No Place Like Home Page 5

  I remember one season our fields were hit by a cyclone, and we lost the entire crop of sunflowers. I thank goodness for little favors, the state's emergency disaster fund kept us from losing the farm to the

  banks since we had no income that year.

  I dreamed about going to the big city. Being tall, clumsy, and mousy, with thick glasses and my nose in a book all the time, I wasn't the most popular kid in school. And my parents, rest their souls, being cruel and naming me after that damn girl from Oz didn't help one bit. Living with the same teasing from the same kids year after year made me long for something more.

  I was putting a suitcase on the passenger seat of the truck when I saw a strange man come riding up our long dirt drive, on a bicycle of all things, ringing a little thumb bell to get my attention. Like I wouldn't have noticed something, someone, so out of place?

  He was calling out in a low voice that seemed to be cracking with excitement, “Dorothy! Dorothy, it is you! Finally, I've found you! I've made it through the obfuscation charms the Elders cloaked the entire damn state with.”

  I had no clue who the tall man, who was sporting a tweed business suit and handlebar mustache, was. I slowly closed the door of the truck and took a slow step toward the house, calling over my shoulder, “Uncle Henry?”

  He didn't look dangerous, on the contrary, he looked like some sort of scholar or teacher in his late thirties, about to hit middle age if the strands of silver frosting his brown hair were any indication. But still, every mass murderer always has people saying how quiet and normal they were and didn't think they'd be capable of the things they did.

  Thinking back, I may have preferred a mass murderer to Baum. At least if they took my life, it would have been more straightforward than the way that clairvoyant Oz-hole took mine. Toto is the only good thing to come of all this bullshit.

  When the man reached me, he almost fell off the bike, still ringing that damn bell. He caught himself and looked at me, his face red, sweat dripping down his face as he opened his mouth to talk.

  But he gasped and crouched a little, letting the bike fall to the ground as held a finger up as he panted.

  What idiot rode a bicycle in hundred degree temperatures, let alone in a heavy tweed suit? I was afraid he was going to drop over dead from heat prostration. I asked as I made sure to keep my distance, “Do I know you, sir? Would you like some water? You look ready to drop.”

  He shook his head, reconsidered as he went into a coughing fit, and nodded as he locked his arms on his knees for support as he leaned over.

  I looked at him and the standing water pipe beside the trough at the pig pen. I doubted he'd be able to attack me let alone stand without help in his current condition, so I chanced moving to him and taking his elbow to assist him to the water pipe.

  I opened the valve, and fresh water started flowing and splashing down into the trough. He moved

  over and cupped his hands and drank greedily, stopping to give me a cheesy grin between slurps and splashing water on his face.

  Amusing for a fool who was ready to drop because he apparently had no sense in his head.

  I stepped back as he splashed water everywhere. Then I cringed when he looked at the trough then before I could stop him, plunged his head down into it. Eww!

  He stood, water falling from his hair in streams. He made a sound of relief and satisfaction and smoothed his soaking wet hair back over his head out of his eyes. I took another step back as my eyes widened in disbelief when I realized his hair was dry and combed neatly. He flicked his hands down, the water of his hands and soaked sleeves splashed to the ground. When I looked up from the puddle at his feet to him, he was adjusting his tie and I noted his suit was dry as a bone and well pressed.

  What the hell? “Uncle Henry?!” Where was he?

  The man smiled as he adjusted his lapels. “Ahh. That's better. I am much obliged for your hospitality, young Dorothy. You've no idea how awful it is to be riding a bicycle in these temperatures.” He was sort of handsome in an old-fashioned kind of way and had a disarming manner.

  That's probably why I wasn't disarmed.

  He took a step toward me, offering a hand as I took a step back. Where was Uncle Henry? “Where are my manners? Frank. Lyman Frank Baum, at your service.” He gave a little bow, his hand still outstretched.

  I hesitated and then shook, still trying to keep as much distance between me and this odd caricature of a man. I opened my mouth to offer my name, which I knew he had somehow known since he had been shouting it like a screech monkey coming down the drive. But I snapped my mouth shut as he beat me to it.

  “And you, my dear, are Dorothy Clementine Gale. I am delighted to finally make your

  acquaintance. Synching times is a little tricky between realms, and I'm afraid I missed my target by a century.”

  What?

  How did this man know me and what was he babbling about, did the sun bake his brain? Was it signs of heat stroke? Then I stiffened. He looked like a professor! Was he from the college? I felt the blood drain from my face. He was here to tell me there was some sort of error and I didn't get the scholarship, wasn't he? God no, it would break Aunt Emily. I was going to be stuck here at the farm the rest of my life.

  That's about when my mind caught up with me.

  I paused. Wait, L. Frank Baum? As in the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the bane of my

  existence? Frank Baum, who died a century ago? I was being punked by the asshat wolves at school again. We had graduated, when were they going to grow up?

  And I knew exactly who put this jerk up to it. “I don't appreciate the joke. Go tell Vivian, har har and get out of here before I call the sheriff.”

  My chest ached, I was so tired of the endless taunting. I had only had one really good friend growing up, Vivian from the soybean farm across the road from us. She had been the only girl to not tease about my name, and she didn't mind hanging out with the mousy gangly girl.

  Everything was fine between us until the day in junior high, when I found myself getting confused feelings for Hannah Selkirk. Viv was the only person I could talk with about it, I sure wasn't going to ask Aunt Em. That's when I lost my only friend. Her family is the God-fearing, bible thumping sort.

  And she said what I was saying was unnatural and against God's will.

  She never talked to me again after that. Instead, she turned into the ringleader of those who taunted me every day and started hanging with the wolf crowd. Though oddly, she never once told anyone my secret. I came to the understanding I was gay before I even hit high school and I know she had realized it back when I first confided in her.

  I shiver to think what would have happened if she had used that against me. As if everyone calling me Scarecrow all the time wasn't bad enough. I could imagine the cruel words they'd have for me if it came out. If I came out. So maybe there was still a little of my friend still in Viv, even though she couldn't stand me anymore.

  Frank looked frantic as he shook his head and said, “No, you don't understand, Dorothy, you have to come with me back to Oz. Now. I have to stay here to slow the advance of the Elders, and you are the only one who can protect Oz in my absence.”

  I yelled at him as I pointed at his bike, “Get out of here now!” I pulled my cell to show I was serious about calling the sheriff. He didn't need to know that Nate Reynolds was a lazy ass who would take an hour or two to show up.

  He was shaking his head and started to plead but then froze when we both heard the distinct sound of a shotgun being pumped. We turned back to see uncle Henry on the porch, leaning casually against a column holding his shotgun in a relaxed and aloof manner. He looked quite sure of himself when he said, “Mister, you're in for a whole world of hurt if you don't do what my niece has asked you to. Now get out of here before I fill your ass with buckshot.”

  Frank grumbled as he looked at us. He picked up his bike and then started pedaling away, ringing that damn bell. He called back, “The reckoning is com
ing Dorothy. We need to be ready!”

  What a total nutcase.

  I turned back to my uncle and shrugged my shoulders at his inquisitive look. The irony of the whole situation wasn't lost on me. Me being Dorothy Gale and having an uncle Henry and Aunt Em. I took one last glance at the madman peddling down our drive. Frank Baum, yeah right. I really hated my life sometimes.

  That's where any similarities to the friggin Oz books stopped though. Uncle Henry had been a late in life surprise to my grandparents. He was only ten years older than me and looked like a buff and ruggedly handsome model from Trucker's Monthly.

  It was almost painful hearing the girls in class always gushing about him when he'd drop me off at school if I missed the bus. I mean, just eww, he was my uncle.

  He and aunt Emily took me in after my parents died trying to get home to me when I was home alone during a tornado warning when I was fifteen. Whenever I close my eyes, I can still hear the tornado sirens warbling off in the distance as I hid in the root cellar alone. When mom and dad didn't return home hours later, I knew. I knew before Sheriff Reynolds came down the road with my aunt and uncle and told me what had happened.

  I moved my glasses up to the top of my head and shook my head. “Vivian was just being a bitch and sent the guy to torment me. Saying his name is Frank Baum. I swear to god Unk, I'm legally changing my name to Dot now that I'm eighteen.”

  He just chuckled as he ejected the shotgun shell he had chambered. I rolled my eyes, it was one of those green ones. A rubber slug, not buckshot. “It ain't all that bad Dottie. Imagine the ribbing Emily and I take for being Henry and Em Gale. True ol' George and Mary did you no favors, but you have to chuckle at the Oz symmetry. Go with the flow, ride the wave. Isn't that what the kids are saying nowadays?”

  I did have to chuckle at the man. “Unk, the 'kids' don't say that, nobody says that, and you're only ten years older than me.”

  Aunt Em stepped out onto the porch, wiping grease from her hands onto a rag, from the lawnmower engine she was repairing. She and Henry were made for each other. She had all the glamour and grace I wish I had. I'm pretty sure when I was assembled by the Great Spaghetti Monster in the Sky, that he forgot I was female or something.

  I was as mousy as they came, with my dull brown, stringy hair, and my thick glasses did me no favors. But without them, I couldn't read anything within three feet. But I could see like an eagle in the distance.

  She could fix about anything with a motor in it. Her small engine work is what keeps the farm solvent in the winter months. She filled out her overalls like some sort of model playing at mechanic.

  It just wasn't fair that she was both. “What's all the commotion out here?”

  She brushed a lock of her curly red hair behind her ear as she gave me a sad smile. After Vivian distanced herself from me, Em had become my best friend and confidante. She was relentless in trying to get me to wear more provocative clothes and makeup because “You just never know when you'll meet the girl that makes your heart feel as though it starts beating for the very first time.”

  She was so cool. After days of prodding me as to the reason Viv didn't come around anymore, I came out to her. She had only chuckled. “Well menfolk, for the most part, are over-rated, 'ceptin, of course, your uncle, Henry. I mean, he is one prime piece of...”

  “Em!”

  She gave a little laugh at the eww factor showing on my face. She finished with, “Well, any girl would be lucky to have you.”

  The look Aunt Emily gave me on the porch as Henry put an arm around her waist was filled with sadness. We had really bonded in those three years they had been my guardians. I saw her as a big sister, and she felt the same. It was as if she was losing her best friend the way she looked at me, and it broke my heart.

  I knew she was proud of me for being the first of the family to go to college, but it still felt like I was going to be leaving a friend behind.

  I offered as we heard the thumb bell ringing in the distance, “Just the kids pranking me one last time before I go.”

  I turned to look at the truck, then them. I exhaled and took a deep breath in slowly as I nudged my chin toward it, my voice wavered, belying my forced smile, “Well that's the last of it.” I felt awkward.

  Emily softened and then opened her arms wide as Henry leaned the shotgun against the column. I stepped in and hugged her tight as the stupid tears started flowing. She shushed me and said, “Really going to miss you around here, Ladybug.”

  I nodded and said into her shoulder, “I'm going to miss you too, Em. I'll be home for the holidays.

  It's only a three-hour drive from Topeka, I can visit on the weekends.”

  Henry chuckled out as Emily released me to force her own smile back up, “Or when you need laundry done, or food...”

  I giggled and stepped into his offered arms. He hugged me tight, swinging side to side, “Gonna miss you, Dottie.”

  I just nodded and smiled as he released me. Then he was digging in a pocket and pulled out a wad of bills all rolled up with a rubber band around them. “Take this. Emergency money in case of – well, in case of emergencies I suppose.”

  Em patted his arm, grinned at me, and teased at his awkwardness, “At least he's pretty.”

  He grunted out a weak, “Hey.”

  I smiled at them but held my hand up, “No, the farm needs it more.”

  He cocked an expectant eyebrow as he took my hand and pressed the money into it. “We'll make do, always do. But you, Dorothy, you're going to college to make something of yourself. We're so proud of you.”

  Ok, the tears were threatening again. I wiped my eyes on the back of my sleeve and gave them a smile and headed for the truck. It was silly how emotional I was getting. I was only going to be less than three hours away from home. Emily questioned, “You sure you don't want us to come to help you get settled in?”

  She sounded more and more like my mom every day.

  I whined, “Emmmm.”

  She chuckled and waved as I slid into the driver's seat and pulled the rusty door shut. I waved and called out the window, “Love you two.”

  They called out in unison, “Love you too.” Then Emily added, “We got you the smartphone for a reason, don't forget the number, Ladybug. It'll always bring you home.”

  I smiled as I rolled my eyes. “I know, I know. Goodbye!” I waved again as I fired up the blue beast. I may have shed a tear as I drove down the drive, hanging one hand out the window and we kept waving until I couldn't see them anymore as I drove past the Swanson's corn fields. So what if my family was sappy. Shut up.

  It was an odd feeling as I got off Old Sutter's Road and onto the paved highway. I felt suddenly alone, disconnected from home for the second time in my life. I felt eerily similar to the days following my parent's death. But this time there was the underlying excited anticipation that my life was about to change in ways I couldn't have ever imagined.

  I should have stayed home and worked the farm. No, that's a lie. Otherwise, I wouldn't have met my Antoinette.

  All my indecision had washed away when Topeka came into view, the dome of the Capitol

  Building rising high above the walls of stone with veins of silver that kept the feral wolves out during the full moon.

  Little known fact, the domed building is also called the Kansas Statehouse, completed in 1903. The original handwritten manuscript of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by that pain in my ass Baum is in a strongbox affixed to the inner dome of the building.

  What? I like trivia, and unless you want to find yourself as a mechanical fish in a suit-coat, you'll

  keep your trap shut and listen to my story.

  I felt oddly grown up as I made my way to the outskirts of town to the Central Kansas College campus, just outside one of the city gates. I looked at the map in the welcome packet I was sent and navigated the tiny campus to the dorms. Which – looked like a dilapidated apartment complex, but with gleaming full moon bars over the windows and doors.


  Ok.

  Not as glamorous as I had pictured in my mind.

  But that was fine because that's when I saw an angel. I stepped into the B-Block building's lobby, expecting it to be bustling with students like me, moving their stuff into their rooms, frantically trying to figure out what they were supposed to do next.

  Not so much.

  Instead, there were a couple guys moving what looked like video gaming chairs into the elevator on one side. I wasn't aware it was a co-ed dorm. A couple girls were over at a counter under a sign in a hole in the wall which read 'RA.' Ok, that would be the residency advisor in charge of our dorm.

  And sitting dead center in the lobby at a makeshift desk, with balloons in the red and golds of the college tied to the corners, was a girl in a cheerleader outfit. She was tipping back in her chair, so it balanced on two legs as she crossed her long and shapely legs that rested on the desk that had a banner on the front which read, 'Welcoming committee, new students check in here.'

  She looked infinitely bored and was, of all things, balancing a pen on her nose as the piped in elevator music played We Built This City in a painfully slow piano rendition, her long blonde hair draping behind her almost to the floor.

  When I stepped up to the table with my welcome packet, she started and almost fell over backward, catching herself and impressively enough, the pen as it tumbled from her nose. She tipped the chair back on all four legs as she removed hers from the desk.

  She said in a chipper voice that thrummed through me, waking the part of me I hid away from everyone back home, “Hi!” It was if someone had poured hot liquid honey all over me, I had never reacted to someone's voice like that before.

  I just stared at the woman, trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing. How could one person be so, beautiful, so... perfect? Her brilliant blue eyes were my entire world at the time, pulling all my thoughts and intelligence from me like they had a gravity of their own.