The Littlest Bigfoot (21 page)

Alice looked at Millie, and then reached out tentatively toward her hand. “Is it okay if I touch it?”

“Go ahead,” said Millie. Alice patted her fur gently.

“So this is how you look all the time? It's not a costume?”

Millie nodded. “This is me.”

Alice looked amused and bewildered and more than a little bit hurt. “Why didn't you tell me?” she asked. “Why didn't you tell me that this is what you are?”

“Would you have believed me?” asked Millie.

Alice opened her mouth, then shut it. “I don't know,” she said.

“Besides, I couldn't,” Millie said. “You don't understand. We are not even supposed to talk to the No-Furs. You are not supposed to know we exist! There are No-Furs who hunt Yare, who would put us in zoos or in cages if they catch us. And,” she said, gulping a deep breath, “I knew that if I told you, you wouldn't like me.” She gulped down more air, feeling dizzy, her heart pounding, toes curled in her borrowed boots, cold sweat trickling through her fur. “You'd hurt me, or you wouldn't want to be my friend.”

“I would never hurt you,” Alice said.

“I know you wouldn't,” said Millie. “I didn't know it at
first. But I know it now.” She pictured Alice starting a new school in a new town or city every September, squaring her shoulders and facing off with girls she knew wouldn't like her. “You're the nicest No-Fur I ever met.”

“I'm the only No-Fur you've ever met,” said Alice. “I am, right? Do people look funny to you?” she asked, and answered her own question. “We must. We must look . . . naked.”

Millie giggled. Alice smiled. Mille laughed. Alice laughed too, and then Millie grabbed her hand.

“I'm sorry I ran away,” she said. She shot another worried glance toward the sky. “But now I must go. My parents will . . .” She smiled, using a phrase that Alice had taught her. “They will freak out because I've been gone so long.”

Alice squeezed Millie's hand. “I'll go with you,” she said.

Millie's eyes widened with alarm. “You can't,” she blurted. “If I was bringing a No-Fur to the village . . . if anyone found out that I'd even been talking to you . . .”

“What would they do?” asked Alice.

“I don't know. Something bad.” Millie bent her neck and mumbled into her fur. “Set my feet on the road.” She lifted her head and looked at Alice, big, strong, beautiful Alice with her lovely thick reddish-blond hair. “You won't tell?”

“No,” said Alice. Then she asked, “Do Bigfoots eat people?”

“Of course not!” said Millie. “We eat jelly sandwiches.” As if to punctuate the remark, her stomach growled, making both girls laugh again. “Maybe we should be having a small snackle before I go,” she said, and reached into her packsack.

Together the girls munched jelly sandwiches and cheese and pickles, and exchanged questions. Alice wanted to know if the proper plural was “Bigfoots” or “Bigfeet” (“Yare.” “Bigfoot,” Millie explained, was terribly insulting), whether they ever used to eat humans (no), and why they lived in forests (afraid of people).

Millie asked whether all humans had guns (no), whether there were laws about all No-Fur women all having to look the same (Alice said there weren't laws, but that being thin with long hair and high heels and makeup was strongly encouraged), and why people hunted Yare (Alice wasn't sure but promised she would look it up on the Internet).

“Tell me about your parents,” Alice said as Millie helped herself to dried plums.

“Their names are Maximus and Septima. My papa is the Leader. He's very big but very gentle. My mother says
that her job is taking care of me,” said Millie. “Most Yare are afraid of No-Furs, but my parents—my mother especially—are, like, obsessed,” she said, borrowing another turn of phrase she'd learned from Alice. “My ma tells me terrible stories about the things the No-Furs do to Yare if they catch them.”

“Like what?” asked Alice, who loved all kinds of stories. “What stories does she tell?”

So Millie told her the tale of Bad Red-Suit No-Fur, and Alice started laughing. “But that's Santa Claus!” she said. “He isn't bad! He goes down the chimney to bring children presents, not steal things!”

“That is not what they tell us,” Millie said sternly. “A No-Fur who can fit down chimneys is scary . . . and even his name sounds scary. Santa Claws!”

Alice laughed, shaking her head, and explained how “Claus” was spelled. When Millie told the story of the Bad Fairytooth No-Fur, Alice laughed even harder.

“That's the Tooth Fairy! And she doesn't take money from children! She takes their teeth, but only after they've fallen out, and she leaves money and a note under the pillow!” Alice paused, and sounded sad when she said, “Or sometimes your family's housekeeper just gives you a gift card.”

As the moon rose higher in the sky, Millie ate, and Alice asked questions, dozens of questions. What did Yare houses look like? (They were made of sod, dug into hillsides, with cleverly vented chimneys that dispersed smoke throughout the forest.) Did Yare wear clothes? (Yes, but not always.) Drive cars? (Just once a year.)

Alice barely paused to take a breath. Did the Yare have pets? Did they ever take vacations? Did they ever have anything to do with the No-Furs? Like, for example, if they found a No-Fur baby abandoned in the forest, would they take it in and care for it and raise it with their own? Or if, just maybe, a lost No-Fur child came wandering through the woods and had no parents—or, at least, no parents who particularly wanted her back . . .

Millie pressed her lips together. Regretfully, she shook her head. “The Yare are scared of No-Furs. They'd never even touch a No-Fur baby. The only time we even go near the No-Furs is on Halloween, and when my father does the Mailing, and even then he is ever so careful.”

Alice seemed eager to ask more, but Millie got to her feet, carefully brushing the crumbs from her fur. “I really, really must to go.”

“Okay,” said Alice. Millie heard her voice crack, could see the unhappiness on her face. She thought about Alice's
life at the Center and horrible Jessica Jarvis and how every year was different but the same. Different schools, different girls, but the same scorn and misery. Different kids pulling different pranks, a dozen versions of Jessica Jarvis pointing and laughing, different Novembers where she'd watch her classmates depart for train stations and airports while she stayed behind at school because her parents were traveling and she wasn't invited to come along.

How would it feel to find out that there was another world out there, a world beneath the world, hidden away like the secret caramel center of a chocolate or a pearl tucked in an oyster's shell? A world where Alice could be accepted, even loved? To know that the world existed, but that she could never go there, that the doors would always be locked against her . . . Millie didn't want to think about it.

She stood, stretched out her arms, and gave Alice the biggest, hardest hug she could manage; then she said, “Good-bye,” and kissed her friend's cheek and went running into the forest, toward home.

D
RESSED ALL IN BLACK—BLACK
jeans, a black sweatshirt, a knitted black cap pulled down to cover his hair, and a black mask obscuring his face—Jeremy Bigelow began his Halloween crouched outside the gates of the Experimental Center for Love and Learning.

“Pay attention to the school,” the old man on the phone had rasped. Jeremy had assumed he'd meant the middle school, and for the week after the call, he'd gone to school an hour early and spent that time, plus recess, scrutinizing the playground, the paths, the parking lot, the athletic field, and the woods behind them. After five days of looking, Jeremy hadn't found a thing, except for a
few cigarette butts and an old deflated soccer ball. So he expanded his search, spending a day apiece at the town's three elementary schools and devoting a weekend to the high school—scouring the grass, examining the trees, collecting discarded soda cans and granola-bar wrappers with the plan of checking them later for fingerprints. He hadn't found a single scrap of evidence or encouragement and was starting to wonder if “school” could mean preschool or the Standish Academy of Karate or even the new yoga studio on Main Street, when he remembered hearing his parents talk about some kind of experimental school that had opened in the former campground on Lake Standish that fall.

Google led him to the school's website (“The Experimental Center for Love and Learning: a safe space where a community of committed learners comes together to explore the world”). Google Maps showed him precisely where the Center was located; Google Earth displayed pictures of the log-cabin-style dining hall, the dozen little cabins, and a wooden gate with what looked like driftwood and twigs spelling out the words “All Are Welcome Here” at the top. Jeremy had rolled his eyes, packed a bag, and headed out after dinner.

“I'm going trick-or-treating!” he called to his parents in the living room, even though they hadn't asked where he
was going, hadn't seemed to notice that he wasn't wearing a costume, and didn't seem particularly interested in when he'd get back.

“Have fun, dear,” said his mother.

“Be careful,” said his dad.

He checked in with Jo, climbed on his bike, which he had reassembled, and pedaled through town, then along the bumpy dirt path that led to the Center. When he reached the gate he'd seen in the picture, he ditched his bike in the tall grasses and continued his trek on foot. The sign might have read “All Are Welcome Here,” but Jeremy felt certain that a strange kid caught creeping around the grounds would not be welcome at all.

He could hear noises coming from the dining hall, the clatter of silverware and the hum of conversation. He watched and waited until the students started to leave, and then he tucked himself under the eaves of the building with his phone cupped in his hand. Kids in costumes streamed past—superheroes and ghosts, football players and devils and a girl all in green who kept sneezing—but they all just looked like regular kids. Then a broad-shouldered girl whose curly hair was pulled into a braid as thick as Jeremy's forearm walked by. The girl wore a trench coat and a hat with a brim and walked with
her hands in her pockets. There was something about the way she stood, the defeated slump of her shoulders, the furtive way she looked around from the corners of her eyes, that reminded him of something—or someone—but he wasn't sure what.

Jeremy watched the girl look to her left and her right, then start walking swiftly down toward the lake . . . and, because he didn't have a plan, or any better ideas, he decided to follow her.

He stayed out of sight as she walked down to the lake, noticing the way she straightened up, held her head higher, and looked excited instead of ashamed as she got closer to the shore. “Millie! You're here!” he heard her call as a canoe glided onto the shore and a small, furry, gray creature that looked like a baby bear hopped out.

“Are you an Ewok?” he heard the bigger girl ask.

“An Ewok!” the canoe girl replied . . . and they walked off together, to go trick-or-treat at the cabins with the rest of the Center's students.

Ewok,
thought Jeremy, snapping off shots as fast as his night-vision camera could take them.
As if.
He heard his blood thunder in his ears, felt himself flush with triumph as he tweezed a bit of gray fur that had drifted into the prickers. Then he ran to his bike and rode down
back through town, weaving in and out of crowds of little kids dressed up like princesses and monsters, until he'd reached Jo's house.

She was, as always, in her Batcave, dressed in a Bikini Kill T-shirt and jeans and pristine sneakers—blue Nikes this time. More maps of Standish had joined the pushpin-studded original on the wall, along with half a dozen blowups of the side-by-side photographs, some with other Bigfoot illustrations superimposed on them.

“Jeremy,” she said, spinning her Aeron chair around. “Whatcha got?”

“I got this,” he said, and showed her the photographs of the girl and the furry creature, the clump of gray hair with a strand of reddish-blond that had gotten mixed in. Talking fast, trying to keep his story organized and concise, while leaving out, for reasons he didn't entirely understand, the weird telephone call he'd gotten—maybe because the old guy had been such a jerk, and also sexist—he told Jo that he'd started looking at schools and how he'd seen the big, broad-shouldered, sad-looking girl, and he'd followed her down to the lake, and seen the Ewok-quote-unquote.

Jo frowned. “It's awfully small,” she said, studying the picture.

“Maybe it's a kid,” Jeremy said. “A kid Bigfoot.”

“Or a human kid in costume,” said Jo.

“Or a kid Bigfoot,” Jeremy persisted.