Chapter 2

Tromping in through the front door, Richard dragged his schoolbag to the mud room, dropping it on the floor before he turned to the kitchen. The heat of fresh steam brushed his cheeks while he entered the archway, and the sound of the whirring fridge door whirring greeted him warmly.

"Perfect timing, Richie," his mother said, opening the microwave door, and putting a paper plate with a bun inside. "I thought I'd make hot dogs tonight, since apparently you came home so early."

"Early?" Richard repeated, pulling out a stool at the kitchen island.

"You're back early from the library," his mother explained. "Usually, we have to wait a lot later for you to break yourself away from all those books. You must be starving by now."

"Well, I am, a little bit," Richard said, after some hesitation; his mind was still on the silver compass sticking from the front pocket of his bag, the chain dangling to the hard-wood floor.

"Okay," his mother said, reaching into the fridge for the ketchup and mustard. She set them on the counter before she plucked an apple from the fruit basket next to the microwave. But while she reached for a knife to slice the apple, her expression fell into deep thoughtfulness.

"Hey, Mom, you okay?" Richard asked, leaning forward across the counter in interest.

"I'm just thinking, about you, Rich," she said. "I feel like ever since that night with the big storm, things have just been…well, not quite the same. You know, I honestly never thought I'd see the day when you would bring a group of boys home for a movie and popcorn and video games."

"I guess I had to talk to them sometime," Richard said, shrugging his shoulders. "They're not really a bad bunch of guys."

"I can see that. But, it's…it's so…amazing, for lack of a better word, to see that you're not so afraid of the world anymore. I mean, playing ball with the boys on the playground, and…talking to them on a regular basis. That's a pretty giant step for you, Rich."

"I know. Still, it's…not like I didn't fight a few dragons to get there. Or, turn over some new stones." Richard played with a fringe of his blonde hair sheepishly.

His mother gave him an odd look, but her growing smile was still there. "I suppose you did," she said. "Still, Richie, I'm proud of you. It obviously takes a whole lot of courage for you to make so many changes."

"Thanks, Mom."

"I'm glad. Here's the apple, and some milk. Five seconds left on the microwave."

…..

Later that night, Richard snuck into the mud room and picked up his schoolbag, hauling it up the stairs to his bedroom. His parents had already bid him good night before they went to their room, but in all the excitement from Richard's father that Richard had finally managed to catch a baseball without fleeing, his schoolbag with the compass inside had been forgotten about.

His footsteps were muffled on the carpeted stairs, but his heart was slamming into his throat. No matter how much he had told himself that there was nothing mysterious about the compass, it actually seemed to embed itself deeper into his mind. Mr. Dewey's face, when he had handed Richard the compass, was hard to ignore just the same- the glow in his eyes, and the knowing behind his smile- left something in the back of Richard's head. After the strange thing that happened to Richard the first time he had entered that library, didn't help to make it go away.

When he was finally in his room, with the door shut tight, Richard dumped his bag on his bed and slowly yanked the compass out by its long chain. Even in the dim of the night, the compass's silver surface still found a way to sparkle, making Richard's skin turn an icy blue color.

He pulled the lid open, and, gently, he set the compass on his desk. The ornate black arrow pointed to the wall behind the desk, boldly standing out, against the snowy white marble of the compass face.

But then, Richard stopped. He pulled his glasses further up his nose, and kneeled down to observe the face of the compass. Sure enough the black arrow was pointing where he thought it was.

However, the needle was still pointing at the bold "N", where, in this case, was actually east.

Richard snatched up the compass, and looked it over and under another time. Wasn't a compass supposed to always point north? Yeah, he thought, the arrow always turned to the strongest point of the earth's magnitude, and that was towards the north. But the compass, no matter which direction he moved it, still pointed at the "N".

Richard tried again to make the compass work, by shaking it, and smacking it against his palm. The black arrow never pointed anywhere but to the wrong direction.

"Huh," Richard whispered, putting the compass sullenly back on the desk. "A compass that doesn't work. Figures."

He was just about to turn around, to pull the covers back from his bed, when Richard saw the book that Mr. Dewey had recommended to him from the library. It was falling out from the front flap of his bag, with the many dog-eared pages sticking out from the cover.

What was that Mr. Dewey had said about the compass, and reading a book?

Curiosity seized Richard once more, and he pulled the book from halfway between the zippers. He switched on the desk lamp, and opened the front cover as he sat down, with the compass glowing bright beside him in the light. Sweeping his hair from his face, he read the front page.

The Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum

Richard blinked twice. Had Mr. Dewey really given him The Wizard of Oz as a recommendation? He hadn't known that the old librarian would make such a simple suggestion, but still, it didn't surprise him that he was given a classic.

He knew the story well enough. Dorothy, the girl in the blue gingham dress, and Toto, her dog, are taken away to Oz, where they meet all kinds of strange creatures, all the while working to defeat the Wicked Witch of the West, after Dorothy's farmhouse lands on the witch of the East.

An interesting enough read, he guessed.

His heart pounding, Richard turned the next page, and started to glaze over the words. Slowly, but surely, the story started to take shape within his mind. He read of the wide-open, grey prairie, with Dorothy's lonely house in the midst of it all; Uncle Henry and Aunt Em were not quite the most joyful people, but Toto always made Dorothy's sweet laughter ring through the land.

Then there was the twister, which took Dorothy's house away from the dreary Kansas, and finally, to the enchanted land of Oz, in the middle of the Munchkin City.

That was as far as he got, before he started to nod off, his head falling to his desk, with his hand folded over the yellowing pages of the book.

But before Richard felt himself fall thoroughly to sleep, he jolted himself back up. In that instant, he didn't need to look at his bedside clock to guess what time it was. The heaviness of the late night was all around him, and he decided getting into his pajamas would be a good idea.

Richard pushed out his chair and grabbed the silver compass, placing it on the open pages to mark where he was. When the silver surface touched the aging paper, the front cover immediately stuck to the compass like a magnet. But Richard was already opening his pajama drawer while that happened behind his back.

Reaching inside, Richard plucked out a pair of striped pajama bottoms, but he stopped suddenly. He peered curiously at the wood of his dresser where, slowly, a shadow of his form started to take shape, against a gentle blue glow from behind him.

But what could be glowing that color in his room? He didn't turn anything on, and there was really nothing that exact color in there, except for the compass.

The compass.

Dropping his pajamas, Richard turned around, and gasped, hard enough to constrict his throat, at what he saw.

On his desk, the open compass was glowing the unusual shade of a silvery, icy blue. Where it stuck to the book's pages, the words were swimming, like the page was underwater. Tiny sparkles of white were fluttering like fairy dust around the cover, twirling in increasingly complex moves, while the face of the compass shone brighter than ever. Lines of white light crawled over the pages, and all over Richard's desk, spreading in patterns as intricate as spider-webs.

Richard, paralyzed where he was, hesitated to move towards the strange object, but when he did, he saw that the compass's arrow was ticking around the perimeter of the face, like a clock hand. It never really spun- it just clicked at a second's interval.

When the arrow finally hit the "N", the compass stopped glowing, and Richard's desk light went out.