Little Women and Me (37 page)

Someone had been tapping me on the shoulder for that whole last sentence. Finally, I turned, saw it was Beth.

“Excuse me. Emily? I hate to interrupt you, but who is Great-Aunt Louise? I’ve never heard of her before.”

I looked around the room, saw the others were all looking at me with equally puzzled expressions on their faces.

Shoot. Of course they’d never heard of Great-Aunt Louise. She was
my
great-aunt from back home. I’d never met her—she’d died too soon—but my real mother had told me all the stories about her.

“Okay,” I said quickly, “so I made that part up. But it doesn’t matter, because what Aunt March is doing is wrong and it’s Jo who should—”

“You know, Emily,” Aunt March cut me off, “I never really could see the point of you before today, but now I’m seeing there might be possibilities in you after all. Perhaps I have been hasty in my decision. Perhaps I should send
you
abroad with Aunt Carrol.”

Me
? Was it really that easy—all I had to do was stand up to Aunt March and Europe was mine? I had to admit, if I had to be stuck in the story forever, it would be a lot more bearable if I could finally see Europe. Once there I could—

Amy’s shout cut into my daydreams.

“
You
!” Amy shouted, pointing an accusing finger in my direction. “You …
interloper
. You stop interfering right this second. I knew you were going to be trouble from the moment you showed up here.”

What did she mean by that?

“Amy,” Papa said sternly, “be careful what you say here.”

“What do you mean,” Marmee said, perplexed, “from the moment Emily showed up here?”

Amy blushed.

And a realization hit me as Amy grabbed on to my elbow
with a muttered “Excuse us for a moment, please” to the others as she practically dragged me from the room:

All those stray things Amy’d said that had struck me as odd since coming here—somehow, Amy had known all along that I’d never really belonged in the story in the first place.

“How long have you known?” I asked, needing to make sure, once we were safely out of hearing.

“Ever since the moment you showed up in front of the fire that time and Jo was saying how it wouldn’t be Christmas without presents.”

Of course. That was the moment I’d arrived here. But …

“
How
did you know?”

“As Beth would say: Silly Emily!” Amy laughed her tinkling laugh. “I knew because I wasn’t in the original story either!”

What???

“What???”

“How else could I know? Like you, I came here from a different time, like that time traveler in that stupid story you wrote.” Her expression turned to an admonishing one. “You know, it was very irresponsible of you to write that. Who knows what might happen to us if the others ever guessed we don’t really belong here?”

“Wait a second.” This was too much for me. “I know how I got here. I’m from the twenty-first century. I was working on some paper on
Little Women
for school in 2011 and—
WHOOSH!
—I got sucked into the book. But how did you get here?”

“2011? Fascinating. You know, I’d always wondered what year you came from, but of course I could never ask
that
question!”

This was incredible: the idea that the book I thought I’d known so well hadn’t always been the book I knew.

“Are we the only ones?” I asked. “Yes, the only ones I’ve ever seen here. Well, except for Papa.”

“
Papa!
”

“Yes, he’s really only
my
papa, although he’s never minded that the rest of you call him that—not even
you
, Emily, and of course he also knows you don’t belong here.”

“Well, you don’t either,” I said heatedly.

“Perhaps not. But
I
got here first.”

“When did you and …
Papa
come?”

“1881,” she answered promptly. “The year after
Little Women
was finally published in one volume.”

“One volume?”

“Yes. Originally, it was divided into two separate books. See how little you know?” She shook her pretty head at my stupidity. “I’d read it first when it was two books, so I already knew the story. Anyway, Papa had bought me a copy of the new one-volume book, we were reading it side by side, I was saying I didn’t like certain parts of it, he was agreeing and, as you say—
WHOOSH!
—we got sucked right in.”

How well I knew that
WHOOSH!

“You know,” Amy went on, “before
we
got here, it was just a story about a mother and her three daughters during the Civil War. The husband is fighting down South but then he dies. Very sad.”

“Wait a second. There were only
three
girls in the original version?”

But Amy waved off my question and was speaking again.

“You know, having you around was just barely tolerable when
you were doing nice things like trying to save me that day on the ice—what a surprise that was to me! I was expecting Jo to come to my rescue, because she always does at that point in the story. But then you stalled us at the house and I began wondering how the scene would play out. I have to say, it was a treat to see it go so differently for a change. You know, when you’ve lived through a story as many times as I’ve lived through this one, a surprise can be a beautiful thing. But never mind that now. It’s no longer tolerable if you’re going to try to change things like who goes abroad.”

“But haven’t
you
ever tried to change anything?”

“Oh yes,” Amy said. “I change things all the time. Usually just little things. Like that part where I invite the other art students over? That wasn’t in the original. I added it because I thought it would be fun to have a luncheon centered all around me.” She frowned. “It’s too bad it didn’t work out so well.” Then she brightened. “Oh! And I also added the incident with the limes. That accomplished two things for me: it got me lots of sympathy, plus I was sick of going to that wretched school with Mr. Davis. Being the only March girl to have to go to some stuffy school? I should think not!”

“Little things,” I said, understanding, “like I changed things with Beth, making it so she won’t die. Well, I know that wasn’t a
little
thing.”

“You think you’ve kept Beth from dying?” Now Amy looked sad.

I nodded. “Of course I did. I think it was when I invented penicillin.”

“Penicillin? What’s that?” She shook her own puzzlement away before I could answer her. “No, you didn’t,” she said, still sad. “You only postponed the inevitable. But you can’t stop Beth
from dying. Believe me, I tried everything I could think of to stop it. One time, I even went to the Hummels’ in her place, but it didn’t change anything. She snuck out when I wasn’t looking and went to see them by herself. Beth dying—it was always the one thing I hated about the book. In fact, it was the thing Papa and I were complaining about when we got sucked into the story, how unbelievably sad it was. But it never can be stopped. Beth always dies in the end.”

“You mean, then …?”

“Yes, she’ll die this time too. It’s just a matter of time.”

Wait a second. I’d thought my purpose here was to keep Beth from dying. But if there was nothing I could do to prevent that, how was I ever going to get out of here? Then I thought of the reality of what Amy’d said—
Beth dying
—and worries about my own problems disappeared for the moment.

“Now I’d like to ask you some questions,” Amy said, intruding on my thoughts.

“Such as?”

“What’s the future like?” she asked eagerly. “I’ve been dying to know, ever since you got here, but of course I couldn’t ask you before today.”

“The future?”

“Yes! What are the fashions like? What are people like? What is
life
like?”

Up to this point, I’d felt kind of like I was conducting an interview with her, trying to learn as much as I could because there was finally someone to answer my questions. But she’d turned the tables on me and now it was
her
interviewing
me
.

“Fashions?” I echoed. Typical Amy. That would be the first thing she’d ask about. “Well, people no longer wear long dresses unless they’re going to a prom or something.”

“What is a prom?”

“A prom is …” I stopped myself. It would take too much to answer that. “Dresses are much shorter, but girls like us wear mostly pants or even shorts.”

“And shorts are?”

“Really short pants.”

Amy’s eyes opened wide. “You mean girls show their
legs
?”

“All the time.”

Amy thought about this. “Oh, I would love that. I have very nice legs, but no one ever gets to see them. Tell me more! How else are things different?”

“Well, there are skyscrapers, tall buildings that are sometimes over one hundred stories tall.”

“One hundred stories tall? You are lying!”

“No, I’m not. And there are phones, devices for talking to people in other places. Instead of horses and carriages, people drive their own cars, which are motorized vehicles. Oh, and they fly in planes too.”

“People
fly
?”

“No, the people don’t fly. The planes fly and the people fly in the planes.”

“Oh my. The future does sound very different indeed.”

“It is different, but some things are exactly the same. We still have sibling rivalry.”

Amy wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”

“It’s what makes you want Laurie instead of letting Jo have him. I think it’s what made me want him too.”

“I don’t feel like talking about Laurie right now.” Amy wrinkled her nose again. “There will be plenty of time for him later. Now tell me, I know Louisa Alcott wrote a sequel to
Little Women
called
Little Men
and—”

“She wrote two,” I said. “There was another called
Jo’s Boys
.”

“
Two
sequels? Oh my! The second must have come out after I got stuck in here. At any rate, I never read the one I know about and I obviously never read the one I didn’t know about, and I’ve been positively
dying
to know for ages: Am
I
in those books too? What do I do? What is my hair like? What—”

“Never mind all that now!” OMG, was there ever a creature more vain than Amy March? “Getting back to these ‘little changes’ you say you’re always making—don’t readers notice? When you originally changed the story in 1881, by joining it, didn’t anyone notice?”

“How should I know what readers noticed or not?” Now she was disgusted. “I wasn’t out there with them, was I? I was stuck in here!”

“Haven’t you ever tried to get out?”

“Yes. At first I thought there must be a rabbit hole somewhere—you know, like
Alice in Wonderland
?—but if there is, I haven’t found it. You’d think if there was a way in, there must be a way out, wouldn’t you? Then Papa got the idea of apologizing to the book. Papa’s not usually given to such …” She paused as though struggling to find the right word. “…
whimsical
thoughts, but he was feeling pretty desperate that day. It can be tough being Papa in a book like
Little Women
. As it stands, he doesn’t get to do much except be talked about a lot when he’s in the war and then come back and officiate over Meg’s wedding. At least I have my big skating scene. At any rate, Papa’s idea was that since we got drawn into the book by criticizing it, perhaps the way out would be through apologizing for that criticism. So we tried that. ‘Oh, Book, we apologize for saying anything bad about you.’ ‘Oh,
Little Women
, we are sorry if we have offended thee.’ “

Wow, there’s something I’d never thought of—talking to the book!

“But that didn’t work,” Amy said. “And really, we did feel silly. Eventually, we began to accept that we’d be stuck here forever. It can get dull at times—so much sameness year after year!—but it seems there’s always new things to discover, even if they’re just small things, and it beats dying.”

“But what happens when you get to the end of the story? When the book ends?”

“Why, we just go back to the very beginning, of course. What else would happen?”

Go back to the very beginning? If I couldn’t get out of here, I’d be doomed to live through this book over and over again throughout all of eternity? I couldn’t let that happen! If that happened, I’d wind up as crazy and silly as Amy!

“The original book,” I said urgently, “the
real
original, you’ve read it—how did it end?”

“Oh. That.”

“Yes. That.”

Now she looked uncomfortable as she twisted her hands together. “Well, Jo goes abroad with Aunt Carrol and there she eventually meets up with Laurie—you know, he goes to comfort her after Beth dies—and then of course they get married in the end.”

They
what
? Amy had claimed that she’d only ever been able to change “little things,” but changing the person who goes abroad with Aunt Carrol—and the person who winds up with Laurie—was no little thing!