It was a good thing Meg had given me an out. I was having a hard-enough time keeping up with all the conversations in this confusingly elaborate dream-because that's what I decided this had to be-and it would have been impossible to rehearse for a play I knew nothing about.

As I watched the other four working and playing together, I thought about how their personalities in my dream matched what I remembered about them.

Meg was the prig.

Jo was the rebel.

Beth was the least cool of the four, but she was so sweet and kind, it would be impossible to make fun of her.

Amy was totally into herself, a blond Bratz doll.

But where did I fit into all this? I wondered. Where was my place? Jo had said I was the middle sister, but what exactly did that mean here?

Not that it mattered. I wouldn't be here much longer. I was bound to wake up any second.

Except I didn't wake up.

I didn't wake up during the long rehearsal, which was confusing-put it this way: it was no episode of Glee.

I didn't wake up when Marmee came home. She was on the shrimpy side when compared with her older daughters and she had some kind of a cloak thing on plus a bonnet. I mean, come on. A bonnet? Still, in spite of her uncool appearance, when she entered the house the others acted like they'd seen the sun rise indoors.

I didn't wake up when we had our dinner, which they kept calling "tea," with bread and butter; or when we all gathered around Marmee in front of the fire as she read a letter from "Papa," who, it turned out, was a priest or pastor or something in the American Civil War. I always thought old people didn't have to serve, but the letter said he would be gone for a year. It also contained messages for each of his "little women." And here's the weirdest part-my dream was so detailed, there was even a direct message from him to me in the letter: Emily, my middle March, know that even when you feel

there is no clear place for you, there is always in my heart.

Not that the message made a lot of sense, but it felt kind of nice to be treated like one of the in-crowd around here.

As the night went on, in order to keep that feeling of fitting in, I pretty much followed along with whatever they did, mirroring their every move, trying to speak like them the few times I opened my mouth. It got a little easier, I guess, but those shalls were still coming hard to me.

We sewed until nine at night; or I should say, they sewed. I'd never sewn a stitch in my life! I was relieved to see each sister take one corner of a quilt. All I had to do was pass them supplies as they worked. Then there was some singing around the old piano while Beth played, followed by getting ready for bed; I didn't wake up during any of it, though I kept expecting to, any moment now.

I didn't even wake up when Beth and Amy went to one bedroom while I followed Meg and Jo into a connecting bedroom. There was a white linen granny nightgown and there was even a bed for me in my Dream March House! Eventually, Marmee came up and sang us lullabies in the most beautiful voice imaginable, before giving us each a kiss on our cheeks.

At that point feeling a part of things, I didn't want to wake up.

Two.

But the next morning when I became aware that the bedroom was freezing cold, OMG, I certainly wanted to wake up!

I don't know everything about every subject in the world, but I'd had enough dreams in my life to know that dreams don't just go on and on like this. Unless ...

Wait a second here. Was I in a coma?

But I must have been in some sort of an accident to be in a coma. And I didn't remember any accident, only opening up that darned book and reading the first line.

No, I told myself. It wasn't a coma because I could feel the cold. I'd simply dreamed that I'd somehow landed myself in the March household in 1861. But as hard as I tried to shake myself awake, the evidence before my eyes wouldn't go away. There was Meg, still sleeping. There was Jo, still sleeping.

So, not a dream. Not a coma.

I tried the pinching thing again but all I got for it was a red mark on my hand. I was going to have to stop doing that to myself.

But, if not a coma, then what?

Had I found some way to bust through the space-time continuum?

That didn't make any sense either. As far as I could remember, the March family had never been real. They were merely a figment of Louisa May Alcott's imagination.

Then what? What exactly had happened to me? All I knew was that I had to get out of here. I had to get back to my normal life-the one where there were no granny nightgowns in my wardrobe and people didn't say "shall."

But how? How?

Then it struck me. Ever since this "dream" had started, I'd been inside the house. Inside the house. That was it! If I could only get outside again, things would reset and I'd wake up.

I threw off the sheets and blankets, not minding a bit about the cold in spite of my thin white granny nightgown and hairy legs-I'd peeked the night before as I'd climbed into bed.

I heard a woman humming and followed the sound to an old-fashioned-looking kitchen. It reminded me of a class trip we'd taken to Sturbridge Village, what with all the antiques, like a barrel with a wooden paddle thingy sticking up through the middle-a butter churn, maybe? Standing at a table was a woman I didn't recognize. Well, that wasn't a huge shock. I hadn't known any of these people until just recently!

Ignoring the woman, even when she shouted "Emily!" after me, I raced for the back door. Once there, I threw it open and stepped out into ...

Fresh snow! I instantly felt the coldness on my bare skin as my feet sank into it. I looked around me and saw real winter just like on an old New England postcard.

But never mind that now ... I was free!

I experienced a head-rush of excitement at having left the March household behind me. Somehow, I would find my way home! But when I turned around, the house was still there-a house without a satellite dish or a paved driveway. And looking at the landscape around me? It was all equally unfamiliar. I saw a horse and carriage traveling by on the dirt road. The horse and carriage might have fit into any country road back home, but the driver with his odd clothes wouldn't. Was he wearing knee pants with stockings? Had I escaped or hadn't I?

Barely thinking about what I was doing, I leaped back over the doorstep, then outside again, then back and forth. Maybe I had to build up speed to trigger the trip back to the future.

Mixed feelings filled me as I leaped back and forth. What was I going to do? How was I ever going to get out of here? But then the other part of me felt something different, something the opposite of panic. I felt a sense of calm as I realized that no amount of jumping out the back door was going to work. I was stuck, with no choice but to just deal with things until some other solution came along.

I'd always been known to be, well, a little excitable about things. In fact, Charlotte used to call me "emo" until Anne pointed out that nobody said "emo" anymore. So how could overreacting me be so accepting of this situation now? Maybe because I knew there weren't going to be any handbooks lying around on How to Get Out of a Strange Time Period When You've Accidentally Slipped into One. But it was something else too. I was experiencing something completely original. Had anyone ever had anything like this happen to them before?

"Hannah, what is Emily doing?" I heard what I now recognized as Jo's irritable voice and I realized who the woman in the kitchen was: Hannah, who was more of a friend than a live-in servant, even though that's what she technically was to the March family.

I couldn't exactly tell Jo that I'd been searching for the seam that separated her fictional world from my real one.

Even I wasn't crazy enough to try that!

"I was just ... enjoying the snow," I said instead with an awkward laugh to Jo as I leaped back inside again. I'd work out my escape later. That seam, the way in and back-it had to be here somewhere ...

"Silly goose." Jo gazed down at my red feet. "You'll catch your death of cold." Then she shook her horse's mane of hair as she grabbed my hand. "But never mind that now. Marmee has left presents for all of us under our pillows."

I followed obediently as she tugged me along, feeling grateful that thanks to her I hadn't had to embarrass myself even more by asking who Hannah was.

Marmee had indeed left presents for us. Oh, yay, whoopee.

There were copies of Pilgrim's Progress for each of us: crimson for Jo, green for Meg, gray for Beth, blue for Amy. As for mine? It was brown.

Brown? It was the Incident of the Shawls all over again!

"I'm so sorry," Marmee explained, "but it was the only color left."

As for the inscription?

Wherever you go, dearest Emily, there you are.

I felt a rush of frustration. Was this some kind of joke?

Hurriedly, I sneaked glances at the inscriptions in my ... sisters' books. But theirs were all inspirational, biblical even. Whereas mine was ...

Wherever you go, dearest Emily, there you are.

They were taunting me! I was on the point of saying something, but then I glanced over at Marmee and saw the sweet look on her face.

"It's ... lovely," I finally lied through my teeth. Then, thinking it would be smarter to talk like the rest of them in order to avoid detection, I added, "I shall rely on these wise words and, um, let them guide me like a beacon through life, always."

Marmee beamed.

"Well," Amy said, with an uncharacteristic snort in my general direction, "don't overdo it."

Jo was going on and on about the army shoes she'd given Marmee for a Christmas present.

And what had I bought Marmee, to go along with Jo's army shoes, Meg's gloves, Beth's handkerchiefs, and Amy's-as it turned out-big bottle of cologne? Well, even though I couldn't remember going shopping with them, even though I'd somehow leaped from that first night in front of the fireplace to this Christmas morning, somehow bypassing the mall crawl altogether, I'd managed to buy Marmee a dollar's worth of paper so she could write to Papa. It was nice to know I was thoughtful if hardly original.

The way Jo blathered on about how she wished she were a boy so she could fight with the men, side by side with our chaplain papa-honestly, I'd only been here a short time, but already I was sick of it.

Someone needed to set her straight about war! After all, I'd watched the news and gone to history class! However necessary the American Civil War might have been, there was nothing nice about young guys getting killed.

"Iraq!" I burst out with it. "Afghanistan!" I went on hastily when they all stared at me. "And by the way," I mumbled, hoping to distract them from my outburst, "I'm hungry. When's breakfast around here?"

I stared back, returning their stunned looks with what I hoped looked like firmness. Of course, they didn't have a clue about Iraq and Afghanistan! For a moment, fear grabbed me, fear of being discovered as the ... March impostor that I was. If they discovered that, they might throw me out on the streets. And then not only would I be stuck in the wrong time period, I'd be a homeless person stuck in the wrong time period. But then again, they already seemed to have accepted me as one of them. So I'd be the eccentric March, I thought with near-manic glee-I'd found my place!

"Never mind whatever it is you're going on about, Emily," Jo said. "Didn't you just hear Marmee say that there's a poor German woman living nearby with a newborn baby and six children all freezing in one bed because they have no fire and nothing to eat and that we should give them our Christmas breakfast?"

Um, no, I thought. Somehow, I'd missed that. On top of everything else, was I now suffering from story amnesia? It was like there were things that happened that the others seemed to know but I didn't. And there were also things I didn't remember from my many times reading the book.

"We will have bread and milk for our own breakfast," Meg said, tying a totally ugly bonnet on her head.

"Yes, Marmee says we will make it up at dinner, so what does it matter if we starve a little now?" Amy's words were brave considering she was, well, Amy, but I got the impression that if her sisters hadn't been pressuring her, she'd have loved to do the wrong thing.

And so would I. What were these people, nuts? They planned to go from a breakfast of bread and milk straight to dinner with nothing in between. I couldn't live that way. It was worse than eating lettuce every day to impress a guy!

"I'm not going." I crossed my arms in front of my chest.

"Aren't you feeling well?" Meg asked, placing a hand on my forehead.

"Would you stop doing that all the time?" I said, annoyed, as I swatted her hand away. "I just don't see any point in giving away a perfectly good breakfast."

The others gaped at me.

"What?" I said, feeling self-conscious and indignant at the same time. So what if the others thought me selfish-I was hungry! "Honestly, what difference does it make?" I went on. "So we make the big gesture of giving them our breakfast now, but what next? Do we give them our dinner too? Our breakfast again in the morning? Of course not! We can't do that, or eventually we starve. So, please tell me, what is the point in doing something that will only help these poor people for a few hours but, in the long run, the larger problem will still be there?"

Beth stepped forward and stood in front of me. For a strange moment, I thought she might say something harsh, the sort of thing I expected from Jo. But when she did speak, her words were gentle, her expression sad.

"It is Christmas morning," Beth said, taking my hand in hers. "I admit, it is hard to give away our feast, and I shall be hungry all day. But think of how much harder it is to go daily without, as the Hummels do."

The Hummels-that must be the name of the German family.

"Yes," Beth went on, "tomorrow the Hummels will have to go back to starving to death, but should we not give them this one happy moment, on Christmas morning of all days? I, for one, should be happy to go hungry all day. Indeed, I wish we could do this for them every day."

Oh God, I groaned inwardly at her sincerity. How had I landed myself here? And who did Beth think she was-Oprah?

Still, the combination of sincerity and serenity in her expression got to me. Somehow, I could stand to have the others think I was selfish, but not Beth.

"Oh, whatever," I conceded sourly. "Let's go give our breakfast away."

The Hummels turned out to be exactly as described: a poor mother with a newborn and six children freezing in one bed with no fire and nothing to eat.

Now they had fire, at least for the morning, because Jo had hauled some of our own firewood over. And they had food, at least for the morning, because we'd brought our Christmas breakfast.

In spite of the grumbles in my stomach, as I looked around at those six little faces, happily eating the fresh muffins and pudding I wished I were eating, I was glad I'd been a part of this, this giving. But then I saw Beth seated in front of the fireplace, the Hummel woman's baby cradled in her lap, and I felt a chill go up my spine. I didn't know where it came from, but I knew there was something I should be remembering right now and yet couldn't.

"Hey, Beth," I tried to urge her. "Give the baby back to its mother and come over here."

But she was so caught up in that baby, it was as though she never heard me.

The bread we had for our breakfast was the warmest, most awesome-smelling bread I'd ever eaten-even better than Panera! "Are you going to sniff that bread or eat it?" Jo said at one point. Well, I guess I did have my nose pressed a little too closely. As for the strangely yellowish milk, it didn't necessarily look bad, just different. "Aren't you going to pour the cream off the top and then shake yours?" Jo said at another point as I raised the glass toward my lips. Oh. Right. I poured. I shook. Then I raised the glass again hoping to drink a bit before any more nasty comments were flung my way, but as the glass got nearer, I wrinkled my nose as it struck me: yuck! Unpasteurized. Still, in spite of the wonderful newness of the one and the strange newness of the other, bread and milk for breakfast wasn't exactly exciting. But as I went through the rest of the day, feeling hunger grow in my stomach, I felt good about that hunger, virtuous even. We had done a good thing and, as the others pointed out, it was just for one day. Tomorrow we'd be back on regular rations.

As it got dark, Meg announced that it was time for the Christmas play I'd seen the others rehearsing. I watched carefully to see if I was supposed to do anything, but it didn't seem like it. As far as I could tell, I was just supposed to be an observer.

A part of me was relieved-how could I have performed in a play when I hadn't learned the script?-but a part of me felt PO'd. Why didn't I, the middle March, have a part in the play? Did I have stage fright? Was I a bad actress?

Meg and Jo put on their costumes on a cot bed they referred to as "the dress circle," while Beth and Amy helped. Then, as the audience-in other words, Marmee and Hannah and me-took their seats, a blue-and-yellow chintz curtain was raised.