Little Women and Me - By Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page 0,12
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? Fifteen?”
“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,