The Littlest Bigfoot

by Jennifer Weiner

  That afternoon Aunt Yetta stuck a small candle into the middle of a seed cake. “Happy Name-Night to you, happy Name-Night to you,” she warbled in her off-key, scratchy voice. “I know it isn’t until tonight, but I wanted to be wishing you the best.” Old Aunt Yetta set a wrapped rectangular box with a bow on top beside Millie’s plate. “For when you’re done.”

  The Yare didn’t celebrate birthdays. Instead, they honored the seventh day after a baby was born, when the little one received a name. Millie’s real name was Millietta, but she’d always been called Millie—or Little Bit or Smallfoot (which was a kind of joke about how the No-Furs called the Tribe Bigfoots), or Little Silver, because of her fur.

  Millie smiled and clapped. “Thank you.”

  “Nyebbeh,” said Aunt Yetta, which, in that instance, meant, “You’re welcome, even though I am still a little upset with you.”

  Millie tucked in, Old Aunt Yetta watching with approval. “Didn’t you eat your snackle at school?”

  Millie shrugged. The truth was, she’d been thinking so much about the noise and bustle across the lake that she’d barely remembered to nibble the cheese and crackers Teacher Greenleaf had served.

  “Were you daydreaming?” asked Old Aunt Yetta, who was familiar with all of Millie’s bad habits.

  Millie sighed. “In a No-Fur book I am reading, I learned about elections. Do you know that the No-Furs pick their Leaders, and it doesn’t even matter much what clan they are from?”

  “What are they calling their Leaders?”

  Millie crunched a bite of apple. “Presiment?”

  “President,” Old Aunt Yetta corrected her.

  “The name is not mattering,” said Millie. “You could be anyone, from any clan! As long as you are good and fair and the No-Furs like you, then you can be their Leader!” She kicked at the wooden chair with the heel of her small foot. It barely made a sound, which only made Millie madder. “And then the No-Fur who doesn’t want to be the Leader can go and do singing!”

  “Oh, Millie.” Old Aunt Yetta smoothed the soft silver-gray fur on Millie’s forehead. Millie ate another scone. The breeze that had been rustling the tree branches died down, and in the quiet Millie and Old Aunt Yetta heard a burst of laughter from across the lake.

  “Will my father do the Mailing tomorrow?” Millie asked, her tone casual and her eyes on her plate.

  Old Aunt Yetta sighed. She knew that Millie’s interest in the Mailing, and the town of Standish and the No-Furs who lived there, was anything but casual.

  “How did we get the Mailing box?” Millie asked.

  “We did it on-the-line,” said Old Aunt Yetta, in a tone that let Millie know not to pursue the subject.

  “But someone must have gone to the posting office. Someone must have had to talk to the No-Furs and get the key, because they couldn’t have mailed us a key if there wasn’t a box yet to mail it to.” Millie sat back smiling triumphantly. “Nyeh!”

  “Millie . . .” Now Old Aunt Yetta was practically groaning.

  Millie raised her head. Her eyes shone in her furry face. “I bet there’s a way for us to un-fur ourselves and go out into the world. I bet my father . . .”

  “Millie,” said Old Aunt Yetta, speaking in a sharp tone she rarely used with her young friend. “That’s enough.”

  “There must be a way, and if there is, I will find it.”

  Old Aunt Yetta stifled another groan.

  “So how is it done?” Millie asked. Her face was alive with excitement. “Is it shaving?” Millie had actually tried that on her own, but the single old razor that she’d found hadn’t done much more than trim her fur short, leaving her with an oddly patchy look that the other littlies, especially Tulip, had found endlessly amusing.

  “Shaving does not work,” Old Aunt Yetta said.

  “Why? Why does it not work?”

  “Because the fur comes back.”

  “Why? How fast? And when we are un-furred, do we look like them?”

  “No,” Old Aunt Yetta said, her voice stern. “No, we do not.”

  Millie didn’t believe her. She’d made a careful study of herself in the single mirror in her family’s home. With her head-hair slicked back, she looked almost like a regular No-Fur girl, like someone who could wear regular-girl clothing and pass in the regular-girl world.

  But she knew when she’d pushed hard enough. She sat up straight, brushing crumbs out of her face-fur and piling them neatly on her napkin.

  “Shmeh,” said Old Aunt Yetta, which was a polite Yare word for “Let’s stop discussing this uncomfortable subject.” “Open your giftie.”

  Millie unwrapped the box and clapped in delight when she saw it was a collection of six episodes of Friends. “Can we watch a nepisode?”

  “Just one,” Old Aunt Yetta said. “And it is ‘episode.’ ”

  Millie beamed, jumped up from her chair, and flung her arms around Old Aunt Yetta’s waist. Old Aunt Yetta made sure the door was latched and no one was nearby, and Millie settled into a pile of cushions on the floor and sang and clapped along as the theme song began. “So no one told you life was gonna be this way . . .” It was true, she thought . . . but it was also true that no one had told her that her life would be this way forever. She could change it; she could take control of her own destiny, could learn the secrets that would let her escape her little village and go out into the great wide world.

  “Millie.”

  At midnight Millie opened her eyes. Her parents were standing by the side of her bed, smiling. Her father’s arms were filled with wrapped gifties. Her mother carried Millie’s favorite carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting, with twelve lit candles standing in a ring around its edge.

  “Happy Name-Night!” her parents whispered, and Millie beamed and gave her parents the biggest hug she could.

  She blew out the candles, and her father handed her the first box, wrapped in pink-and-white paper, with a card from Amazon tucked under the ribbon.

  Millie’s eyes widened. Carefully she removed the paper and the card and tucked them away for safekeeping. Then she opened the box and gasped in delight. Nestled in a cloud of tissue paper was a pair of sparkly red shoes, No-Fur shoes, with metal buckles. “Like in the movie!” she said.

  “Just so,” rumbled Maximus. (Her parents knew she’d seen The Wizard of Oz, because the previous winter, during a blizzard that had kept the Tribe inside for days, Old Aunt Yetta had arranged a screening and had served popcorn and hot chocolate as the littlies snuggled in piles of pillows and blankets on her floor. Tulip, Millie remembered, had refused to even watch, and Florrie had cried at the green-faced No-Fur pretending to be a witch.)

  Millie swung her legs out of bed. They dangled above the floor as she slipped on the shoes, which were the perfect size for her little feet. Next she unwrapped a heavy, beautifully bound collection of Grimm’s fairy tales, a boxed set of Anne of Green Gables books, and a dozen ribbons in pinks and yellows and blues that she could clip into her head-hair.

  There was a box of chocolate-covered cherries, a box of sea-salt caramels, and a single, slightly battered videocassette of season ten of Friends that her parents told her sternly she was only to watch with Old Aunt Yetta and was never to mention to Tulip or any of the other Yare.

  “I promise, I promise!” Millie said. Her father hugged her, and Septima smiled her shy smile, with one hand, as always, over her mouth. (Millie suspected that someone had told her mother at a very early age that she had ugly teeth, because every time she smiled, Septima’s hand would always wander up to cover her lips.)

  Millie walked between her parents down the slope that led to the edge of the lake, for the ritual Name-Night dunking . . . and there, feeling her happiness swell like a bubble inside of her, Millie started to sing: “Happy Name-Night to me, happy Name-Night to me, happy NAME-Night, dear MILL-EEEE . . .”

  “Shh!” said Maximus, looking around to make sure they were alone, as Septima pinched Millie’s lips together gently but firmly.


  “When you are Leader,” she began, “you must be setting the example, Millie. You know how voices carry across the water.”

  “I wasn’t even being loudness.” Millie struggled not to sigh, hating the petulant, babyish sound of her voice. Hating, more than that, the constant necessity for quiet, endless quiet, even with the Tribe’s village in the center of an untouched forest far from the nearest human home, with thick woods on three sides and a wide lake on the fourth.

  “Happy Name-Night,” said Maximus, and handed her a penny. “Do your wishing!”

  Millie held the penny tightly and closed her eyes as she waded into the water until she was submerged. I wish, she thought, as hard as she could, I wish I could climb into a boat and paddle myself away.

  She let the penny sink to the bottom of the lake and climbed out of the water, shaking her fur briskly, then trotting to her parents, who’d been watching from the shore. Not many Yare liked the water—their muscular bodies and dense fur didn’t make it easy for them to float or swim—but Millie had always loved the lake.

  “Little dreamer,” said Septima, bending to give her daughter a towel and a kiss, and her father called her his heart’s delight, which made Millie’s eyes prickle and her throat get tight. I will be good, she promised herself. I’ll do what they tell me, I’ll be who they want.

  But early the next morning, Millie could hear the No-Furs on the opposite side of the lake. Splashes and shrieks of laughter, clapping and shouting and songs. She scrambled up the Lookout Tree and through her binoculars saw that they’d tied a rope to a tall tree of their own, and they were taking turns swinging out over the water before jumping in. It was just too tempting . . .

  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.

  CHAPTER 9

  BETWEEN 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.

&
nbsp; 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.