20. Beach
"What is that?" Elphaba scowls at the dubious-looking contraption laying at the water's edge.
At the same time, Galinda exclaims, "Wow, it looks fun!"
Fiyero looks perfectly pleased with both responses. "That," he says cheerfully, "is what's going to take you para-sailing. That, and that boat out there."
"It doesn't look safe." Elphaba fixes him with a flat look. "I thought we were going to have a picnic at the beach." It is testimony to how little she likes the look of the waiting harness that she almost sounds eager to start the picnic.
"We are, Elphie! Right after you try this para-sailing thing," Galinda chirps, and Elphaba sighs. Of course she has to be the one to try it — she, who is supremely unexcited about the whole thing, unlike a certain best friend of hers.
There is no sense in trying to find any logic in Galinda's thought process.
"It's perfectly safe. I come here with the boys all the time," Fiyero insists, seeming to sense Elphaba's discontent. "We love it."
In the end, when she is five hundred feet up in the air with the wind whipping her hair in all directions and her friends just specks on the ground, Elphaba learns that she loves it too.
She can see the whole beach from that height and it leaves her breathless — even though it's not really a beach, because Oz is all but landlocked, which means that she is floating above nothing more than a glorified lake whose opposite shore she can now just barely make out.
The freedom all around her is like nothing she's ever felt before, and the smile on her face is wider than any her friends have ever seen. At this height, her problems seem to vanish, insignificant in the face of a vaster reality that lies sprawled out below her.
If she could just fly like this every day, Elphaba thinks that she might never be unhappy again.