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She told me that, whatever anyone at school said, a trailer was where I lived, not who I was.
I don’t think she believed it even then, but at least in those days she still cared enough to lie.
I was all sharp edges and angles—words that came out too fast and at the wrong times.
Flat Hill, Kansas.
I didn’t know what was worse: to have your shot and screw it up, or to never have had a shot in the first place.
Mom pushed past me again to get to her keys. Like I was just a thing that was in the way of something she wanted.
If we lived in a regular house, with one and a half bathrooms, I wondered, would she still hate me this much? Was resentment something that grew better in small spaces, like those flowers that Mom used to force to bloom inside in little vases?
“You don’t see it, do you? She’s already getting hers. You don’t need to help it along.”
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—
Still—whoever she was now—I didn’t want her out there on her own.
I had wanted to be gone. I’d wanted it for as long as I’d known there was anywhere to go.
He was beautiful. He was too beautiful. It was the kind of beautiful that can almost seem ugly; the kind of beautiful you don’t want to touch, because you know it might burn.
what I was going to do next was the same thing I’d been doing my whole life. I turned back. Just put one foot in front of the other. Nothing had changed except the color of the road.
Even abandoned like this, there was something cheerful and quaint about the way the houses—all of various heights—were built so close together that they were practically stacked on top of one another, as if personal space wasn’t something they cared about around here.
goth Munchkin.
“Indigo,”
“Good. Like that means anything around here. I hate to break it to you, but just because someone has pretty hair and good skin tone and a crown instead of a pointy hat doesn’t mean she’s not the baddest bitch this side of the Emerald City.
She looked so sad. It was the worst kind of sad, too—the kind where you’re sad about something that you know will never change. The kind of sad you can’t even bother getting angry about anymore.
“I’m an educated monkey. My name is Ollie.”
It was good to see her mad, actually. At least anger can get you somewhere.
“I would rather be free than fly,”
I ever had a chance to help the monkeys, I would take it. No matter what it cost me. It was the least I could do. Not for him, but for myself. Just to say I had someone.
the Tin Woodman’s story. He had been a flesh-and-blood man until a witch had enchanted his ax to make him chop off pieces of his body one by one, and one by one he had replaced them with metal parts until that was all that was left of him.
There were consequences in Oz. Supersized consequences that didn’t fit the crime.
I scraped my nails absently along the stone walls next to my bed, trying to make a mark. Any mark. It was like with Indigo’s tattoos. We all had our ways of saying I was here.
I’d hated the responsibility of taking care of something that I never asked for,
That’s the spirit. We’ll make a Wicked one out of you yet, now won’t we?”
I had been lonely a lot in my life—enough to know that there are different kinds of lonely.
“Why does there have to be a beginning and an ending?” the voice asked. “If you ask me, it’s all middle.”
Grandma Gert.”
there’s more than one kind of home. And you’re right. You are on your own. We all are, and we all have to learn it sooner or later. If you have to be alone, though, wouldn’t you rather be alone among friends?”
“Forgiveness doesn’t come easy for you, I see. Sometimes you have to bend so as not to break, dear.”
“I’m not Glinda. I’m Glamora, her twin sister.
“Wickedness is part of Oz. It’s part of the order of things. It’s always been the Good versus the Wicked. Magic can’t exist without Goodness. Goodness can’t exist without Wickedness. And Oz can’t exist without magic.”
“Why does she need more than she already has?”
Magic always wants to be something different from what it already is. It wants to change. That’s what makes it magic.
“You don’t have to know every turn of the road in order to walk down it.”
“It’s just that for a girl who says so much, she does not yet know herself.”
Beautiful was in the way that she moved and spoke. Beautiful was an action as well as a description.
I don’t know about your tin farm, but here, sugar can be a poison.”
Sometimes it felt like we were in the middle of some argument that I had already lost. He was just so sure of everything.
Maybe he spoke only one language. The truth, and nothing but. It had stung like hell, but it made what he was saying now sound all the more real.
“You’re afraid to do anything but wish for things to happen to you.
I didn’t take his hand this time. I’d rather fall down in the dark.
She was apologetic for the hurt she’d caused me, but not the action.
scrying
“Yeah, well,” I said. “I can imagine a lot of things. That doesn’t mean they’re possible.”
I felt like if I forgave her, I was just asking her to hurt me again.
Forgiveness can get you places, I guess. But sometimes you need to light a fire.
Sleep felt as far away as home.
