“Jo March, you are perverse enough to provoke a saint!”
—Little Women
On Tuesday afternoon, I was loitering near the door of the café when Amy raced around the corner. At the sight of me, she slowed to a stroll.
“Look who showed up on time for once. I wonder why?” The words were accompanied by a squinting, lip-tapping pantomime worthy of a silent movie.
“I have to be here. I don’t know if you know this, but that’s what mandatory means.” I’d actually gotten here half an hour early to meet Hudson, after he texted to ask if I wanted to hang out before auditions. Not that I was going to share that with Amy.
Laurie arrived next, and draped an arm around each of our shoulders. “My ladies. Sometimes I don’t know which of you I like more.”
“She’s not going to share,” Amy informed him as he reached for the box of granola bars I was holding. “So you’re better off picking me.”
Dropping his hand to my waist, Laurie tugged me back against his side. “No snacks for your Laurie?” He fluttered his lashes.
“Something in your eye?” I asked sweetly.
“I bet she’s saving them for him.” Amy nodded at Hudson, who was crossing the gravel driveway. “Which he obviously needs the calories.”
“Aha! I see how it is.” Laurie winked at me but didn’t let go. “You’re afraid little lover boy will be jealous.”
“No. And also, no.”
“You can’t use a double negative, JoJo. Even I know that.”
“That’s not . . .” I gave up. “Maybe your cologne is too strong for me.”
He held his shirt away from his chest, inhaling deeply. “Really? I like it.”
Amy loudly sniffed his shoulder. “Oh yeah.”
“Hey.” Hudson studied our odd trio for a moment before smiling at me. I smacked Laurie’s hand away from the box of granola bars. I was distracted, not blind.
“Hi.” Hopefully Hudson could tell from my sigh that I hadn’t invited these two clowns. “You ready for the excitement?”
Amy huffed. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Actually, Amy, it’s a life-or-Beth situation.” I did a fair imitation of my sister in unsolicited-monologue mode, which was about where my acting ability maxed out.
Hudson snickered, but Amy’s face pruned with annoyance.
“That’s funny.” Laurie shook his head. “Usually Amy’s the one who’s like, ‘I love this so much,’ and Jo’s all ‘Ugh, I hate it here.’” He spoke in a screechy falsetto for Amy, hands splayed on either side of his face, while I sounded like a constipated stoner.
“So Jo’s the cynical one.” Hudson made a note on his phone. “Tell me more.”
Amy threw her shoulders back, like she’d been waiting for her cue. “Jo March is mostly a self-insert Louisa May Alcott, with a slightly happier ending. Although not artistically, since her creativity is totally stifled.”
“I was talking about this Jo, actually.” He indicated me with his thumb.
“It’s not that complicated. Bad mood, no style, running. Boom. The story of Jo.”
I bared my teeth at her. “Amy’s even easier, because her top three are all peroxide.”
“I forgot to say ‘no sense of humor.’” She nodded at his phone. “Add that to the list.”
Hudson attempted a redirect. “What’s Jo like at school?”
“Oh, Jo’s not popular like me and Meg.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Just when I thought I knew all my sister’s delusions by heart, she busted out a new one. Amy had a gaggle of friends, but they were mostly legends in their own minds. Meg’s crowd was more of the rich ’n’ lazy set. They didn’t star in plays or play sports or wear crowns at homecoming, but if there had been a yacht club in our landlocked town, my older sister’s crew would have been charter members. Our family was obviously not on the same level financially, but somehow my sister’s pretty face and inertia had granted her access to the boat-shoes scene.
“FYI, in real life Laurie was never hung up on Jo,” Amy informed Hudson, waving at me. “Don’t believe the hype.”
“It was pretty casual.” Laurie winked at him, bro to bro. “Not that I’m the type to kiss and tell.”
“Can we talk about something interesting now?” Amy whined, one thousand percent referring to herself.
“You’re from New York, right?” Laurie leaned past me to address Hudson, like I was an inconvenient wooden post. “The Big Apple.” Hudson nodded. “Ask me how many times I’ve seen Phantom.”
“How many times have you seen Phantom?”
“Seven.” Laurie let that sit for a few beats. “And counting.”
Hudson absorbed this important data with a slow nod before turning to me. “What about you?”
“Hard pass. No phantoms, no opera.”
The corners of his mouth tipped up. “I mean, have you been to New York?”
“Uh, no.” Was it supposed to be a universal rite of passage, like riding a bike? Also, did we look like we had that kind of cash?
“You should go. I could show you around.”
He sounded playful, but also like he meant it, which . . . I’d have to unpack later, without an audience. Laurie executed a precise single-brow lift, an expression I’d watched him practice in an endless succession of selfies.
Amy squirmed with impatience. “This is almost as boring as watching a roomful of Beths.”
“It must be a little weird, having a new sister every year,” Hudson said.
“At least we get to pick a Beth. As opposed to being stuck with someone from birth.” She wrinkled her nose. “Know what I mean, Faux Jo?”
“Sure, Shamy.” I ran a finger under my lower eyelid. The middle finger, to be precise.
“Ah, sisterhood,” Mom said loudly, opening the café door from inside.
Andrea peered from behind her. “What are we talking about?”
“You know how it is with Jo and Amy. So much good-natured ribbing.” Mom threw in a hand wave, like that made it more convincing.
“Life imitating art?” Andrea suggested.
“Yes.” Mom beamed at her. “Exactly.”
“Speaking of blurred lines,” Hudson said, “doesn’t the name thing get confusing? Someone says ‘Jo’ and it’s like, which one?”
“Just say JoJo,” Laurie offered. “That’s what I do.”
“No, you don’t.” I stared into his eyes. The power of suggestion.
“And there have been, what, seven or eight different Beths?” Hudson went on.
“But Beth doesn’t matter,” Amy reminded everyone. “Her character is basically a prop on Jo’s emotional journey, and who needs more of that?” She pretended to snore.
“You know, I think that’s a wonderful idea, Hudson.”
We all stared at my mother with varying degrees of Huh?
“To help our visitors, let’s all try to express ourselves more clearly over the next few weeks, whether we’re speaking to or about each other.”
“Okay.” I lifted my chin at Amy. “You annoy the crap out of me. How was that?”
“I meant that we should use proper names, Jo.”
“Sorry. You annoy the crap out of me, Amy.”
“‘You annoy the you-know-what out of me, Amy Porter’ would be better,” Mom admonished. “The point is to distinguish between the workaday you and your character.”
“Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Laurie suggested awesomely.
“Or we could simply say Book Jo instead of, you know, Jo.” Mom gestured at me like this were the most natural thing in the world, even though I’d been trying for years to convince my family to draw a hard line between That Book and our real lives.
“Ooh,” Amy jumped in, not above using my name to draw attention to herself, “it could be BJ for short.”
Mom winced. “No, dear.”
“What about you?” Andrea leaned closer to Laurie, who automatically shifted to display the three-quarters profile he considered his best angle. “Interesting they don’t call you by your given name.”
“I don’t mind,” he said.
“No?” she pressed, like maybe he hadn’t thought it through.
Laurie shook his head. “I can rock a girl’s name. It’s cool.”
“Some might consider it erasing the identity of the only cast member of color.” It wasn’t clear from Andrea’s tone whether she counted herself among the some or was playing devil’s advocate.
It was true that Little Women Live! was a predominantly white production of a very white book. Mom hired less homogeneous Beths whenever possible, but we were limited by the pastiness of the local population—and the fact that most of the roles were permanently taken. It would be hard to diversify the cast unless she started bumping off her daughters.
Maybe I should volunteer?
“Some people call me LB when I’m not in character,” Laurie offered. “If it makes you feel better.”
“It’s a football thing,” I told Hudson. “His real name is Leo.”
“LB as in pound it.” Laurie raised his fist, and Amy fell over herself in the rush to tap his knuckles. “And because I bench major LBs, if you know what I mean.” Pounds, he mouthed, adding a bicep flex in case we still didn’t get it.
“Also those are your initials,” I reminded him.
“That too. But the L could stand for Laurie.” He winked at us. “The one in the book.”
“Shouldn’t it be BL?” Hudson asked. “For Book Laurie?”
Amy scowled at him. “As someone who has studied the text, I think it’s close enough. And you can all start calling me BA, as in Bad Ass.” She elbowed Laurie, who gave a belated nod of appreciation.
“Except the whole point is you’re not BA. You’re just Amy.” It was like working in a head-trauma ward.
“Who’s on first,” Andrea murmured.
“What about you?” I asked my mother.
“Me?”
“What will we call you?” It was no secret that Mom loved when people conflated her with Marmee, the saintly maternal figure from Little Women.
“That shouldn’t be an issue.” Her smile was serene, like she’d just sipped a cup of chamomile tea after an hour of predawn yoga. “Marmee keeps herself in the background. She’s all about letting her girls take center stage.”
I didn’t intend to roll my eyes. It was an involuntary reaction, like a sneeze.
“You know what your nickname should be, Jo?” Amy didn’t wait to be asked. “The Weekly Volcano. Because you’re always about to blow.”
“That’s not really appropriate,” Mom began, but my little sister was on a roll.
“I know you know what I’m talking about.” Amy tipped her head toward Andrea, like they were fellow scientists in a disaster movie, surrounded by clueless civilians. “In the book, Jo submits some of her TV-MA stories to a newspaper called the Weekly Volcano, but then this old boring guy guilt-trips her about writing racy romance. Which is sort of what happened to the real Louisa May. Personally, I think it’s a bummer she doesn’t get more attention for her sensation stories, which totally slap. I’m talking about Alcott,” she clarified. “And also Book Jo. But not this Jo. She’s no writer. We don’t let her anywhere near our press materials.”
“Keep going,” I deadpanned. “It gets funnier the more you explain.”
Mom made a show of checking her watch. “Why don’t we head inside?”
“Aren’t we missing a sister?” Hudson asked.
“Meg will join us as soon as she can,” Mom assured him. Translation: sometime between tomorrow and never.
“Don’t you mean BM?” Amy wondered aloud. “Our BM doesn’t follow a regular schedule, but it’s always a relief when she finally gets here.”
Andrea looked amused.
“You’re still doing it wrong,” I told her. “But also, we don’t need a code name for Meg. If she’s doing something, it’s the one from the book. If she’s comatose or doesn’t bother showing up, we’re talking about the actual Meg.”
Amy mimed a head explosion, complete with sonic boom. Maybe I’d taken the bitchiness too far, but the double standard in our family when it came to Meg made me want to punch something.
“Jo’s just jealous,” Amy informed everyone as we trooped into the café. “Because of David.”
“Who’s David?” Hudson asked, with what sounded like more than journalistic interest.
The head tip, the hand curl, the inhale like she was about to deep-sea dive: this was Amy’s version of stepping up to a podium and tapping the mike. “If you ask me, David is the real Laurie of this story.”
Laurie gasped like she’d sucker-punched him.
“Not as a performer. You own that role,” my sister purred, before turning to Hudson with a chilling smile. “You should ask Jo about David. She’s the one who’s obsessed with him.”
I sent her a look that threatened violent retribution, but Amy was too caught up in the scene playing out in her head to notice.
“Jo used to follow David around like a puppy, only not small or cute. Even though he has a real dog who’s way cooler.” She paused, possibly recognizing she’d stopped making sense. “Too bad for her he chose Meg instead.”
“And now I cry myself to sleep every night.” I slow-clapped. “Great story.”
“Girls,” Mom scolded, like we were equally guilty. “Let’s focus. It’s time to meet our Beth.”
“You mean NB?” Amy suggested, in her most sickeningly sweet voice. “For New Beth?”
“That could work,” Mom said vaguely, gesturing us to our seats.
“Or NBD,” my sister went on. “Since she’s No Big Deal.”
It was the kind of editorializing that would have earned me an expression of Deep Disappointment, with a side of Sad Feelings. Since this was Amy, Mom merely touched a finger to her lips, like she was telling her to use her library voice. “Is everyone ready?”
“To Beth or not to Beth, that is the question,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Don’t write that down,” Amy told Hudson, who was grinning at me. “It’s not funny.”
“Beth number one,” our mother called, before her real daughters could start slapping each other. “You’re on.”