Little Bigfoot, Big City

by Jennifer Weiner

  “I know you’ll be great,” said Alice.

  “Will you come with us to the audition?” Millie asked. “I will be braver if I know that you are there.”

  Alice had planned to call the clinic first thing in the morning and go there while Millie and Jessica were at the audition. She decided that the call could wait.

  “Yes, I’ll come,” she said, and felt the warmth she remembered rising in her chest when Millie hugged her, that half-forgotten feeling of having swallowed a drop of sunshine. My friend, she thought. My friend is here with me.

  THE BUS FROM STANDISH LEFT at six in the morning. Jeremy was lucky enough to get out of the house before anyone woke up and to get a window seat with an empty seat beside him. Thanks to the GPS locator that Dr. Johansson had somehow activated in Alice’s phone, he could see that she was still in her apartment on the Upper East Side, probably sound asleep.

  At eight o’clock, just as the bus was groaning its way up the ramps at Port Authority Bus Terminal, Jeremy saw the Alice dot start to move, heading downtown, then stopping at a spot the map informed him was Carnegie Hall.

  She’s with Millie, Jeremy thought, feeling a lump swell in his throat. But maybe that was okay. Mr. Carruthers was looking for Millie, that was true, but they were looking for her at the Jacob Javits Center, blocks away, in a completely different part of town.

  Jeremy walked up Broadway, thinking that he’d keep an eye on Alice, make sure nothing happened, and wait for her to text him her next location.

  It was easy enough to hide himself in the noisy crowd of would-be contestants and onlookers and fans who’d gathered all around Carnegie Hall, where a banner announced, “The Next Stage Auditions Start Now!” Some carried posters with things like “America Loves the Amazing Marvin” and “Go for Your Dreams, Serena!”

  When he finally spotted Alice, she was with two other girls. One of them was another student at the Center. Jeremy recognized her from the night of the failed Bigfoot hunt, when she’d reluctantly told the world that she had a tail. The other one was Millie, who was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled down low enough to cover her forehead, and the collar zipped up almost to her lips. She and Alice were walking along, unnoticed. Mostly, Jeremy suspected, because everyone who saw them was looking at the tail-girl, who looked extremely glamorous and very grown-up in high-heeled shoes and a short skirt and lipstick. “That’s Millie from the videos!” he heard someone murmur, and someone else said, “She’s the one to beat.”

  He wasn’t sure he’d be able to talk his way through the doors, but luck was on his side. When a troupe of a dozen school-aged jugglers—along with their parents, their trainer, their manager, and their tutor—arrived just after noon, Jeremy slipped in with them and got waved right through the door. When the jugglers turned left, following a sign labeled “Dressing Rooms,” Jeremy turned right. After a few dead ends and apologetic waves at harried-looking people with headsets and clipboards, he found his way to the auditorium and found a seat amid dozens of anxious parents, spouses, coaches, and piano teachers, many of them trying to sneak pictures of their competitors (in spite of the “No Cell Phone Use Permitted” and “Absolutely No Recording” signs that The Next Stage’s crew had put up on the walls).

  He was sitting six rows from the front, and five rows behind the judges. There were dancers and jugglers and a ventriloquist, and then, finally, the judges called, “Millie Maximus!” and Millie took the stage. Millie was wearing a frilly white blouse that covered her neck and her arms all the way to her wrists. There were white gloves on her hands, a gray knitted winter hat with a pom-pom on her head, and something—leggings, or tights, Jeremy wasn’t sure what girls called them—covering up her legs. Her body was entirely covered, every bit of what would have been skin on a normal person hidden. And her face . . .

  Jeremy stared at her. She’d done something to her face. There was no more fur there, between the high neck of the blouse and the brim of the hat. Just cheeks and a nose, a mouth and chin and forehead, all the features a regular girl had. The only evidence that Millie was something other than human was her silvery-gray eyes, slightly too large and too shiny to be human.

  “Hello,” she said as she stepped into the spotlight and lifted one hand in a small salute. Even from a distance Jeremy could see that her hand was trembling. As he watched, the tail-girl, wearing a short black skirt and a black-and-white top, came to stand beside her.

  Two of the judges turned toward the third. Benjamin Burton, Jeremy thought. He was the boss, the producer and creator of the show, the one who usually told the competitors how awful they were, only his manner was so elegant and his voice so beguiling that sometimes the singer or dancer or juggler wouldn’t even realize that they’d been insulted or dismissed. Jeremy had never seen the man at a loss for words, but now he was silent and immobile as he stared at the two girls.

  Romy Montez looked down at the sheet of paper, then up at the stage. “Millie Maximus?”

  “That is me,” said the girl, the furry girl who was now furless. A glandular condition, she’d said, but of course Jeremy had known better. Only now, a prickle of doubt worried at his heart. Where was her fur? What if he’d gotten it wrong?

  “And who are you?” Romy asked the other girl.

  “My name is Jessica Jarvis,” she said. “And we can explain.”

  “Let’s have it,” said Benjamin Burton, who’d finally found his voice. “Quickly, if you please.” He sounded the way he always did, speaking with the same clipped, sarcastic voice that viewers in America had gotten used to over the past four years, but Jeremy thought he heard something new underneath that cynicism. Surprise? Excitement? Maybe even a touch of fear?

  “I am having shyness. Th-that is, I’m very shy,” Millie stammered. Now it wasn’t just her hands that were shaking; her voice too. Jeremy could even see her knees quivering underneath their layers. “I love to sing, but I do not enjoy to be on camera. So I got my friend Jessica to do lip-syncing. I sang, and she stood in front of the camera, so that it was her you’d be seeing.” Her speech finished, Millie took one step backward, then another, and looked over her shoulder, longingly, at the darkness in the wings. Jeremy peered in the same direction and caught a glimpse of curly reddish hair. Alice, he thought, and felt his breath whoosh out of him, knowing that she was here and that she was safe. He could watch and make sure nothing happened, and follow her to the clinic.

  “If you don’t like being on camera, how do you think you’ll manage on the show? You do realize,” Romy Montez said politely, “that we are televised nationwide?”

  Millie stopped walking backward. “I am working on my confidence, sir.”

  “Sir,” said Julia Sharp, who sounded like she might have been giggling.

  “And what about you?” Benjamin Burton asked. “You. Other one.” He gestured with his pen, having apparently forgotten Jessica’s name. She was happy to remind him.

  “Jessica Jarvis. I’d like to be considered in the junior spokesmodel category.”

  “She’s not entered,” murmured Julia Sharp.

  “This is highly irregular,” Benjamin Burton said. He was on his feet, his ever-present sunglasses off his face and in his hands, staring at Millie with the strangest expression, a combination of surprise and something else, something Jeremy couldn’t name, something that looked a little bit like longing.

  Before Benjamin Burton could say anything else, Jessica whispered to Millie, who took one more quick glimpse backstage, then walked forward, into the spotlight. Her shoulders dropped. Her chin lifted. She pulled off her hat, and her long, silvery hair rippled as she shook her head gently from side to side. Jeremy leaned forward, aware that he was witnessing a kind of transformation, listening to the crowd murmur. Millie might have felt that she was “shyness” at some point in her life, but she seemed perfectly assured as she stood, her hair seeming to pull down all the light in the room, until Jessica was barely even visible. Millie moved smoothly as she took one la
st step forward into the spotlight, opened her mouth, and began to sing, unaccompanied.

  “Something has changed within me / Something is not the same.”

  Her voice was quiet at first, but so pure and sweet that everyone in the crowd leaned forward, waiting for the next notes.

  Millie stepped forward until she was almost at the edge of the stage. Her silvery hair gleamed; her eyes seemed to capture the gazes of everyone watching.

  From down in the orchestra pit, a piano picked up the melody. Millie’s voice was strong and clear. She sang the song like it was her very own story, as if every word had been written just for her. Her hands were in fists at her chest, and her head was held high.

  As she swung into the next verse, and the stringed instruments and the horns began to play along with her, the audience was perfectly silent, rapt and motionless.

  She turned to look offstage. “Alice, come with me,” she said. Jeremy sat up very straight, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling. He knew the line was supposed to be “Glinda, come with me,” as Elphaba, the green “wicked witch” who sang the song, addressed her friend and rival. But Millie had changed it and put in Alice’s name.

  And that was as far as she got. There was a scream, then a thump, and then the sounds of a scuffle off to the side of the stage. Millie’s head whipped around.

  “Alice!” she screamed.

  The audience started murmuring. They sounded dazed, like they’d woken up from a dream. “Alice? Is that what she said?” asked the woman, a juggler’s mother, on Jeremy’s left, while a little girl climbed on top of her seat for a better look. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why’d she stop singing?”

  Millie turned to face the judges, and her furless face was pale. “I’m sorry!” she called, and ran off into the darkness.

  “Thank you for the opportunity!” blurted Jessica Jarvis, and ran after Millie.

  Jeremy got to his feet, grabbed his backpack, and vaulted over the row of seats in front of him and into the aisle. He ducked around a bouncer who tried to grab his shoulders, slipped between the legs of another one, and then ran up the stairs and onto the stage.

  “Hey!” yelled Romy Montez, who had gotten to his feet.

  “What’s going on?” screeched Julia Sharp, who was cringing in her chair.

  Jeremy felt like his insides were turning into ice as he looked backstage and saw what some part of him must have known he would see. Two men in dark suits and sunglasses, one on either side of her, each with a big hand under her arm, were pulling Alice out a door and onto the sidewalk.

  Jeremy raced after them out into the chilly, gray afternoon. Across the street, with its engine running, was a familiar white van. His friend Skip Carruthers sat behind the wheel. Of course we won’t hurt her, Skip had told him, and Jeremy hadn’t entirely believed him, which was why he’d given Carruthers misinformation and told him it was Millie, not Alice, who’d be in the city that weekend, and that she’d be at a science-fiction convention, not here. But none of it had mattered. In typical Jeremy Bigelow fashion, his best efforts had only made trouble for people he cared about. The Department of Official Inquiry had gotten its Bigfoot, and Jeremy had led them right to her. And, let’s not forget, his mind added, you betrayed a friend.

  Feeling helpless and furious and sick and ashamed, Jeremy ran. The men who had their hands on Alice were dragging her across the street, getting ready to shove her into the van. Millie and Jessica were closing the distance, but Jeremy could see that they weren’t going to reach her in time. “Hey,” he shouted, knowing that yelling would do absolutely no good. He yelled anyway. “Hey, Skip!”

  Skip Carruthers’s head turned. He looked at Jeremy . . . except that wasn’t right. He had his sunglasses on, and he seemed to be looking straight past Jeremy, through Jeremy, as if he’d never seen Jeremy before in his life, as if Jeremy were a stranger who didn’t matter at all.

  That dismissal echoed every other time he’d been ignored and overlooked by some grown-up, starting with his parents and continuing with every coach or teacher or choir director or Boy Scout troop leader who’d ever known one of his far superior brothers. It filled Jeremy with rage, and the rage gave him a brief burst of what felt like almost superhuman strength.

  He raced across the street, hearing horns blatting and cabdrivers shouting, feeling a car’s bumper brush his thigh as it screeched to a stop. He caught up to Millie and Jessica, then ran past them, reaching, his fingertips touching Alice’s hair.

  He was so close . . . but “close” only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes, like his papa Frank used to say. The men had hooked their hands underneath Alice’s armpits, and they were wrestling her into the backseat. “It’s the kid,” one of the men said in a dismissive voice, and the other man gave Jeremy a contemptuous look.

  The first man’s leg shot out sideways, catching Jeremy in the belly, knocking the air out of him, and sending him to the pavement on his knees. Before he fell, he saw the man sitting in the backseat of the van. Dr. Marcus Johansson, of the Standish Children’s Museum. A phone—probably the one he’d been using to track Alice—looked as tiny as a matchbox in his giant hand. His expression was grave.

  “You!” yelled Jeremy. “You lied to us!”

  Alice must have heard him or seen Dr. Johansson too, because suddenly she stopped struggling, and her body went limp. It caught her kidnappers by surprise, and as they struggled to keep their grip, Jeremy saw a woman jump out of a car parked on the side of the street and sprint toward the van.

  “Alice!” she shouted.

  The men in suits who had Alice weren’t looking behind them. As they turned, the woman came racing right at them, her sneakered feet flying over the pavement, her hair, the same reddish-gold shade as Alice’s, flying out behind her.

  “Let her go!” she yelled.

  One man kept hold of Alice as the other began, “Ma’am—”

  But that was all he managed. The woman didn’t even slow down. She jumped over Jeremy, dropped her shoulders, bent her knees, and slammed all of her weight into the sunglass man’s belly, like a rugby player tackling an opponent. The man, startled and caught off guard, fell backward into the street, right in front of a city bus, which honked and then braked to a stop.

  “Help!” Alice shrieked as the one man left holding her tightened his grip. He lifted Alice off the ground, preparing to throw her into the van. Jeremy shoved himself forward, head butting the man’s knee. The man didn’t fall, but he stumbled, losing his balance for just a second, and then the redheaded woman was there. She jumped in front of him as the man, still off balance, tried to get a better grip on Alice. The woman wrestled her free. A little white car came screeching up right beside the van. Jeremy saw a small, white-haired woman at the wheel.

  “Hurry!” Jeremy heard the driver shout.

  The red-haired woman opened the back door and pushed Alice into the backseat. Millie tumbled in through the other door. Jessica stood in the street, like she wasn’t sure what to do, and in her instant of hesitation, the doors slammed shut and the car zoomed off, zigging in front of the bus, zagging in front of a cab, becoming briefly airborne after hitting a pothole, then barreling through a red light and vanishing around a corner.

  Jessica turned around, thinking that she’d run back across the street and get some help, but then the men in the suits, perhaps thinking that they needed something to show for their day’s work, grabbed her and tossed her into the backseat.

  “Hey!” Jeremy shouted as the van drove off in the direction of the white car. He was starting to turn around—to go somewhere, to tell someone—when he felt heavy hands on his shoulders and heard a furious voice in his ear.

  “If I discover that you had anything to do with that, anything at all, I will have you made into a mince pie.”

  Jeremy turned his head and saw The Next Stage’s most famous judge looking like he wanted to tear someone apart.

  “I didn’t,” Jeremy said, swallowing hard, wonde
ring if Benjamin Burton had any idea what he’d seen, any knowledge of the Bigfoot world. It didn’t seem likely, but, Jeremy supposed, anything was possible. “I promise. I was trying to help.” He stared at the space where the car and the van had been. Then he turned back toward Benjamin Burton. “Those guys . . . they were from a government organization . . .”

  “The Department of Official Inquiry. Yes, yes, I know.” Benjamin Burton put one hand between Jeremy’s shoulder blades and marched him back across the street, into Carnegie Hall. They passed the auditorium and walked down a flight of stairs, then along a dim underground hallway. Whenever they walked by a window, Jeremy would look outside, hoping he’d see Alice again or Skip Carruthers or the little white getaway car. But, of course, the New York City street looked the same as it ever had, the same as it probably always did, the sidewalk filled with pedestrians and joggers and dog walkers and strollers, the street crammed bumper to bumper with buses and taxis and cars. It was as if the day’s drama had never even happened at all.

  “Come on,” said Benjamin Burton’s deep voice. “You’re going to tell me everything. And then I’m going to tell you how to set this mess right.” He led Jeremy down one flight of stairs, then another, into a basement.

  “I will,” said Jeremy. “I promise.”

  He followed Benjamin Burton into the darkness, feeling his heart pound as, far above them, a door slammed shut.

  ONE MINUTE ALICE HAD BEEN standing backstage, trying to make herself inconspicuous in a pool of shadows next to the curtains, watching Millie first struggling to explain herself, and then getting ready to sing. On the way down to the audition, Millie hadn’t been able to stop touching her face, stroking and poking and even pinching at the smooth skin, until Jessica said, “Cut it out!” Then she’d looked at Millie curiously. “If you’ve got stuff that makes the fur go away, why don’t you use it all the time?”

  Millie didn’t answer, but Alice felt her shudder. Alice had been the one who’d watched Millie breathing deeply, clearly working up her nerve before uncorking the vial and taking a sip. She’d been the one who’d seen her friend hunched over and shuddering; she’d been the one to hear the moans Millie made as her fur seemed to suck itself into her body. For a minute all Millie could do was lie there on the bathroom floor, looking even smaller than she usually did, her unhealthy pallor announcing that her skin had never seen the sunlight.