No Place Like Homecoming

by Dallen, Maggie

  All that got me was a weird look from the old guy delivering balloons.

  More balloons.

  Because that was clearly what this explosion of rainbow colored vomit needed. More balloons. I headed in the direction that the balloon delivery guy had come from on the side of the house. Something told me I wouldn’t be welcomed graciously if I tried to come in through the front door.

  I was the help now, apparently. This was what my life had come to.

  I was the help, and I was dressed like freakin’ Dorothy. Logan had moved on to someone new, and my parents didn’t want me back.

  My own parents didn’t want me.

  I closed my eyes and sucked in a breath. Don’t go there. Do not go there. Do not—

  Eyes still closed, I ran right into something.

  “Oof!”

  Or someone.

  “Hey, watch where you’re—Isla?”

  Crap. I opened my eyes to see...yup. It was official. This nightmare day just got worse. “Oh, hey Flynn.”

  I tried my best for bright and cheerful, but what came out was breathy and pathetic. My lips refused to curve into a smile, and judging by the flinch I saw coming from Flynn’s friend, it probably didn’t even come close.

  Flynn frowned and stepped closer, which did nothing to help my oxygen issue. I scrambled backwards to get some breathing room, but in my hurry to back up, I forgot about the fact that I was wearing used ruby slippers and one shoe slipped off my foot, sending me off balance as I scrambled to find my footing.

  “Whoa, whoa.” Flynn reached out and caught me by my arms right before I fell back on my butt. Leaning down, he lowered his voice so a passing clown couldn’t hear.

  That’s right. A clown.

  Because this day wasn’t nightmarish enough.

  “Isla, are you okay?” His brow was furrowed in concern. Like he was actually worried about me.

  Ha! This guy hated me. This guy had given me the most amazing kiss of my life...and he hated me. And I couldn’t even blame him for hating me because he had every right to.

  I sucked.

  I’d try to play him and he’d caught me. And now I’d driven away the one person who’d ever looked at me like that. Like maybe I was more, or maybe I could be more.

  Like maybe there was more to me than everyone thought.

  But there wasn’t more to me, there was just this. This pathetic, unwanted, unmemorable mess.

  I’d blown my chance with Flynn and now I was out of options. But none of it mattered because my life was over. I’d left for a week and my life had dissolved like sugar in hot water.

  I had nothing to go back to.

  And my own parents didn’t even want me back.

  “Isla, you’re shaking,” Flynn informed me. His voice held so much concern, it hurt my heart to hear it. It would be so easy to believe that it was real. That he really cared.

  Get it together. I mentally shouted at my shaky limbs and my failing lungs, but not surprisingly, it didn’t help.

  “You guys need a hand?” Flynn’s friend said from behind him.

  Oh great. Another hottie gets to witness my epic life fail.

  “Nah, man, we’re good. I’ll meet you in there.”

  The other guy cast me one last worried glance before picking up a cooler he’d been carrying and heading past us.

  I tried to swallow but...ugh. My mouth was too dry. It was like trying to swallow cotton.

  “Here, let’s get you out of the sun.” Flynn wrapped an arm around me and led me into the shade. Pulling out a water bottle from some mystery pocket that only a caterer would have, he handed it over. “Drink.”

  I chugged it without being told twice.

  “Better?” he asked.

  I nodded. My gaze couldn’t quite focus, but the threat of tears was gone. “I have to get going,” I said. “Dorothy stuff. You know.”

  His brows drew down. “Yeah, okay. Just as long as you’re sure—”

  “I’m fine,” I said, already walking away. I’m fine. Fine. Fine. Fine.

  I repeated that word roughly three thousand times over the course of the next twenty minutes. Apparently my acting skills weren’t as good as I’d hoped because no one seemed to be buying it. Mrs. Messner kept fussing over me. Callie wouldn’t stop asking if I wanted to talk. Even Willow was watching me with concern.

  “Dude, if you ruin this party for all of us, I’ll kill you,” Savannah said. It would have sounded far scarier if she’d been the wicked witch. But Mrs. Messner was decked out in green paint and Savannah looked annoyingly gorgeous as the good witch.

  Sure, she got to be all pretty in pink while I toted around a stuffed puppy and said things like, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.”

  We were called out to the party shortly after we arrived, and it was instantly obvious why no one had wanted to be Dorothy.

  I looked lame. I sounded lamer. The kids were too old to find any of this entertaining or cool. And who could blame them? The parents of this castle—the king and queen, I guess?—They’d gone all out. A hay maze had been set up behind the house, along with apple dunking and all the other fall games that I’d only ever heard about up until today. Was this even real?

  I looked around the backyard, which was overrun with kids of varying ages, including a group of younger teens in the distance who looked like they were having the time of their lives making fun of us costumed freaks.

  “Uh, Dorothy, are you okay?” A deep voice asked from behind me.

  I snapped. “I’m fine. How many times do I have to—” I stopped short at the sight of a large lion behind me. Well, a large guy dressed like a lion.

  “Who are you?” I finished.

  “This is Maverick,” Callie said before he could answer. “He’s on the football team.”

  Maverick nodded.

  I could have guessed he was a football player, what with the gargantuan shoulders and the towering size.

  He actually kind of made a good lion, though I wasn’t buying the cowardly bit. This guy looked like he could lift the entire house with a pinky.

  “Mrs. Messner hired you,” I said, stating the obvious because apparently that was all my brain could do today.

  He nodded and Callie took that as her cue to fill the silence with the story of how they’d gotten Maverick to sign on at the last minute because he’d been friends with Mrs. Messner’s son and blah blah blah.

  I didn’t care. I couldn’t even pretend to care.

  I would have given everything I owned for a moment of peace and quiet. Just one full minute of alone time to calm down, to get my head on straight.

  But instead I was surrounded. Someone somewhere called out that it was time to start, and there were suddenly a whole lot of kids at my feet.

  Oh no. Not again.

  The munchkins were back.

  With Callie’s encouragement the little ones sang a loud, enthusiastic, and totally off-key version of Follow the Yellow Brick Road.

  To me.

  They were singing at me, and if singing could be weaponized, these kids would be lethal.

  If I hadn’t already felt like I’d been forsaken in hell, this cinched it. I was in a nightmare. A living, breathing nightmare filled with sticky fingers and kids’ shrill voices.

  Callie and Willow were interacting with the kids, and the lion stood at my back, possibly just as horrified by where he’d found himself as I was.

  Nope. That wasn’t possible. No one could be more horrified than me.

  I caught Flynn on the sidelines, taking pictures of my misery like this was something anyone would ever want to remember.

  “Dorothy, you’re up,” Mrs. Messner hissed from the sidelines.

  I stared at her for a long moment before I realized what she meant.

  No. Oh no, no, no.

  I was supposed to sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I’d known this, of course, but I’d managed to forget.

  Okay, fine, maybe I’d chosen to not think about it. If I d
id, I’d get nervous.

  Which, sure enough, I did.

  But the thing was, I was already in the midst of a panic attack. This new spiral into the land of song was the last straw.

  “Are you okay?” Callie whispered.

  Why did everyone keep asking me that? No. Of course I wasn’t okay. I was dressed as Dorothy. At a kids’ party. In hell.

  My perfect boyfriend had hooked up with my frenemy, my best friend had gone incommunicado except to fill me in on my almost-boyfriend’s hookups, and oh yeah...my parents didn’t want me.

  My perfect life was going to hell in a handbasket.

  Oh right. And now I had to sing.

  All eyes were on me. The silence stretched to something tight and cloying. I spotted Flynn at the back of a crowd, near a catering station where his friend was watching the scene with crossed arms and a look of disdain. But Flynn? His brows were drawn down low in concern.

  That look would be the death of me.

  I opened my mouth to sing. There was nothing else to do. I had no other choice.

  “Somewhere over the rainbow…”

  The words came out. Until they didn’t. I saw Willow’s pale grey Tin-Man costume shift closer. I saw Callie moving toward me. Even the lion behind me who I didn’t know put a hand on my back as if he knew.

  I think they all knew.

  I might have been the last one to see it coming. The last thing I heard was my own voice, weak and shaky singing ‘why oh why can’t I?’

  Then everything went black.

  Twelve

  Flynn

  Oh crap. She fainted.

  My feet moved into action before I even knew what I was doing, shoving parents and kids out of the way to get to her.

  Maverick caught her in his arms before her head hit the cement of the back patio, and Mrs. Messner was running interference with the party guests and the owners of the house.

  I heard one person mention 9-1-1, which seemed like overkill.

  “I got her,” I said, squatting down next to Isla and picking her up before anyone could interfere.

  Savannah moved ahead of me and made the crowds part with her wand until we were safely inside and down in the Garners’ finished basement where Mrs. Messner’s staging area had been set up.

  Callie and Willow were hot on our heels and as soon as I set Isla down on the couch they had her covered with a blanket and a pillow under her head. “Should we call her aunt?” Callie said.

  “I already did.” Mrs. Messner was all business as she came in beside us. “She’s on her way.”

  “Should we call a doctor or—”

  “No.” Isla’s voice was creaky but strong. “No. Please don’t call a doctor.”

  “She needs space.” Mrs. Messner shooed us all away but I stayed. I couldn’t not stay. My heart was still recovering from the sight of Isla’s eyes rolling back and her body going limp.

  My stomach had plummeted at the sight and even now I couldn’t quite catch my breath. Not until I knew she was all right.

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Isla,” Callie called from the doorway. “I’ll cover you out there.”

  “She’s a better singer anyway,” Savannah said. A quick glance from all of us had her adding, “No offense.”

  Isla actually smiled. Sort of. It was a pathetic version of her real smile. But, now that I thought of it, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen her real smile. Or anything close to genuine behavior on her part, for that matter.

  Mrs. Messner fussed a little while longer, ignoring Isla’s protests that she was fine, she’d just forgotten to eat.

  This was an excuse no one could swallow. We’d all seen the way she was acting when she’d arrived. Gone was the confident, sassy city girl and in her place had been someone fragile and on edge.

  I’d been watching her for the past hour and had seen with my own eyes the way she couldn’t seem to follow a conversation. How her mind was anywhere but here.

  “I’d better go make sure everything is going all right upstairs,” Mrs. Messner said after she’d ascertained that Isla wasn’t about to faint again. “Flynn, will you stay with her?”

  Isla struggled upright. “That’s not necess—”

  “Of course.” I cut off Isla’s protests and she fell back with a sigh. In a matter of seconds, we were alone.

  I sat on the edge of the couch as she covered her eyes. “On a scale of one to ten, how embarrassing was that?”

  “Hmm.” I pretended to ponder. “I’d say about an eleven.”

  She groaned. “That’s what I thought.” She started to struggle upright again, and when I tried to help her, she shoved me aside. “On a positive note, maybe I’ll be fired.”

  I laughed. “I doubt it. Although, I don’t think Savannah or the others will let you be the lead again, no matter how much they hate the character or how bad her tips.”

  “They take it that seriously, huh?”

  I shrugged. “They take making money seriously. A lot of us do.”

  She looked down at her hands. “I don’t need money.”

  “Then why are you even here?” I asked. Some of my anger from the night before seeped into my tone. Her playing the role of Dorothy was just one of the many things I didn’t understand about her and I hated how frustrating that was.

  I shouldn’t care. After the way she’d acted last night, I really didn’t want to care.

  She shrugged. “My aunt’s making me earn my keep while I stay with her.”

  “But you don’t want to stay with her,” I guessed.

  She shook her head, and to my utter horror, I saw tears fill her eyes. I knew without a doubt that this, at least, was real. “I just want to go home.”

  “Then catch a flight.” I regretted the harshness in my tone as soon as it slipped out, but I was still freakin’ humiliated by the way I’d let her make a fool of me the night before. Sure, her tears looked legit, and I had no doubt her freakout today was real, but the way she was with me? This connection I’d thought we had?

  There was nothing genuine about any of that.

  “I need a ride,” she said, her fingers plucking at a stray thread on her costume.

  “Why?”

  “Because my parents...my parents…” She stopped and swallowed. “I just can’t get a flight, okay? But I have to get back and I heard maybe you might need some help paying for the costs and—”

  “And that’s what this has been about,” I finished. My stomach felt like lead. Which was stupid, because she was just confirming what I’d already known. It wasn’t like I’d expected an explanation, and I didn’t want to hear her excuses.

  I hadn’t honestly thought that she’d suddenly seen me in a new light. Like a couple of conversations and suddenly she saw more than anyone else had ever seen.

  Stupid, Flynn. So freakin’ stupid.

  “You need to get back to your boyfriend, right?” I managed a casual tone that totally belied the churning pit in my gut at the thought of Isla with another guy.

  She wasn’t mine. I had no claim on her. One kiss didn’t mean anything.

  But my entire body thought otherwise because my every muscle went rigid as I waited for her to confirm it. A few heartbeats went by as I waited. And then I turned to look at her as I waited some more.

  She was drawing in these deep breaths, her gaze fixed on her own fingers. Despite my frustration, my heart ached at the sight of her struggling. Her features were tight, like she might cry at any second. Was it guilt for cheating on some guy back home? Or something else.

  “Isla.” I tried to keep my voice gentle as I reached for her hand, forcing her to still her frantic fidgeting before she picked the entire skirt apart. “Do you have a guy waiting for you at home?”

  She looked up with tears in her eyes and her voice wobbled. “No. Not anymore.”

  Ugh. Crap. Now I just wanted to pull her into my arms and tell her everything would be all right. “Not anymore?”

  Her thr
oat worked as she swallowed. “He forgot about me.”

  I let out a huff of disbelief and amusement. I couldn’t help it. The very idea was so ludicrous.

  Her brows pulled together in question.

  “I guarantee he didn't forget about you, Isla.”

  “How would you know?” she mumbled.

  “Because you…” I tugged on her hand until she looked up again. “You are unforgettable.”

  Her expression crumbled and a sad sob escaped. “W-why are you being nice to me?”

  I couldn’t resist any longer. With that question, I tugged on her hand until she fell against me, her head tucked against my chest as I wrapped my arms around her. “I don’t know,” I said, a smile curving my lips because...that was the truth. After last night, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t even speak to this girl again, and here I was comforting her.

  “You shouldn’t be nice to me.” Her voice was muffled against my T-shirt and it was followed by a sniff.

  “Well, it’s kind of hard not to be,” I said. I squeezed her tighter. “You’re pretty pathetic right now, you know?”

  Her laughter came out along with a sob, and the sound made my chest tighten to the point where it was impossible to talk. So we sat like that for a while.

  I knew it wouldn’t last forever. There was a whole party going on upstairs, and a lot of worried people would be coming to check on Isla any minute now. But while it lasted...it was freakin’ amazing.

  Having her in my arms like this was right.

  It didn’t make sense. Not even a little bit. I wasn’t supposed to like the girl. But I did.

  “If you wanted to drive out east with me, you know you could’ve just asked, right?” I asked after a long silence.

  She sniffed and pulled back to look at me with red, teary eyes. “Flynn, I didn’t...I mean, last night, I never should have—”

  “Let’s just forget it ever happened, yeah?” My heart thudded painfully against my ribcage as I spoke.

  I didn’t want to forget.

  I wanted to kiss her again.

  I wanted to kiss this girl again so badly it hurt.

  But I wasn’t about to play the fool again. I might feel like I knew this girl and she knew me, but the truth was...she was still a mystery. Still a stranger.