The Littlest Bigfoot (12 page)

So at lunch she sidled over to Jacobus, who was two years younger than she was. Jacobus was a hulking young Yare with enormous shoulders and hands, and curly reddish-brown fur.

“Happy Name-Day,” he said, reaching out to hold both of Millie's hands in his, the ritual greeting the Yare gave one another on special occasions. “Do you have any cake left over?”

She handed him a wedge of carrot cake, then said, as casually as she could, “You are knowing where the canoe is, right?”

Before Jacobus could answer, Tulip walked over to join them. The fur around her eyes and ears was looking even darker. “Why are you asking about canoes?”

“Why are you asking why I'm asking?” Millie responded.

Tulip looked smug. “You want to go over to where the No-Furs are.”

Millie straightened to her full height, which took
her to Jacobus's chest and Tulip's shoulder. “What if I do? I'm supposed to be spying. I could gather valuable information.”

“Like what?” sniffed Tulip. “The words to more of their songs?”

In for a penny, in for a pounding,
Millie thought. That was what Old Aunt Yetta said. “It's important for the Tribe to be knowing what the No-Furs are up to. You could come with me!” she offered.

Jacobus stepped backward, away from Millie, and Tulip flinched.

“We don't even have to go all the way to shore; we can just get close enough to see what all the noise is,” Millie said.

Jacobus shook his head with his brow-fur bristling and his expression grave. “Millie,” he said, “you know we can't go near them.”

“They won't see us!” she said. “It'll be dark, and we'll be in a boat, on the water.”

“Nyebbeh,” Tulip said, and went back to the classroom—to tattle, Millie thought. Jacobus continued walking backward, with the remnants of Millie's cake looking very small in his hands. “I should tell your parents what you're saying.”

She grabbed his arm-fur and tugged it hard. “Nyebbeh! Nugget! No!”

“But you can't go.” He crouched down and stared into her eyes. “You have to promise you won't.”

“I won't,” she grumbled.

“Remember Cassoundra,” he said.

“I do,” she said, feeling miserable. Every Yare remembered Cassoundra, the only Yare to ever appear—accidentally, of course—in a No-Fur movie. Cassoundra, whose Tribe lived in California, had been filmed by No-Furs after she'd wandered near their campsite. She was the reason modern-day No-Furs had even a vague idea of what the Yare looked like and where they lived. As a result of Cassoundra's mistake, her clan had to leave its encampment where they'd lived for two hundred years, and Cassoundra had been cast out of the Tribe, her feet set on the road. Her name was the one the Yare used when they wanted to tell their children how dire the consequences of discovery could be, to scare them into good behavior, or silence.

Jacobus shuffled closer to Millie and whispered in her ear a name that was hardly ever spoken out loud. “Remember Demetrius.”

Millie shuddered. Demetrius was the name of her
father's twin brother. Demetrius had been curious, like Millie (“That's where she gets it,” Septima was fond of remarking, usually with an exasperated look toward her spouse). He too liked to climb up trees to spy on the campers across the lake; he too had been heard talking about what it would be like to take a canoe in the dead of night and paddle over to their side.

Most of all—worst of all—Demetrius was a student of history. He'd read the same books as Millie. He knew that the Yare and the No-Furs had once lived together side by side, and he believed that if the No-Furs just got to know the Yare, if they realized that their differences were mostly external—a matter of hair and size—then they would welcome them, and the Yare and the No-Furs could live as friends once again.

His parents tried to stop him, Maximus had told Millie, with a grave expression and his deep voice even deeper than usual. They punished him for spying; they bribed him with treats and gifts; they begged and pleaded and explained, over and over, how risky it was. But when he was sixteen, Demetrius disappeared. A canoe was found missing, along with a packsack and most of his clothes and books. He'd left a note saying that he loved his parents and his brother but that he was going to see the world.

“Is he dead?” Millie had asked, her lips trembling, her mouth dry.

Maximus had given her a sober look. “We will never know,” he said . . . and that, somehow, seemed even worse than having an uncle who'd died.

“Millie,” said Jacobus.

Millie looked at him. “I remember what I'm taught.” Her little hands had curled into fists, and she could feel her silvery fur bristling, making her look like an indignant porcupine. “I know, I know, I know!”

All through her lessons, as the day dragged on, Millie could hear splashes and shouts and laughter. Even after Teacher Greenleaf looked at her sternly and pulled the curtains across the window, Millie could hear them. It was all too much . . . and, two days after her Name-Night, she couldn't resist the temptation any longer.

B
ETWEEN DAILY CONVERSATION AND MORNING
Nutrition, Alice found out that the Experimental Center's new arrival's name was Jessica Jarvis, and she was coming to school so late because she'd either been a guest at or a model in Fashion Week in New York City. Jessica's father was a famous designer. Her mother had been his favorite model, and Jessica was their only, beloved child. She'd been sent to the Experimental Center because of its extremely forgiving policies about “off-campus learning opportunities.”

“Also,” Taley said, “I thinkbd they givde her class creditb for modeling.”

On their way to their first learning session, Lori had
made an introduction. “You're both from New York City, Alice. You and Jessica should have a lot to talk about!” she said. The sunshine glistened on her big front teeth, and Alice could see the faint, downy mustache on her upper lip. From the way Jessica was smirking, Alice suspected that the other girl could too.

Alice extended her hand, and Jessica gave Alice her own hand, as limp as a plastic bag full of warm water. “What neighborhood are you from?” Alice asked automatically—the thing every New Yorker asked his or her fellows when encountering them elsewhere in the world.

Jessica pushed the words “Upper East Side” through her barely parted lips, with her torso tilted backward like she couldn't wait to get away from Alice. Her voice, unlike Riya's quiet tones and Taley's nasal honk, was lovely, low and sweet, like she'd taken singing lessons or had a secret career as a news anchor. “And you?” she asked, because Lori was still there.

“Eighty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue,” said Alice, and was gratified to see Jessica's eyebrow give an incremental twitch of surprise, probably because Alice came from a neighborhood that Jessica regarded as acceptable.

“You'll help Alice feel welcome in our community?” Lori asked as Jessica retrieved her hand.

“Of course!” said Jessica.

Lori gave a little skipping twirl of delight before a loud, grating noise distracted her. Across from the soccer fields, one of the learning guides had rigged a blender to a bicycle with a plan of getting the kids to pedal, using their own energy to turn basil and garlic and pine nuts and olive oil into pesto. Except the guide had failed to put the lid on the blender before the pedaling commenced, and three learners and a half dozen nearby trees had gotten sprayed with garlicky green goo. Lori ran over to help, and Jessica flounced away in a swirl of shiny hair and a cloud of forbidden aerosol hairspray.

That night, when Alice went back to the Ladybug cabin, her bed had been stripped. Her fluffy white comforter and crisply pillowcased pillows had all been dumped in a heap on the floor. Her clothes had been pulled out of the cubbies and tossed on top of the bedding, and the bed that had been hers was now made up with a pink flowered quilt and peach satin pillows. Alice bit her lip, resisting the impulse to return the favor, to yank off all the invading sweet-smelling peachy-pink stuff and toss it on the floor . . . or better yet, into the lake. She knew what this meant. She'd hoped that maybe the Center wouldn't be like her other schools. Taley and Riya weren't friends, but they weren't
awful, and she had her lessons with Kate. Plus, twice in the week before, she'd seen one of the eighth-grade boys on an early-morning run of his own. The second time he'd even waved at her. But now the turning point had come, the moment where the Experimental Center would change into the same kind of torture chamber that every one of her other schools had been.

“Sorry, I need the bottom bunk,” Jessica said. “Vertigo. Oh, and I needed more space in the bathroom, so I put your”—she paused just long enough for the silence to stretch to an insulting length—“
things
underneath the sink.”

Instead of complaining, Alice quietly went about making the top bed and putting her belongings away in the corresponding cubbies. There'd been a Jessica at each of her previous schools. Fighting with that girl—whether her name was Miranda or Olivia or Sophie or Sally—never did any good. Neither did telling the teachers. You just kept your head down, stayed out of their way, and hoped they found other targets.

Unfortunately, Jessica seemed to decide that tormenting Alice was her personal mission . . . and it was work she took seriously. In the mornings, when Alice came back from the forest, Jessica was in the shower, and she stayed there, filling the room with steam and the
cloying scent of peach body wash, using up all of the hot water as Alice, muddy and miserable, brushed her teeth and waited.

“Privacy!” Jessica would sing, slamming the bathroom door and locking the other three girls out.

At meals she would sit next to the basketball-shorts boys, giggling and whispering. The giggles and whispers always stopped when Alice passed them, then resumed, much more loudly, as she walked away.

During learning sessions Jessica would tilt her head adorably and say, “I'm sorry, what was that?” whenever Alice gave an answer or read out loud. “Can you speak up and stop mumbling, please? I really want to hear what you have to say.”

Within a week of her arrival, Jessica had assembled her clique: two eighth-grade girls, Cara and Christy, and three of the long-basketball-shorts-wearing boys, a clump that Alice thought of as the Steves (only one of the boys—the one who'd waved at her—was named Steve, but they all looked and dressed the same, and Alice had never managed to learn their names). Cara was a tall girl with long legs and fine features whose parents were actors in Los Angeles. Christy was plain and quiet to the point of invisibility. Taley's theory, which Alice had overheard her explain to Riya, was that the
glamorous Jessica and Cara kept Christy around because she made them feel pretty and because she paid for everything with the generous allowance her parents sent.

Alice supposed she should be grateful that Jessica was hardly ever in their cabin, unless she was monopolizing the shower or changing her clothes. All three girls had learned not to try to get near the bunk's single mirror when Jessica was using it or to complain about how her various hair-styling implements took up all four of the electrical outlets in the cabin.

“Silence, ladies,” Jessica would say. Somehow, the word “silence” sounded worse than “shut up,” and “ladies” sounded worse than “losers.” Jessica's disdain could have been the thing that brought the girls together, united against a common enemy, but Jessica cleverly made sure that didn't happen.

“I don't think fencing's a weird hobby at all,” she'd said on her second day at school, with her hand on a confused Riya's shoulder. “I know some people”—she cut her eyes at Alice—“think it means you're a dangerous sociopath who wants to stab someone for real, but not all of us agree.”

Riya had snatched up her helmet and stalked away, and when Alice had tried to explain, Riya interrupted her with a clipped “It's fine.”

“Justdb ignoredb her,” Taley said. Alice tried . . . but a week into Jessica's reign, just as Alice was getting used to the new reality, everything changed.

“Alice,” Jessica purred as she flounced into the cabin one day after lunch.

Alice was so startled to hear her name coming out of her bunkmate's mouth that at first she assumed she'd misheard. It wasn't until Jessica tapped her shoulder, making an impatient face, and said, “Earth to Alice, come in, Alice,” that Alice realized that Jessica was, in fact, talking to her.

“Do you want to borrow something?” Whatever Jessica wanted, Alice decided, she would let her have. It would be easier than fighting.

Jessica laughed, shaking her head. “No, no. I was just wondering if you wanted to sit with us tonight at . . . um . . .” She wrinkled her nose charmingly. “What are we calling it now?”