Little Bigfoot, Big City

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Uniform,” Millie corrected. Her mother gave a rueful smile.

  “It is so long I am forgetting.” Septima flipped the scrapbook open. “Shot Putter Leads Track Team to Victory,” read the headline of the first story, and there was a picture of Millie’s mother, her fur gone, and her skin a golden, coppery color, in a sleeveless shirt, white with stripes across the chest, and baggy shorts and knee socks pulled up high. She had a great mass of black hair atop her head, pulled back into intricate braids. Instead of smiling at the camera, she was looking shyly off to the side, like she wanted to be invisible, like she wanted to disappear . . . except not entirely. There was something about the defiant tilt of her chin, the corded muscles of her forearms, and the coiled strength of her body that suggested a kind of stubbornness, a will to make herself known and seen. It was strange and yet familiar—familiar, Millie realized, from her own reflection in the looking glass that hung above the chest of drawers in her bedroom. She too longed to be where she wasn’t. She too dreamed of a life she could never have. She too would use whatever power she had to get herself where she wanted to be, to make a place for herself in a different world.

  Millie stared, tracing the picture with her fingertips, struggling to line up this version—this regular, No-Fur girl version—of her mother with the tremulous, fur-covered Septima she’d always known. She looked like a completely different person, like she was barely Yare at all.

  Septima sighed and looked down at her hands.

  “It wasn’t fair, really,” she said. “The Yare are much stronger than the No-Furs. Of course I’d be a good thrower. But it wasn’t that I wanted to beat them . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, and Millie, who thought that maybe she understood, said, “You just wanted to know.”

  “Yes.” Septima nodded. “Just to be there, and to know, that was all. Not to win, but just to know how I did, compared to the others. Just to know . . .” She ran her fingers over the scrapbook’s cover and gave Millie a shy smile. “Although I always was liking the bus rides to the meets.” Her smile widened. “We’d sing songs on the bus. I had a cheeseburger once when we went for lunch.”

  “So what happened?” Millie asked as she filed away the image of her mother on a bus, in a restaurant, ordering, paying for, and eating a cheeseburger, for future consideration.

  It was quiet for a moment, so still in the little treehouse that Millie could hear the wind outside. Then Septima started flipping the pages. “Track Team Sweeps to Victory,” “Overbrook Standout: Homeschooled Septima Yare Is a Shot-Put Prodigy,” “Yare Takes Gold at West Virginia State Championships.”

  Millie bent her head, reading one of the stories. “ ‘Watching Septima Yare drop into her crouch, then explode into a balletic whirl, hurling the shot put feet—sometimes yards—farther than her competitors, it is hard to believe that she learned the sport just this year, on her own. “She’s a natural,” said Donal Gregg, the Overbrook High School track coach. “She’s the best I’ve seen in twenty years of coaching, and that includes boys and girls.” While the shy seventeen-year-old, who has been homeschooled for her entire life, declined to speak to this reporter, her performance on the field speaks for itself. Asked about Yare’s future, Gregg said, “She can take this as far as she wants to. I don’t think the Olympics are outside the realm of possibility.”’

  “The Olympics,” Millie breathed. Septima’s hands were twisting in her lap. Millie turned another page. “Yare Named to All-State Squad. Next Stop: Junior Nationals.” There was another picture, this one of Septima lined up with four other girls, each one in the uniform of a different high school. In this shot Septima met the camera’s gaze with a bold, pleased smile. Her braids were arranged differently, twined around her head. She cradled the shot behind her ear, and her eyes were narrowed as she peered past the photographer.

  “So what happened?” Millie asked again.

  Septima pressed her lips together. “One of the other girls made a complaining . . .” She paused, then corrected herself in a quiet voice. “A complaint. We were training together once a week at a school in Wheeling. I took a bus to get there. The first two practices were fine, but at the third one, the coach took me aside. There was another No-Fur man with him, a man I’d never seen before. First the coach said I’d never been submitting my physical. Of course, I’d never had one. I did not know what to say. Then he told me”—she ducked her head, and her voice was so quiet that Millie could hardly hear her—“that some of the girls did not think that I was . . .”

  “Human?” Millie whispered, with her heart in her throat.

  Her mother shook her head. “They did not think that I was a girl. I was too big and too strong, and I didn’t look like the rest of them.” Even over the distance of all the years, Millie could hear the hurt and bewilderment and shame in her mother’s voice. “The other man was a doctor. He said that they would do an examining, to check, and then all would be well.”

  Millie felt her skin go cold. If they’d done an examination—if a coach or a doctor had ever learned her mother’s truth—it would have been a disaster. Not just for her but for her entire Tribe, maybe even for all the Yare in the world.

  “What did you do?” she whispered.

  “I said I needed to talk to my parents. They told me they could do the examining right now, right in the nurse’s office at the school. I didn’t know . . .” Septima was shaking all over, her fur quivering. “I didn’t know if they’d look and be able to tell what I really was. So I excused myself—to call my parents, I said—and I ran. I ran, and I ran, and I thought of what would happen if they found our village, if they ever learned the truth of it. All through the night, I ran, and walked, and I promised, never again. The No-Fur world was no place for me. Best to stay hidden. Best to stay where I was safe.”

  Septima pressed her lips together tightly, and then gave Millie her familiar crooked half smile.

  “And then what?” Millie whispered. She imagined that she was walking alongside her mother, through the dark night, shivering in her shorts and her track team sweatshirt, terrified and alone.

  “I could not go back,” her mother said. Her voice was soft, full of old pain and regret. “I thought maybe they’d come looking for me—the coaches, or even a reporter—and they’d find the Tribe, and I could not bring the No-Furs to the Tribe’s door.” She ducked her head, mumbling into her chest-fur. “And I could not tell my parents what I’d done. They would not have understood. They would have set my feet on the road.” She gave a great shudder. “So I just kept walking. I knew there was a Tribe up here, from the Gatherings. I walked at night and I slept in the daytime. I followed the light of the moon.”

  Millie’s fur was prickling and her mouth was dry. “You just left? You never said good-bye to your ma and pa?”

  Septima shook her head. “Not for long-and-long,” she said. “I wrote them letters. And then, later, with the on-the-line, I could write to them that way. But then, I was young and frightened, and I wanted only to hide from what I had done.” She pressed her lips together. “I was ashamed.”

  Millie wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck, burying her face in Septima’s shoulder. Her mother held her, rocking her gently, patting her back and smoothing her fur, the way she had when Millie was very small.

  “But here is the truth of it,” Septima said. “I know what it feels like to want.” Again, she gestured toward the window and the sky and the world beyond it. “I know what it is to want more than what your own people can give you. To want something from the world.”

  Septima reached into the box, pulled out a dull metal ball, and tucked it underneath her chin, cradling it for an instant before setting it gently back in the box. Millie thought she caught the gleam of a medal or two in there, tied with lengths of faded ribbon, but she couldn’t be sure. Her mother removed a sealed envelope and held it in her hand.

  “I think also,” she said, “that the No-Fur Alice needs you.”

  Millie f
elt herself blushing underneath her fur as a wave of guilt swept through her.

  “I have been watching,” her mother said. “Watching and hearing you singing your songs, making your recordings. This No-Fur Jessica has many friends, right?”

  Millie nodded, thinking that was at least what Jessica wanted everyone to think. Boys liked her; other girls did too, with her beautiful clothes and her funny, cutting remarks.

  “But Alice is different,” her mother continued. “Alice is not much like the rest of them, is she?”

  Millie shook her head. Her face was still hot with guilt. She knew that she hadn’t been a good friend to Alice. She’d gotten too busy with all the liking and clicking and fanning and friending, too full of thoughts about which song and which outfit and how to make her fur disappear.

  Her mother was looking at her steadily. “Will you be a good friend to Alice?”

  “I will try,” Millie promised.

  Her mother lifted the small bundle Millie had packed. “You were going to stay the night at the No-Fur school?” she asked.

  Millie nodded, still blushing. “Two nights,” she said. “I will stay in their cabin.” She felt sick with guilt at having to lie, and dizzy with relief that her mother just thought she’d found friends to sing with and hadn’t discovered the truth of The Next Stage. She didn’t know where Millie was going and what she intended to do. “I put a note under my pillow. So you wouldn’t worry.”

  “I will always worry,” said her mother. “Worry is what mothers do.” She handed Millie the envelope, which held five twenty-dollar bills, as soft as the old clothes she kept to polish her good silver.

  “My prize money,” Septima said with a shy, proud smile on her face. “For the meet that I won. In case you are having the emergency. Or your friends take you for a cheeseburger.” She reached out and folded Millie’s fingers around the envelope. “Have a care, my Millietta,” she said.

  Millie hugged her mother as hard as she could, and then, without looking back, she ran off to the path by the lake, carrying her clothes bundle and the basket of food. She could feel her mother’s gaze still on her and she could feel the lie she’d told sticking in her throat like a malevolent toad. I am having the sleep-over, she thought. Just not at the Center. And whether she was sleeping in Alice’s cabin or in Alice’s parents’ partment, Millie knew that Septima would worry just the same.

  But that wasn’t true. If her mother knew she was going to New York City, she would never let her out of the forest. And what if Millie actually won the contest? What if she was invited back to perform for the judges on TV?

  I will burn that bridge when I come to it, Millie thought, she tightened the strings of her hood, fluffed her face-fur, and trotted lightly over the snow.

  ALICE HAD SPENT HOURS PREPARING a speech for Lori and Phil about how she and Jessica needed to visit the Museum of Natural History in New York City to complete their project on endangered whales. She had her lies lined up: Yes, her parents would be in the city (not true). Absolutely, she and Jessica would be supervised the entire time (they wouldn’t). And of course Lori and Phil were welcome to call her folks to check in at any time (the calls would go right to voice mail, and urgent messages would be returned by Marcus Johansson, who’d been more than willing to give Alice his cell-phone number so that he could serve as a pretend parent).

  When Alice had gone to the Center’s office, Phil had been staring at his computer screen and tugging at his beard, and Lori had been fiddling with the Guatemalan worry dolls she kept in a basket on her desk. A few days before, the state’s health department had done a surprise inspection of the school’s kitchen and had fined them because Kate had left a water glass on the otherwise-spotless stainless-steel counter. The week before that, someone claiming to be from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had shown up to ask questions about the school’s hiring practices. Lori’s indignant cries of “No one is more inclusive than we are!” were loud enough that every learner in the entire school could hear them. A representative from the Environmental Protection Agency had inspected their septic tank and told them they’d need a bigger one, and the school had been fined for failing to have enough accessible bathroom stalls for the school to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

  “I’m starting to think this might be personal,” said Phil, gazing mournfully at the latest citation, and Lori, with a handful of worry dolls, had started to sing “We Shall Overcome.” All Alice had to do was mumble her request about needing to spend the night in New York City, and Lori gave an absent nod and said she’d arrange for a van.

  None of it had felt completely real. But now it was Friday morning, the air so cold that it hurt to breathe, the sky a brilliant, vivid blue. Jessica had packed an enormous wheeled suitcase and two duffel bags, one with shoes, the other with makeup and accessories. Millie arrived with her things bundled up and tied to a stick, like a hobo from Alice’s history book. She also had a basket of snackles. “From my mother,” she said shyly as Alice accepted a maple muffin, and Jessica said she wasn’t eating carbs.

  “Seat belts, ladies,” said Chip, the driver, an amiable twenty-three-year-old and a cousin of Phil’s who was in his sixth year of college.

  Millie sat in the middle, with Alice and Jessica on either side of her. Alice had to show Millie how to pull her belt across her chest and latch it closed. She leaned her head against the window, letting her eyes slip shut, thinking that if she could will herself to fall asleep, it wouldn’t hurt as much to be sitting beside the girl she’d once called her friend, with Millie’s new friend—an upgrade, Alice thought—sitting on the other side.

  When she felt Millie’s furry paw brush her hand she kept her eyes shut. When she heard Millie whisper, “Alice?” in a small and frightened voice, she pretended to be sleeping. Alice didn’t open her eyes, not even when she felt Millie flinch as Chip merged onto the highway, not even when she heard Millie gasp and felt her cringe when someone honked. She didn’t let herself think about how terrifying it must be to someone who’d only ever seen her little village and the Center and, for a few hours every year, the town where they went trick-or-treating, someone who’d never driven on a road with more than one lane or seen a place bigger than Standish or more than a few dozen people at a time.

  Alice reminded herself of how it felt to hear Millie laugh and sing and plot with Jessica while Alice lay on her bed, seething, and the two of them ignored her. She remembered a dozen times when she’d been pushed to the edge of a room, outside of their circle. She wouldn’t be won over with a kind word or a muffin. She wouldn’t let Millie get close to her again, knowing how quickly Millie had abandoned her when a better opportunity arrived. She would ignore the fear she heard in Millie’s voice and the slight tremble of her fingers. She’d get to New York and find out the truth of who she was and where she belonged, and then she’d go to that place and make some real friends.

  A FIELD TRIP TO WHERE?” asked his father, squinting at the permission slip Jeremy had made on his computer and printed out so recently that the paper was still warm.

  “New York City,” Jeremy said patiently.

  His father picked up a pen, then put it down, frowning. “Wasn’t your class just there?”

  Jeremy stifled a sigh. He’d been hoping his dad wouldn’t remember last year’s excursion to some big art museum, where a mothball-scented old lady with a whispery voice had led them around, talking about perspective and impasto and the painters’ use of light.

  “That was for art class. This is for music.”

  His father looked at the form, which asked for his permission for Jeremy to attend The Next Stage auditions at Carnegie Hall, then at Jeremy. Maybe, Jeremy thought, he was remembering the sad excursion the family had made to the Juilliard music school, back when they believed Jeremy was some kind of musical prodigy, instead of a slightly better-than-average singer and player of the oboe. “So you’re not auditioning?”

  “No. We’re just watching
the people who are.”

  His father’s forehead furrowed as he frowned. Jeremy thought that he’d have more to say, but finally he just signed the paper, handed it back, and then pulled out his wallet and gave Jeremy two twenty-dollar bills and told him to have a good time.

  “Thanks,” Jeremy said, even as he was wondering why he bothered. The truth was, he could have just told his parents he was sleeping at a friend’s house, or even left without saying anything at all, and they probably wouldn’t have even noticed he was gone.

  Back in his room, he reviewed the plan. He and Jo and Alice had met at the Standish Diner the previous Sunday to talk through the details. Jeremy and Jo had offered to accompany Alice to the city, but she’d turned them down. “I need to do this alone,” she’d said.

  “But you have to call us,” Jo said. “As soon as they tell you where you’re going. You have to call us, so we know where to find you, in case—”

  “In case something happens to me,” said Alice. “I’ll tell you where they tell me to go, and I’ll send you a picture when I get there, and I’ll make sure my phone’s on. That way . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, just tried to retuck the curls that had come out of her braid. Her face looked paler than it had the first time they’d met, with freckles standing out on her nose and her cheeks.

  Jeremy nodded and made sure she had his number and told her good luck.

  Outside, she’d turned left, walking back toward the school, and he and Jo had climbed onto the tandem bike to make their plans in the open air, where no one could listen in.

  “We should follow her,” Jeremy said.

  “You should follow her,” said Jo. “I’m fine on a bike, but on foot, not so speedy.”

  They agreed that Jeremy would be the man on the ground, trailing Alice through New York City, keeping watch and keeping her safe. Jo would stay in Standish, in her Batcave, with all of her computers up and running and her network of experts—the ones they’d trusted enough to tell about Millie and Alice—standing by.