Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond (22 page)

“A toast to Tin!” Dorothy crowed, and raised a paper cup of vodka in my direction. “Here’s to taking one for the team, and here’s hoping it was a
big
one.”

She winked, and they all did the shot.

The Wizard supplied us with a bottle of vodka, three packs of cigarettes, a yellow BIC lighter, and most miraculously of all, the key to a supply closet where we could enjoy it all to our hearts’ content.

Instead of scissors, he got me a beautiful knife.

He had looked at Dorothy before he looked at me, because who wouldn’t, but he wasn’t picky. Anyone but the ugly one, he’d said, and we all knew the ugly one was Crow.

He looked at Dorothy, but then Dorothy looked at me, and somehow it was done.

After, we pretended like I volunteered, like I wanted it, like Dorothy was doing me a favor by stepping aside and letting me have all the fun, and maybe we weren’t pretending. Maybe that’s how it was. Maybe it could be that way if I decided that’s how it should be.

So I tipped my vodka back, too, and it burned.

That morning I had taken my secret knife and carved triangles into the bare patch on my thigh—not bare anymore. Interlocking triangles, one corner cutting into the next, so suddenly they weren’t triangles at all, just sharp lines doing their own thing. One for the Wizard, one for Crow, one for Dorothy. All of them for me.

Crow scowled when I flicked the lighter, so I flicked it again, right under her nose, yellow flame leaping toward her, and she screeched and punched me in the stomach. The lighter jumped out of my hand and skidded across the linoleum, the flame winking out. Then Roar roared, and Dorothy slapped a hand over his mouth, and Crow laughed and kissed my neck, and I squirmed away and lit up my smoke, and we all got so drunk we puked.

It’s good enough that we do it again, and again. When we need more vodka—and more cigarettes along with it, and once some of the graphic novels Crow likes with all the blood, and more than once some pot for Roar, and always something special for Dorothy, brownies or polish or an inferior pair of silver shoes—I do what I have to do.

It gets easier.

The Wicked Bitch never noticed any of it. Neither did the monkeys, neither did the doctors, and if the other patients did, they weren’t saying anything, because they all had their own arrangements with the Wizard, or because they couldn’t care less. We could have lived like that forever, but instead we did it only until Dorothy pointed out that it wasn’t living at all, not as long as we were caged up in the zoo.

“I think you’re ready now,” she said, proud as if she’d made us herself. “Let’s do this thing, for real.”

No more sneaking around for the sake of sneaking.

No more pill swapping just to see what would happen.

No more games.

For real.

Crow didn’t want to call it anything—Crow didn’t even like to talk about it, didn’t take part in the planning, just sat there dumb and dull like Roar used to be, while we scribbled maps, timed rounds, scouted exits—and so I had to name it myself. The Great Escape. The Big Breakout. Mission Possible. It wasn’t my fault they were stupid; it wasn’t supposed to be my job. My job was to get what we needed from the Wizard: The timing. The keycards. The cash. But when I asked Crow, she just shrugged and said whatever Dorothy wants.

Like I didn’t exist.

Crow didn’t know about the maps I was drawing on my calves, the way the knife tip traced our escape route through the flesh. She didn’t come into my room at night anymore, and I didn’t want her there, anyway. Once, I peeked through the crack in her door, and I watched her, sitting on her bed in the moonlight, staring at nothing, like she couldn’t be bothered to help us escape because she was already gone.

Maybe, even though I packed my bag and mouthed goodbye to my roommate and pressed my palm against the Wizard’s door like some kind of promise, I knew it would all go to shit. But I didn’t think it would go so fast.

We made it out of west, through the intake lobby, and all the way to the last of the locked doors. We made it far enough to start thinking we might actually do it, to whisper to one another, “This is real, this is happening, we’re getting out.” I told Crow we would run away to the city together, and we would get cool jobs and a cool apartment and live like other people lived, only better, because it was like Dorothy said: We lived in color. We were special. Crow blinked at me and said could we get a goat like Bad Dog and feed it all our dirty laundry, and then she said would the Wizard be at the door every night, collecting the rent, and I just nodded and told her sure, Crow, whatever you want—because Crow was right about her brains being a little scrambled, especially without her blue pills, and sometimes it was good just to say yes and keep going.

Dorothy held her hand, and they skipped along the road of yellow brick, tracing it back and back and back toward where we all started, toward the last of the locked doors, and whatever was on the other side of it. I locked arms with Roar, and he gave me the lopsided grin he’d been trying out lately. He wasn’t any good at smiling, and he was worse at skipping, but that was okay, too. On that night in that dark hallway, after it all seemed possible and before we got to the last door, everything was okay. Crow could think whatever she wanted; Roar could stop being afraid; I could watch Crow’s curls dance in the darkness and breathe in her smell and see how she looked at Dorothy and still keep the knife in my pocket, because we were close enough to the end that carving my heart out could wait.

The last door.

That was the one that needed the stolen pass, and Dorothy flashed it against the blinking panel, but nothing happened, except a red light. She swiped it again, and there was a noise, a click, a little like a turning lock but more like a warning.

It takes less than five minutes to happen.

It’s still happening.

I’m still there, in the dark corridor, choking on panic and the bleat of an alarm. I’m still there, always there, like I’m still in the room with Crow on that first night, like I’m still with the Wizard, will always be in the stink of his breath, in the sweat of his arms, in the bargain no one forced me to make.

When the scars fade, I carve them fresh.

In the dark corridor on the last night, when the alarm blares, and the monkeys spring from all sides, we scatter. We are in a lounge, which means tables to hide beneath and couches to climb over and magazines to throw. Dorothy hides. Roar fights. I draw my knife and think for once I will cut someone else.

There is screaming. Those are the monkeys, as Roar sends them flying through the air and into walls. Roar is the beast we always knew he could be, our fierce giant, the monster we made of him, and it takes six of them and a Taser to pin him down, something I only find out later, because I am focused on my knife.

They come toward me, and I brandish the blade, and I shout warnings, lines from movies that tougher people than me know how to say—“Stand back or else!”—but no one stands back; they come for me, and when I hear a fearsome
screech, I know it is Crow coming to rescue me. I want to shout, “No, don’t! Save yourself!”—more of the things you say in the movies when there is any saving to go around. But I realize that Crow is not coming for me.

The monkeys have Dorothy and are dragging her out from under the table, dragging her even as she clings to the leg and sobs and begs them to let her go. The monkeys have Dorothy, and Crow somehow has the lighter. And a bottle of hairspray she must have packed in her bag when we all thought we were leaving for a different life.

Crow fires a spray of foul mist.

Crow screams, “Let go of Dorothy!”

Crow flicks the lighter.

And Crow is on fire.

It was the Wicked Bitch of the West, of all people, who put her out. Padded out of her nap room to see what the ruckus was and thought fast—filled a bucket of water, doused Crow’s flames. The monkeys found a fire extinguisher somewhere, but by then it was over. We were all quiet and still, except for Roar, who was making strange noises in electrified sleep; except for me, who was slipping a knife back into my pocket unseen; except for Crow, who was screaming.

It doesn’t hurt until it does. Crow taught me that.

I could have taught her something, too: that once it starts hurting, it never stops.

They took Roar away to north wing, with its black ribbon of death, and they kept him there for a long time. When they brought him back, he wasn’t Roar anymore. He was a body to prop in the corner, on a chair or a stool or a windowsill—a giant body like a piece of furniture that drooled
and moaned and didn’t notice if you hung towels or bras or signs saying “vegetable” around its neck. Sometimes, if you worked at it, you could get him to rock back and forth, like he was praying.

Roar was back before Crow because of the burns.

When she came back, she was still Crow, but she also wasn’t. Because of the scar tissue and the melted skin that turned her face into a cratered moon, because of the nightmares, because of the hair that burned away and wouldn’t grow back. Because now she was the one who felt too much, felt everything like it was fire. Or because Dorothy was gone.