Little Women and Me (17 page)

“Well, see, that was the problem,” I said. “Your piece was simply too long, so I had to cut it.”

“You cut it from ten pages to two lines?”

“Why, yes,” I said. “Space considerations, you know.” I held up the newspaper, pointed to the item about Hannah. “I had to leave room for our advertisers, didn’t I?”

Two things happened then.

Jo lunged for my throat and Laurie came out of the closet. “What are you doing here?” I could only gasp out the words because I was still busy trying to pry Jo’s fingers off my throat.

Seeing him there, Jo instantly let go of me.

“I invited him,” Jo said.

The others gasped.

“I just thought he might like to write for the newspaper,” Jo said.

“But he’s a …
boy
!” Beth said.

“No, he’s not,” said Jo. “He’s Teddy.” Teddy was Jo’s
special
name for him. Figured.

“But we’ve never had a boy write for the newspaper before,” Amy said.

“Yes, but wouldn’t it be nice to get a fresh perspective?” Jo said. “And as I say, it is only Laurie …” She picked up the paper, handed it to him. “What do you think?”

Why, you little rat!
That’s what
I
thought. She wanted him to write for the paper?
HA!
I’d bet anything she’d hidden him away in that closet hoping that when he saw my first issue of the paper, he’d think it lame. I’d bet anything that was it because it was certainly the kind of thing I’d do to her.

And it was lame, I saw that now as I looked over his shoulder: “A Happy Death,” “Of Cats and Dolls,” “The Tragedy of Her Nose”—it was as lousy as Jo’s paper had been.

“
The Twist Times
.” He chuckled over the title. “Very clever.”

Well, maybe it wasn’t
so
bad …

“I do think there could maybe be more local news,” he continued, “you know, since it is a newspaper. And that piece on writing does seem to be a bit, er, truncated … hmm … Do you think Hannah might be willing to teach me to cook?” He folded the paper, not waiting for an answer, and turned to me with an admiring smile. “Nice work.” Then he added, surveying my dowdy dress, “I’d think, though, as editor you’d get to dress better.”

Was there no pleasing him fashionwise?

“I hope you’ll let me write for your paper,” he addressed me as though we were the only two there.

Why had his attitude toward me changed?
I wondered. Oh, well. He was probably only being overly nice to me so he could get published. Everyone wants to see their names in print—fifteen minutes of fame and all that.

Still, might as well take advantage of the situation …

“Of course you can,” I said.

“But it’s not up to just you,” Jo said testily. “There has to be a vote.”

What was this? Now that it turned out that Laurie admired my paper, she no longer wanted him involved?

“Well,” I said sweetly to her, “it was
your idea
to invite him.” I turned to the group at large. “All those in favor?”

“Aye!” Amy said.

“Aye!” Meg said.

“Aye!” Beth said, adding, “even if he is a boy.”

“Aye!” I thrust my hand up in the air in Jo’s direction. “
Aye!
” I waved that hand insistently.

“Fine,” she said sourly, raising a limp hand. “Aye.”

“But he’s going to need a male name to write under,” Beth said. “I mean, I realize he’s already got one. But you know, like the rest of us use from the book?”

But I’d exhausted all the names I could remember from
Oliver Twist
.

“Bull’s-eye okay with you?” I asked Laurie with a doubtful smile.

“It’s perfect.” Laurie’s eyes sparkled as he smiled back at me. “I don’t mind being the dog.”

Then Laurie informed us about how, in anticipation of being invited to join our merry journalistic group, he’d set up a makeshift post office in the hedge between our properties. The box had a roof that opened so that messages and books and things might circulate more freely among us.

The others thought this was a capital idea—that was Jo’s word for it: “capital”—but I could see trouble down the road.

What if one sister intercepted a letter from another sister to Laurie? What if one sister stole a letter from Laurie to another sister?

A post office between our two houses?

How reckless!

Eleven

Poor Pip was dead!

Who the heck was Pip?

Turn back the clock five days, to June 1…

The Kings had gone to the seashore, leaving Meg with three weeks free. Aunt March was off to Plumfield, and while Jo had feared right up to the last minute that the old woman would either decide not to go after all or would insist on Jo coming with her, the carriage that took her away only contained one Aunt March, one driver, and about twenty-two trunks. Then, since Meg and Jo both had a vacation of sorts at home, Beth and Amy begged Marmee to let them take a break from their studies too.

And Marmee agreed to all of it, saying that while three weeks might be too long, she would allow her girls to experiment with one week of leisure, a life with all play and no work.

Funny, no one asked what I thought of all this, what I wanted to do.

The truth was, much as I might have grumbled about my duties, I’d grown used to my round of regular responsibilities. But now, with no King children or Aunt March to go to, no Beth and Amy to help with their lessons, I was out of a job. Or jobs.

The jack-of-all-trades had nothing to do.

They say that idle time is the devil’s hands.

Isn’t that what they say?

Well, something like that.

The others settled into their first day of leisure. Meg said she would just laze around the whole time. Jo intended to read in the old apple tree and go on “larks” with Laurie—well, we’d see about
that
! Who was violating the pact now? Amy was going to spend her time drawing, while Beth had her dolls to attend to.

That left me.

The
Pickwick Portfolio/Twist Times
having renewed my energy for writing, I spent my time working on the story I’d started about a girl who time travels to an earlier era. With no other distractions, I figured I could make real headway on it in a week.

Of course, I was finding there were problems with writing in this world. For one thing, there were no computers. Everything had to be done in daylight or by candlelight and by hand. It was all write, write, write with my right, right, right—I swear, my right wrist was getting muscular, at least two times larger than my left! If this kept up, my right wrist would be the equivalent of Amy’s nose: something to be self-conscious about and laughed over.

Okay, maybe I was getting carried away.

But it was awful not having a computer. I couldn’t move text around easily and the sheets of paper I worked on got muddled-looking with all the strikeouts and arrows indicating something should be moved here or there; never mind that there was no Internet for me to procrastinate with.

Then there was the added problem of finding a safe place to hide my increasingly large stack of pages. I didn’t want the others to see what I was writing. I mean, it wasn’t like I was giving away the secret recipe for Snapple, but some people around here might be …
offended
if they, oh, I don’t know …
recognized
themselves in any of my characters.

I snuck up to the garret, used a stick to pry loose a floorboard, and shoved the day’s pages inside, on top of pages I’d hastily stuffed in there on previous occasions.

There!

It was a good story, I thought. I wondered if, if and when I returned to my real life, I’d be able to take it with me.

Everyone was bored.

Of course, no one would admit it. But when Marmee asked at day’s end, “How was your first day of leisure, girls?” after a moment of silence Meg responded, “Wonderful! Although for some reason, the day did seem extraordinarily long.”

“Interesting,” was all Marmee said, but her smile struck me as smug.

I studied her.
What a shrewd … Marmee she is!
I thought. When she’d said we could try this “experiment” for a week, I hadn’t seen right away that she was the one conducting the experiment … and that it was on us! It was like she was some sort of mad scientist.
“If I do
X
and allow the girls to do
Y
, I predict that I will wind up with
Z
result … and then
I
can have the pleasure of pontificating on it all!”

That
would be a fun speech to endure!

I hadn’t realized, all those times I’d read
Little Women
when I was younger, how pompous Marmee could be.

Of course, unlike the others, I hadn’t been bored at all that day. I’d liked having so many hours to work on my short story that was really turning into more of a book. But it wasn’t the sort of thing I’d want to do all day long every day.

If I did, my right wrist would fall off!

It really was boring
, I thought to myself the next day with a yawn,
having no specific duties to fill my day with.
When I was back home, I’d loved free time because there was so much that I could do for fun. But here? In the 1800s? There was no TV, no computers, no phones to talk or text on all day long if I wanted to. There was definitely no Twitter. There was just sitting around the house. For short periods of time, it wasn’t bad. But like this? It was too
much
quiet.

Marmee and her wretched experiments!

That’s probably why I felt so much excitement and relief when on the second day of the experiment, Jo walked in with a letter that Laurie had left in our post office.

“He says it’s going to be a perfect day for rowing on the river!” she announced, looking as relieved and excited as I felt.

I quickly hurried to get a bonnet, finally settling on Hannah’s because it was the largest by far.

The sun—I hated it as much as I hated winter
, I thought as I tied a bow beneath my chin. With my auburn hair and fair skin, I
burned easily, and I’d left my SPF90 back in the real world somewhere.