“Sorry, I need the bottom bunk,” Jessica said. “Vertigo. Oh, and I needed more space in the bathroom, so I put your”—she paused just long enough for the silence to stretch to an insulting length—“things underneath the sink.”
Instead of complaining, Alice quietly went about making the top bed and putting her belongings away in the corresponding cubbies. There’d been a Jessica at each of her previous schools. Fighting with that girl—whether her name was Miranda or Olivia or Sophie or Sally—never did any good. Neither did telling the teachers. You just kept your head down, stayed out of their way, and hoped they found other targets.
Unfortunately, Jessica seemed to decide that tormenting Alice was her personal mission . . . and it was work she took seriously. In the mornings, when Alice came back from the forest, Jessica was in the shower, and she stayed there, filling the room with steam and the cloying scent of peach body wash, using up all of the hot water as Alice, muddy and miserable, brushed her teeth and waited.
“Privacy!” Jessica would sing, slamming the bathroom door and locking the other three girls out.
At meals she would sit next to the basketball-shorts boys, giggling and whispering. The giggles and whispers always stopped when Alice passed them, then resumed, much more loudly, as she walked away.
During learning sessions Jessica would tilt her head adorably and say, “I’m sorry, what was that?” whenever Alice gave an answer or read out loud. “Can you speak up and stop mumbling, please? I really want to hear what you have to say.”
Within a week of her arrival, Jessica had assembled her clique: two eighth-grade girls, Cara and Christy, and three of the long-basketball-shorts-wearing boys, a clump that Alice thought of as the Steves (only one of the boys—the one who’d waved at her—was named Steve, but they all looked and dressed the same, and Alice had never managed to learn their names). Cara was a tall girl with long legs and fine features whose parents were actors in Los Angeles. Christy was plain and quiet to the point of invisibility. Taley’s theory, which Alice had overheard her explain to Riya, was that the glamorous Jessica and Cara kept Christy around because she made them feel pretty and because she paid for everything with the generous allowance her parents sent.
Alice supposed she should be grateful that Jessica was hardly ever in their cabin, unless she was monopolizing the shower or changing her clothes. All three girls had learned not to try to get near the bunk’s single mirror when Jessica was using it or to complain about how her various hair-styling implements took up all four of the electrical outlets in the cabin.
“Silence, ladies,” Jessica would say. Somehow, the word “silence” sounded worse than “shut up,” and “ladies” sounded worse than “losers.” Jessica’s disdain could have been the thing that brought the girls together, united against a common enemy, but Jessica cleverly made sure that didn’t happen.
“I don’t think fencing’s a weird hobby at all,” she’d said on her second day at school, with her hand on a confused Riya’s shoulder. “I know some people”—she cut her eyes at Alice—“think it means you’re a dangerous sociopath who wants to stab someone for real, but not all of us agree.”
Riya had snatched up her helmet and stalked away, and when Alice had tried to explain, Riya interrupted her with a clipped “It’s fine.”
“Justdb ignoredb her,” Taley said. Alice tried . . . but a week into Jessica’s reign, just as Alice was getting used to the new reality, everything changed.
“Alice,” Jessica purred as she flounced into the cabin one day after lunch.
Alice was so startled to hear her name coming out of her bunkmate’s mouth that at first she assumed she’d misheard. It wasn’t until Jessica tapped her shoulder, making an impatient face, and said, “Earth to Alice, come in, Alice,” that Alice realized that Jessica was, in fact, talking to her.
“Do you want to borrow something?” Whatever Jessica wanted, Alice decided, she would let her have. It would be easier than fighting.
Jessica laughed, shaking her head. “No, no. I was just wondering if you wanted to sit with us tonight at . . . um . . .” She wrinkled her nose charmingly. “What are we calling it now?”
“Evening Nutrition.” Alice felt like she was watching herself in a movie, as Jessica leaned toward her, smelling like apricots from the body spray she’d just applied. “And no thanks.”
“I think Steven likes you.”
Alice felt her body flush with pleasure, even as she wondered about how a boy who’d never spoken to her could like her, and which boy Steven was. From her spot at her sewing machine, Taley was watching with interest, her watery hazel eyes magnified behind her glasses. Riya, who was slipping leggings on underneath her skirt, had frozen in the act. As Jessica waited, Taley began shaking her head, silently but firmly, while mouthing the word “no.”
Alice felt a flare of annoyance. She sat near Taley and Riya at most meals, but Riya usually just talked about fencing, and Taley spent most of her time cross-examining Kate about possible allergens in the food. Alice was sure they were just tolerating her, enduring her company because they knew Lori would fuss, or maybe even arrange a lecture on “A mind-set of kindness,” if she saw a learner sitting alone . . . and there’d definitely never been a boy who’d wanted to join them.
“Come on,” Jessica said, and laughed her chiming laugh. “It’s no big deal! He wants to get to know you!”
Of course, Alice was suspicious as to why a girl who’d done nothing but ignore her and tease her suddenly wanted to be her friend. But Jessica was dazzling—there was no other word for it. It was almost as if she exerted her own gravity, and Alice was powerless to resist. And Alice wanted so badly to believe that it could be true; that this beautiful girl could like her; that a boy liked her too.
“Okay,” she said. Jessica beamed and clapped her hands, a gesture Alice remembered her own mother making, usually when Alice emerged from one of her weekly trips to the salon with the Mane blown perfectly straight.
That night Alice was the one monopolizing the mirror and the shower, as she used her own body wash (scented with lemons and sage) and attempted to style her hair.Taley and Riya watched this with expressions of sadness (Taley) and skepticism (Riya).
“Alice,” Riya finally said. “Jessica Jarvis is not a good person.”
Alice felt her shoulders stiffen. “At least she wants me to be around,” she said.
Riya and Taley exchanged a glance.
“We wantb you aroundb,” said Taley.
Alice kept her eyes on her reflection, thinking that it couldn’t be true. “If you did,” she said, “then you would have invited me to go into town with you. Or you would have asked me to meditate with you . . . or play chess . . . or something!”
In the mirror’s reflection, Alice could see Riya and Taley exchange another look.
“We didb invite youdb,” Taley said. “You always said ‘no.’ ”
“You could invite us to do things with you,” Riya pointed out. “We could get up in the morning and go for a run.”
Alice swallowed hard. She knew this was true. They had asked—or at least, they had during her first weeks at the Center—but she’d turned them down with a curt “No thank you” because she knew that they were only being polite. She felt her face getting hot underneath her neatly combed hair. As she watched, a curl sprang free and bounced against her forehead, and another one boinged against the back of her neck.
“I have to go,” she muttered, and pushed her way past them. She walked quickly to the Lodge, where Jessica and her friends were waiting, as happy and welcoming as if they were throwing a party and Alice was their guest of honor.
The next week was the best time that Alice could remember, at the Center or at any of her schools, and maybe even in her entire life. Jessica and Cara and Christy were all so nice, so sweet and funny, treating Alice like a cross between a little sister and a posable doll with hair you could arrange in six different styles. They asked about New York City, won
dering if Alice knew this girl from Swifton or that boy from the Atwater School. They never made her feel bad if she hadn’t been to a shop or a restaurant that Jessica mentioned or hadn’t seen a movie that Cara knew. They swept Alice into their embrace, lending her whatever clothes they had that fit; curling and braiding and straightening her hair, exclaiming over how thick and shiny it was; plucking her eyebrows and painting her nails; laughing at her observations about the Center and its inhabitants. The meaner Alice’s comments were, the more they’d laugh. When Alice said she sometimes thought of Taley as Jack the Dripper, because of her runny nose, they had shrieked in approval, and when she shared her observation about Phil and Lori resembling an exclamation point and a period, Jessica had actually applauded.
At night they hung out in the eighth-grade girls’ cabin, where she and Jessica and Christy and Cara would slouch on the top bunk with their legs dangling over the side, listening to music on Jessica’s phone and discussing their main topics of interest: the Experimental Center and how awful it was, the Steves and how cute they were. (Alice had shyly confessed that she just thought of the boys as the Steves, and Jessica had been so delighted that she’d decreed that, from that moment forward, the boys would be known only as the Steves.)
Jessica had been at the Center for its entire four-year existence, and knew all the history. She remembered when Lori and Phil had tried to ban makeup on the grounds that cosmetics represented women’s “capitulation to patriarchal, capitalistic beauty standards,” and how Jessica and two other girls, now graduated, had talked them out of it by arguing that a ban would curtail girls’ creativity and self-expression. Jessica remembered the Great Gluten War of the previous year, and the time Lori and Phil decided that keeping score during sports was “hurtful to young learners’ self-esteem.”
“So of course the Center got kicked out of the league,” Jessica said. “Which is why our teams just scrimmage each other.”
Best of all, though—better than having friends to hang out with at meals and talk with during free time—were their late-night adventures. When the rest of the Center was asleep, the girls slipped out of their cabins and down to the lake to go night swimming. Even in the first week of October the water was warm and silky, and the darkness disguised Alice’s despised body, her thighs and her belly and her enormous hands. Swimming underwater, skimming over the soft sand of the lake bed, with her hair actually looking pretty as it streamed out behind her, Alice could almost imagine Steve’s eyes on her, could almost believe that a boy thought she was beautiful . . . especially because one of the Steves, the boy whose name actually was Steve, seemed to go out of his way to talk to her. At dinner he’d sit next to her. When she made jokes, he’d smile. Even though they’d only exchanged two sentences—“Please pass the milk” and “Here you go”—Alice imagined that she could feel him watching her, in the mornings when she went running, then at night when she swam.
True, Alice had heard a few conversations stop when she got to the table, had heard a few bursts of unpleasant-sounding laughter after she got up to get more hummus or more loaf. Her body would tense at the sound, the hair on the back of her neck prickling as she saw the Steves and Jessica and Cara and Christy with their heads all together, whispering. She told herself not to be suspicious. The girls had been nothing but nice to her, and when she came back to the table, Steve would scoot over and pat the empty space on the bench beside him. She stuck by Jessica’s side, avoiding the cabin, avoiding Taley and Riya, who, clearly, were jealous of Alice’s new friendship, when they tried to warn her away.
“They’re justb usingdb you,” Taley would say, giving Alice her most sincere look, with her eyes watering from whatever pollen was currently in the air, and her hands full of whatever dress she was making.
“Maybe you’re just jealous that they’re not using you,” Alice finally muttered. There was a loud noise as Riya, on the top bunk, slammed her thick On Fencing book shut and jumped from the bed to the floor.
“Taley is not jealous,” she said, each word precise and clipped and clear. “Neither am I. Those girls are shallow and mean, and they don’t want to be your friends.”
“How do you know?” Alice’s face was hot, and she felt like she was swelling with embarrassment and anger, her body growing even bigger than it normally was. “Is it so crazy that there are people in this world who actually want to be my friend?”
“It’s not crazy,” said Riya. “But it’s not those girls.”
“Then why?” Alice asked. “If they don’t want to be my friend, then why do they want to spend time with me? They like me,” she added before Taley or Riya could offer a theory. “Sorry if you two find that so hard to believe.” She tossed her hair like Jessica did—or, rather, she tried to, except when Jessica tossed her hair it gave kind of a silky shiver, whereas Alice’s toss just sent her heavy braid whacking into her back.
This is real, she told herself. Finally, after years of misery, she’d found the place where she fit, the people who could see beyond her exterior, past the giant hands and wild hair, could see that, inside, she was funny, clever, and beautiful. Or maybe not beautiful, but at least the same as they were . . . and she wasn’t going to let Taley and Riya mess it up.
Two weeks after her first evening meal with Jessica and her friends, Alice was sitting between Cara and Christy at the table, when Jessica beckoned them all close. “We should go skinny-dipping,” Jessica said, her eyebrows arched and her cheeks flushed.
Alice felt icy prickles along her skin. She swallowed hard. So far, she’d always worn a bathing suit, a modest one-piece with a long-sleeved rash guard on top, when they went in the water.
“Don’t worry!” Jessica giggled. “It’s completely dark . . . and it feels amazing. Have you ever been skinny-dipping?”
Alice had, with her granny, in Cape Cod. She remembered how free she’d felt, how she’d let the waves toss her, pretending that she was a mermaid with an elegant silvery tail and that she could escape to the depths of the ocean and live in a castle of coral and sand.
“I don’t know . . . ,” murmured Christy.
Jessica pouted. “Oh, come on. Don’t be a party pooper. Alice?” Jessica’s face lit up. “Are you in?”
“I’m in,” Alice said, and, once again, Jessica applauded.
That night Alice followed the other girls to the edge of the lake. They hid behind trees to strip, and left their clothes folded neatly on the towels they’d brought, in a pile at the water’s edge. On Jessica’s command they dashed, giggling, through the darkness and into the lake.
It was a cloudy, moonless night, the darkness of the sky and the water so complete that Alice could hardly see her own arms and legs underneath her. She felt like she had finally achieved her goal of invisibility, and it was as glorious as she imagined.
Floating on her back, staring up at the sky, Alice felt beautiful and happy and free. This is all I ever wanted, she thought dreamily, hearing splashing and the sound of her friends’ laughter. I will never be any happier than this.
Then the laughter took on a nasty edge. Alice flipped over, peering toward the shore. She heard the sound of splashing and whispers and running. She started stroking swiftly toward the Center, just in time to see a fully clothed Steve—she couldn’t tell which one—scoop up her towel and her clothes and vanish into the woods.
“Hey,” she called. She could hear the Steves laughing. The girls were laughing too. “You guys! Hey!”
Nobody came. They were waiting for her, Alice realized miserably as she dog-paddled in chest-deep water, making sure no one could see. Probably they had a camera or a cell phone. They’d take pictures of her, and they’d put them online or email them to every kid at the Center or—
“Alice!” That was Jessica, her cultured voice sounding cruel. “Oh, A-lice! You can’t stay in there forever. Come out. We’ll give you your clothes.”
“Why’d you take them?” Alice called.
More laughter. More rustling. More w
hispers. She thought of Taley’s sad looks, the speech that Riya had made. They’d been right. Maybe they hadn’t known the details, but they’d known that Jessica and her friends had been planning something, and they’d tried to tell Alice, but Alice hadn’t listened. She had been so caught up in the clearly ridiculous fantasy that a girl like Jessica would actually want to be her friend, so desperate to believe, that she’d ignored the truth. Girls like that never wanted to be friends with big, ugly weirdos like her.
The good thing about crying in the water was that there was no clothing to soak. The tears rolled right off your cheeks and plopped into the lake. Alice paddled and cried, silently, so hard that she got the hiccoughs, for so long that she was surprised she had any tears left.
She could wait until morning, when Jessica and her crew would have to go to Mother Tree. Except if she did that, then maybe everyone in the school would see her in the water. Or she could make a break for it—cover herself up as best she could and run as fast as possible.
“Al-ice . . . ,” Jessica was taunting. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Alice flipped onto her belly, swam to the shallows, and finger-walked to the very edge of the shore. Scooping up fistfuls of silty sand, she slathered herself from shoulders to thighs with pine-needle-studded lake mud and raked her fingers through her hair, pulling it as straight as possible, to cover as much of her chest as it could. She tried her hardest, layering leaves and pine needles onto her skin, trying to make sure that she’d covered as much of her body as possible. Then, teeth chattering, face still wet with tears, she hauled herself up and out of the water, and ignoring the burst of laughter and the flash of someone’s camera, she hunched over, and ran as fast as she could back to her cabin.
The Littlest Bigfoot Page 9