Little Bigfoot, Big City

by Jennifer Weiner

  A-LICE,” CALLED JESSICA WITHOUT LOOKING away from her lighted makeup mirror. “Your freak friend is here!”

  Alice felt her hands clench. She’d finally made it back to the Center after a week in Hawaii with her parents, where her father had spent every day hunched on a lounge chair next to the pool with a towel draped over his neck, yelling at people on his phone, and her mother had vanished into the spa. Walking on the beach, swimming in the clear water, even running in her first race had all been fun, but she’d been desperate to be with her friends . . . and, of course, her not-friend Jessica Jarvis.

  “Freak” was not a word that was approved of at the Experimental Center for Love and Learning. At least it hadn’t been, until last fall, when Alice and Millie and then every kid in the place had stepped forward, into the glaring lights of the local TV stations, and announced, “I’m a freak.” After a long conversation that included the entire school community, Phil and Lori had called for a vote and agreed to “reclaim” the word “freak,” turning it into a compliment instead of an insult.

  Still, Alice detected a certain tone in Jessica’s voice. Jessica and her friends had tricked Alice last fall, luring her into the water for skinny-dipping, then stealing her clothes, taking her picture, and posting it, alongside various monsters, including Bigfoots, all over campus for everyone to see. It had been awful—except, Alice knew, if it had never happened, then she wouldn’t have carried a plate of brownies down to the lake in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t have heard Millie splashing, and she wouldn’t have saved her, and she wouldn’t have started on the path that would, she knew, lead to the truth about her life.

  “Merry New Year’s!” said Millie, stomping snow off her boots as she stepped into the seventh-grade girls’ cabin. She wore a pair of blue snow pants, laced-up boots, and a parka with a fur-trimmed hood. Except, Alice saw, the hood wasn’t fur-trimmed. That was just Millie’s silvery fur, which stood out around her face in a bristle when she was excited or upset or cold.

  “Alice!” Millie said, and stood on her tiptoes to fling her arms around her friend. Alice hugged her hard, breathing in Millie’s scent of wood smoke and maple syrup, feeling Millie’s fur brush her face. It felt like coming into a warm house on a cold night, like that first sip of water when you’ve been thirsty for hours. My friend, Alice thought as Millie pulled away.

  “Look at you!” said Millie. “You are toasty gold! And you have the spotty bits on your nose!”

  “I’m tan. And those are freckles,” said Alice, smiling, the way she always did, at the funny way that Millie spoke. Once, she’d asked whether all humans looked naked to the Yare, and Millie had said no, but she’d answered so quickly, and she’d looked away when she’d said it, so that Alice thought that she was just being polite. “And I have so much to tell you!”

  “I have so much to tell you!” Millie echoed. She’d written Alice back, finally, but just a few sentences that talked about “technical difficulties” and made vague reference to a “secret” that she’d learned.

  “Can you two continue this joyous reunion somewhere else?” asked Jessica, who was doing something to her hair with a curling iron.

  “Leavedb thembd alone.” Taley sniffled. She was flopped on her bunk bed, reading a book and sounding as congested as ever. Alice guessed that the allergy clinic where she’d spent her break hadn’t been much help.

  Millie grabbed Alice’s hands. Alice picked up her jacket, her hat and scarf and mittens, and the two of them walked outside, heading into the woods, their breath preceding them in frosty, cloud-shaped puffs.

  “Tell me your telling!” Millie urged.

  “Okay. Do you remember that boy? The one who was in the paper? The one who organized that rally?”

  “The one who chased you,” Millie said immediately. “The bad, no-good No-Fur.”

  “Is that what you call him?” Alice asked. When Millie nodded, Alice said, “Before I left, when I was waiting for Lee, the boy came and found me and told me something.”

  Millie’s eyes narrowed. “Did he hurt your feeling?”

  Alice smiled a little. “Not exactly. He told me that he’d found some of my hair and sent it to a lab for analysis and that they found out . . .” She looked at Millie, who was holding very still and watching her carefully. “He said I wasn’t human,” she finished.

  “Oh, Alice,” said Millie. Her little hands were curled into fists, and her silvery eyes were narrowed, like she was ready for a fight. “Of course you are human! No matter what that bad boy tells you!”

  “No, no,” said Alice. “He wasn’t trying to be mean. He was saying—at least, I think he was saying—that I’m . . .” She pulled the icy air into her lungs until her eyes watered. “That I’m Yare.”

  Instead of being overjoyed, Millie looked sad, even sympathetic. She stood on her tiptoes and patted Alice’s shoulder. “The bad boy was teasling you. That can never be.”

  “I don’t think he was teasing,” said Alice, pronouncing the word carefully, so that Millie would hear. “And why would he want to be mean to me?”

  “Because,” said Millie, “you made him look foolish.”

  “True,” said Alice. They both smiled, remembering how Alice, with her hair down, dressed in a furry vest, had run, leading the boy and his band of followers on a merry chase through the woods, all the way to the gates of the Experimental Center.

  “He sounded like he meant it,” Alice said.

  “He would want to sound that way, I am thinking. So that you’d believe him,” Millie said.

  Alice wanted to stomp her foot in frustration. When she’d imagined this talk, she’d thought that Millie would be delighted. She’d imagined Millie hugging her, dancing in glee, promising to help her “get on the bottom of things.” She hadn’t thought that Millie would be skeptical and dismissive, and she wasn’t sure quite what to do.

  Millie was shaking her head again. “What you are saying . . . it is a thing that has never happened.”

  “You’re saying that, for hundreds and hundreds of years, no Bigfoot ever had a baby with a human?”

  “No Yare that I am ever hearing of,” said Millie, saying the word “Yare” a little more loudly than the rest of the sentence. Alice realized that she’d said the B-word—Bigfoot—which the Yare considered a very rude slur. She felt her face get hot.

  “Okay, but there’s other Yare, right? Other Tribes? Yare that you don’t know, that maybe do things differently?”

  Millie was shaking her head. “Maybe this is a thing that has happened, long-and-long ago, but as long as I’ve been alive, I am knowing that the Yare keep away from the No-Furs. We hide from your kind.”

  “What about your uncle? Your father’s brother? Didn’t he run away?” Alice knew that he had. Millie had told her the story of her father, Maximus, and how his brother had “had the curiosity,” just like Millie, and how one dark night he’d left a note and taken a canoe and gone paddling away, off into the No-Fur world, never to be seen again. His name had been taken back by the Tribe and was never meant to be spoken out loud.

  “But that was long-and-long ago,” said Millie. “Before I am born.”

  “How long ago?” Alice asked.

  “Before the war,” Millie replied.

  “Which war?” Alice asked. Millie waved one silver-furred paw in the air in a dismissive gesture.

  “We do not call the wars the same as you. This was the one before the Great Depressing.”

  Alice stopped. “Before World War One?” she asked.

  Millie reached up to swat a handful of snow from a low-hanging pine bough. “The Big War, yes. This is what my parents are telling me. That before this Big War, and the Great Depressing, is when my father’s brother, whose name is not to be spoken, ran away.”

  “Millie,” said Alice. She felt out of breath and slightly wobbly on her feet. “How old is your father?”

  Millie made a pushing-away motion with both of her hands, a Yare gesture Alice had com
e to learn meant embarrassment or confusion, or a desire to change the subject. “Oh, I’m bad at reckoning No-Fur time.”

  “Okay,” said Alice. She was thinking of one of the rare compliments her mother had ever paid her, after she’d pestered her for some treat or permission to stay up late to watch a show. Alice, you are nothing if not persistent. “How old are you?” she asked Millie.

  “I will be having thirteen summers this year,” Millie said. Then she frowned, and her fur seemed to droop. “But I am smallish for my age. Even Florrie, who has only six summers, is bigger than me.” When she raised her head, her fur seemed to perk up and quiver with indignation. “It is not fair.” She looked at Alice and touched Alice’s curls and sighed. “I would be giving anything to be tall and strong like you.”

  Alice flushed at the compliment but pressed ahead, determined to stay on topic. “Okay, so you and I are basically the same age. How many summers have your parents had?”

  “Many and many,” Millie said in a voice that was still maddeningly calm.

  “How many,” Alice asked, “is many and many?”

  Millie made her flicking gesture again.

  “Millie, this is important,” Alice said.

  Alice heard Millie muttering under her breath as she nibbled her face-fur and, Alice hoped, tried to count. “I am thinking one hundred and some,” Millie finally said. “Old Aunt Yetta’s had two hundred summers. There was a party for her Name-Night.” Millie’s expression became dreamy. “There were mince pies and squash pies and Mallomars for me, from on-the-line. Mallomars are my favorites.”

  Alice stopped walking. She felt the same dizziness she remembered from a classmate’s eighth birthday party, which had been held at an indoor trampoline park, where she’d bounced and flipped and bounced and flipped so many times that the world had started spinning and she’d had to be helped off the trampoline so that she could lie down.

  “Old Aunt Yetta is two hundred years old,” she said.

  Millie nodded. “Are you ever having the Mallomar?” she asked, trying, again, to change the subject. “My papa says they are a seasonal item. Stores can’t sell them in the summer because the chocolate and the marshmallow will melt.”

  “Your parents are more than one hundred years old.”

  Millie nodded again.

  “Do all Yare live that long?” Alice asked.

  “As far as I am knowing,” Millie replied.

  “Will you live that long?” Alice asked.

  Millie shrugged. “My parents worry, because of my smallness, that maybe I am different, somehow. So I do not know.” She bent, scooped up snow to form a snowball, then tossed it in the air. “I think that bad boy was teasling on you.” She turned so that she was looking Alice in the face, her gaze on Alice’s eyes. “I know that you are lonely with your parents and wishing for things to be different.” When Alice nodded, Millie reached out and took Alice’s mittened hands in her own. “I wish they could be different too.”

  Alice felt her eyes filling with tears. Maybe that boy, Jeremy, had been teasing her, getting her hopes up, getting her to believe that somewhere, out in the world, she had parents who loved her. Probably Millie was right. Alice would just have to be content knowing that she had a friend, even if she could never truly be part of Millie’s Tribe. The Yare had reluctantly let themselves be seen when their lives were in danger, but Alice knew she wouldn’t be invited back for sleepovers or Name-Night parties, wouldn’t be spending time in Millie’s cozy underground lair or joining the Yare in their feastings, not even if she showed up with Mallomars. As long as they saw her as one of the No-Furs, she could never truly belong.

  “May I tell you my news?” Millie asked politely, and Alice made herself nod, even though it felt like her belly was full of rocks, like each of her limbs weighed a thousand pounds, and even nodding was an effort. She tried to look excited as Millie’s face broke into a big grin.

  “Well,” said Millie, and started talking very fast. “I filled out the application on The Next Stage’s site-web—”

  “Website,” said Alice.

  “As you say. I have to record an audition. I tried and tried, with the camera pointing . . .” She gestured down toward her chest. “So they wouldn’t know about my . . .” She gestured up at her face-fur. “But every time it wouldn’t let me upload my song, because it said a face must be showing. And so I thought”—Millie paused, then said—“it could be you!”

  “What do you mean?” Alice asked.

  “Only this,” said Millie. “I will stand behind you. You will be looking into the camera. You will move your lips and I will do the singing, and nobody will be the wiser!” She stopped, looking expectantly at her friend.

  Alice plucked at the edges of her mittens and readjusted her hat. She could feel the Mane escape its elastics, curls and tendrils pushing at the bright pink fleece. “But what happens if they pick you?” she asked. “Don’t you have to go and sing for them in person?”

  Millie stood on her tiptoes and whispered in Alice’s ear. “I have a potion,” she said. “From Old Aunt Yetta. For making fur go away. If I get picked, I will use it.”

  Alice considered. “So why don’t you use it to do the audition?”

  Millie frowned and nibbled at the fur around her lips. “It hurts. It hurts a lot. Maybe it is because it was meant for my father, not for me, and he is big, and I am small. And I only have the one vial of it!”

  “But what happens if I pretend to sing, and then you get picked, and you’re you, not me?”

  Millie raised her hands to her ears and shook them, like she was shooing away smoke. Alice knew that gesture too, and it meant, I’m excited, and don’t bother me about details. “We will burn that bridge when we come to it. But for now, can you be me? Please?”

  Alice would have liked nothing better than to pretend to be Millie and help her friend, but the thought of being on camera, with her stocky body and her wild hair, left her feeling sick. People made fun of the way she looked. It had happened all her life. People who saw the audition that Millie wanted to record would probably laugh too, like everyone else did. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you—”

  “Please,” said Millie, and grabbed Alice’s hands, holding them tight in her own furry paws. “Please help. This is all I’ve ever wanted. Please say you will.”

  Alice’s stomach did a slow flip, thinking that no one would believe it. Millie was small and sweet and charming, and sounded that way. Alice was none of those things.

  “Let’s think this through,” she said, which was something her own father (if he really was her father) would say . . . except Alice knew that it sounded reasonable, but it always meant no, and from Millie’s frustrated expression, she could tell that her friend had come to the same conclusion. “There has to be another way,” she said, and led Millie back toward the seventh-grade cabin. “I’ll help you brainstorm.”

  Millie shook her head.

  “There is no other way,” she said. “I have done thinking through. I have thought of everything! I can’t do the potion yet—if I steal more, Old Aunt Yetta will be knowing—and there’s only five days left for me to send in a video!”

  “I’ll do it,” came the voice of Jessica Jarvis, floating through the frosty air.

  Both girls turned. Jessica wore a black cape trimmed with white fur, instead of a bulky down parka or a wool coat. Her gloves were black leather, also trimmed with white, and she wore knee-high winter boots with white laces.

  Millie glared at her. “Were you leaves-dropping?”

  “Eavesdropping,” Alice and Jessica both said.

  “And I was not,” said Jessica. “You two weren’t exactly whispering.”

  Alice gave Jessica a hard look. She and Jessica had been enemies after the skinny-dipping incident, and things had not improved when Millie had forced Jessica to tell the whole world—or, at least, most of the town of Standish—that Jessica had a tail, a fact that Millie had only guessed at that had turned
out to be true. They’d made a temporary and tentative truce after that revelation, but that didn’t mean Alice liked her or trusted her. “Why would you want to help?” Alice asked.

  “Because,” said Jessica, in the lecturing tone she used when explaining something she found completely obvious, like the importance of curling one’s eyelashes or always using hair conditioner, “they don’t just pick singers and dancers on The Next Stage. They pick spokesmodels.”

  Alice looked to her friend for confirmation. Millie was nodding wildly. “Yes, yes, this is a true thing!”

  “That still doesn’t explain what’s going to happen if she gets picked to audition in person,” Alice said.

  Jessica gave a small and charming shrug. “We’ll just say that Millie was shy. Because of her skin condition. When they look at her”—she paused, giving Millie’s fur a condescending smirk—“I’m sure they’ll understand. And then I’ll tell them that they’re getting two for the price of one.”

  “You’d do it?” Millie was practically dancing in excitement, her feet, in their clumpy snow boots, making hash marks in the snow. “You will do this thing for me?”

  “As long as you promise to do something for me,” said Jessica. “A favor to be specified at a future date.”

  Alice felt like she’d been punched. Millie knew what Jessica had done to Alice, how Jessica had gotten her snobby friends to put Alice’s picture up all around campus, how they’d all laughed at her. She’d been certain that Millie would say, Never think it, in the haughty voice she used sometimes, the one that reminded Alice that she would be the leader of her Tribe someday. I will not be doing any of the favors for you. I will be figuring this out with Alice, my friend.

  Except Millie didn’t say that. Millie was, instead, agreeing eagerly to do whatever Jessica wanted. “Anything,” Millie was saying. “Anything!”

  And then, as Alice watched in disbelief, Millie slipped her arm through Jessica’s, and the two of them were walking ahead of Alice, back to the cabin, talking about songs and dresses and hairstyles and how Millie would hide. Alice trailed behind them, telling herself not to be jealous, trying not to notice how well the two of them matched, both the same height and shape, with Millie’s silvery fur a pretty complement to Jessica’s shiny, darker locks.