The Littlest Bigfoot (15 page)

M
OST OF HER TIME AT
the Center, Alice had tried to be quiet, to be invisible, to slip, unnoticed, among her classmates. The night after the Jessica Jarvis incident she decided not to care.

Late that night, she stomped up the path to the dining hall, cracking branches, kicking dead leaves, doing everything but banging Phil's bongos to announce her arrival. The dining-hall doors were locked, but instead of looking for the key that she knew Kate kept underneath the mat, Alice slammed the door as hard as she could with her shoulder, giving a humorless smile when it popped open on her first attempt. If they thought she
was a monster, well, then, she'd behave like a monster.

Alice yanked open the refrigerator. At the end of that awful, endless day, she'd refused to go to dinner, had stayed in bed, flat on her belly with a pillow over her head.

“Kate made you something special,” Lori said after paying a special visit to Bunk Ladybug, but Alice had refused to answer or even move.

Lori hadn't lied. There was a plate in the walk-in refrigerator, covered in wax paper, with “For Alice” written on it in Kate's dashed-off scribble. Last week they'd been experimenting with brownie recipes, adding swirls of dark chocolate, marshmallow drizzle, bits of toffee, and peppermint. It had been fun.

Alice snatched the plate and turned to go. She'd walk to the lake, she'd eat her treat, and then she'd figure out if she even wanted to stay at this place or whether she should just call her parents, admit defeat, and beg them to bring her back home.

On her way out, she stopped and looked at the stack of clean plates on the shelf, the rows of bowls for the morning's porridge, the heavy mugs for tea. Before she'd even planned it, she stretched out her arm and swept a stack of pottery onto the floor. The crash was deafening as the plates and bowls shattered into nasty-looking
shards and pottery dust. Alice leaped over the mess, still holding her brownies, and started to walk down to the lake.

The day had been just as horrible as she'd feared. She'd lain awake all night, too ashamed and furious to sleep, and when it was time for Daily Conversation, her eyes felt gritty, like they were full of sand, and her arms and neck were knotted with cramps.

“Oh,” she heard Riya say as the girls stepped out of the cabin in the morning. Riya stopped moving like she'd been frozen. Taley gasped.

Alice pushed past them. It looked like the campus had been hit by some strange snowstorm that had left the tree trunks blanketed in white.

Then Alice saw what was going on. Jessica and her crew had had a busy night. It wasn't snow on the trees; it was pieces of paper. Each one of them had her picture. Her picture, with another one beside it. On some posters she was lined up next to a Bigfoot, and sometimes the Thing or the Incredible Hulk or King Kong.

Alice stomped over to a tree and tore down the flyers. She marched to the next tree and saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Riya and Taley were trotting from tree to tree, pulling down more pictures. She'd just finished
ripping down a flyer depicting her next to Godzilla when Jessica Jarvis drifted by.

“It really is an uncanny resemblance,” Jessica said. She looked lovely as always, her hair in shining waves, the pleats of her miniskirt perfectly ironed, her lip gloss beautifully applied, her white blouse spotless.

Alice's eyes were hot and her throat felt tight and burning as she pulled another poster off a tree. She wanted to ask why . . . but she knew there wasn't an answer that would satisfy her or take away the sting. They'd done this to her because it was what people like Jessica did. It was how they kept themselves on top of the social pyramid . . . every once in a while, they'd step down from their pedestal and squash the people underneath them, just to remind the world that they could.

That morning, classes were canceled. Phil and Lori called everyone to Mother Tree and then stood there in silence, their heads bowed. Lori finally looked up, and Alice was mortified to see that Lori's eyes were full of tears.

“I have never—never—been so disappointed,” she said. Her voice was croaky as she slowly looked over the assembled learners. “When you enrolled, each one of you signed a pledge. You promised to respect the individuality
and dignity and unique spirit of the other members of this village. This morning, we learned that some of you didn't take that pledge seriously. You have betrayed not only your fellow learners but your own integrity and the spirit in which we founded the Center.”

Phil rested his hands on her shoulders as Lori continued. “I urge the person or people who did this—and I hesitate to even dignify you with the title of ‘person'—to come forward now, and apologize, not only to Alice, but to this entire community and, maybe most of all, to yourselves.”

Lori stepped back. A heavy silence descended over the group. Alice sat, miserable, feeling as if every inch of her skin was burning, as if she could experience her classmates' scorn and pity like a physical thing, a fever or a rash.

After five minutes of silence, Phil said, “My good friend Jack David agreed to come this morning and lead a seminar about bullying. I urge you all to give him your full attention.”

Phil bent his head, and a short, bald, sunburned-looking man, dressed in a blue shirt and khakis, bounded to the front of the group and said, “Who here has ever felt like they didn't fit in?”

All morning Alice sat there listening to Jack David talk
about societal standards and internalized self-loathing and “a mind-set of kindness” and how it was all of their duty to stand up to bullies. Lori said the Center would be sending a letter home to everyone's parents “with regard to this unfortunate situation,” and Phil once again urged the culprits, or “anyone with any knowledge of the situation,” to come forward.

Alice didn't move.
This is what happens,
she told herself.
This is what happens when you're dumb enough to think that anyone actually likes you. This is what happens when you let yourself hope.

Phil and Lori let her go back to the cabin and spend the entire afternoon there, skipping lunch and her learning sessions and Evening Nutrition. Alice lay on her bed with her eyes closed, ignoring Taley and Riya when they tried to talk to her, ignoring Jessica, who knew better than to say a word.

That night Lori tried to tell her about the brownies Kate had baked, but Alice wouldn't open her eyes. Taley and Riya invited her to watch the finale of some reality TV talent show with them; they'd gotten special permission to use the TV set in the lodge. Alice just shook her head.

“I'mdb sorry thisb habbened,” said Taley. She tried to touch Alice's hair.

Alice jerked away.

“Leave. Me. Alone,” she said.

“Okay,” said Taley. “But we're here if you want to talk or anything.” She paused. “We're really sorry.” She sounded like she meant it, but Alice thought that she and Riya were privately discussing how they'd warned Alice about Jessica, how they'd told her this would happen, how it was nobody's fault but her own.

Alice lay on her bed, motionless, fists clenched, through lights-out. When everyone was asleep, she got up, slammed out of the cabin, and went to the kitchen, where she took the brownies and broke the dishes.
I don't want to be here,
she thought, stomping off toward the water.
I don't want to be anywhere. I don't want to be . . . at all.

She'd just gotten herself settled underneath her favorite tree when she heard something. Faint splashing, then a girl's voice.

“Help!”

Alice peered out into the darkness. Maybe she'd imagined something. Maybe this was just another trick, a way for a day she didn't think could get any worse to prove her wrong. She heard more splashing . . . and coughing . . . and a tiny, choking voice saying, “Help!”

Without thinking, she kicked off her shoes and ran into the water, stroking quickly until she reached the flailing figure.
A girl,
she thought, although between the darkness and the churn of the water, it was hard to tell.

“I've got you,” she said. Immediately the girl stopped kicking and thrashing, letting Alice grab her shoulders and tow her onto the shore.

M
ILLIE FELT HERSELF BEING PULLED
through the water, then dragged up onto the sandy beach. She heard her rescuer collapse beside her, gasping.

As soon as she could move, Millie pushed herself onto her hands and knees, and half crawled, half scuttled into the bushes, so that her savior—a girl, she thought, a No-Fur girl—wouldn't be able to see her.
Never, never, never let a No-Fur catch sight of you
, she'd heard her parents and her teachers and Old Aunt Yetta tell her for years . . . but the tickle of fear was completely overwhelmed by her excitement. She was here, in the No-Fur world. With a No-Fur girl! Her fondest wish had come true.

When she managed to get herself hidden, she retched and opened her mouth, and what felt like half the lake came pouring out. Millie looked down. Her dress was a soaked ruin through which her fur could clearly be seen. Her pockets were empty, the vial of potion lost somewhere in the lake's vastness. Her hairy feet, with their curving claws, were bare, which meant her ruby slippers were probably at the bottom of the lake. She patted her head, trying to smooth back her head-hair, and smiled a little as her fingers found the bow she'd clipped in, on the other side of the lake, what felt like a million years ago.

Peeking through the bushes, she saw the other girl get up. She was beautiful, big and solid like Millie always wished she could be, with thick, gleaming hair running down her back, strong, round arms, and tanned legs. The girl deftly twisted her hair into a coil, wringing it out before flipping it over her shoulder and looking around.

“Hello?” she called.

“I am back in here,” Millie said. She knew she should just run away, leave before the girl could get a good look at her and tell the grown-ups that she'd just fished a real, live Bigfoot out of the lake, but Millie couldn't make herself do it. How many times had she dreamed of a night like this, where she'd meet one of the No-Fur kids and
they'd talk and discover all the things they had in common and become friends? All thoughts of the
Next Stage
finale had fled in the presence of a real, live No-Fur girl. Millie had a million questions, and this could be the only chance she'd have in her entire life to get answers.

“Are you okay?” the No-Fur girl was asking. Now she'd taken off her top-shirt and was repeating the wringing-out process. Millie could see muscles flex in her back as her hands worked, and felt her familiar shame at being so puny. And how would she explain why she was standing in the bushes?

She did some fake coughing to buy herself some time and decided to trust the girl with at least a small piece of the truth. “I am okay,” she said. “It is only that my dress is kind of see-through, and I am a little bit . . . hairy.”

The girl winced—a sympathetic kind of wince, Millie thought.

“Is your stomach okay?” she asked. “Do you need a drink?”

“That would be lovely!” Millie said in a fancy kind of voice like the one she'd heard in a commercial for a luxurious brand of mustard. “Also maybe a small snackle? That was a very long swim.”

The No-Fur girl looked puzzled. Millie worried that
maybe she'd been rude or said something wrong. “I have brownies,” the girl finally said. Sure enough, the girl looked around, then walked up the beach a ways and came back with a plate.

Brownies! Millie had seen commercials for them but had never tasted one. Before she could stop herself, her hand shot through the bushes and snatched a dark-brown square of pastry from the top of the plate. “Thank you,” she said, and took a tiny nibble. The rich, dense sweetness seemed to explode on her tongue, filling her mouth and throat with unimaginable deliciousness. Millie moaned out loud.

“I know,” said the No-Fur, sounding shy and proud. “I came up with the recipe by myself.”

Millie crammed a bite of brownie into her mouth and closed her eyes, chewing in ecstasy. If No-Furs had these, if they could eat them anytime they wanted, how did they ever get anything done? Why would they want to do anything else? If Millie was a No-Fur, she'd just eat brownies all day and all night.

Except now she was thirsty.

“Excuse me, but did you perhaps mention water?” she asked, taking care to keep her language polite and correct.

“I'll go get some,” said the girl. She turned on her heel and started to run toward the school.

Leave,
said a voice in Millie's head, a voice that sounded like Septima's.
Leave now and this could come round right
. Instead, Millie helped herself to another two brownies. The girl couldn't see her through the bushes—at least, not that well—and even if she did, Millie would use the line that all Yare littlies had been taught to say as soon as they could speak, the line they were instructed to recite if ever the No-Furs found them:
I have a glandular condition.