Little Women and Me Read online

  Winnie-the-Pooh? It does qualify as “old stuff,” so you’d think it would have the potential to impress, but how would I change it for the better? Add conflict by making Eeyore a depressed serial killer?

  Little Women.

  Huh.

  For the first time, I pull one of the books from the shelf. As I tug the volume loose from the bookcase, my fingers tingle as though zapped by electricity.

  Weird.

  I hold the red cloth-covered volume in my hands. I loved this book when I was younger, but I haven’t read it once in the last four years. How much do I still remember of it? Enough to do the assignment without rereading? After all, I’ve read a lot of books in the years in between. Still …

  I go to my desk holding the book in one hand, sit down in front of the computer, and think about what to put in the outline. Hmm … Three things I loved about the book …

  One. The first is easy. The name of the family: March. You’d think that with daughters named Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, my parents’ last name might be Brontë. But no. Our last name is March, which is something I loved about Little Women. It may sound superficial, but the characters having the same last name as me always made me identify with them, kind of like Mr. O.’s ability to identify with a football player now that they share the same last name.

  Two. Jo March is a writer. I’ve always loved writing, even more than I love reading, and a lot of that can be traced back to Jo March. What girl doesn’t want to be Jo March after reading about her writing stories in her garret while chomping on crisp apples? Chomping apples may not seem like the definition of cool, but the way Jo did it, it just set her apart from everyone else, and in a good way, like it was somehow a sign of her independent spirit. Jo is the March girl every reader wants to be.

  Three. The amazing relationship between the four sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. They were all so different, yet even when they argued—unlike with Charlotte or Anne and me—they always managed to love and eventually support one another. They actually made having siblings seem like a good idea. Girls without any sisters want to have sisters like them. And girls like me, ones with sisters who always make you feel like the least important people in your own families—those girls really wanted to have sisters like them!

  This is good. My outline is practically writing itself.

  Now for the second part. What’s the one thing I would change to make Little Women a perfect book?

  Hmm …

  I open the book, figuring maybe reading a little bit will help me decide, flip past the first woodcut illustration to the first chapter and the first line:

  “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

  Having read the first line, I read another, and then another. Before I know it, I’m caught up in the story. This surprises me, given how often I’ve read it before. And what further surprises me is that even though I have read it many times already, there’s so much of the story that feels new, things I don’t remember reading before. Is that because it’s been four years since I last read it? Or is it because I’m different now, older?

  I stare at the pages, still stuck with trying out what should be changed about the book.

  Maybe the thing that happens to Beth? I always hated that. But wait a second. What about how things end up for Jo and Amy with the boy next door, Laurie? That has to be the most frustrating romantic outcome in any book ever.

  But which to change?

  The thing with Beth? The thing with Jo and Amy and Laurie? The—

  V~ROOM!

  What’s that sound? Is that Charlotte vacuuming in the hopes of getting our mother to think her even more wonderful than she already thinks her to be?

  I cross the room, bang my copy of Little Women against the closed door. Rude, I know. But still.

  The sound doesn’t stop, however. Instead, it grows in volume and suddenly I feel myself spinning in circles rapidly, spinning and spinning until …

  WHOOSH!

  Talk about being sucked into a book.

  One

  “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled the girl, lying on the rug.

  I looked at the girl sprawled out in front of the crackling fire. She was my age or maybe just a bit older—tall, thin, large nose, gray eyes, chestnut hair piled into a messy bun, long gray dress. I knew her. Oh, not from school or town. No, I knew her from the woodcut illustrations—yeah, the ones in my book. And I knew the words she’d spoken, which were the opening lines, of course.

  Jo March!

  I blinked my eyes hard at the impossible vision—what was going on?—only to snap them open again at the sound of other girl voices.

  It was so strange, coming in on the middle of the conversation. What were they talking about? Something about missing Papa? Something about the war?

  I followed the voices to the speakers. They all wore long dresses, seriously ugly boots peeking out from beneath the hems. The oldest looking of the girls had soft brown hair tied up in some kind of funky ’do. She looked like a size 16 and she kept studying her hands as though she thought they were the coolest thing ever. Whoa! That’s Meg March, I thought.

  The girl next to her looked the youngest, a skinny chick with long, curly blond hair. Her eyes were a startling blue. Amy.

  So where was …?

  I heard a soft voice say something about not minding about the money. That’s when I saw her, almost hidden like a mouse, as she knitted away in the corner. The rosy cheeks, the flat hair, the bright eyes, and the peaceful expression. Check. Had to be Beth.

  As I looked around the room, and took in the old-fashioned furniture and stuff, I tried to figure out what had happened. The last thing I remembered was opening my copy of Little Women and reading the first line, then reading more and thinking about things, and then … WHOOSH!

  Had I turned on the TV while doing my homework and stumbled on an old movie version? But no, this Jo March didn’t look like an actress playing Jo March. She looked like, well, Jo March! Maybe I’d eaten a contaminated lettuce leaf at lunch and was hallucinating or someone had poisoned me? Or maybe the answer was simpler: I fell asleep while reading, and this was just a dream?

  I pinched myself, hard, but after the pinch I was still in the room. In a dream, can you give yourself a specific direction like that and actually have the dream-you do the thing?

  “Emily.” I jumped in my chair as Jo kicked me in the foot.

  As I looked down at where she’d tapped me, I saw for the first time that I had the same seriously ugly boots on my feet as the rest of them: they were brown leather, heavily creased, and laced from the toes to a few inches above the ankle. I also took in my long brown dress, and felt something thick and binding across my midsection. My hand moved to my waist. At the feel of the narrow bonelike strips, a bizarre thought occurred to me—was I wearing a corset? This was worse than a bra! And my underpants felt … loose. Not like panties at all. They felt bloomerish! All of it—the boots, the long dress, whatever bizarre garments lay underneath the dress—felt incredibly heavy, like I would lose weight just by walking around and sweating in this stuff all day long. My hand traveled up to my head only to find my auburn hair pulled up into a loose bun with … pins? I had pins in my hair? That’s when I jumped in my chair for the second time in as many minutes. What the heck had happened to my own clothes? Why was my hair like this? What was going on???

  “Emily,” Jo said again. “Why must you always daydream when we’re trying to have an important discussion?”

  And how did she know my name?

  It had felt real enough when she nudged my foot hard, and I suddenly needed to touch her, to see if she felt real. But as I reached, half tempted to tap her on the shoulder as hard as she’d tapped my foot, I saw my own hand. It was no longer the hand I knew. Gone were the longish nails, painted near black, and the ringed fingers I’d used to hold my salad fork while talking to Jackson. In its place was a hand that loo
ked rougher than mine, like it had been doing some sort of work, the nails very short and very clean.

  I jumped to my feet. Not seeing any mirrors in the room, I rushed to a set of windows and glimpsed what I could of my reflection in one of the panes, the night black beyond the glass. I looked like me, I saw, and yet not at all like me. Where was my makeup? My eyebrows were no longer tweezed! Suddenly I had to wonder: If I took off all these clothes—obviously not in front of everyone else, of course—would I discover unshaved armpits and hairy legs? Gross!

  On a small table next to the set of windows stood a small lamp, the light glowing through a cloudy glass globe attached to the silver base. I couldn’t see any wires attached to the base, so I glanced inside the globe, saw a flame burning from a thick wick. I sniffed: oil.

  First, I was hearing things from Little Women. Then I was seeing things. Now I was smelling things? What was going on?

  It’s just a dream, Emily, I muttered to myself repeatedly, closing my eyes on all the confusing things, just a dream, just a dream …

  “Really, Emily,” Meg said sternly.

  My eyes snapped open again. I was myself and not myself, and not only could I hear these four girls talking to one another, but they were talking to me too, even using my name. This was some dream!

  And if I could see and hear them, then maybe they could hear me too?

  I opened my mouth to speak, not taking the time first to think of what to say. What came out was:

  “What year is this?”

  “It’s 1861,” Amy said with a smirk, then for good measure she rolled her eyes.

  1861? Wow. Radical.

  “If I ever asked a question like that,” Amy continued, “Jo’d tease me forever.”

  I ignored her.

  “And how old am I?”

  “You’re fourteen, you goose,” Jo said, adding in an exasperated singsong, “and Meg is sixteen, I am fifteen, Beth is thirteen, and Amy is twelve.”

  “And that makes me …,” I started to say.

  “The middle sister”—Jo’s tone remained exasperated—“just like you’ve always been. Now do try to stop being so silly, if you possibly can. We’re trying to figure out what we shall each get for Marmee.”

  I must have looked confused, because Beth piped up in a nice way, “You know, Emily, how we decided it wouldn’t be right to spend money on our own pleasures when the men are in the army? So we decided instead to take the dollar each of us has received and spend it instead on Marmee?”

  “And now,” Jo said pointedly to me, “we are wondering what you plan to get her.”

  Was she for real? No, of course she wasn’t. She was just a dream, which was why I burst out laughing and then said, “What can you possibly buy someone for just one dollar?”

  Now it was the four others’ turn to look puzzled as they stared at me for a long moment.

  Meg finally spoke. “Actually, you can get quite a lot. I plan on buying Marmee gloves when we all go shopping tomorrow.”

  “I had been planning on buying myself a new book,” Jo said, adding with an insane level of seriousness, “but now I am going to buy Marmee army shoes.”

  “I was going to buy myself some music,” Beth said, “but I’ll be much happier getting her handkerchiefs, and I even plan to embroider her name onto them.”

  “I had so wanted some drawing pencils,” sighed Amy. “But I suppose now I shall get her cologne. Although if I get only a smallish bottle—”

  “What about you?” Jo cut Amy off as she turned to me. “What shall you buy for Marmee with your dollar when we go shopping tomorrow?”

  They’d just listed four things they apparently thought they could buy for a buck each, but how should I know what you could buy in the stores around here? Besides, I wouldn’t even be here tomorrow. I’d be awake, since this was all a dream!

  “I don’t know what I shall get,” I answered. Did they have any dollar stores around here?

  Wait a second, I thought. I just said shall. It was so weird, like being around Brazilian people and suddenly thinking I could understand Portuguese!

  Whatever, I told myself. Just go with it, Emily. You’ll be out of here soon enough.

  “I don’t know,” I repeated, feeling the others stare at me. “I guess I’ll just get her one of those things like the things you all are going to get her.”

  Meg felt my forehead. “Are you feeling unwell?”

  “Emily is behaving peculiarly,” Jo said, adding wryly, “even for her.”

  “I’m fine.” I waved Meg’s hand away. “It’s just that sometimes things get … confusing around here.”

  Confusing? Ha! I had no idea what was going on! Maybe I’d been kidnapped and brought to some historical re-creationist cult run by those old dudes who like to put on war uniforms from World War II or the Civil War?

  “I don’t under—” Meg started to say, but Jo cut her off.

  “Didn’t you hear her say she’s fine? Besides, we really should practice the play I wrote for Christmas before Marmee comes home. We don’t want to spoil the surprise by having her see it before we’re ready.”

  “Yes, of course,” Meg agreed. “But perhaps Emily should just observe while we rehearse? She really doesn’t seem herself.”

  “Fine,” Jo grumbled.

  It was a good thing Meg had given me an out. I was having a hard-enough time keeping up with all the conversations in this confusingly elaborate dream—because that’s what I decided this had to be—and it would have been impossible to rehearse for a play I knew nothing about.

  As I watched the other four working and playing together, I thought about how their personalities in my dream matched what I remembered about them.

  Meg was the prig.

  Jo was the rebel.

  Beth was the least cool of the four, but she was so sweet and kind, it would be impossible to make fun of her.

  Amy was totally into herself, a blond Bratz doll.

  But where did I fit into all this? I wondered. Where was my place? Jo had said I was the middle sister, but what exactly did that mean here?

  Not that it mattered. I wouldn’t be here much longer. I was bound to wake up any second.

  Except I didn’t wake up.

  I didn’t wake up during the long rehearsal, which was confusing—put it this way: it was no episode of Glee.

  I didn’t wake up when Marmee came home. She was on the shrimpy side when compared with her older daughters and she had some kind of a cloak thing on plus a bonnet. I mean, come on. A bonnet? Still, in spite of her uncool appearance, when she entered the house the others acted like they’d seen the sun rise indoors.

  I didn’t wake up when we had our dinner, which they kept calling “tea,” with bread and butter; or when we all gathered around Marmee in front of the fire as she read a letter from “Papa,” who, it turned out, was a priest or pastor or something in the American Civil War. I always thought old people didn’t have to serve, but the letter said he would be gone for a year. It also contained messages for each of his “little women.” And here’s the weirdest part—my dream was so detailed, there was even a direct message from him to me in the letter:

  Emily, my middle March, know that even when you feel

  there is no clear place for you, there is always in my heart.

  Not that the message made a lot of sense, but it felt kind of nice to be treated like one of the in-crowd around here.

  As the night went on, in order to keep that feeling of fitting in, I pretty much followed along with whatever they did, mirroring their every move, trying to speak like them the few times I opened my mouth. It got a little easier, I guess, but those shalls were still coming hard to me.

  We sewed until nine at night; or I should say, they sewed. I’d never sewn a stitch in my life! I was relieved to see each sister take one corner of a quilt. All I had to do was pass them supplies as they worked. Then there was some singing around the old piano while Beth played, followed by getting ready for b
ed; I didn’t wake up during any of it, though I kept expecting to, any moment now.

  I didn’t even wake up when Beth and Amy went to one bedroom while I followed Meg and Jo into a connecting bedroom. There was a white linen granny nightgown and there was even a bed for me in my Dream March House! Eventually, Marmee came up and sang us lullabies in the most beautiful voice imaginable, before giving us each a kiss on our cheeks.

  At that point feeling a part of things, I didn’t want to wake up.

  Two

  But the next morning when I became aware that the bedroom was freezing cold, OMG, I certainly wanted to wake up!

  I don’t know everything about every subject in the world, but I’d had enough dreams in my life to know that dreams don’t just go on and on like this. Unless …

  Wait a second here. Was I in a coma?

  But I must have been in some sort of an accident to be in a coma. And I didn’t remember any accident, only opening up that darned book and reading the first line.

  No, I told myself. It wasn’t a coma because I could feel the cold. I’d simply dreamed that I’d somehow landed myself in the March household in 1861. But as hard as I tried to shake myself awake, the evidence before my eyes wouldn’t go away. There was Meg, still sleeping. There was Jo, still sleeping.

  So, not a dream. Not a coma.

  I tried the pinching thing again but all I got for it was a red mark on my hand. I was going to have to stop doing that to myself.

  But, if not a coma, then what?

  Had I found some way to bust through the space-time continuum?

  That didn’t make any sense either. As far as I could remember, the March family had never been real. They were merely a figment of Louisa May Alcott’s imagination.

  Then what? What exactly had happened to me? All I knew was that I had to get out of here. I had to get back to my normal life—the one where there were no granny nightgowns in my wardrobe and people didn’t say “shall.”

  But how? How?

  Then it struck me. Ever since this “dream” had started, I’d been inside the house. Inside the house. That was it! If I could only get outside again, things would reset and I’d wake up.