Little Women and Me

Eight


It didn’t take long for that fallout I’d anticipated, that “something more serious,” to materialize.

Meg and Jo were preparing to go to the theater with Laurie to see something called The Seven Castles of the Diamond Lake that Jo boasted had fairies, elves, red imps, and gorgeous princes and princesses. Amy, who’d had a cold, was angling to go too, but Jo dismissed her request because: one, the show would hurt her eyes; two, she could go with Hannah and Beth the following week; three, she hadn’t been invited.

I wondered why no one mentioned the possibility of me going to the show, either with Meg, Jo, and Laurie then, or with Hannah, Beth, and Amy the following week. Was I not known to like the theater? I debated whether I wanted to go or not. On the one hand, it would be a new form of entertainment here, plus, if the play was good, I could tease Jo about how much better it was than the one she and Meg had performed soon after my arrival; it was always fun to tease Jo. But on the other hand, I didn’t really like fairies, elves, red imps, and gorgeous princes and princesses—it all sounded so Disney.

But I didn’t get to debate the pros and cons of staying versus tagging along because suddenly Amy was screaming, “You’ll be sorry about this, Jo March!”

Did I miss something?



Maybe I should have been clued in about what was to come based on what I knew about my sisters: that both Amy and Jo were hotheads, but that Jo had the least self-control and was always sorry afterward. Well, maybe it wasn’t accurate to say that she had the least self-control, since I was fairly certain Jo had never tried to slip Laurie the tongue.

But I should have been clued in when Amy disappeared, and I could have sworn I heard her rooting around in the room I shared with Meg and Jo.

And I really should have been clued in when I saw Amy emerge from our bedrooms, back her way over to the fireplace, and toss something in before we could see what it was, whatever she tossed in causing the flames to leap higher and flare brighter.

But I wasn’t clued in because I’d started to write a story, one about a girl at a bad time in her life who finds herself mysteriously sucked into a favorite book. Back home, being a reader and writer were two of the things I’d always loved so why not do it here?

So it wasn’t until the next morning that we all became aware of Amy’s unpardonable crime.

When Meg and Jo had returned from the play the day before, they told us stories of fairies, elves, red imps, and gorgeous princes and princesses—enough so that I wasn’t sorry I missed it, particularly when Meg declared Jo to be a superior playwright to the one who created that awful-sounding theatrical mess. Meanwhile, Amy adopted an air of nonchalance as though she’d never been interested in the play in the first place.

Now Jo discovered that while she was at the play, Amy had burned Jo’s story—a half-dozen fairy tales she’d been working on with the intent of finishing it as a book before Papa got home. That copy, Jo said, had been the only copy.

How could I have forgotten! In the original book, Amy burned Jo’s writing after the lime incident. It was such a mean-girls thing to do to someone else—I’d thought that even at eight years old when I’d read it for the first time. It was worse than little boys pulling the wings off flies. Was Amy some sort of sociopath?

And oh, the awful look on Jo’s face when she said it was her only copy.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Jo, feeling as though I alone in that room could understand what she was going through. It would be terrible to lose the only copy of something I’d written.

“I’ll hate you forever, Amy March!” Jo cried, giving Amy one last box on the ears—she’d already shaken Amy so much, her teeth had nearly chattered out of her head—before huffing off in the direction of the garret.

Overdramatic? Sure. But for once I couldn’t blame her.

Even Meg, Amy’s usual champion, couldn’t blame Jo for her anger.

Nor could Marmee, although as she tucked us in that night, I heard her lecture Jo softly about the inadvisability of letting the sun go down upon her anger. But Jo wasn’t ready to forgive.



The next morning Jo announced that she was going skating with Laurie.

Somehow overnight Amy had convinced herself that she was the injured party. Hey, she’d already apologized, hadn’t she? So no matter what she’d done to make Jo mad in the first place, if Jo wasn’t willing to forgive her instantly, then Jo was now in the wrong.

Amy informed any who would listen that the last time Jo had gone skating, she’d promised to take Amy the next time, and this was the last ice of the season. Spring would soon be here.

The last ice? Spring?

Just how long had I been here already? And what was going on back home? Would I ever get back home again? I almost wished things would move along quicker with Beth, so that I could do something heroic to save her, and finally return to my real life. Not that I didn’t like it here—I’d grown used to the unpasteurized milk, and then there was Laurie—but it wasn’t my real life. Not that my real life was so hot anyway, come to think of it.

Meg, in all her eldest-sister wisdom, advised Amy that she should go skating; that she should follow Jo and Laurie at a discreet distance, waiting for the golden opportunity to make friends with Jo again. Everyone knew Jo’s moods changed like the weather.

Amy had already grabbed her skates and was halfway to the door when it struck me what was about to happen.

My story amnesia lifted and I saw the scene so clearly: Laurie oblivious; Jo seeing Amy coming up behind them but pretending she didn’t; Laurie skating ahead to see if the ice was safe before racing; Amy never hearing the warning Laurie gave Jo to stay near the shore, that it wasn’t safe in the middle; Jo not caring if Amy heard or not; Amy heading for the middle of the river because she thought the ice would be smoother there; and Jo turning just in time to see Amy fall through.

So what if somehow Jo and Laurie pulled her out afterward, this was something dangerous I could prevent. Maybe, in addition to saving Beth at some future point, maybe I was supposed to keep Amy from falling through the cracks … literally!

“I’m coming with you!” I shouted after Amy, thinking to avert disaster with my presence.

Amy froze in the doorway, stunned.

“But you hate the cold!” Beth objected.

“You don’t even skate!” Meg further objected.

Well, she was right about that. In my real world, I hated any sport that involved giving up physical control, which included all winter sports, as far as I was concerned: skating, skiing, sledding, the luge—whatever the heck that was. And yes, I did hate being cold. Still …

“I don’t care!” I shouted, suddenly feeling the weight of my purpose in this world. “I’m coming with you!”

“But you don’t even have skates!” Amy said, walking out. Meg, perhaps seeing how urgent I felt even if she didn’t understand why, shoved a pair of decrepit-looking skates upon me. “Here, take mine.”

With hurried thanks, I grabbed them from her and raced off after Amy.



Brrrrr!

As much as I hated the cold when I was on land, it was even worse out here on the ice.

Were they sure spring was right around the corner?

One thing I knew was right around the corner was Laurie, who’d skated out of view around the bend in his fur-trimmed coat and cap, just like I remembered in my vision from the original book. Everything was going according to plot, right down to Jo being aware of Amy but pretending not to be, everything right down to Jo hearing Laurie say that the middle of the ice was too dangerous and her not caring if Amy heard him or not.

Everything was the same, except for the addition of me, of course.

Normally I would have been jealous of Jo and Laurie spending time alone together—this was different from them going off to a play in the company of prim Meg—but I didn’t have time for that now. As I teetered and wobbled and stumbled after Amy in the unfamiliar skates, it was all I could do to keep my balance.

Amy turned to call over her shoulder to me impatiently, “If you’re going to come, come!” Then she began to head toward the precarious middle of the ice.

“Wait!” I called after her.

“What is it, Emily?” she asked in exasperation. “I’m in a hurry here.”

I knew I had to stop her, had to keep her close to the shore where I still was, so I did the only thing I could think to do: I forced myself to fall.

I remembered a line from an old television commercial. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” I shouted, sprawling around on the ice as though I really couldn’t. Okay, I’ll admit it: I really couldn’t.

It’s hard to stand up on ice when you have nothing to hold on to, no real sense of balance, and you don’t know how to skate.

“Oh … fine.” She shook her blond locks and headed in my direction.

She was halfway to me when the crack came.

C-RACK!

It was so loud, like a gunshot, I don’t know how it was possible that people in the next town didn’t hear it.

I looked across the ice in time to see Amy’s arms shoot up into the air, and then her body disappeared into the black water that filled the space where the ice had cracked open, her little blue hood bobbing on the surface.

This is still fine, I said to myself, forcing a note of calm into my internal voice. So I didn’t stop her from falling through the ice. So what? This will be just like the book. Jo will have turned in time to see Amy fall through and Laurie will lie down flat and grab Amy while he sends Jo to go fetch a rail from that fence over there.

Only it wasn’t still fine. When I looked up in the direction Jo and Laurie had been just a minute ago, they weren’t there, so Jo hadn’t seen Amy fall through the ice.

Oh no, I realized with an even greater horror. This meant that the only person left to save Amy was … me???

Oh shoot.

“Amy! Hang on!” I called to the bobbing blue hood.

Then, still unable to rise in my skates, I dragged myself along the ice.

After much heaving and pulling, I finally edged up on the black hole. I’ll admit, I was a little scared to get close. What good would it do the world—any world—if I fell in too and we both drowned?

But then I realized that this was all my fault. In my misguided effort to avert disaster for Amy, I’d managed to make things worse. Now, instead of simply suffering a scary dunk in the water as she’d been meant to do, she could drown.

I had no choice. I had to save her.

Like the Grinch, my sometimes-ten-sizes-too-small heart grew three sizes that day.

I inched up all the way to the edge, not caring about my own safety anymore.

“Grab on to my hand, Amy!” I urged her.

But she didn’t seem to hear me, struggling as she was to keep her head above water, to keep it from disappearing beneath the surrounding ice.

If she didn’t hear my voice, did she hear the much louder crack that soon followed?

Because there it was—C-RACK!— and the ice beneath me was giving way and now I was in the black water beside her.

It was the coldest I’d ever been in my life, but I didn’t care. Somehow, I got my arms around her waist and with one enormous heave I threw her out of the water and onto the ice, like landing a really big fish. Then I tried to heave myself out too, using the ice border like I would the side of a swimming pool to leverage my body, but every time I bore down on another section of ice, it gave way beneath me.

And I was getting cold. So cold.

My hands became ice, my breathing shallow, and then suddenly I began to feel warmer even though I was still in the frigid water.

Was this how my life was going to end, I wondered, far from my real life, stuck in the middle of blasted Little Women?

And then there was Jo’s voice, yelling, “Emily March! What have you gotten yourself into? Get out of there this instant!”

And then there was Laurie, lying down on the ice, reaching out a hand until he could grasp on to my wrist tightly, keeping me above water while he yelled to Jo to get a rail from the fence over there.

And then they were handing me the rail, pulling me up and out to safety.

“It took you both long enough,” I said accusingly to Jo and Laurie.

“What happened?” Laurie asked, his concern so strong I would have felt hopeful for our future as a couple if I weren’t nearly dead.

“That’s never happened before,” Amy said oddly. Then she added with awe in her voice, “Emily saved my life.”

“Huh,” Jo said. “Well, I highly doubt that. Emily can’t even skate.”



Back home, Amy and I were wrapped in blankets and put before the fire, our teeth still chattering.

Jo couldn’t do enough for Amy. Apparently death was a great reminder of love.

“Well, no harm done,” Marmee said soothingly. “A little cold water never hurt anybody.”

I nearly choked on my tea.

No harm done? my mind screamed. A little cold water? I wanted to strangle Marmee. Amy had almost died out there. I’d almost died out there! Hadn’t any of these people ever heard of hypothermia before?

Oh, wait a second … 1862… perhaps no one had invented hypothermia yet … or maybe they just didn’t know about it …

And then they were hurrying Amy and me off to our beds, and I could hear Jo and Marmee talking over Amy’s snoring in the next room.

Jo was feeling guilty over her temper, worrying that one day she’d do something so awful it would destroy her life and make everyone hate her.

Serves you right, I thought. If we were in my world and you pulled a stunt like that—letting someone go out on thin ice when you knew the risks, and then if that person died, we’d call it negligent homicide and lock you away.

Wait a second. Maybe Amy wasn’t the resident sociopath. Or perhaps she and Jo were both pathological?

But there was Marmee’s voice, soothing Jo with stories about her own temper, how it had taken Marmee most of her life to conquer it.

“How did you?” Jo asked with rare timidity. “Conquer your temper, I mean.”

“I didn’t conquer it permanently,” Marmee said. “It came back to me again when I had four young daughters and we were poor.”

“Four? Don’t you mean five?” Jo said.

“Oh, that’s right,” Marmee said sounding puzzled. “I don’t know why, but for some reason, I forget at times that there are five of you and think there are just four.”

Gee, I wonder why that is? I almost snorted out loud. It was some comfort to realize that I wasn’t the only one here who was confused at times by all of this. Maybe the story mostly seemed preadapted to me, but there were these occasional wrinkles, as though the story still had to stretch to accommodate me.

Then Marmee droned on about Papa, how his goodness and perpetual patience had been the beacon that had led to her current temper-less state. He’d encouraged her to be the kind of woman her girls would want to grow up to emulate, a woman who would be proud and happy to have her girls confide in her.

It would have been so easy to snort then. So much of what she was saying was snort-worthy, like the idea of Papa being perpetually patient. Well, of course he was—because he never actually had to be there!

I thought about what Marmee and Jo had discussed about Jo’s temper being something she needed to work on and I remembered those books Marmee had given us for Christmas: the four—no, five copies of Pilgrim’s Progress. It occurred to me that Marmee knew that Jo’s temper was her weak spot; and further, that Marmee had intended for each of us to work on our character. Meg, I figured, needed to become less superior; we all knew about Jo’s temper and Amy’s vanity, not to mention Beth’s shyness—shyness might not be a huge flaw like a pathological temper, but it did keep Beth from fully enjoying her life. But what then was my character flaw, the big thing I had to work on? Surely, it had to be something more than conquering my tendency to be the family skank.

“I still don’t believe that story Amy told about Emily saving her,” Jo said. “Emily? Perhaps Amy was imagining things?”

“It does seem unlikely,” Marmee admitted.

Hey! I was outraged. I would have objected, loudly, but I was the eavesdropper here. And what did they mean by that? What did these people know about me that I didn’t? Was there something about me that made it seem unlikely I would ever save anyone else’s life?

Then Marmee said how much she missed Papa but how she’d told him to go to war because she wanted to give her best to the country she loved, and then Marmee counseled Jo to turn to her Heavenly Father for guidance, Amy woke up with a happy cry to see Jo there, the two hugged and kissed, and everything was forgiven and forgotten.

Well, I wouldn’t forget.

Amy could have died because of Jo … and Amy destroyed Jo’s book!

These Marches were nuts!