Dorothy Must Die
Page 92

When I saw the open drawers, overturned on the floor, I felt like I was going to throw up.
Star was gone.
Outside the window, the sky turned from blue to purple to black. Even though it was barely after breakfast, Dorothy had turned the clock.
I couldn’t bring myself to care. Star was gone. My room had been ransacked. I was sure they knew about me—about who I really was. The Tin Woodman already seemed suspicious of me. They’d put it all together.
I had to get out of here.
I turned to face the mirror, which was basically the only thing in the room that had been left undisturbed. Could it be the way out, too?
I ran my fingers over the smooth, reflective surface, hoping some kind of answer would reveal itself. “Nox,” I said, knowing in my heart that it was useless. “Please help me. Tell me what to do. I need you.”
I thought I saw my image ripple, just barely, like when you drop a penny in a pool, and a quick surge of hope rushed through me. But the mirror remained unchanged. Any movement I’d seen had just been my imagination.
I looked at my face, the face that wasn’t really my own, and tried to remember what I really looked like. For some reason, it made me wonder what my mother was doing. I wondered how much time had passed since I’d left—I knew that time didn’t work the same here as it did back home. Was she an old woman now? Had she found a new life without me? Or maybe a hundred years had passed back in Kansas and she was now long dead. I shivered.
Suddenly I found myself longing for my real face. I thought about taking out the knife and cutting myself to reverse the spell, just to get a glimpse of the girl I had been. If I was going to be captured, or have to fight my way out, I decided I would do it as Amy.
The blade came to me eagerly. It glinted in the mirror.
I was just about to slice my palm open when I heard something behind me. First a rustle, then a squeak. I spun around to see Star emerging from a crevice between the floorboards and the wall, a tiny little space I had never noticed before.
“Star!” I cried. “Where the hell were you? Where did you come from?” I was so overjoyed to see her that I didn’t even care that I was talking to a rat that had no way of answering any of my questions. She must have escaped somehow. That’s one good thing you can say about rodents: they know how to make a quick getaway. I just hoped she’d done it before they’d searched my dresser. Somehow I didn’t think Dorothy would take kindly to a maid harboring a rat in her room.
I knelt down to pick her up, but she darted away from me.
“Star?” I stood back up and watched her closely. Something was up—she was frantically running around in a circle like she was trying to get my attention.
“What are you trying to tell me?” I asked.
As if she understood what I was asking, she scurried over to the door and began scratching at it.
She wanted me to follow.
“Are you serious? Now?”
It was a bad idea. Worse than bad. Colossally bad. The Tin Woodman was tearing the rooms apart one by one, the whole palace was in chaos over the missing monkey, and I wasn’t sure whether or not I was a suspect. Plus, Jellia had already covered for me once this morning, and I still wasn’t sure exactly what that was all about. The safest course of action, for now, was to keep my head down and be ready to run.
Or ready to fight.
“Star . . . ,” I said.
She squeaked. She’d never behaved like this before. It was a far cry from her lethargic Dusty Acres days, usually spent napping in her exercise ball. Maybe there was some natural phenomena in Oz that made animals smarter. I mean, the monkeys talk after all.
I sighed. They do say rats are extremely intelligent. If she wanted me to follow, I would follow.
As soon as I opened the door, Star raced out without hesitation. I chased after her. I guess if anyone caught me, I could tell them I was trying to strangle the rat on Dorothy’s behalf.
I was nervous, still unsure what exactly was going on. But Star wasn’t. Star moved quickly and hugged the side of the hall as if she knew that she was supposed to be inconspicuous—as if she knew exactly where she was going, exactly what she was doing.
After a couple of turns, past rooms where other maids were too busy diligently cleaning to notice us, Star came to an unexpected stop, right in front of a life-size statue of Dorothy. I’d probably dusted this a few times—there were others like it scattered all over the palace. In this one, Dorothy peered hopefully toward the horizon (the wall), while clutching a picnic basket, Toto’s scruffy head poking out of it. This version of Dorothy reminded me of the sweet, innocent one I was familiar with, the way most people back home thought of her: sweet and smiling, her hair pulled into two plaits. Too bad she was fictional. I looked at the statue. I looked down at Star. She was twitching in expectation.
“Okay,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Now what?”
Star rolled over onto her back, then back to her feet, and looked up at me.
I didn’t understand rat sign language, but I knew she was trying to show me something. I looked at the statue again. I thought about all those movies where a statue conceals a hidden door and almost laughed, looking down at Star.
“Is this when I, like, lean on the statue and fall through a trapdoor?” I poked stone Dorothy in the eye for emphasis, and nothing happened.
In response, Star started running around in a circle, chasing her tail.
“Star, I don’t have time for this,” I said. “Things are already screwed up and why am I talking to you, you’re a rat.”