dared to hope.
He did look at me first, briefly, considering, but then his eyes veered off and …
And suddenly I realized I had to stop the words from coming out of his mouth. He was going to say “Jo, of course.” He was going to say it because I’d made fun of his sailor costume and because, in spite of Jo saying that “genius” was what she wanted most when he’d probably been secretly hoping she’d say “Laurie,” she was the one who always played hard to get.
I had to stop it from happening. I had to keep those words from exiting his mouth.
“Bee! It’s a bee!” I began shouting, extricating my hand from the tower of hands and running maniacally in circles.
“Bee?” Jo said. “I don’t see any bee!”
“Borrow Kate’s lorgnette then!” I shouted, still running in circles. “Can’t you see? There’s a whole swarm of them!”
Before long, I triggered mass hysteria, everyone running maniacally in circles, including practical Mr. Brooke and lame Frank.
At last, I collapsed on the lawn.
“The danger’s over,” I gasped, waving my hands to indicate the others could stop running too.
“How about a nice game of Authors?” I suggested when all the others had also collapsed. After all my exertion in the heat, I felt practically delirious. “And I’ll even go first. I’ll take Dickens for eight hundred dollars, Alex.”
“What are you taking about, Emily?” Jo demanded.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I only know that if the answer is Bull’s-eye, I’ll stand a chance.”
“You’re making no sense,” Jo said.
“I know,” I admitted.
But one thing did make sense.
I’d prevented Laurie from saying that he liked Jo more than he liked me, that he liked her best. If I could only keep him from ever saying that, I still might stand a chance.
Then Kate was rude to Meg about being a governess; Mr. Brooke stood up for Meg and taught her to read German; Mr. Brooke said Laurie would be off to college next year, making me wonder what a convent-like existence ours would be without him; Mr. Brooke said he’d be off to become a soldier at that time but that he didn’t have a mother or sister to miss him; Amy told Grace we had an old sidesaddle at home that we put over a low-lying apple tree branch to pretend we were riding a horse, proving yet again how odd the March girls were; Amy said she longed to go abroad; Beth was nice to Frank; the party ended and we all went home.
The Vaughns would be off to Canada the next day.
As I lay in bed that night, I felt pleasantly exhausted.
But then I shot up as a disturbing thought struck me.
At some point—a ways off, but still—the story of Little Women as I knew it would reach the end.
Where would I be when that happened? What would become of me once I ran out of story?
Thirteen
It was a warm September afternoon, the summer holiday was drawing to a close, and the other four had just tramped off to do that thing they’d been doing every day now and that I wanted no part of: self-improvement.
Marmee liked for us to be out-of-doors as much as possible. So each day the others would put on what I considered to be ridiculous costumes: floppy hats and brown linen pouches slung over one shoulder, long walking staffs in one hand, various items in the other. Then they’d traipse up the hill between the house and the river, ultimate destination unspecified, and do whatever it was they did. They said they brought their work with them and played at being pilgrims, but for all I knew they could have been casting spells over the town and playing at being witches. As I say, I wanted no part of these self-improvements.
But there was something boring, not to mention a little lonely, in being left behind, so once they were safely out of view I went to visit Laurie.
“I’m bored, dude,” he said when he came to the door.
“There’s a bit of that going around, dude,” I said. “Maybe we need to do something out of the ordinary?”
“I already tried that,” he said. “I frustrated Brooke by deliberately making mistakes in all my studies, then I scared the maids by implying that one of the dogs was going mad.”
“That last sounds like it has possibilities,” I said.
“It did, but how long can terrified maids be fun?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It sounds like the kind of thing you could