pet—a March Chia Pet! At least it didn’t scratch.
As for me, what did I bring? Myself. Wasn’t that enough?
“I’m back!” I called as I reentered the house.
“We’re up here!” Jo called from somewhere up above me. “In Laurie’s room!”
You fast mover, Jo March, I thought as I took the stairs with determination, juggling cats and blancmange and geranium decorations. Well, two of us could play at this!
“Laurie tells me they haven’t lived here long either,” Jo informed me as I entered the room, breathless, depositing the kittens and blancmange on the first available surface: the astonished invalid’s lap.
Wait a second. Did she just say “either”? But I thought we always lived here. At least I thought the Marches did.
“So I’ve been advising Laurie on how to make friends,” Jo said.
HA! For one who never took advice, Jo was awfully good at dishing it out.
“I told him how I’ve already gotten to know all the neighbors except for him,” Jo said. Hands on hips, she looked around the room. “Look at this messy room! I told Laurie it should be set to rights before I read to him.”
It really was amazing how much they’d managed to discuss in the time I’d been gone, although somehow I sensed Jo had done most of the talking.
“Emily?” Jo cocked an eyebrow at me.
“What?” I finally spoke. Sometimes it was tough to get a word in edgewise with Jo.
“The room.” She glanced at our surroundings with a meaningful look: the messy sheets, the scattered clothes, the disorderly bookshelves.
“You don’t mean—” I started to say. “But that’s wack!”
“ ‘Wack’?” Laurie asked, looking extremely interested in me all of a sudden. “I love words, and that’s one I’ve never heard before, or at least not quite in that way.”
“Wack means crazy,” I informed Laurie, thinking: Yay! We have something in common! We both love words!
“Then why didn’t you just say ‘crazy’?” Jo pressed. “Or even ‘wacky’? Although there is no such word as wacky, it would make more sense than wack if you were looking for a synonym for crazy.”
Wait. No wacky? What kind of world was this? Oh, right. It was a world in which, not only was there no wack yet, there wasn’t even a wacky. I was going to have to get my hands on a good dictionary, I realized, and memorize the whole thing.
“So what you really meant to say was ‘wacky,’ “ Jo persisted.
“No,” I finally said, annoyed. Suddenly I didn’t care how wack it made me look in their eyes, I refused to let her win another argument. “I meant to say ‘wack,’ “ I informed her defiantly. Then I looked at Laurie, shrugged. “What can I say? I love words and I like inventing new ones.”
Laurie’s eyes lit up. “Miss Emily! How charming!”
“You can just call me Emily,” I said, “now that we’re friends.”
“Emily,” Jo said.
“Hmm?” Gosh, Laurie was cute.
“The room?” Jo said.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, you silly goose,” I said, still gazing into Laurie’s beautiful dark eyes. “You know I spend all day every Thursday cleaning our home with Beth. If you think Laurie’s room should be cleaned so badly, clean it yourself.”
While Jo grumbled around the room, “setting things to rights,” it was my turn to learn a few things.
I learned both his parents died when he was little—sad.
I learned Brooke was Mr. John Brooke, his tutor—useful.
I learned his grandfather didn’t like him to play the piano—perplexing.
“Are you two just going to sit there and talk all day?” Jo huffed, plumping the last pillow and placing it on Laurie’s bed.
“I know!” Laurie clapped his hands on his thighs. Since we’d arrived, he already looked less sick than when we first saw him from the window. At least he was more cheerful. “I’ll show you Grandfather’s library!”
The library he led us to was even bigger than Aunt March’s, with a large portrait of Mr. Laurence dominating the room.
“What an amazing room,” Jo said. In moments like these, I didn’t resent her at all, because I was feeling the exact same thing—all those books to fall into.
“Grandfather lives among his books,” Laurie informed us.
HA! Don’t we all! I thought half bitterly, suddenly tired of being a fly on the wall in someone else’s life. If this had followed the original book, Jo was meant to be alone here with him. I was just an extra in their play.
Well, at least by being here I could enforce the pact.
“Don’t you think Grandfather looks frightening in that picture?” Laurie asked Jo.
“No,” Jo