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 Read Free Page A

gathering up batteries for flashlights and making sure we had enough water to last through the week. I wanted her to take care of me. Because that’s what mothers do.
    Just because I’d learned how to take care of myself didn’t mean I didn’t still feel panic setting in every time she left me like this—all alone, with no clue when she’d be back, or if she’d ever be back at all. Even without a tornado on the way, it was always an open question.
    “It’s better out there than in here,” she snapped.
    Before I could think of a good enough retort, she was gone.
    I opened the door as she slid into the front seat of Tawny’s Camaro; I watched as Mom adjusted the mirror to look at herself and saw her catch a glimpse of me instead, just before the car vroomed away.
    Before I could have the satisfaction of slamming the door myself, the wind did it for me. So maybe this tornado was coming after all.
    I thought of Dustin and his wasted scholarship, and about my father, who’d left me behind just to get out of here. I thought of what this place did to people. Tornado or no tornado, I wasn’t Dorothy, and a stupid little storm wasn’t going to change anything for me.
    I walked to my dresser, pushed up flush against the kitchen stove, and opened the top drawer, feeling around for the red-and-white gym sock that was fat with cash—the stash of money I’d been saving for an emergency for years: $347. Once the storm cleared, that could get me bus tickets. That could get me a lot farther than Topeka, which was the farthest I had ever gone. I could let my mother fend for herself. She didn’t want me. School didn’t want me. What was I waiting for?
    My hand hit the back of the drawer. All I found were socks.
    I pulled the drawer out and rifled through it. Nothing.
    The money was gone. Everything I’d spent my life saving up for. Gone.
    It was no mystery who’d taken it. It was less of a mystery what she’d spent it on. With no cash, no car, and no one to wave a magic wand, I was stuck where I was.
    It didn’t matter anyway. Leaving was just a fantasy.
    In the living room, Al Roker was back on TV. His frown was gone, sort of, but even though his face was now plastered with a giant grin, his jaw was quivering and he looked like he might start crying at any second. He kept chattering away, going on and on about isotopes and pressure systems and hiding in the basement.
    Too bad they don’t have basements in trailer parks, I thought.
    And then I thought: Bring it on. There’s no place like anywhere but here.

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