Upon closer inspection, I realized that it wasn’t exactly trash. Some of it might as well have been, but there seemed to be some kind of method to the way it was organized. There were heaps of old coins and silverware and laundry and magazines as well as other stuff I didn’t recognize, all of it piled on top of more piles up and down the coast. The only thing natural that lay in sight was a thin barrier of palm trees that marked the end of the beach. Beyond those, the buildings I’d seen from the water loomed.

By now, Ozma had made it ashore, and she seemed just as intrigued by the island as I was. She looked around, made a beeline for what seemed to me to be a random mound of metallic scraps, and began to dig through it.

After only a few minutes of tossing stuff aside, she came back up, triumphantly holding a golden, jewel-encrusted scepter almost as tall as she was, topped with Oz’s insignia. She held it forth, beaming with pride, and banged it against the ground as if to remind me not to forget that she was the queen, after all.

I would have been more impressed if I hadn’t been distracted by something I’d spotted out of the corner of my eye. Something pastel and Argyle.

I gasped when I got a good look at it. It was a sock. It was my sock; the long-lost half of my favorite pair. How had it made it all the way here from Kansas? Had it shaken loose somehow when I’d been carried over in the tornado?

No. I was positive I’d lost it at the laundromat.

Oh, so what. It didn’t matter where it had come from. I leaned down and scooped it up. It didn’t do me a hell of a lot of good with its unmissing match still safely back in Kansas, but I was glad to see it, if only for the unexpected reminder of home. I held it to my face to find that it was warm from the sun and still smelled like the off-brand fabric softener I used to buy out of an old-fashioned coin-op dispenser.

Ozma was rooting around on the ground like a pig searching out truffles, and I felt a surge of unreasonable glee as I joined her in the hunt for who knows what. Pretty soon, I had unearthed the final page of my tenth grade state government term paper, which I’d dropped somewhere between arriving at school and getting to class—earning myself a B minus for the quarter in the process—along with an old door key (I knew it was mine because of the battered, plastic SpongeBob key chain), a French textbook I’d had to shell out forty bucks to replace, and, most astonishingly, the beloved silver chain that my grandmother had given me for my tenth birthday just before she’d died. When I’d realized it was missing a few years later, I’d just assumed it was because my mom had pawned it for cash.

I rolled the chain over and over in my hand, admiring it, then hung it carefully around my neck. There was a satisfying click as I locked the clasp, and something about that sound, and the feeling of the metal against my collarbone, gave me a pang of regret.

Things had gotten insane so quickly since I’d arrived in Oz that I’d never really stopped to think about all the things I’d lost in coming here. Not the big things: of course I’d thought about my mother, and I’d even missed my room back in my old trailer every now and then. It was the other stuff that I hadn’t thought about that came back to me now. The books I’d loved that I’d never read again—books that had nothing to do with Oz—and my favorite sweater, and the birthday cards from my father that I’d kept saved in a shoebox in the back of my closet.

Even my old self. She had been ordinary, but she had been someone, and now she was gone. I’d never taken the time to say good-bye to her.

I was so caught up in the feeling that I didn’t notice at first that Ozma and I were no longer alone on the beach.

But then I had the sense that I was being watched, and when I looked up and saw the lanky, wild-haired figure who was gazing at me, my heart practically burst open with joy.

This had to have been Pete’s doing. When he’d promised to try to help, I hadn’t dared to think he would actually be able to make good on it, but apparently I should have given him more credit. He had led me right where I’d asked him to, and done it in what had to be record time.

Standing there, atop a hill of ballpoint pens, looking as beautiful as I’d ever seen him, was Nox.

“I was wondering when you’d make it here,” he said. “I figured it only had to be a matter of time, but damn, you sure know how to keep a guy waiting.”

SIXTEEN

I jumped to my feet and flung myself into Nox’s arms, practically knocking him over in the process.

If it had been a movie, the camera would have rotated around us as the orchestra swelled and Nox swept me up in his arms. Young lovers, reunited at last, happily ever after—you know the drill. If it were a movie, the strings would have come in at the very moment that our lips met in a passionate, do-or-die kiss.

But it wasn’t a movie. Instead, we held each other for a few seconds before awkwardly breaking apart and standing there, not quite looking at each other.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” Nox replied.

“So,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

Seeing him again, just when I least expected it, I was reminded of how little I knew him. We had fought against each other, and fought at each other’s sides. When he was gone, I missed him—I knew that much—but did it actually mean anything?

“So,” Nox said. “I guess we have a lot to talk about.”

“I guess so,” I mumbled. “So where do we start?”

Nox ran a hand through his hair. He looked up at the sky, where the sun was setting again. “Look,” he said. “I don’t even know how long I’ve been stuck here. Long enough to think about some stuff. And . . .”