Little Women and Me - By Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page 0,7

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 bed; 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