it surprised even me.
Uncle Henry opened the door and stepped into the room with Aunt Em right behind him. At first, he opened his arms to give me a hug, but then he gasped when he saw my feet. A split second later, Aunt Em gasped, too.
Aunt Em’s hand flew to her bosom. “Oh my word,” she said.
“Where . . . ,” Uncle Henry trailed off.
Toto yapped and sprung into the air. Without even thinking about it, I scooped him into my arms and drew him to my chest.