They all laughed when I stepped out onto the stage, which is hardly surprising since this whole thing’s been a setup from the start. I mean, it was pretty tame after the way they behaved on T-Day Friday, but they’re all still on probation from that stunt.

I hated them for their laughter.

I mean I looked stunning and I knew it. I’d spent ages on my appearance, and the final result had been… well, a surprise. An amazing, eye opening, enchanting surprise.

As a general rule, I kept my hair longer than school regulation would normally allow, but most of the teachers seem to go easy on those of us who’re having a hard time. Clouds and silvery linings and such. Even so it wasn’t nearly long enough for Dorothy’s long, braided pig tails, so the counsellor, of all people, brought me some hair extensions on the night and took the time and effort to sew them into my hair. By the time she was done I’d resolved that I was going to grow my hair that long naturally and stuff the consequences.

She also helped me with my makeup. All through the weeks running up to the performance – maybe as a kind of incentive for me to keep coming to my sessions with her – she’d shown me a whole bunch of tips on how to paint my face, and by the night of the play I could make myself up as well as any girl in the school.

The costume had been supplied by the school, as was the case for all the major part costumes. Blue gingham dress over a white cotton blouse with puff sleeves and a high collar. Lacy white pop-socks and those inevitable ruby red slippers.

The slippers had turned out to be something special. I’d expected a pair of old pumps painted with red glitter, but these looked so much better, so much more the part, and they fitted me like Cinderella’s glass ones fit her.

With the whole lot together, I was such a convincing Dorothy, I doubted anyone actually recognised me. Had I turned up on that stage with no-one expecting it to be me, not one of my schoolmates would have thought I was anything more or less than I appeared – a slender and quite pretty young girl.

But they knew I'd be playing the part, which meant they knew whoever stepped out onto the stage wearing the Dorothy costume would have to be the poofta, so they laughed when they saw me.

It would have gone the same no matter how I played it. If I’d hammed it up and done an overly exaggerated drag queen act, they wouldn’t have responded any differently. So in the end I did it for me – which was maybe what the counsellor had been hoping for.

She played Glinda of course. There was usually at least one member of staff in a prominent role somewhere providing a kind of calming influence on all the raging hormones us kids have to deal with. When I first caught sight of her in costume, I wondered if the cretin who’d set this up might be regretting not voting me into the good witch’s costume, pink taffeta meringue that it was. I guess he'd had to make the choice between major humiliation for the short time Glinda spent in front of the audience and slightly reduced but greatly extended humiliation in the main role.

It kind of backfired on them. Since my school mates were the only ones laughing, all the parents ended up giving them a range of confused and vaguely disappointed looks, because they couldn’t see anything to laugh at in my appearance.

I had no intention of letting them humiliate me. I looked good – in fact I looked great – and I knew it. I threw myself into my part, playing it for all I was worth. You think Judy Garland could overact, oh you should have seen me. My very small revenge on the people who’d put me in this position. To do it to the best of my ability and to enjoy it as much as I could in the process.

And I really did. Enjoy myself, I mean. It turned out that all the girls who'd been nominated for the lead ended up landing the other major parts, so pretty much everyone else on stage with me was a girl and, with the possible exception of Glinda, I was the prettiest one there.

I say pretty much everyone. Mr Maynard, our drama teacher, took the part of the Wicked Witch of the West, so I wasn’t the only one up there in drag, though as it turned out, he seemed to be. He hammed it up as badly as only a drama teacher can and really gave the audience something to laugh at.

I found my dad in the audience early on. He was the only one of the parents who recognised me, and the look in his face went beyond description. It threw me for a moment. It only hit me then how much of a shock this might be for him, and dreading his reaction once he'd recovered, I spent the rest of the evening avoiding his gaze.

In all the weeks leading up to opening night, I had never found the courage to tell Dad what part I’d be playing, and he’d never thought to ask, or maybe he'd deliberately decided not to. It crossed my mind that maybe he liked the idea of being surprised.

I rogue memory drifted through my mind. Something he'd told me a few years ago.

“When your mother was pregnant with you," he said, "our friends used to ask, ‘So what are you hoping for?’ and I’d say, ‘A baby.’

“‘No seriously,’ they’d say, ‘do you want a boy or a girl?’ and I’d tell them, ‘I really don’t mind. Ten fingers and ten toes would be nice, but I’ll love my child whatever he or she turns out to be.”

Hey Dad, guess what? I still have ten fingers and ten toes.

So I threw myself into the part and looked everywhere except my dad's seat. I’d worked hard in the rehearsals, and I managed to develop a pretty good impression of Judy Garland’s breathless enthusiasm – thanks mainly to Dad inflicting that dreadful film on me back when I first told him I'd be in this play. I also had a good enough singing voice, courtesy of my mum, and I was able to give as good as the rest as we sang and danced our way through the show.

My fellow – there really ought to be a equivalent word for girls in this day and age – actresses – because let’s face it, Mr Maynard really was the only man in drag that night – smiled as broadly as me through the whole evening, smiles reaching all the way to their eyes. It seemed like maybe they’d forgotten who I really was, or maybe they’d seen the new me emerge over the past few weeks and decided they liked her. Either way, it seemed I had finally made those friends Dad so desperately wanted me to have.

We all had our solos. As Dorothy mine was the first one, singing over the rainbow right at the start whilst thinking about the drabness of my life. In the film they accentuated the idea by showing the Kansas scenes in black and white, something we couldn’t really recreate on stage, but we came pretty close by changing the lighting to give much brighter colours once I reached Oz. I kicked off with Judy Garland’s version of the song and hit it pitch perfect all the way through. It’s part of the magic of theatre, when one thing goes right, the rest follows on, and everyone else built on the solid foundation of my beginning and took the show to greater heights than we'd imagined possible.

We eventually approached the end. The wizard handed out his gifts of courage to the lioness, a heart to the tin woman, a brain to the scarecrowette(?), and an apology to Dorothy when he was unable to give her what she asked for. There was an audible sigh from the audience as I turned away, head hanging with disappointment. I mean seriously? These people do know the story, Right? Anyway, Glinda stepped onto the stage and stopped me just as I was about to leave the stage.

You know how it goes, right?

“You’ve had the means to go home all this time,” she said pointing at my beautiful ruby slippers. “Just click your heels together three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home.’”

In rehearsals I’d made my sad goodbyes to everyone before following her instruction, but somewhere along the way I’d asked for something special from Mr Maynard. I’d been practising long and hard after school with Mrs Maynard, who happened to be the school’s music teacher, and after he’d sat in on one of our rehearsals, he’d agreed whole heartedly with my request.

I reprised Over the Rainbow, but this time I used Eva’s version, twirling around the stage, making my farewells to my surprised but smiling co-actresses, ending with Glinda who was positively beaming at me.

I poured everything I had into the song, every last ounce of my heart and soul. I hope Eva was out there listening somewhere, and I hope I did her proud. The last lines I sang to my dad. For the first time since I’d caught the look on his face at the beginning of the show, I turned towards him. If I could only make him understand.

“If happy little bluebirds fly

Above the rainbow why oh why can’t I?”

There were tears in his eyes. Not sad tears, not distressed, but tears that told me all I needed to know. There was pride there and the beginning of understanding.

Things were going to be alright.

They could have dropped the curtain then and I wouldn’t have minded, but the show must go on. I did as Glinda had told me and brought my feet together the requisite three times, each heel click sounding out like a gunshot.

“There’s no place like home,” I said, and everything went dark.

It was meant to. We did a quick scene change in the dark back to Dorothy’s bedroom, and the lights came back, subdued and less colourful as they’d been in the beginning, with me laying in my bed. Aunty Em – also played by the school’s counsellor – came in having done the fastest costume change in the history of the school – advantage of the meringue I suppose; she could wear Auntie Em’s costume underneath, and all she’d needed to do after stripping off her outer layer was to tie her hair back.

“I’m home,” I whispered from my bed.

Auntie Em sat beside the bed and brushed my hair. “You had us worried for a while there, but I think you’re going to be alright.”

“Yes,” I said. “I really think I am.”

Some lines you don’t need to act.

It hardly seemed enough of a scene to merit the thirty second scene change. We'd planned on doing the parade of characters as in the film, where familiar faces from around the farm turn out to be the same as the main characters from Oz, but Mr Maynard had made a last minute change, cutting that from the production. I guess he thought the song provided the right note on which to end the play. The curtain came down and I sat up as all the other cast members crowded onto the stage. We sat in nervous silence for a painfully long moment, then a loan clap reminded the audience they owed us something, and the applause built to a torrent of sound.

We all took our bows, the noise swelling with each one and rising to a deafening thunder when I stepped forward. Every person in the audience climbed to his or her feet as I stepped forward, even my fellow classmates who'd planned this as a humiliation for me. My dad was smiling through his tears as he pounded his hands together.

We took three curtain calls before the applause began to subside, then accepted our bouquets of flowers. Mr Maynard’s was larger than the rest in recognition of all the work he’d put into making the show possible, but he decided I should have it and exchanged mine for his with the audience roaring their approval.

It’s not possible to bow when you’re holding the better part of a deciduous forest, so I settled for curtsying instead. The audience didn't seem to mind and kept applauding until the curtain dropped for the last time. I turned to my new friends, their excited faces radiating as much delight as mine.

I had that smile on my face that Dad had been longing to see and it wasn’t just the buzz of a great show, although that was a part of it. It's just that I'd never felt so right. I belonged here, like this, and my friends seemed to sense it too. For the longest while we stood laughing, crying and hugging.

Then our parents arrived back stage. I turned to find my dad looking at me and everything else receded into the background. He stepped up to me and put a hand on each of my shoulders.

“I never realised how much like your mother you are,” he said. “She tried to tell me before she died but I wasn’t ready to listen. Not then, but I am now.”

I threw myself into his embrace, buried my tears in his shoulder. I was crushing my flowers, but I didn’t care. I was home. All of me, all the way. Maybe there was magic in the stars after all. I looked down at my ruby red slippers.

There’s no place like home.