...when high school wasn't easy she's the reason I survived.

When Josephine March was sixteen years old, she wiped her sweaty palm on her jacket, gripped the handle of a wooden baseball bat, then sent it crashing into the windshield of a muddy red truck. An ominous note was left on the front seat.

And that boy never even looked in Amy's direction ever again.

"It's weird- I mean, I'm glad he isn't bothering me anymore, but I wonder what made him do such a quick one-eighty?" Amy wondered, sitting on the dock with her sisters, their toes in the water. Meg noticed Jo looking particularly hard at the water. Her ice cream cone- to celebrate the start of spring break- was melting in her hand. She was distracted.

"Maybe he realized he was being weird and creepy," Beth suggested. She took a lick off her strawberry cone. It was like her, to always assume the best of people.

"Or maybe he got scared," Jo said. A drop of her chocolate ice cream landed on her arm. When she went to finish it, she took a big bite, sinking her teeth into the frozen middle.

"Don't do that!" Amy shuddered.

"What?"

"Bite it! That's so weird."

"You wuss. It's faster."

She would confess what she had done five years later when Meg took her out on her birthday for her first drink. Instead of the taste of chocolate or rocky road, Jo felt a slight burn in the back of her throat as she confessed.

"I mean, he was in my grade. It was awful."

"Yeah. It was awful. But you could have been in big trouble."

"I don't regret it."

Meg landed the starring role in The Wizard of Oz her senior year.

She didn't intend to try out for Dorothy at first, but Jo and Amy had practically rioted until she took the audition music home.

"I'm not- I don't look like Dorothy!" she sighed. "Dorothy is skinnier and- and she's white!" Meg was the spitting image of their mother- Latina through and through.

"So?" Jo snorted. "Melissa gives Wicked Witch of the West vibes, but I bet they'll still cast her as Glinda because she's a soprano. Just- you know, wow them. You make it look so easy, you're a great singer!"

"You have to try," Amy implored.

She couldn't look at the cast list when it gets taped to the choir room door, even though she has been losing sleep over it for the past week. Jo had to check for her.

When she heard an uncharacteristic squeal, Meg looked up. Jo was grinning, flapping her hands excitedly. "You did it! You did it!"

Winter break for Meg was spent in a happy daze, looping the soundtrack and roping her sisters into practicing the scenes with her.

Beth worked on her dress for weeks, and when she was finished, there was a grey skirt and a hidden blue skirt that came down with the release of a few snap buttons. It was perfect.

And when the night finally came and they took their bows after the first performance, a flower flew onto the stage with a tag fixed to it. Her name was written there in familiar, neat handwriting. She followed the sound of Jo and Laurie- each trying to whistle louder than the other- and found John in the crowd.

He wasn't applauding anymore, but Meg couldn't blame him. He had picked the seat between Laurie and Jo and currently had his ears covered. He did, however, have a big grin on his face.

Amy and Beth were deemed twins when they went to kindergarten in the same year.

There was actually a year between them, but Beth wasn't well enough to be away from home when the time for enrollment came. So the youngest two March sisters stepped onto the bus the next year: hand in hand, six and seven years old, and sat next to each other every day in the alphabetical seating chart.

Throughout elementary, they were considered inseparable. A package deal. Invited to all the same parties, playing all the same games, doing their homework together, and eating their lunches together.

It wasn't until fifth grade that Amy began to feel the pull of Beth 'falling behind'.

One of them wanted to make new friends. The more friends, the better. One of them wanted her ears pierced, to hang out with the middle school cheerleaders, to have their birthday at the roller skating rink.

The other wanted to stick with their usual recess group and play four square every day. She wanted to read under a desk during inside recess. Roller skating was loud and scary; they shouldn't have their party there.

One of them decided that maybe they should have separate birthdays this year.

And the other agreed.

By eighth grade, it was hard to tell that they were related. Some people forgot that Amy March even had a sister in their grade.

Amy sat in the back of the bus with the high schoolers, near Meg and her friends, and the freshman boys who always jokingly called her Miss March. Jo sat in the front seat with Beth so she wouldn't be lonely, and bought her a pair of noise-canceling headphones for Christmas.

Meg graduated before Amy and Beth made it to high school. She left them with one piece of advice for the year. Stick together.

And Amy almost hated herself for the way her heart sank when she heard that. And how relieved she felt when Jo and Dad went with Beth during the open house to find her classes, allowing Amy to walk with her friends. Their group moved quicker, socialized more, talking to all of their teachers with ease.

It wasn't that Beth would be a setback. It just took her such a long time to do things.

The first day rolled around. Jo almost missed the bus. Meg texted them all good luck from her dorm at college. Beth had her headphones on already. Amy nearly sighed but caught herself. Still, how was she going to hear attendance? How was she going to look approachable and make any new friends?

They didn't have any classes together until fourth period.

The group that Amy was starting to fit into wasn't the most polite, it turned out.

Amy ended up moving her things to the desk next to Beth, shooting a cold glare at the boy who had started saying those awful things. Beth lifted one side of her soundproof headphones up.

"Oh. Why did you move?"

"I figured we could stick together in here."

"That sounds good," Beth smiled.

And it really did.

Track was the only sport that Jo thought she would ever be good at. She couldn't throw far, never could kick a ball in a straight line, fumbled more often than she caught, and wasn't good at teamwork.

But she could run very fast. So that's what she did.

Her events were the four-hundred-meter sprint and the two-mile long distance. When she placed first in the two-mile run at her second meet, her dad had surprised her with new running shoes in her favorite color.

When track season was over, Jo missed it. She took to running around the block, or to the gas station and back. She acted up in PE on purpose so the teacher would send her to run laps instead of playing table tennis or being yelled at in flag football.

Next year, Jo March was the first name on the signup sheet for track and field.

Prom, the all-important high school rite of passage.

There was no way Meg could afford a new dress, so she dug out a bridesmaid dress she had worn three years ago to a wedding.

Somehow, she and Beth managed to get it to fit comfortably. Meg couldn't say the same about her shoes, but she knew they probably couldn't afford a new pair of those either, so she squeezed into the old ones, grinned, and bore it.

She left with a big group of girls, all giddy with excitement, touching up their lipliner and eye shadow. Someone painted gold sparkles on Meg's eyelids.

Not even her sprained ankle could ruin the night for her. Especially when the varsity quarterback accompanied the group back to the March house and scooped her up in a princess carry to move her to the couch.

By the time Jo's senior prom rolled around, Meg was concerned with more important things, like college exams.

"Hey, that doesn't mean I can't still be excited for you!" Meg protested over the phone.

"Don't get too excited. I might not go."

"What?! You have to, you'll never get the chance to go to another senior prom, it's what you like to call a 'novel experience'."

"It's planned by the student council, how novel can it be."

A week later, Jo called her back, dumbfounded. "I just got asked to prom."

Meg made the trip home that Friday, picked up her sister from school early, and did her nails. The short acrylics covered up the nails that Jo had bitten down to stubs.

"And just remember to say hi to everyone, keep smiling, keep your hands still, and don't make any weird noises. You'll be fine, and it'll be time to go home before you know it."

When she left, Jo had a slightly nervous smile on her face.

"Tell me everything!" Amy shouted after her. She was still salty about being the one who would experience prom last. Meg almost wished she hadn't hyped it up in her own descriptions so much, because dances in the school gym now paled in comparison to Amy.

Even after Beth went to bed, with Grizzly the fat, gray cat cradled in her arms, Amy and Meg stayed up. They sat in the living room, working on a jigsaw puzzle by the lamplight and waiting for Jo to come home so they could hear about what had happened.

Her date didn't drop her off.

Laurie did. Jo brushed it off as not getting along with the date as well as she thought she would. Everyone seemed to sort of buy it. At least they didn't suspect what she knew, that she had probably done something wrong and ruined it, she just didn't know what yet. It sort of stung that he had left her there, but it was more fun leaving early and going out for nachos with her best friend.

No one thought that Beth would go to prom. It didn't seem like her scene.

Laurie stunned everyone by convincing her to go if he took her. They didn't have to dance, they could leave whenever, and he would drive them. As long as she tried it out.

And she agreed. Meg altered the little green dress she had worn to prom to fit Beth's thinner frame, and to everyone's delight, she had fun.

Jo got a wallet-sized print of the picture Mrs. March had taken of Laurie and Beth in their prom attire on the porch. Beth avoided eye contact with the camera, as always, but had a genuinely happy smile on her face. Laurie wished she would get rid of it or at least cut him out. His grandfather had made him cut his hair short for the summer internship he had coming up, so he wouldn't look 'scruffy'.

"I look bald, Jo," he whined.

"I'm keeping it," Jo stubbornly insisted. "It's a photo of two of my favorite people. Stupid haircut and all, you've been immortalized, Teddy."

They had gone out for milkshakes after and ended up coming home just past midnight. Beth took off her heels, washed her face, and promptly fell into bed where she stayed until noon the next day, around the time Amy got back from her post-prom sleepover at May Chester's house.

She, as it turned out, had had her pick of dates. A whopping four promposals. All in the same week. And although she had officially gone with one of them, she ended up hanging out with her friends more anyways.

Jo was perplexed. "So, you didn't actually sleep? After the whole prom, none of you were tired enough?"

"We slept eventually. We just warmed up the hot tub first. Did you know they have a hot tub? Right on their back porch, I'm so glad that Lindsey told me to bring my swimsuit!"

Life had been happening. Mom was settling into her summer job, Dad was turning the soil in his garden to prepare for the warmth of spring. Jo had started three college applications, Meg had switched her major to education, and Amy and Beth had joined an art club together when the diagnosis came.

They had found cancer.

Amy curled up in the top bunk to cry into her pillow that night. Her sister had cancer. Beth could die.

She could hear Jo pacing the length of the attic above her. With their luck, her older sister would pace right through the floorboards and collapse onto Amy. She kept imagining it every time she heard a creak, but didn't care as much as she thought she would.

The very next day, Jo announced that she was taking a gap year.

Amy and her father were the first to protest. Jo had been offered scholarships for her grades and athletic achievements. She had a few short stories published, her grades were amazing for the most part (looking at you, sophomore year geometry) and she had been working tirelessly during the summers with college in mind. Taking a gap year could throw her off track. She would lose momentum.

"I'm not leaving Beth behind, not like this. I can't," Jo had insisted.

Beth didn't want her to put her dreams on hold either, but Jo's arguments were slowly starting to sway her.

"Mom has her teaching job, and Dad has his sermons, and I did a lot of research-" Jo started pulling crumpled notebook papers out of her pocket. "Cancer treatment is a lot. A lot of appointments, a lot of money. Someone needs to be here to help."

Their parents argued that they were the adults, they would take care of their children, and she shouldn't worry so much about them.

"What if Dad's old injury flares up and Beth is sick at the same time?" Jo just wouldn't give up. "And she and Amy are still in high school, they shouldn't have to worry about the adult stuff. I'm an adult, I can- I can drive Amy to tennis practice if she does that again this year, I can help with homework- as long as it isn't math, I can help!"

In the end, she wore them down. She was staying. And Amy knew she wouldn't ever regret it. She knew Jo would never go back and change her decision, but she wondered if she was the only one to catch the jealousy in Jo's eyes as she watched Laurie pack up and leave for his first semester.

One of Amy's favorite memories from high school was the year that Laurie's grandpa insisted he find some extracurricular to do. Then, when he didn't choose one because he kept 'forgetting' to look through the pamphlet, Mr. Laurence chose one for him.

Marching band.

It always cracked Amy up to see him in that uniform, with the long black pants and the big shoulders, the feathery hats, and the gauntlets. He didn't know how to play anything but piano, and a piano is a hard instrument to march with, so the director put him up front with the tambourine. During football games, he held huge cymbals and complained that his arms would turn to jelly.

The March family attended football games often that year, so Laurie would have someone cheering him on. When he took off his hat, his curls lay limp and sad on his forehead.

Mr. Laurence let him quit after seeing that one season through. Next summer, Laurie got a job instead.

One thing Jo hated about working with her best friend was his lax attitude.

He had no idea, when he first joined her at the ice cream parlor by the lake, that fun and games were not first priority.

It wasn't like Jo never goofed off. But side work had to be done, it just had to be! And sometimes she had to yell at him. And sometimes he would sulk. But that didn't mean she loved him any less.

He was just frustrating.

Laurie only ever worked at the ice cream parlor with her, he never ended up joining the team of lifeguards at the YMCA who oversaw swim lessons and kid's swim hours. He didn't pass the first aid and CPR certification. He also didn't want to get up as early as Jo did. Jo was secretly relieved. If he had become a lifeguard, she was convinced someone would have drowned.

The one time she really snapped at him, however, was during their senior year.

"You really haven't applied to any scholarships yet?" Jo's brow furrowed.

"Well... no? I mean, I don't exactly need to?"

"Oh, so you'll just drown in student loans, then?" Jo rolled her eyes. Laurie laughed and tried to shut her laptop.

"Come on, you can finish that one later. That piece of junk is about to overheat anyways."

"No, I'm going to finish it. Some of us don't want to owe the government a shit ton of money in four years. Maybe instead of me joining your game, you could sit down with me and fill some of these out."

"You can balance work and fun," Laurie shrugged. "And my parents... you know, they left me stuff."

"Oh, well not everyone is just sitting on an inheritance, Theodore," Jo snapped, finally aggravated. "My work-life balance is going to look a lot different than yours. It always has."

Laurie stepped back as if struck.

It was true, although she had never said it out loud before. It was weird to acknowledge it. It had always gone unspoken that Jo was the one with two summer jobs and Laurie was constantly on the verge of being fired from his one. Jo had responsibilities like picking up and dropping off her sisters, and yardwork when her dad was too shaky to do it, and pulling her weight around the house to keep the family on an even keel. Stuff that Laurie never really worried about. Jo had to work hard, and Laurie chose when he worked hard.

And she wished she didn't sometimes resent him for it.

Jo knew he didn't mean to come off as insensitive. It wasn't his fault that they were in very different financial positions.

And what he said next made her even more guilty.

"Well, some of us have parents who are alive, and maybe I would have preferred that. That money is only there because they aren't."

Oh. Right.

Jo didn't know what she would do without her parents.

Before she could say sorry, Laurie was gone.

They made up later. Of course they did. They always did. But it wasn't really the same after that. Especially when Jo's plans were pushed back a year, and Laurie still left for Harvard.

The goodbyes were strained. Neither really forgot that argument.

Meg passed her driver's test on the first try, even though she was worried sick about it. Their father had set up traffic cones in the empty church parking lot after a Wednesday evening mass, and they practiced parallel parking together until he was sure Meg could parallel park with her eyes closed, and Meg thought that maybe she wouldn't fail.

So Jo was torn up when she failed her first try. In typical Jo fashion, she despaired at first, resigning herself to a future with no license. Laurie came up with what he proudly referred to as 'the mother of all pep talks', and finally forced her behind the wheel again. In spite of sweating palms, racing thoughts, and clenched muscles, Jo passed on her second try, with flying colors.

Beth cried after every single practice with the instructor. Everything scared her. Highways, dark country roads, four-way stops with other people at them, roundabouts, switching lanes, and going anywhere new.

Ironically enough, she was the best parallel parker in the entire family.

After a few driving-induced panic attacks, she did pass the test but never drove if she could help it, especially anywhere new.

Amy scraped by on her first try. One more small mistake would have failed her, but she scooted by and was satisfied. She was a responsible enough driver that Laurie let her behind the wheel of his car, something that he had only let Jo do once before realizing how much road rage one woman could contain.

"You're such a passenger princess," Amy teased.

"What? A man can't enjoy a carefree car ride, with the wind in his hair?" Laurie asked. He couldn't even be bothered to open his eyes. The sun was so warm, there was a good song on the radio for once, and it was so nice to be back home for the summer. "I could go for a nap right now actually."

"You better not. You're navigating, remember?"

"Oh. I guess I should open my eyes then?"

"Yeah, Sleeping Beauty. You do that, and tell me if I'm turning left or right."

The first time Beth volunteered at the animal shelter was one of her very favorite memories.

One of the full-time employees had shown the volunteers around. There were puppies, small dogs, big loud dogs, kittens, and the ones that Beth gravitated toward the most. The adult and senior cats.

That section of the shelter was more isolated from the rest to give the older cats some peace and quiet. They were a lot less likely to be adopted and thought to be less cute. They had graying muzzles, crooked whiskers, bad eyesight in some cases, and walked slowly. Beth loved them all. She loved them so much, she thought she might die of it.

She started coming back to volunteer so much that they hired her part-time over the summer. Laurie had seen her walking home crying, and been alarmed, only to run outside and see that Beth was crying happy tears over her new red shirt and name tag.

"I get to see them all summer! Isn't that amazing?"

One summer turned into every Saturday during the school year, and the next summer, and every summer, and then taking one home with her.

The March family had produced two Homecoming Queens.

First was Meg. It was Sally's idea to nominate her.

It had come as a surprise to Meg to hear her name announced as one of the nominees for the senior queen, and an even bigger surprise when she was announced the winner.

Amy wasn't as shocked when it happened to her five years later. She knew for sure that Beth had nominated her, and heard through the grapevine of quite a few boys who had.

She was relieved that Meg had been nominated long before, long enough that nearly every student going to school when Meg won had graduated by now.

No one would say she was copying.

That's the thing about being the youngest. Even though Beth was technically in the same grade as her, she was still the fourth sister. The fourth to do everything, to reach those milestones. There was hardly anything she could do that hadn't already been done by Meg, Jo, or Beth. Sports, writing, homecoming queen, wanting to be a veterinarian. Teachers called her by the wrong name sometimes (even though she looked like none of her sisters. She was adopted, for God's sake!)

So graduating was a relief. Out in the wider world, there were more options. More paths were left untrodden by her sisters before her. So many places to go where no one knew any of the Marches, and she could be the first member of the March family that they knew.

Homecoming Queen had been one nice thing from high school though. No one thought of her sisters when they voted for her.

And that's it, I didn't really have a concrete ending for this. It was really just a collection of Modern Day headcanons. I have been enjoying adapting the March family to Modern Day in my own way. I'm partially inspired by the 2018 movie, but I feel like I'm making their stories a bit darker (?) or just a little less fluffy. Having siblings isn't all sunshine and rainbows. They can be your best friends, but there are feuds, sometimes jealousy... all the human emotions that come with any relationship I guess.

Also, Laurie was in this a lot but he's sort of an honorary March