Little Women and Me (5 page)

The play, which was mostly confusing, was also mostly Jo. She played all the male parts, wearing leather boots and an old sword and a slashed doublet that she obviously loved. Meg played the female—no big stretch.

I was relieved when it was over, because I hadn’t been able to figure out what was going on in the play. Besides, it was finally time to eat again.

Pink and white ice cream, cake and fruit, French bonbons, and a bouquet of flowers for each of us. Whoa! It was way better munchies than I’d been expecting. Marmee said that Mr. Laurence—the grandfather of the Laurence boy, whom Meg swore we didn’t know—sent it. Marmee said he had sent it because he heard about us giving our own breakfast away.

Ah, the rewards of virtue!
I thought happily, reaching for another bonbon and dropping it on top of a spoonful of pink ice cream before popping it all into my mouth. The pink ice cream was so good.

I had a sudden inspiration.

“Hey, do we still have any of that thick milk from this morning?” I asked.

“Of course, why?” Marmee said.

“Can I have a glass?” I asked.

Hannah brought me one—I had to admit, the servant thing was easy to get used to—and I scooped up the rest of the ice cream, dumped it into the glass of milk, and swirled the two things together. I was going to ask for a straw but stopped myself. Did the 1860s even have plastic yet? Shrugging, I sipped from the glass. Oh, yum.

“What
are
you doing, Emily?” Jo demanded.

“Hmm?” I said, wiping with the back of my hand at the milk mustache I could feel on my upper lip.

“That thing,” Jo said, pointing at my glass.

“Oh,” I said. “Here. Try it.”

Jo took a cautious sip and then a smile broke across her face. Before I knew it, she passed the glass to Meg, who had the same reaction, and so on through the sisters and finally to Marmee. Then they all asked Hannah for glasses of milk, adding their own pink ice cream and swirling.

Hey! It struck me. Had I just invented milk shakes?

“Well,
I’ve
spoken to him before,” Jo said importantly. “The Laurence boy, I mean.”

Then, as the others listened closely, she told us how she talked to him once over the fence about cricket, whatever that was, until Meg came along and spoiled the fun. Jo added that he seemed shy and in need of a good time. Ha! I could tell Jo thought she was
just
the person to provide it.

With the exception of the spectral figure of Papa in his letters and perhaps a few of the Hummel children, it had just been women, women, women since I’d arrived. But now things were changing. A boy was being introduced into the story!

There’s always trouble when a boy enters the picture—hel
lo
! Jackson, anybody?—and I did try to warn the others.

But, just like with Beth and the Hummel baby, no one would listen to me.

Beth and the baby …

Suddenly it hit me. In the original
Little Women
, Beth and that baby was really the beginning of the end for Beth, even though the reader had no clue at the time. And then it further hit me: Mr. Ochocinco’s assignment, back in my real world. We were
supposed to pick one thing we’d change about a favorite book to make it perfect. I’d been going back and forth about changing what happens to Beth or fixing things between Jo and Amy and the boy next door to make the book more romantically satisfying. But now … now that I
knew
Beth, the choice was obvious. I’d save Beth’s life. To heck with who wound up with the boy.

So maybe that was my purpose in being here? The thing that would get me home again?

I’d been sent into the story to keep Beth from dying!

Three

But before I could save Beth’s life, I needed to find my way in this strange new world for as long as I was in it. So, after placing my hand on Beth’s forehead and not feeling anything that felt like a fever, and after promising myself to always keep a close eye on her so I could prevent her original fate from happening, I got back to the business of doing just that: finding my way.

And what a random way it was! If someone had asked me before I got here if
Little Women
was a normal novel, with a regular plot like any other, I’d have said yes. But now that I was living it, I saw for the first time how episodic it was. Talk about people being random!

Every girl who has grown up in the last hundred years or so wanting to be a writer, including me, has Jo March to blame. An overstatement? Maybe. But still.

Meg reported finding Jo in the garret, her favorite escape,
wrapped in a comforter on the three-legged sofa by the sunny window with her pet rat named Scrabble not far away. Meg reported that Jo had been eating apples and crying over a book. That’s when it hit home: my memories of Jo March from that
other
book. How obsessed with books and her own writing she had been. How whenever I read about her in that garret, I’d wanted to
be
her. How, whenever she’d been writing something in the book, I wanted to be a writer
like
her. How, in spite of the various charms of the other three sisters, it was Jo who really rocked.

But now that I’d started getting to know her, she was proving to be a regular P.I.T.A.

“Of course you’re not invited to the party, silly goose!” Jo laughed in my face now.

My fingers itched to slap her as I repeatedly clenched and unclenched my fists at my sides. I swore, if she called me “silly goose” just one more time …

“You are only fourteen!” she said, laughing some more.

“Oh, right,” I said. “And you’re so much older at—what is it again?
Fif
teen?”

“Even if you were older,” Meg soothed, “you must be reasonable, Emily. Look at the invitation. It says that
Miss March
and
Miss Josephine
are invited to a little dance on New Year’s Eve at the home of the Misses Gardiner. It doesn’t say a thing about Miss Emily. Surely, you must realize how wrong it would be to show up at a party when you haven’t been invited.”

Well
, I thought unreasonably,
I hadn’t exactly been invited to this book either, yet here I am!

“See, Emily?” Meg thrust the invitation at me again. She could be so …
teachery
at times. I supposed that was the teacher in her. “Your name doesn’t appear—”

“Yes, yes.” I swatted the folded note away. “I’ve already seen the stupid invitation, thank you very much.”

“Emily!” Meg looked scandalized. “Your language!”

“Oh, who can blame her?” Amy said with a self-pitying groan. “I cannot
wait
until
I
am old enough to go to parties and dances and balls. But of course, when
I
am old enough, I will wear perfectly beautiful gowns that will not be at all like the dreadful poplin Jo must wear tonight. That is, the one with the tear and the burn mark in the back because she always stands too close to the fire. And
that
means that she will have to stand with her back to the wall all night, never even joining in the dancing. Nor will my gloves have lemonade stains on them like Jo’s do. Meg and Jo will have to share gloves tonight, each wearing one of Meg’s good ones while carrying one of Jo’s soiled ones in their other hands. And when
I
am old enough—”

“Which you will not be for a very long time,” Jo said sternly, “since you are only twelve now.”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “And Meg’s sixteen, you’re fifteen, Beth’s thirteen, and I’m fourteen. We all know how old we are.” I yawned, overacting like a character in one of
her
plays. “Is there some reason you feel the need to keep reminding us?”

“Don’t be irritable,” Beth said gently, grabbing on to my hand. “We will have our own fun here at home tonight. First, we will have the excitement of helping Meg and Jo get ready. Then we will sit around in our nightcaps, sewing and singing, all the while imagining the fun they are having. And then, finally, they will come home and tell us all about it!”

Beth was so good, it was hard to be grumpy around her. Still, Meg and even
Jo
were going to a dance while I had to stay at home, sewing and singing?
I
wanted to get out of the house for a
change!
I
wanted to go to a dance! I was sure there would be
boys
there!

I couldn’t completely prevent the sourness as I forced myself to smile at Beth and respond, “Sounds great.”

Actually, it turned out it was fun helping someone else get ready for a party you weren’t invited to.

It was fun when Jo accidentally burned Meg’s hair when she tried to curl it with a pair of hot tongs.

And it was fun watching Jo try not to itch her head after Meg put nineteen pins in her hair.

And it was really fun hearing someone other than me get “admonished” for a change as Meg gave Jo a lengthy list of don’ts, which included:

Don’t say “Christopher Columbus” or wink.

Don’t dawdle when Hannah comes to collect us at eleven.

Don’t eat much supper.

Don’t shake hands.

Apparently, in the 1860s, girls weren’t supposed to have any fun, punctuality counted, they were laying the groundwork for female eating disorders, and they were scared to touch other people.

“Now remember, when we get to the party,” Meg gave Jo one last warning, “if I lift my eyebrows at you, it means you are doing something wrong and you must stop it at once, while if I nod my head it means you are behaving correctly, at least at that moment. Have you got all that?”

“Yes,” Jo said with a sigh that made it clear she was no longer excited about the party.

It was very satisfying, seeing Jo looking less alpha girl for once. Nearly on the verge of laughing out loud at the situation, I caught myself. What exactly was my problem with Jo? Well, outside of the fact that she was completely full of herself. But really, what was my problem? I shook the feeling away, promising myself I’d get back to it. Right now I was too busy helping Beth and Amy wave Meg and Jo off.

There stood Meg, wearing a silvery poplin gown, her singed hair carefully camouflaged by some thingy that reminded me of the hairnets the kitchen workers wore at school, only nicer because it was blue velvet. There were lace frills here and there, a white chrysanthemum attached to her shoulder, and she tottered back and forth in heels she obviously wasn’t used to wearing.

And there stood Jo, with her nineteen pins in her hair.

“Good-bye!” “Good-bye!” they shouted back at us as they bobbed their way out the door and into the night. The way they bobbed—they kind of reminded me of bobbleheads.

“So what shall we do first?” Beth asked with timid eagerness as soon as the door had shut on the others. “Shall we sing first? Or sew maybe?”

“I have a headache,” I said, feeling the sudden need to be alone. “I think I’ll just lie down for a few minutes.”

“Oh, not a headache!” Beth said.

“I hope you don’t die from it,” Amy added.

“Of course I won’t—” I started to say; then, “
What?
”

“I’m sure Amy didn’t mean to upset you.” Beth blushed. “But you do know, when people get headaches, sometimes it does lead to …
other things
.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said impatiently.

Honestly, no matter how often Jo reminded me that I was fourteen, I couldn’t help but feel like I was surrounded by a group of people much younger than me, less sophisticated. Well, maybe because I
was
. If only these people could see YouTube, they’d probably have heart attacks.

“I just need a few minutes of peace and quiet,” I added, “but I promise you, I’m not going to
die
from it.”

And that really was all it was
, I thought as I entered the bedroom I shared with Meg and Jo, for once having the whole room to myself:
I just needed a few moments alone.

You’d assume that without the endless noise of the life I was used to—there were no TVs or computers or iPods here or cell phones ringing with Justin Bieber, barf—it would be quieter. The kind of place that would offer a girl opportunities for silent thought. And maybe there were, in other parts of this Brave New World. But here? I could barely hear myself think.