Wow, there’s something I’d never thought of—talking to the book!
“But that didn’t work,” Amy said. “And really, we did feel silly. Eventually, we began to accept that we’d be stuck here forever. It can get dull at times—so much sameness year after year!—but it seems there’s always new things to discover, even if they’re just small things, and it beats dying.”
“But what happens when you get to the end of the story? When the book ends?”
“Why, we just go back to the very beginning, of course. What else would happen?”
Go back to the very beginning? If I couldn’t get out of here, I’d be doomed to live through this book over and over again throughout all of eternity? I couldn’t let that happen! If that happened, I’d wind up as crazy and silly as Amy!
“The original book,” I said urgently, “the real original, you’ve read it—how did it end?”
“Oh. That.”
“Yes. That.”
Now she looked uncomfortable as she twisted her hands together. “Well, Jo goes abroad with Aunt Carrol and there she eventually meets up with Laurie—you know, he goes to comfort her after Beth dies—and then of course they get married in the end.”
They what? Amy had claimed that she’d only ever been able to change “little things,” but changing the person who goes abroad with Aunt Carrol—and the person who winds up with Laurie—was no little thing!
I started from the room, but Amy grabbed my arm, hard.
“What are you planning to do now?” she demanded. “You can’t interfere any more. Don’t you understand? Do you have any idea how difficult it was for me getting used to the hardships of the 1860s when I came here used to the modern conveniences of the 1880s? If I have to live through the story, I’m going to wind up with Laurie.”
Talk about an interloper!
I shook her hand off and marched out of the room.
Reentering the parlor, with Amy scampering behind me still trying to stop me, I walked right up to Jo.
I grabbed Jo by the biceps with both hands—man, she had well-developed biceps!—and gave her a good shake. I didn’t care that everyone else was looking, what they were thinking.
It was time I did the right thing. It was time I became a better person.
“I don’t care how you do it,” I warned Jo, “but you must be the one to go abroad. If you don’t, Amy will go. She’ll go to London, she’ll go to Paris, she’ll go to Heidelberg.” I stopped. Heidelberg—where had that come from? I’d never even heard of Heidelberg! I shrugged the thought off, barreled on. “And she’ll go to Nice. Eventually, Laurie will find her there to comfort her about”—I shook my head, shook the sadness away—“something really sad, but never mind that now. The point is, he will find her and eventually they will get married.”
“Amy and Teddy married?” Jo laughed, as did everyone else except for Amy.
“I know,” I said, “it’s a real laugh riot, right? Except it isn’t, because that is exactly what will happen if you don’t go abroad. Meanwhile, while Amy’s larking around Europe on your trip with your Teddy, you’ll go to New York to live in a boardinghouse. You’ll meet an old German guy with a beard and you’ll agree to become his wife one day when you come across him walking in the rain with a parcel under his arm and he shares his umbrella with you.”
“New York? An old German guy? An umbrella?” Jo wrenched one of her arms from my grasp, placed her hand on my forehead.
Now, that was still annoying.
“Are you feeling all right?” Jo’s voice was full of concern. “Is this just one of your castle-in-the-air stories like before with Great-Aunt Louise?”
How was I ever going to persuade her?
“So what if it is?” I sighed. “I’m telling the truth.” I paused. “Think about the bread, Jo,” I said meaningfully. “Think about the moldy bread.”
Jo looked sharp at me then and I knew she was remembering. Maybe it was wrong of me to use that, since I knew now that the bread hadn’t saved Beth, wouldn’t save Beth. But maybe it would at least make Jo listen to me.
“I know things,” I said, and I did, even if I didn’t know how to save Beth. “You may not realize it now, but you love Laurie. You’re in love with him. Maybe you’re too blind to see it, but he certainly knows he’s in love with you.”
It was so true, all of it. I saw that now.
“Everyone knows you two belong together,” I finished somewhat lamely.
Jo was puzzled now.
“But I thought,” she said, “you wanted Laurie for yourself.”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I thought I did, once.”
It struck me then, how for so long I’d thought I wanted Laurie, but it was only ever the idea of him—the idea of having something that was really meant for one of my sisters. It was the whole Jackson thing all over again. And now I saw that there had been signs all along that I didn’t really like him like him—starting with the fact that I felt nothing when we kissed—but I’d been the one who’d been too blind to see the truth.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I told Jo, “what I once thought I wanted. Now I want him for you. Anyone who’s ever seen the two of you together knows you belong together.” I paused before adding, “It’s the way the story was always meant to be.”
V-ROOM!
What was that sound?
It sounded like a vacuum cleaner.
Wait a second, I told myself. No one had a vacuum cleaner in the 1800s!
But the sound didn’t stop. Instead, it grew in volume and suddenly I felt myself spinning in circles rapidly, spinning and spinning until …
WHOOSH!
Epilogue
Talk about getting sucked out of a good book!
I sit at the desk staring at a piece of paper without even seeing what’s on it.
Okay, what just happened here?
Really, what just happened?
I get out of my chair and rush to the floor-length mirror in the corner of the room. The reflection looking back is me. No more gowns and boots. No more hair piled on top of my head in pins. It’s me, in my regular clothes with my regular hair. I move a little from side to side—hey, I don’t have a corset anymore! I reach into the neck of my shirt and snap the thin strap on my shoulder. Yup, I got my bra back.
I turn away from the mirror and look around my room—my room—and see all my familiar things, familiar even though it feels like forever since I’ve seen them. I touch my iPod and my computer like I’m greeting old friends and it hits me: I’m not in the March house anymore. Or at least not that March house.
What happened?
Did I bump my head? Did I fall asleep at my desk and have the longest dream ever? Is this like The Wizard of Oz, with me as Dorothy, certain I’ve had the most amazing adventure ever while everyone around me is trying to convince me it was all just a dream?
Did any of that really happen at all?
“Emily!” Charlotte calls, and a moment later there’s a knock at my door. “Emily. Mom says it’s time for dinner.”
Charlotte! Mom!
I throw the door open and throw my arms around Charlotte’s neck. I’ve missed her so much without even realizing it.
“Um, Emily?” she says, stiff in my arms. “What are you doing?”
“Sorry,” I say, letting her go.
“It’s okay,” she says hurriedly. “I just didn’t understand. I think it’s been over four years since you hugged me.”
Four years? That’s the amount of time I was away!
“What year is this?” I ask.
“It’s the same year it was when you woke up this morning, you know that. What’s gotten into you?”
I can’t believe it. I feel like I’ve been away forever, and yet I haven’t?
I go to my desk, look down at the date on the paper there, the one I was looking at without really seeing it before. It’s my outline for the paper for Mr. Ochocinco’s class. The date on it? Let’s just say it is not in
the 1860s.
I feel like so much has happened to me, like so much has changed in my life, and yet nothing here has changed at all?
Suddenly I hear a voice in my head, my own voice:
It’s the way the story was always meant to be.
Maybe Charlotte and me have never been close, and maybe I always blamed her for that. But I see now that while I’ll never be able to control anyone else’s behavior or choices, I can control what I bring to my relationships.
I go to Charlotte, grab her by the shoulders.
“You have to let Jackson know you like him, Charlotte. If you don’t, eventually—maybe not tomorrow, maybe not until next year, but eventually he’ll wind up with Anne.”
“Anne? What are you talking about? Have you bumped your head?”
Maybe I have. Mentally, I gotta give Charlotte credit though. At least she doesn’t put her hand to my forehead to see if I’ve got a fever.
“Never mind about me,” I say. “I know what I’m telling you may sound crazy. But you have to believe me. I do know what I’m talking about.”
“But why would I tell Jackson I like him? And why would Jackson ever go for Anne? You two are always together. He clearly likes you.”
I swallow my guilt. Not only does Jackson not know that Charlotte likes him, but Charlotte has no clue that Jackson likes her.
I do what I should have done all along.
I tell Charlotte the truth.
It’s the way the story was always meant to be.
After dinner, even though the rest of the weekend is still ahead of me and even though the assignment for Monday is just for the outline, with the paper not due until the following Monday, I sit down to write my paper.
Might as well get this over with while my thoughts are still fresh in my head.
But first, I really want a shower.
I go to the bathroom, thrilled with what I find there: a real live twenty-first-century bathroom. Do people who live in the present even know how lucky they are?
After about an hour of hot water and conditioner, I return to my paper.
When you first gave us this assignment, to change one thing in a favorite book, I knew which book I wanted to write about, Little Women. But deciding on just one thing proved harder than I thought. You see, as I’m sure most readers would agree, there are two things wrong with Little Women: Beth dying and Laurie winding up with Amy instead of Jo.
Let’s face it: everyone hates it when Beth dies. It’s just so sad!
So for a long time, that’s what I thought needed changing: Beth dying. But then I finally came to realize: Beth’s dying can’t be changed. It’s written in the cards the first moment she goes to see the Hummel family. From then on, it’s just a matter of time. I realize now that you can change a lot of things in life, but you can’t change death. You can’t stop it. Death will come, whether you want it to or not.
Louisa May Alcott was right to have Beth die, sad as it is.
But she was wrong about Laurie and Amy!
It’s Laurie and Jo who belong together. Anyone with eyes in their head and a brain to read knows that!
So that’s the one thing, the only thing, I would change about Little Women.
Laurie and Jo should wind up together, because while you can’t stop death, love should always, always be allowed to grow where it’s meant to be.
On Monday, even though the paper’s not due for another week, I hand it to Mr. Ochocinco at the end of class. And, because my paper’s short, he sits and reads it while I wait.
While I wait, I think about how since Friday night I’ve come to realize that whatever I may have thought had happened to me—time travel? really? what was I thinking?—it had all been in my head.
Mr. Ochocinco finishes my paper, hands it back to me.
“Aren’t you going to grade it?” I ask.
“It’s a fine piece of writing, Emily, and under normal circumstances I would give you an A. But I can’t even grade this paper. You’ll have to do it over again.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you obviously haven’t read the book. Or if you did, you never finished it.”
“What are you talking about?”
What is he talking about? Never even read the book? I feel like I practically lived that book!
“You say right here that Laurie winds up with Amy in the end,” he says. “But that’s wrong. If you’d bothered to finish Little Women, you’d remember that Laurie winds up with Jo.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I insist.
“Yes, he does.” Mr. Ochocinco swivels his chair, plucks a volume from the bookcase behind him. Turning, he hands me a copy of Little Women, the same volume I have with the woodcut illustrations.
“See for yourself,” he says. “Turn to the last chapter where the three remaining sisters are picnicking with their families.”
See for myself. See for himself! Is this man on drugs? I’ll show him, I think, paging through the book.
I quickly scan the text.
Wait a second here. I don’t even see Professor Bhaer’s name mentioned. But that’s Jo’s husband!
I scan through again.
There’s something about Meg and John and their kids. Next Jo’s name is linked with Laurie’s. And Amy—her name is linked with someone I’ve never even heard of before.
I study the final woodcut at the end of the book, a scene that depicts the three remaining girls clearly paired off with their spouses: Meg and John; Jo and Laurie; Amy with some other guy. Wait a second. Instinctively, I know that guy—he’s the redhaired guy that Jo didn’t want to dance with one time at a party!
I’ll tell you one thing. In that picture, Amy does not look happy. In fact, she almost looks as though she’s scowling directly at me.
I hand him back the book, stunned.
“So you see, Emily,” he says, “you’ll just have to rewrite your paper. Choose something else to change about Little Women. Or better yet, choose another book, preferably one you know better.”
“Yes, I do see,” I say vaguely.
I can’t believe this. OMG, did I change Little Women? Did everything I thought was a dream really happen?
Still feeling dazed, I head toward the door.
“Emily?” Mr. Ochocinco calls after me.
I turn.
“You dropped something from your notebook,” he says. Bending, he picks something up from the ground, hands it to me.
I look at the thing in my hand. It’s a paper crown, with the initials “P.C.” on it.
The Pickwick Club, I mouth the words silently.
But how …?
OMG, it all really did happen. I lived in Little Women, and I changed the ending!
As I close the door to Mr. Ochocinco’s room behind me, I see Jackson and Charlotte pass by in the hallway, holding hands.
After I told Charlotte about Jackson liking her on Friday night, and after we finished eating dinner, she got up the nerve to call him while I worked on my paper—the paper I’ll now have to rewrite.
Oh, well.
So Jo wound up with Laurie, and Charlotte is winding up with Jackson. Me, I wound up with neither Jackson nor Laurie. But that’s as it should be. It’s the way the story was always meant to go. Someday, I’ll have my own guy. He won’t be either Jackson or Laurie. He’ll be some guy I genuinely like for who he is, and who likes me for who I am.
I have got to find Kendra—I need to tell her everything that’s happened!
But then I realize: I’ll never be able to tell anyone what’s happened to me, what I’ve seen, where I’ve been, and how I changed the story even as it changed me—who would ever believe me?
And suddenly I miss my family, my other family: starchy Meg, annoying Jo, sweet Beth, and even Amy, the interloper.
I finger the paper crown in my hand as words come to me, words that I instinctively know are the last bit of dialogue Beth speaks before she dies, saying, “… for love is the only thing we can carry with us wh
en we go; and it makes the end so easy.”
Yes, Beth, I think. Yes, it does.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Pamela Harty and everyone at The Knight Agency for superior representation.
Thanks to Melanie Cecka and everyone at Bloomsbury USA for superior publishing.
Thanks to writers who helped this particular book on its way—Lauren Catherine, Andrea Schicke Hirsch, Greg Logsted, and Rob Mayette—for superior help.
Thanks to Lucille Baratz for being a superior mother, Greg Logsted for being a superior husband, and Jackie Logsted for being the most superior of daughters.
Thanks to booksellers, librarians, and readers everywhere—superlative beings, one and all.
Author’s Note
[Author’s Note about the Author’s Note: Please don’t read this if you haven’t finished the book!]
When I was younger, I read Little Women more times than I can count. I loved the world Louisa May Alcott created, although I did have two major issues with it: I always hated it when Beth died, and I really hated that Laurie wound up with Amy instead of the person I’d have him end up with if I were in charge of the world, Jo. There are some books you first encounter when you’re younger—Jane Eyre and The Great Gatsby immediately spring to mind—that you read again as you get older, but Little Women had never been that way for me. Once I reached a certain age, it became a book I no longer reread, the Marches existing instead in fond memory and movie adaptations.
But then, a few years ago, my daughter, Jackie, and her best friend discovered Little Women for the first time, and I began really thinking about the book once more. We discussed how sad it is that Beth dies, how even Joey on Friends is so upset about it that he makes Rachel hide the book in the freezer! And we discussed how wrong we all thought it was that Laurie winds up with Amy instead of Jo.
That’s when I had the kind of moment that drives so much of my writing: What if? In this case, what if a contemporary teen somehow found herself inside the world of Little Women, her mission there being to change one of the two problems readers traditionally have with the book? So I sat down and wrote the prologue to Little Women and Me, in which Emily is literally sucked into the story. And then I pulled out a copy of Little Women and set about writing the rest of my book.
Little Women and Me Page 24
