A/N: JE owns these characters; I am a friggin nut who likes to play a bit with them. Also credit needs to go the late L. Frank Baum for his characters from The Wizard of Oz. There is a place in Beech, NC called Land of Oz; I have changed it using poetic license to fit it in with this story. .

Thanks to Jenny for her wonderful beta skills.

Follow The Yellow Brick Road- Chapter 9

We took our seats, the driver put the bus in gear and we were thankfully on the road to Oz. The road was black asphalt as opposed to the yellow brick one in Oz. I hoped that we would get there without any more delays, but with my luck, things were about to get very interesting.

After fidgeting around on the bus for quite awhile, I got a great idea. I whipped out my copy of The Wizard Of Oz. Okay, it wasn't the Baum version but an adaptation. If you wanted to get really technical, it was a graphic novel rather than a regular book. Gosh, I thought to myself. This is a real page turner. I was halfway finished with the book when I felt like I was being watched. Looking up, saw Carlos' bemused expression. His eyebrows were quirked up a notch and his lips were twitching. Damn it, I was amusing him again.

"What?"

"Steph, I'm pretty sure Julie's class didn't read this version." He was pointing at the graphic novel I was reading.

"I know, but this is more fun. See, more pictures." He bent over and looked at the book over my shoulder. "It's an art form, like anime."

"Babe. It's a comic book. Sure, it's stylized because it manga."

"But it's good."

"Okay."

"How come you know so much about it? Oops, sorry. It's not my business...didn't mean to pry."

Looking downcast at my book, I couldn't believe that I was asking him questions already, so early in our relationship. It wasn't the Spanish Inquisition or anything like that, but I didn't want him to think I was being too nosy. He cupped my chin gently and raised my face level to his. As I peered into concerned, warm, chocolate-brown eyes, I got lost in their depths.

"You aren't prying. You're my woman now. There is nothing that you can't talk to me about. If there is something I can't share, I won't. I never want you to feel that you can't talk to me. Cada día te quiero más que ayer y menos que mañana. I love you more than yesterday but not as much as tomorrow."

"I respect you. Totally. Always have, always will. My problem is I am too curious and you know... curiosity killed the cat. I don't want to do anything that might make you regret being with me."

"I won't. I can't. Stephanie, as long as you are aware that I have limitations... Believe me, I'm less than perfect. Hopefully my flaws won't be held against me."

I just beamed at him. The idea that he could be so open with me was miraculous. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that this would happen when Ranger had asked me to do him a favor. Now I had Carlos and we're together.

Our foreheads were touching, when Carlos' cell phone suddenly vibrated. He checked the readout and said he needed to take the call, then he kissed my nose and started to talk on his phone. It was a short, terse conversation. It was encouraging that he afforded everyone those abysmal phone manners since he ended the call without saying any goodbyes.

I tried to give him as much privacy as I could in the confined space of the bus. After Carlos took the call, he went back to work on his laptop. I resumed reading but was done in fifteen minutes since there wasn't much left to read. Reluctantly, I reached for the Baum version of The Wizard of Oz, which I had also brought with me.

I must have read that opening sentence at least a dozen times.

"Dorothy lived in the great Kansas prairie, with her Uncle Henry, a farmer and Auntie Em, the farmer's wife." I just couldn't get past that first sentence. It was very frustrating.

The excitement about everything that had been occurring must have finally caught up with me. It had all come to a head, and I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I had been on an emotional roller coaster ever since Ranger had asked me for a favor. Now I was on a bus filled with tweens, heading for the Land of Oz. I had traveled south from New Jersey to Florida and now I was heading North again to North Carolina. In the process, I had seen more and more of Carlos andless and less of Ranger.

The lull of the bus' movement, coupled with the drone of the passengers talking, was hypnotic. My eyelids started to feel droopy. It was a struggle to stay awake. Each second, my eyes felt heavier and heavier. Then my eyes began to blink once, twice, and finally darkness descended around me.

I was no longer awake but in a dreamlike state. All consciousness of being in the bus disappeared. I was floating on a flowing spiral of warm, sweet, thick, gooey chocolate syrup when I was suddenly startled awake. I jerked up to find myself awake in what I thought was my parents' home in the 'Burg.

The main problem was that the whole thing was surreal. My parents looked like themselves, but my Mom was called Auntie Helem and Dad was Uncle Henfrank. They called me Stephathy as well. Strange, don't you think? The kicker was that Bob was there. Bob lives with Morelli. So the only times that Bob has been over there was when Morelli had brought him over. Luckily, Morelli was nowhere in sight. There was just Bob.

Bedlam started as a storm was approaching the house. A tornado was headed our way. Everybody had to go down to the cellar to stay sheltered from the cyclone. We were quickly on way there when something caused Bob to spook and he hightailed it back to the house. Naturally, I followed Bob to get him back to the cellar. The wind was howling so loudly that I didn't hear anyone calling my name.

I ran upstairs to my room and found Bob cowering under my bed. He was so scared and confused. Animals have an innate sense of danger. He didn't want to budge from under there. His large, furry, orange body was quivering in fear.

The full force of the wind smacked into the house and the outcome wasn't good. The house, with us in it, was swept into the vortex of the twister. The house was ripped from its foundation on the ground and started to fly up into the air. It went higher and higher as it went flying across the sky. The bedroom, along with the house, went spinning like a toy top. Bob had come out from under the bed when we started to spin and we held on to each for dear life. Together we watched in horror and amazement as a cow flew by the window.

After a few harrowing minutes, I can't really say how many exactly, the tornado lost its intensity. The tornado had ended and the house started to tumble downward to the ground. It crashed loudly and heavily when it hit earth. The severe impact caused me to lose consciousness once again. It took a really long time to re-awaken.

My eyes took tentative blinks before they could open completely. What I saw was shocking! If my mother had witnessed this sight, she would have pitched a fit. Helen Plum prided herself on her excellent housewife skills. My room was in shambles, littered with a variety of items. All over the place were clothes, books, and broken knickknacks. The glass in the windowpane had broken, leaving a gaping hole. There were so many things scattered around that it made moving about precarious.

I looked for Bob to see if he was alright. Imagine the surprise I got while staring at him. I noticed something astonishing. Bob still had a dog's body, with orange, fuzzy, fur covering it as it always had. Don't get me wrong. He was safe, but there was definitely something strange going on. No one was really sure what breed he was. The problem with him was his face. Actually, it wasn't Bob's or any other dog's face. It was a human face of someone I knew very well. I looked into blue eyes that looked very much like mine. Around the face like a halo were tightly-coiled, permed curls of blue-gray and the face belonged to Grandma Mazur.

"Isn't this a pip, Stephathy. But don't expect me to lick you."

"I think I can live with that," I said, (reacting with shock that it sounded like Grandma.)

We gingerly walked our way around the debris and I tried to clear a path for Grandma Bobo. Both of us decided it would be safer to be outside. Leaving from the back door, the view outside was nothing that we'd ever seen before. It was not the 'Burg , Trenton or even Kansas. I had no idea where we were.