No Place Like Oz (2 page)

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 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.