Little Women and Me (6 page)

And I had so many things to think about!

Like the color of my hair.

Okay, I do realize that sounds lame, but the other girls all had hair ranging from the various browns of Meg, Jo, and Beth to Amy’s yellow, while mine was auburn. Didn’t the others notice how different I looked compared to them? What did our father, the vaunted Papa, look like? Had I gotten my coloring from him? Perhaps dearly beloved Marmee had had an illegitimate child on the side—me! But I could hardly ask the others about all that, could I? “Oh, by the way, what is Papa’s hair color?” They’d lock me away!

Didn’t the others notice, given my looks and the odd things I tended to say, that I didn’t fit in? And yet, no one seemed to think that at all.

On the contrary. On returning to this bedroom after my
barefooted attempt in the snow to break the seam between this world and my real one, I’d discovered a wardrobe where some of the clothes were supposed to be mine. (Well, I discovered which ones were mine after first mistakenly trying to put on one of Jo’s things—she quickly put an end to
that
!) With two older sisters to provide me with hand-me-downs, I had more clothes here than I had back home! Yes, I had clothes here, and a family—a family who seemed to have memories of everything I’d done for the last fourteen years, going back to when I was first born into this house, as if the story had been preadapted for my entrance, and yet they were memories that I had no knowledge of. What
were
those memories? What did they all
know
about me? What had I been like at age two? At ten? And what about their lives—what did I need to know about them?

Again, more questions I couldn’t ask.

Was I a different person in this world than in my own world?

My own world!

Ever since arriving here, I’d been in defensive mode, only really able to react to all the newness of the strange life surrounding me, so I’d had little time to think about what was going on back there.

What
was
I supposed to have been doing back home today? Or tomorrow? Had I been invited to any New Year’s Eve parties? Was I at one right now with Kendra and even having a good time there? Did I still exist back home, living on two planes at once, or did I just live here? And if only here, there must be things I had to get back there for. School. Homework assignments. Parties—
real
parties, not like this silly cookies-and-punch gig that Meg and Jo were going to. Wouldn’t people miss me and start looking for me?

But wait a second.
Did
life still go on out there? Did the clock still go on ticking in my real life even while I was in here?

I. Had. No. Idea.

“So, tell me about the Laurence boy,” I said. “Jo made such a big deal about speaking to him over the fence. Have either of you ever seen him?”

In spite of my initial reluctance to stay at home with my …
younger sisters
while the older two went off to the dance without us, it was turning out to be a bizarrely fun evening, just as Beth had promised.

Without the other two around to boss us, we were free to act like, well, silly gooses if we wanted to. We’d already found some munchies and had laughed over how Jo was dealing with her nineteen pins as we huddled in our white nightshirts and nightcaps in front of the fire.

I caught sight of my image in a reflective surface. Huh. Not bad. The nightcap looked kind of cool on me, sort of like a floppy French beret. Maybe I’d start a trend when I got back home?

Of course, being the oldest of us,
I
was the first to bring up the topic of boys. It was satisfying for a moment to have them look at me as though I were worldly on the subject. In my whole life, no one had ever pegged me as being worldly on the topic of boys! But these girls? Except for Papa, it was as though boys were aliens to them.

“I did see him once,” Amy said, seeming oddly shy for her. Well, I guessed, guys could have that effect on some girls. Me, I certainly hadn’t been shy when I tried to hijack Jackson’s attentions
from Charlotte. Darn, I hoped he hadn’t already made a play for Anne!

“That same day Jo spoke to him over the fence,” Amy went on, “I guess you could say I was spying on them … but only for a minute!”

“Amy!” Beth was shocked. Then, with a voice dripping with wistful curiosity: “What did he look like?”

“Oh, he was very fine.” Amy, all amped up to know something we didn’t, was full of self-confidence and excitement now. “He had big black eyes, curly black hair, brown skin like he’d been riding his horse in the sun, a longish nose, nice teeth, curiously small hands and feet. Oh, and he was easily as tall as Jo and seemed awfully polite and jolly.”

“That must’ve been some long minute for you to have seen so much,” I said. Then: “Wait a second. Did you say ‘small hands and feet’? Combine that with some of his other features, and your description could fit Jo’s rat, Scrabble!”

“Oh no,” Amy insisted as her yellow curls shook in vehemence. “He was very fine indeed. I only mentioned the small hands and feet because they impressed me as being so much more refined than, you know, the usual galumphing hands and feet you see on other boys.”

I sniffed, a rather Jo-like sniff. Amy suddenly made it sound as though she knew a lot about boys. Still …

“So, the Laurence boy is hot, then?” I wanted to know.

“Oh no,” Amy said, looking puzzled. “I am most certain that when I saw him he did
not
have a fever.”

“I wonder what they are doing at the dance now?” Beth cradled her cheek in her palm, a dreamy expression on her face. “I would bet anything that the Gardiners have the finest piano—”

“Yes,” Amy cut her sister off, “but there are six girls in that family, including Sallie, so you’d hardly ever get a chance to play.”

“Well, there are five girls in this house,” I said, “and Beth gets to play that wretched piano all the time, so I don’t see how much difference one more sister could make.”

Beth looked on the verge of tears.

“Honestly, Emily,” Amy said, “sometimes I think you’re as bad as Jo.”

As bad as …?

My hands went straight to my hips.

“Wait a second here,” I half shouted. “What did
I
do?”

Amy nodded smugly as she gave me the once-over from head to toe. “Well,
that
for one.” She imitated the way I was standing. “And you hurt Beth’s feelings, even if you didn’t mean to. You know how she loves her music.”

“I’m sorry, Beth.” I could feel my cheeks redden. “I never meant to say your piano is … wretched.” (Except it was.) “It’s a … lovely piano and you play it … splendidly.” (Well, as well as anyone could play a wretched piano.) “Certainly you play it better than I could.” (This was no lie. I couldn’t play at all.)

“I guess,” I went on, “I was just still feeling nasty about not getting to go to the party.”

Just like Jo made me feel annoyed, Beth could make me feel ashamed of myself. Of course, of all the girls, Beth also had the greatest capacity for making me feel better after one of my screwups.

“Oh, I know
exactly
what you mean,” Beth said, smiling now. “I don’t think there is anything more confusing in this life than life.”

“Well, I haven’t figured it out yet,” Amy said with a very
Jo-like snort of her own. “Life—it’s just one great big muddle to me.” Then she laughed. “Except for boys.”

“Boys, boys, boys!” I laughed back, tickling her. “Is that all you ever think about, Amy March?”

And then we were all laughing and tickling.

When we had had enough and were back again before the fire …

“I wonder what they’re doing,” I said aloud, “right this minute?”

“I’ll bet,” Amy said, her face lighting up, “that the boys will be talking about skating, since it is winter, and Jo will want to join in the conversation.”

“But Meg will lift her eyebrows at Jo before she can,” Beth said with a sigh. It was impossible to picture Beth approaching a group of guys about anything, let alone something like skating, but maybe she sighed at the idea of Jo’s wings being clipped. Beth may not have had much boldness in her, but it was obvious how much she admired that quality in Jo.

“Jo will not be able to dance because of the burn at the back of her dress,” Amy reminded us.

“But,” Beth added brightly, getting excited now, “she can still tap her foot smartly whenever a lively tune is being played.”

“Except,” Amy put in, “she will probably be standing in front of another fireplace while she is doing so … and she will burn her dress all over again!”

Amy laughed as Beth tried to look serious but instead started laughing herself.

“I know,” I said excitedly, wanting to join in, “and if that Laurence boy is there, Jo’ll think of a way to get him alone so she can get to know him better.”

The other two stopped laughing and just stared at me.

“Oh no,” Amy said way too seriously as Beth gazed on. “I am quite certain that even Jo would never do
that
.”

It was all I could do to keep from snorting aloud, because if memory served me correctly—

But then our two older sisters were there again, bobbing back in like bobbleheads, only bobbing a little more slowly this time because Meg had her arms draped around Jo’s and Hannah’s shoulders as she hopped on one foot.

“What happened?” Beth said, alarmed.

“Meg sprained her ankle in those ridiculous heels,” Jo said.

“That Laurence boy offered us the use of his grandfather’s carriage,” Hannah put in. “He rode all the way here on the box, even though it was cold out, so that Meg could put her foot up on the seat inside.”

And then Marmee was there, all capable movements.

Where had Marmee been hiding herself all this time?

But there was no time to ask about that now as she settled Meg in her own best seat beside the fire, propping Meg’s foot on a low stool and sending Hannah for a warm towel to wrap around Meg’s ankle.

The invalid comfortably settled, Meg and Jo began chattering about their evening.

“I was trying to escape a redheaded boy,” Jo said, “who wanted to dance with me.”

This sounded familiar.
A redheaded boy
, I wondered.
Should I know that redheaded boy?

“He was a fine boy,” Meg said, “and a marvelous dancer. I know, because I danced with him.”

“I’m sure that’s all true,” Jo said. “But I couldn’t dance in
front of the others in this dress and let them see the burn on the back, could I?”

Meg grudgingly agreed that this was true.

“So I slipped into a curtained recess,” Jo went on, “where I just happened to bump into the Laurence boy.”

I knew it!

“He is called Laurie,” Jo went on as though this was the most exciting detail ever, as if the whole world didn’t know the boy next door to the Marches was called this. “His real name is Theodore, but he doesn’t like it because some of the boys at school called him Dora, for which he thrashed them, making them call him Laurie instead.”

Laurie
was an improvement on
Dora
?

“
And
,” Jo rushed on breathlessly, “he has been to school at Vevey—that’s in the Swiss Alps—and he will be sixteen next month, talks a lot about going to college, and longs to live in Italy. Oh, and he dances marvelously too, no doubt far better than that redheaded boy.”

Amy’s blue eyes went wide. “So you danced with the Laurence boy?”

“In that dress?” Beth added.

“Well,” Jo said, barely blushing, “at first he asked me and I said no, showing him the burn mark at the back of my dress—”

“Josephine!” Now even Marmee was scandalized.

“But Laurie found a long hallway that was deserted and where no one would see us,” Jo went on, as though there’d been no interruption, “and we romped up and down the length of it. It was wonderful because, as I explained to him, there was plenty of room and nothing for me to harm as I am normally so likely to do in my usual galumphing way.”

“Jo!” the three other sisters shouted at her.

“What?” Jo said, all innocent confusion.

While all I could think was:

Boys, boys, boys.

Earlier, I’d been excited that there was finally at least the
idea
of a boy in the story. But maybe that wouldn’t be such a good thing. Sure, they were all “scandalized” by Jo’s behavior now. But before long, they’d mostly all be fighting and falling all over each other to get to this Laurie character. That’s what happens when a cute guy comes into the picture, even if he does have some features in common with Scrabble the rat.

“Let’s make a pact,” I said impulsively.

The others stared at me, puzzled.

“It just seems to me,” I said, “that we all get along well. But now that this …
Laurie
boy has been introduced into the picture, we’ll probably all start acting ridiculous, fighting with one another and competing for his attentions. I don’t want that to happen to us.”

It was true, I didn’t. The one thing this world had going for it was that here my sisters all mostly got along together, not like back home with Charlotte and Anne. I didn’t want to see that all messed up.