The Littlest Bigfoot

by Jennifer Weiner

  “I’ve been in the Google cache for hours. The image was first uploaded to Blabber. It’s one of those apps where kids in high school and college can post things about their professors or other kids. It’s all ‘supposed to be’ anonymous,” Jo said, her tone turning sarcastic, her fingers curving into the air quotes she’d put around “supposed to be.” Jo could be sharp-tongued, and she saved most of her scorn for people who didn’t understand the Internet the way she did—a group that included the vast majority of humanity, as well as Jeremy himself.

  “It’s also supposed to automatically delete after sixty seconds, but you know how that goes.”

  Jeremy nodded, and he and Jo recited together, “On the Internet, everything lives forever.”

  “So anyhow,” Jo continued, “all we have to do now is find the Blabber account that posted it.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  Jo just smiled. Jeremy wondered, maybe for the hundredth time, whether Jo knew people in the government, or whether her father, who he’d heard moving around in the house but had never seen, was some kind of spy.

  “Leave that part to me. Meanwhile, your job is to monitor the Net. Especially anything coming from this region.”

  “The picture was uploaded from somewhere in upstate,” Jeremy said, thinking out loud. “That could be here or Albany or up near Vermont . . .”

  Jo was unperturbed. “We have to start somewhere, so why not close to home? We know there are Bigfoots in Standish. We know that Standish is in upstate New York. Thus, it’s not impossible, and maybe even likely, that the picture was shot somewhere nearby.” She smiled her sarcastic half smile. “And sometimes you get lucky. Or so I’ve heard.”

  Jeremy wondered what that meant. When Jo turned back to her screen, he started mentally listing the chat rooms he’d hang out in, the Twitter accounts he’d check, the blogs he’d be visiting. “Maybe I’ll walk around the forest a little,” he said. “If there’s a tribe somewhere nearby, like we think, they must be freaking out if they know one of them’s been photographed.”

  “Excellent.” Jo’s voice was crisp, and Jeremy felt his face flush with pleasure. “As soon as I hear from Gary about what we’re looking at, I’ll let you know.”

  Together, they spent the next hour in the Batcave, with Jo scrolling through phone numbers, cross-referencing them with Blabber accounts, and Jeremy googling for other re-postings of, and comments beneath, the flyer. When Jo’s father called her to dinner, Jeremy told her good-bye and walked toward his bike, thinking he’d go the long way home through the forest, when his cell phone rang. Blocked number, read the screen. Curious, he lifted the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Jeremy.” The voice was an old man’s, cracked and whispery but somehow still powerful, like it belonged to someone who was used to having people listen and do what he said. “Keep looking.”

  “Keep looking for what?” His heart was beating hard, and the cereal was sloshing uncomfortably in his belly. “Keep looking where?”

  “The forest,” said the voice. “The lake. Pay attention to the school. You’re very close, boy. Closer than you know.”

  “Who is this?” He realized—later than he should have—that he and Jo weren’t the only people who’d seen the flyer, not if it was floating around online. “And if this is about . . . you know, Bigfoots . . . you should talk to Jo, too.”

  The man made a rude, dismissive noise. “Never mind the girl,” he said. “She’ll just slow you down. Keep looking.” His voice sounded scary and greedy when he whispered, “We’re almost there.”

  “What do you mean?” Jeremy blurted. “Why do you care?”

  “Because they’re everything,” the old man whispered. “The key to everything.” The line went dead. Jeremy stared at the phone, then picked up his bike and gave a shocked yell when it fell to pieces in his hands, as if every bolt had been unscrewed precisely to the point of it coming undone. The wheels went rolling off in opposite directions, the seat and seat post and frame fell to the ground, and Jeremy was left standing there holding the handlebars, hearing that ancient, scratchy, greedy voice in his head, saying, Because they’re everything.

  CHAPTER 15

  MILLIE?” SEPTIMA STOOD IN THE doorway of Millie’s bedroom, her hands entwined, fingers tugging at her wrist-fur. “You barely had two bites at the feast.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Millie was lying on her bed, fully clothed, face toward the wall. It was Halloween, Halloween night, except Halloweening had been canceled after Old Aunt Yetta came across a new picture that had been posted on-the-line, a shot “that proves, conclusively, once and for all, that Bigfoots are real!”

  Millie hadn’t seen the picture. Hidden in the Lookout Tree, watching the Elders’ meeting, she was too far away to get a good look at what it showed. From what she could hear, though, it sounded like the Yare, or at least Old Aunt Yetta, didn’t believe that it was real.

  “Not Yare. It’s the old picture of Cassoundra, and then just a No-Fur littlie with some pine needles and some mud,” Old Aunt Yetta pronounced. Millie felt her fur prickle and bristle with alarm. Could that be the picture Alice had told her about, the flyers the mean girls had posted showing her alongside an assortment of monsters?

  Nugget, she thought. I should say something. Instead, she just listened.

  Ricardan glared fiercely at Old Aunt Yetta. “Real or not doesn’t matter! If the No-Furs believe it, they’ll come looking, and it won’t be long before they find us.”

  “We should go,” whispered Aelia, who’d been tugging so hard at the fur on her cheeks that she’d given herself a few bald patches. “We should pack up the village . . . we should go somewhere far . . . where there aren’t any cities . . . maybe up north, where it’s cold . . .”

  “We can’t leave,” said Junie, one of the younger female Yare. “I just planted my perennials.”

  “And why would the No-Furs look here?” Old Aunt Yetta asked. “None of them are knowing where the picture was taken. There’s nothing that would draw them to our forest.”

  “Measures must be taken,” Ricardan said as his wife nodded her enthusiastic agreement. “Always safe. Never sorry. We must have new rules about noise. Perhaps guards at the perimeter. And we should cancel Halloweening.”

  At this a chorus of gasps came from some of the younger Yare.

  “No Halloweening?” whispered Frederee, whose fur seemed to droop.

  “Silence! You don’t have the Speaking Stick,” Ricardan said, lip curled disdainfully to show his large front teeth. “Halloweening was always foolishness. Far too risky. We can be having our own feasting, and that will be that.”

  Millie gave a soft growl, feeling like she’d cry. She knew what a Yare celebration would include: rabbit casserole and sweet stewed pumpkin, sweet and savory hand-pies, baked apples and poached pears and sugar-roasted walnuts. Games of checkers and chess and Scrabble played quietly around the fire. No dashing down strange streets, right along with the No-Fur kids, no walking up to No-Fur doorsteps bold as could be, ringing their doorbells, holding your bag open, waiting for them to drop delicious chocolate candy inside. No shouts and no laughter. No pretending, the way Millie always did, that she was a No-Fur girl in a Bigfoot costume, that, at the end of the night, she’d pull off fur-covered boots, unpeel her sleeves and cuffs and wig, and unzip her skin, stepping out of it and leaving it puddled on the floor, to emerge a smooth-skinned little girl, no different from the fairies and princesses and witches and superheroes with whom she’d spent the night.

  “They don’t know where to look,” Old Aunt Yetta snapped.

  “They’ll find us.” Aelia’s voice was almost a moan. “They’ll be coming . . . with their hellercopters . . . and their bright lights . . . and their littlies on the ATM machines . . .”

  “ATVs,” whispered Millie, and rolled her eyes.

  “Silence,” she heard her father rumble. “Ricardan is right.” Ricardan preened, his fur bristling, making him look bus
hier and bigger. “It’s too risky. There will be no Halloweening this year.”

  Millie had almost jumped out of the tree in frustration and fury. Instead she decided, that minute, that she would have her Halloweening, that she’d go trick-or-treating no matter what her father decreed.

  By then she’d crossed the lake three times already to visit with Alice. Each time she’d borrowed Frederee’s clothing, although she supposed it wasn’t technically borrowing because she hadn’t technically asked for permission to wear his clothes or to take the Tribe’s single canoe. She had eaten brownies and cookies and granola, and had listened as Alice had wept about how much being called a monster and a freak had hurt her, and offered what comfort she could.

  Now that Millie had met an actual No-Fur, she could see that maybe No-Fur life wasn’t as grand as she’d imagined and that being Yare was maybe not so bad at all. Yare mothers and fathers did not abandon their littlies, putting their lives in the hands of educational consultants, sending them away to sleepaway camps and boarding schools, seeing them only a handful of days every year. If Alice had been Yare, she would have been treasured.

  While the grown-up Yare were still chanting their final blessings, Millie had slipped out of the tree, raced to Old Aunt Yetta’s house, and pulled the top-lap out from its box underneath Old Aunt Yetta’s bed. She logged on to the email account she’d created and sent a message to Alice that read, “Can I go trick-or-treating with you?”

  Then she sat, fidgeting and looking over her shoulder, until finally she had her answer: “Yes!!!”

  The night of Halloween, Millie, who’d been in what her mother called “a mood” since the decision was made, had left the feasting early and spent the night in bed. At seven o’clock she announced that she was going for a walk.

  “By yourself?” Septima asked. She kept her voice gentle, but her hands were working, plucking at her apron or the fur on her fingers.

  “I want to be alone,” said Millie, taking care to sound extra pouty. “But I would like a small snackle.” Her mother filled her packsack with treats from the feasting, and Millie walked down to the lake, glad it was a cloudy night. The canoe was right where she’d left it the last time. It was the work of just a few minutes to slide the boat into the water and start paddling toward the opposite shore.

  Alice was waiting for her, dressed in a long coat with a belt, a banded hat, and a pair of dark sunglasses that were pushed up on her forehead so she could see. “Millie! You’re here!” she said, and smiled and gave Millie a hug before looking her over, seeing Millie as she really was, in all her furred glory, for the first time. “Wow.” Millie had fashioned a kind of hood with a collar out of a piece of brown velvet from Septima’s scrap bag. She wore Florrie’s work boots and carried one of Old Aunt Yetta’s walking sticks.

  “Are you an Ewok?” Alice asked.

  “An Ewok,” Millie confirmed. The No-Furs usually guessed “Bigfoot” when they saw the larger littlies trick-or-treating. When they saw Millie, they typically said “Ewok,” which, Millie had learned on-the-line, were the small, teddy bear–ish creatures that lived on a made-up moon called Endor and whose presence had ruined a movie called Return of the Jedi. Millie smoothed her fur as Alice circled her.

  “Wow,” she said. “That is some costume.”

  “The Yare are excellent seamstresses,” Millie said. This was true—at least, according to the customers who’d posted reviews on Etsy.

  “Come on,” Alice said. “We’re going to trick-or-treat on campus first, and then they’re taking us into town.”

  Millie marched up the hill, following her friend, who adjusted her pace so that Millie didn’t have to struggle to keep up. The air was crisp, and smelled like autumn, like fallen leaves and fireplaces, and Millie couldn’t stop looking at the No-Fur kids in their costumes. Some were dressed as superheroes, with boots and capes and papier-mâché shields. There was a boy whose hair looked like it had been electrified, with his face painted white and his lips painted black, and a girl in an enormous white hoopskirted gown and a matching white hat with a green satin brim. From the way Alice avoided her, Millie guessed that this was the infamous Jessica, who’d tricked Alice into thinny-dipping and taken her picture.

  “I should warn you,” Alice said. “The stuff the learning guides hand out is probably going to be, like, no-bake kale cookies or something.”

  Millie nodded. She didn’t care about the candy and had her small snackle and a thermos of tea in case she got hungry. She looked at her friend. “And what are you being?”

  Alice sighed, pulling her hat down tightly over her forehead. “I’m the Invisible Man.”

  Millie, assuming this was another reference to a book she hadn’t read or a TV show she’d never seen, simply nodded. After hearing what had happened to Alice, she understood why her friend would want to be invisible.

  “Hi, Alice!” said a girl dressed all in white, with a white helmet and face mask, who was carrying a slim, silver sword.

  “Who’s your friendb?” snuffled a girl in a fancy, flounced green dress, with a green wig and green face paint.

  “This is Millie. What are you dressed as?” Alice asked.

  The green girl sniffled. “I’mdb mucus,” she said, looking glum. She turned to Millie. “Are you fromdb Standish?”

  “I’m camping with my family, on the other side of the lake,” Millie said. She couldn’t believe she was actually talking to not just one but three No-Fur girls, and that, so far, they seemed to be accepting her as one of their own. Except the one all in white, who was studying her curiously.

  “That’s an amazing costume,” she said, walking in a slow circle around Millie, who felt her fur begin to bristle. The girl reached out to stroke her, and Millie forced herself not to flinch or tell the other girl—Riya, she thought—how rude it was to touch someone’s fur without permission. “Where’s the zipper?” Riya asked.

  “Sewn into the seam,” Millie squeaked.

  “She’s an Ewok,” Alice said curtly. Millie sensed something, some mixture of fear and sympathy in the other girls’ attitude toward Alice, the way they seemed to choose their words carefully when they talked to her, the way they held their bodies.

  Alice isn’t like them, Millie thought, and for some reason the idea gave her a thrill. She liked the idea that Alice didn’t belong entirely to the No-Fur world, that she belonged, instead, to Millie.

  The four girls approached the first of the learning guides’ cottages. “Trickb-or-treatdb!” called Taley, knocking on the door. It was opened by a soft-voiced, mild-looking person named Clem, who praised their costumes and offered them carob-coconut bars, before frowning at Riya. “I thought Phil and Lori said no weapons?”

  “I have permission,” Riya said crisply . . . but when he’d shut his door she’d smiled and said, “Actually, I don’t.”

  Millie held open her sack, accepted her treat, and with Alice by her side, and with Riya and Taley arguing aloud whether Riya’s everyday fencing gear constituted a costume, trotted off in a swelling crowd of No-Fur kids dressed as clowns and peacocks and ballet dancers and mummies and things Millie couldn’t begin to identify. The boys were whooping as they ran from cabin to cabin; the girls were chattering, complimenting each other on their hair and their clothes. As a girl strutted by in high heels, followed by a pair of giggling bedsheet ghosts, Millie, feeling nervous, grabbed Alice’s hand.

  “Are you okay?” asked Alice, who looked puzzled but friendly and nice. She won’t hurt me, Millie told herself. She’s not like they say.

  “I am okay,” said Millie, and made herself let go and follow Alice up the three steps and onto a seat on the school bus, which roared to life and went lurching down the road. The boys were singing, “Ninety-nine bottles of root beer on the wall,” and the girls were pulling mirrors out of purses and pockets to inspect themselves. Millie shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the pebbled plastic of the bus seat, trying to make her knees stop quivering, thinki
ng that working her way into No-Fur society was the first necessary step toward her eventual stardom.

  I made it. I’m here, she thought. I’m really here.

  CHAPTER 16

  FOR ALICE IT WAS THE best Halloween that she could remember: running through the streets, shouting and laughing, with the crisp air reddening her cheeks and her bag sagging with candy, with her friend at her side.

  In the crush of kids in costume, none of the learning guides noticed that Millie was a stranger or asked where she’d come from or if she had permission to be there. Alice enjoyed a pleasant daydream that she could keep her costume on and it would make her actually invisible; that she could slip through the world unseen and unnoticed until she found a place where she felt welcome.

  At eleven o’clock the learning guides herded the kids back onto the bus. Alice and Millie sat down on a seat together behind Riya and Taley. Alice had always thought there was something a little strange about Millie, about the way she spoke, and how shy she was about letting Alice see her, and that night it was even more noticeable: the way she kept looking around, staring at Riya and Taley like she was trying to memorize everything about them, the way she’d lean toward them or toward Jessica Jarvis and her crew, like she didn’t want to miss a single word they were saying. It was almost as if she’d never seen people before. But, of course, she hadn’t seen many people, Alice thought. She’d been homeschooled in a small town with kids in the same religion. Of course this was all weird and strange.

  Alice looked out the window and sighed, and she and Millie said, “I wish,” at the exact same moment.

  Alice looked at her friend. “You wish what?”

  “I am wishing I could be in a place like this, with people.” Millie’s eyes—Alice saw that even her eyelids were furry—were half-shut, her mouth curved in a sweet smile. “I am wishing my mother and father would let me . . . you know.” She gestured at the kids on the bus. “I am wishing they’d let me do things like this, with other kids. Different kids, not just Yare ones. I am wishing they’d let me go.”