Dr. Johansson hadn’t looked happy when Jeremy and Jo had told him that Alice had decided to go to the city alone. “I’d feel better if she had the two of you with her.”
“That’s what we thought too, but we couldn’t change her mind, so we decided . . .” Jeremy shuffled his feet, until Jo jumped in.
“We’re going to follow her,” Jo said.
“It’s for her own good,” said Jeremy.
“Of course,” said the doctor.
Jeremy wasn’t surprised to find out that Dr. Johansson had all kinds of gadgets in the drawers of his gigantic desk, including a tiny camera to stick somewhere in the lobby of Alice’s building that would broadcast an image of everyone entering and leaving to the screen of Jeremy’s phone. The three of them consulted a map and online images of Alice’s street, plotting out hiding spots and subway routes.
“I don’t like doing this,” Dr. Johansson said, typing rapidly, toggling between screens so fast that Jeremy couldn’t keep up. “But it’s the only way to keep her safe. Can you tell me her phone number again?”
Jeremy recited the digits. Then he saw an Apple logo come up, then the words “override protocol.” “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Sneaking in through the back door,” Dr. Johansson said. “And turning on Alice’s telephone’s GPS locator. You know how most phones have a ‘find my phone’ feature?”
Jeremy did, having used that feature himself.
“Parents use it too, only instead of ‘find my phone,’ it’s ‘track my kid.’ There’s a lawsuit before the circuit court of appeals right now as to whether that’s legal or if it constitutes an invasion of privacy, but until the judges make up their minds . . .”
He typed, then looked at the screen. Jeremy saw a map of Standish and a glowing red dot. “Alice,” said Dr. Johansson. “She’s at school. Or, at least, her phone is.”
He showed Jeremy how to use the app to track Alice. They discussed which maps would be most useful in New York and what Jeremy should say if anyone asked why he was sitting outside of Alice’s apartment building. Finally, Dr. Johansson gave him what he promised would be the most useful thing of all. That turned out to be a yellow MetroCard, a pass for the city’s buses and subways.
“Good luck,” he said, and Jo said, “Be careful,” and Jeremy promised her he would.
In his bedroom, Jeremy packed a bag and checked the maps he’d downloaded, tracing his route from Port Authority Bus Terminal to Alice’s apartment on the Upper East Side, making sure he’d looked up every diner and all-night coffee shop where he could stop in to use a bathroom or get warm. A snatch of an old song began to play in his head. “Every step you take / I’ll be watching you.” It sounded creepy, like he was a stalker, not a protector, but as long as he was clear about his intentions, it would all come out right.
“I’m one of the good guys,” he said, just to remind himself, and put a spare phone charger in his backpack and zipped it shut.
MILLIE SHUDDERED AS THE VAN emerged from the whooshing, terrifying darkness of the tunnel. “Are we there yet?” she asked, pressing her body into the seat, clutching the seat belt with both hands with her eyes squeezed shut.
“Stop doing that!” Jessica hissed.
“Doing what?” Millie asked.
“Making that noise,” Jessica said. “You sound like a teakettle. And you need to stop doing that thing with your nose. Can you please at least try to look normal?”
Millie pressed her lips together and forced her face to relax. She could try to stop flaring her nostrils but she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop shaking. The city stank. The air was thick, almost furry with the smell of exhaust and burning rubber, of horse urine and half-rotted trash. Her ears were being assaulted by the cacophony of what sounded like a hundred car horns, a thousand voices chattering and singing and shouting and sighing and swearing in three dozen different languages. There were people, people everywhere, more people than Millie had ever seen or even imagined, people walking shoulder to shoulder down the sidewalks, people standing in impatient clusters, waiting for the traffic lights to change, people pushing their way into stores and offices, people shoving their way out. The trip into the city had been terrible, but Millie could already tell that the city itself was going to be much, much worse.
She’d been hopeful, at first, that the day would go well. Millie had arrived at the Center and waited by the seventh-grade learners’ cabin until Alice and Jessica came back from breakfast.
“That’s all you’ve got?” asked Jessica, staring at Millie’s bundle. “Is that a pillowcase? And why’d you tie it to a branch?”
“I saw it in a picture,” said Millie, who was beginning to think that Teacher Greenleaf’s books on American history might need some updating. “Is this not proper?”
“Most people,” said Jessica, “would use a suitcase.”
Millie considered. “I do not have suits,” she said.
“What about your backpack?”
“That,” Millie said, “is not being special.”
Jessica made an unpleasant noise, told Millie to wait, and trotted back through the gates, leaving Alice and Millie alone.
“Hello,” Millie ventured.
“Hi,” Alice said. She was looking at her feet. Her back was stiff, her hands were in her pockets, and her hair, bundled underneath a red knitted hat, looked like it was pulsing against the yarn, desperate for escape. Millie offered her a muffin. Alice picked one and muttered, “Thanks.”
When Alice didn’t say anything else, Millie said, “It is nice of you to let us stay in your partment.”
“A-partment,” said Alice.
“Yes, a partment,” Millie said. “I am not ever having seen one. Is it up very high?”
“We’re on the thirty-eighth floor.” Alice was still looking at her feet.
Millie wanted to tell her what she’d found out about her mother, how she’d once been a No-Fur track star and thrown a ball of metal farther than any other girl or boy, but Alice’s stormy expression made her keep quiet.
When Jessica came back with the kind of bag called a duffel, Millie untied her bundle from the stick and tucked it inside. They met the driver, a big, amiable No-Fur boy named Chip with a beard and a funny, sweetish smell, a little bit like burning leaves. Millie liked him right away. This will be fine, she thought, as she climbed inside the van and buckled her belt.
Driving through the town of Standish was distressing but tolerable. But the endless hours they spent on the highway were a nightmare. Millie spent the first hour of the ride trying to get used to being in a car surrounded by other cars, trying to make herself stop yelping and grabbling on to the back of the driver’s chair whenever they shifted into another lane, or when another car went whizzing by. Chip had called her a “backseat driver,” and at first he’d just laughed when she’d cringed and whimpered, but the third time she’d grabbed at his seat, shrieking, “Stop!” he’d lost his temper a little bit and said that it wasn’t safe and that if she couldn’t sit still he would have to bring her back to Standish.
For a while Millie tried to watch the outside, as the forest thinned out and the traffic got heavier. She saw abandoned train tracks, the backs of shabby houses with trash bags piled up on half-rotted wooden porches, and sagging lengths of power lines, sometimes with plastic bags or sneakers hanging from them. She saw cars sitting on concrete cubes and shops with “For Sale” signs and broken windows. Once, she saw a dead deer, one that had probably been hit by a car as it tried to run across six lanes of highway. Its eyes were still open, and there was blood on its nose and its mouth, and Millie had turned away, feeling sick and sad and sorry.
Millie had tried to get Alice to talk to her, to tell her how to act and what to do, but Alice was pretending to be asleep. Millie knew she was pretending—a No-Fur’s wake-smell and sleep-smell were different—but she also knew Alice didn’t want to talk to her. Millie had been unkind. It didn’t even matter that she hadn’t meant to b
e unkind, that she’d just been busy and distracted, that she’d thrown in with Alice’s enemy because that was the easiest path to success, not because she’d meant to hurt Alice. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t meant to hurt Alice. What mattered was that she had.
Now they were rolling slowly along Broadway, the actual street of Broadway, which was far less grand than Millie had imagined. The smell had changed to include the scent of roasting chestnuts in vendors’ carts, and horses from horse-drawn carriages. She heard the whirr of bicycle wheels, the churning of motors, a hundred conversations. Everywhere she looked there were people, seething over the sidewalk like ants on a juicy piece of fruit. The buildings so high that they crowded out the sun.
“Millie!” Jessica hissed. Millie looked at her friend, and Alice gestured at Millie’s face.
“You’re staring,” she said. “And your nose . . .”
Millie realized that she had been flaring her nostrils and tipping her head toward the window, the better to catch every gust of scent.
“I am sorry,” she apologized, and then caught sight of a sign. “Eyebrow Threading. What is that meaning?”
“They take a thread,” said Jessica, “and they use it to clean up your arches.”
“Ah,” said Millie, who knew what “thread” was but not how an arch might have anything to do with an eyebrow.
“And here’s the famous Times Square,” said Chip as they inched along through the traffic. Feeling dizzy, Millie stared at the signs, electronic billboards or advertisements for Broadway shows that had somehow been projected directly onto the buildings. There was a triangle-shaped concrete island that separated the streets into strands, and on the island was a booth labeled “TKTS,” with a line snaking toward its windows, and red metal bleachers, and No-Furs standing in front of the bleachers, singing.
Millie found that she couldn’t breathe. She’d try, but her breath would catch before she could pull it down into her lungs. What if she somehow got separated from her fellow travelers and lost in the thronging No-Furs, carried away like a twig in a storm-swollen stream?
Millie leaned forward, hearing herself wheeze, thinking that she might throw up. It was all too much—too much noise, too much light, too many voices, too many bodies too close together, too many things to see. She could feel the entire new world was pressing down against her: the looming buildings, the crowded streets, the smell of horse and hot dogs and dirty gray snow, and all of those people, thousands of people, filling the buses and the taxis, charging across the streets when the traffic lights changed.
She felt sick and small and, suddenly, desperate to be home, to tell Chip that she couldn’t stay here and to please take her back to the Center.
Then she thought, I have to try. If I don’t try, I’ll always wonder. For the rest of my life, I’ll wonder. And she remembered something she’d overheard Taley saying, a quote from a No-Fur lady named Eleanor Roosevelt, about how every day you had to do a thing that scared you.
“Why?” she’d asked, thinking about her mother, who hated to be scared.
“Becausedb,” said Taley, “it helbs you grow.”
Millie did not think she wanted to grow. Millie wanted to leave. Back home, she was the Leader’s beloved daughter, brave, curious Millie, who’d parleyed with a No-Fur and saved the Tribe. She wanted her bed, she wanted her blankets, she wanted the smell of pastry and clean sheets and clean snow melting into a noisy stream, she wanted the sound of her father chopping wood outside her bedroom window and the feel of her mother’s kiss on her head. It was ridiculous and pathetic for a Yare her age, and one who would be Leader besides, but Millie missed her mother and father. She wanted to go home.
This must be homesickness, she thought. She’d heard the term before and had some vague sense that it had to do with one’s home actually being sick, full of coughing in the winter or poison ivy in the summertime. Now she knew. Homesick was when you felt sick because you weren’t at home, sick with desire to go back to where you belonged.
She sat in the backseat, trembling all over, with her breakfast rolling around in her belly and tears dripping down her cheeks and soaking her face-fur. She waited for Alice or Jessica to notice that she was crying and ask her what was wrong. Neither of them did. I will be brave, Millie told herself, and she managed five minutes of bravery, until a man on a bicycle, with a giant square-shaped parcel wrapped in red plastic with the words “GRUBHUB” written across it sticking out from his back like a tumor, caromed down the street, so close to their car that she was sure that his shoulder had brushed the window. He zipped in front of them, sped through a tiny gap between two cars, and shot across the street the instant before the light changed to red. Cars honked and people shouted as a taxi went crashing into a fire hydrant. Water sprayed up into the chilly air, and the man, without missing a stroke on the pedals, took one hand off the handlebars and raised his fist, waving it tauntingly behind his back as his bike coasted down the street. Millie decided that she could never live in New York City. She wasn’t even sure that she could stand to be there for the night.
I will be brave, she thought again, except she didn’t feel a bit brave, and she had never felt less like singing in her life. She was sure that if she tried, the only noise that would come out of her mouth would be a terrified croak. They would laugh at her—the audience, the other competitors, the judges. They’d stare at her fur and ask what was wrong with her and if she had a disease. They would point and take pictures and post them on all the sites she’d become familiar with over the past few weeks—Mutter and InstaChat and Facebook and Only Connect and the rest of them—and then someone would trap her and put her in a cage, in a zoo, on display, never to ever see her loved ones ever again.
She opened her mouth to tell Alice and Jessica that she wanted to go home, but then the light changed again, and the car lurched forward, then jolted to a stop with its front about six inches from the back of a taxi.
“Sorry, guys,” said Chip as all three girls shrieked, and Jessica’s luggage came tumbling over the back of the seat. Chip, sounding jovial, said, “Welcome to New York,” and Millie knew that she wouldn’t be able to say anything, she would only be able to cry.
I will wait, she decided. This terrible ride had to end at some point. She would wait until dark, and she’d make some excuse to go outside for a bit of fresh air, and then, like her mother had all those years ago, she would follow the moon back to her Tribe, her bed, her home.
ALICE CLIMBED OUT OF THE car, walked through her apartment building’s door, waved at Stavros, the doorman, and uttered four words she had never before said out loud: “These are my friends.” Even if it wasn’t exactly true, it felt good to say.
Stavros tipped his cap and smiled, nodding as Jessica introduced herself and then tipped her chin toward Millie, over in the corner. Millie had wrapped her arms around herself and pulled the hood of her coat over her head and cinched it so tight that all you could see of her were her eyes and the tip of her nose.
“This is Millie,” Jessica said. “She’s got a rash.”
Millie muttered a greeting.
Stavros turned to Alice. “I thought your mama was going for a few days,” he said. “Lots of luggage. Lots of bags.”
“Oh, you know my mom. She packs everything but the kitchen sink,” Alice said. “She knows we’re coming. She’s on her way back right now.”
Stavros nodded, and then, before Alice could look at his face to see if he believed her, she hurried the other two girls around the corner to the elevators. Millie kept her head down, with the oversize coat disguising her body and her borrowed duffel looking small and shabby in her arms.
Alice pushed the button, and when the elevator’s doors slid open, she and Jessica stepped inside. Millie did not. Millie stood just outside the doors, and Alice saw that she was trembling and heard her breathing hard. Inside the hood, all of her face-fur was standing up straight, like a cartoon of a furry creature that had stuck its paw in an electrical o
utlet.
“Millie, come on!” Alice said, and tried to smile in case anyone was watching.
Millie shook her head. “It eats people!” she whispered. “I was watching! I saw!”
“Oh, for the love of God,” Jessica muttered, and grabbed Millie’s wrist, trying to tug her forward. Millie didn’t budge.
“I saw,” she repeated. Her eyes were enormous, so wide that Alice could see the whites under her irises, and her voice was whispery when she turned to Alice. “Two old people got into that one.” She pointed at the elevator across the hall. “And when it opened its mouth again, they were gone.”
“It’s not a mouth, it’s a door. It’s an elevator. Like on Friends,” Alice said, hoping desperately that Millie’s favorite No-Fur sitcom actually contained footage of an elevator. “It goes up and down. It didn’t eat them,” Alice whispered. “It just carried them upstairs.”
Millie squeezed her eyes shut and allowed Alice to lead her onto the elevator, giving a terrified squeak when an arm, clad in pink-and-ivory tweed, shoved itself between the sliding doors as they closed.
“Hold the door, please,” came the distinguished tones of Mrs. Philpott, who lived on the seventeenth floor. Alice gave Millie a stern look as the older woman, clutching her teacup poodle, Pearl, climbed slowly into the elevator.
“Hello, dear,” Mrs. Philpott said to Alice, and Pearl—who was tiny and white and went to the groomer’s twice a week to have all her fur shaved off except for ball-shaped bundles around each of her paws and a topknot that Mrs. Philpott ornamented with a rhinestone bow—gave a little yip of recognition. The elevator began its ascent. Millie gasped and flattened herself against the wall.
“It’s okay!” Alice said, and smiled at Mrs. Philpott. “My cousin,” she said. “She’s afraid of heights.” Meanwhile, Pearl seemed to have noticed the strangers and began to growl low in her throat. Alice nudged Millie as soon as she realized that Millie was growling back.
Little Bigfoot, Big City Page 17