Little Women and Me - By Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page 0,92

no time for any of that now as I continued:

“If you send Amy abroad instead of Jo, why, it’s as bad as what happened to Great-Aunt Louise. She’s the one who had to leave school and go to work to help the family during the Depression while her sisters got educated, always getting everything. She’s the one who took care of all the older relatives as they died one by one. And what was there for her? No husband, no kids, she never even got out of the country, and the most amazing thing was, she never resented anyone else.”

Someone had been tapping me on the shoulder for that whole last sentence. Finally, I turned, saw it was Beth.

“Excuse me. Emily? I hate to interrupt you, but who is Great-Aunt Louise? I’ve never heard of her before.”

I looked around the room, saw the others were all looking at me with equally puzzled expressions on their faces.

Shoot. Of course they’d never heard of Great-Aunt Louise. She was my great-aunt from back home. I’d never met her—she’d died too soon—but my real mother had told me all the stories about her.

“Okay,” I said quickly, “so I made that part up. But it doesn’t matter, because what Aunt March is doing is wrong and it’s Jo who should—”

“You know, Emily,” Aunt March cut me off, “I never really could see the point of you before today, but now I’m seeing there might be possibilities in you after all. Perhaps I have been hasty in my decision. Perhaps I should send you abroad with Aunt Carrol.”

Me? Was it really that easy—all I had to do was stand up to Aunt March and Europe was mine? I had to admit, if I had to be stuck in the story forever, it would be a lot more bearable if I could finally see Europe. Once there I could—

Amy’s shout cut into my daydreams.

“You!” Amy shouted, pointing an accusing finger in my direction. “You … interloper. You stop interfering right this second. I knew you were going to be trouble from the moment you showed up here.”

What did she mean by that?

“Amy,” Papa said sternly, “be careful what you say here.”

“What do you mean,” Marmee said, perplexed, “from the moment Emily showed up here?”

Amy blushed.

And a realization hit me as Amy grabbed on to my elbow with a muttered “Excuse us for a moment, please” to the others as she practically dragged me from the room:

All those stray things Amy’d said that had struck me as odd since coming here—somehow, Amy had known all along that I’d never really belonged in the story in the first place.

“How long have you known?” I asked, needing to make sure, once we were safely out of hearing.

“Ever since the moment you showed up in front of the fire that time and Jo was saying how it wouldn’t be Christmas without presents.”

Of course. That was the moment I’d arrived here. But …

“How did you know?”

“As Beth would say: Silly Emily!” Amy laughed her tinkling laugh. “I knew because I wasn’t in the original story either!”

What???

“What???”

“How else could I know? Like you, I came here from a different time, like that time traveler in that stupid story you wrote.” Her expression turned to an admonishing one. “You know, it was very irresponsible of you to write that. Who knows what might happen to us if the others ever guessed we don’t really belong here?”

“Wait a second.” This was too much for me. “I know how I got here. I’m from the twenty-first century. I was working on some paper on Little Women for school in 2011 and—WHOOSH!—I got sucked into the book. But how did you get here?”

“2011? Fascinating. You know, I’d always wondered what year you came from, but of course I could never ask that question!”

This was incredible: the idea that the book I thought I’d known so well hadn’t always been the book I knew.

“Are we the only ones?” I asked. “Yes, the only ones I’ve ever seen here. Well, except for Papa.”

“Papa!”

“Yes, he’s really only my papa, although he’s never minded that the rest of you call him that—not even you, Emily, and of course he also knows you don’t belong here.”

“Well, you don’t either,” I said heatedly.

“Perhaps not. But I got here first.”

“When did you and … Papa come?”

“1881,” she answered promptly. “The year after Little Women was finally published in one volume.”

“One volume?”

“Yes. Originally, it was divided into two separate books. See how little you know?”