The Littlest Bigfoot Page 5

  She ran and ran, loving the sensation of her body at work, relishing the quiet and the solitude, pushing herself to go faster and faster until the path ended at the shore of the lake—Lake Standish, she reminded herself. Standish was the name of the lake and the name of the town and, she bet, the name of the town’s main street or high school or both. Breathing hard, Alice cupped her hands in the water and rinsed her face, then let a palmful of water trickle from her crown down through her hair. Her shirt was plastered to her body, her shoes were filthy, her hair was already matted with branches and leaves, but she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so wonderful.

  Sitting by the water to catch her breath, she closed her eyes and listened. Little wavelets lapped gently at the toes of her shoes. She could hear the trill of a bird, the burst and flutter of wings . . . and, very faintly, voices.

  Alice stood up, squinting across the lake. She didn’t see anything but more trees . . . but she was sure she’d heard something, a girl’s voice, singing. She sat down again, slipping off her shoes and planting her feet in the water, eyes shut, listening, feeling the Mane hanging warm and heavy against her back, thinking that maybe this place would be all right, if she could run like this every day, away from the school and the students (the Center and the learners, she reminded herself), away from everything, even her own thoughts.

  When Alice trotted back to the Center, she found tall, skinny, face-painted Phil standing in the middle of the soccer field, pounding a cowbell with a stick. “Village assembly!” he called in a high, thin voice. His beard waggled in time to the stick strikes. “Everyone meet at Mother Tree!”

  Alice joined the crowd of kids moving toward the big tree Phil was pointing at. They were, she thought, a motley crew. Some of the girls had put on makeup and colorful woven bracelets and had painted their nails and dressed in outfits that looked both clean and planned; others, like Riya, just wore shorts and T-shirts and seemed unconcerned if their ponytails were crooked or their fingernails were bare. Taley was still in her orange, blue, and white jumper and pink sneakers, but she’d discarded her bandanna and tied hanks of purple yarn at the ends of the ponytails she’d fashioned. A few of the boys wore the cool-kid uniform of droopy, oversize basketball shorts, enormous sneakers, and baseball caps turned backward that Alice had seen in New York City. But she also saw one boy dressed all in black—black pants, black shoes, black long-sleeved shirt—with his hair dyed black and styled in a Mohawk. A girl wore head-to-toe tie-dye, and another girl was all in white, with hair that hung past her waist and a skirt so long that its hem dragged on the grass . . . and nobody stared. There were Doctor Who T-shirts and acid-washed jeans, fringed boots and leather sandals, fingernails in shades from pearly white to inky black (both boys and girls had painted nails), pierced noses and pierced eyebrows, and no one was making a big deal about anyone else.

  Alice followed the pack to Mother Tree and took a seat in the grass.

  Everyone here has a thing, she thought, remembering what Taley had said. Looking at her new classmates, she wondered if it was true . . . and, if it was, what her thing might be.

  “Welcome, all,” said Lori. She lifted her arms, palms up, and closed her eyes, and stood silently for a very long time. Just when Alice was beginning to wonder if she’d fallen into a trance, or maybe just asleep, she began in a slow, almost eerie voice: “The light within me salutes and honors the light within you.”

  Alice had been around Felicia’s yoga instructor long enough to mutter, “Namaste.”

  Taley Nudelman pulled a pile of yarn and a needlepoint pillowcase out of her backpack. She sneezed, then sighed, reaching for one of the half dozen undyed cotton handkerchiefs she carried instead of paper tissue (“They’re vbery bidg on reuse,” she whispered when she saw Alice staring).

  “We are all, every one of us, creators of the light. Let’s take a moment to honor that sacred specialness,” said Lori.

  Riya hunched over a fencing book, making crisp swishing motions with an index finger. Two rows ahead, a boy of eight or nine who seemed to have twice the normal allotment of teeth flicked a paper football at the back of another boy’s head, and a few kids down, the tie-dye girl was drumming a complicated rhythm on her thighs.

  Here we go, thought Alice as Lori continued. “Let us seek to love, not to hate. Let us seek to heal, not hurt. Let the future stand revealed. Let love prevail.”

  “Let Kate have lost her recipe for tandoori tofu,” a boy behind Alice whispered as Lori, face flushed and arms stretched up to the sky, concluded, “May the wind be always at your back, may a friend be always at your side, and may the Rainbow always touch your shoulder.”

  Lori sat down, fluffing her curly hair with her fingers, and Phil, who had a guitar slung around his neck, got to his feet. He was so tall and thin, and Lori was so short and round. Alice thought that, together, they looked like an exclamation point and a period. She considered whispering this observation to one of her bunkmates, but Taley was doing something with her wool, and Riya was still concentrating on her book and whatever fencing match was happening in her head.

  “And now,” said Phil, “a few words about words. You’ll notice that we’ve done away with the titles of  ‘student’ and ‘teacher.’ Because, the truth is, we’re all part of a village, a community where everyone’s an educator and everyone’s a learner. Calling you ‘students’ puts us”—he raised one hand high in the air—“above you.” He lowered his other hand toward the ground. “When really”—he floated his hands toward one another until they met at the end of his beard—“we are all the same. And along those lines . . .”

  Alice half listened as Phil talked about how insults, obviously, were not allowed at the Center. Neither was “body talk”—either positive or negative. “Telling someone they look nice centers the conversation on their physical selves where what we want is to be mindful of our souls,” he said. A few of the older kids snickered.

  “Couldb dbe worse,” Taley whispered. “Last year, we godt a three-hourdb lecture on Your Carbon Foobtprint.”

  “And now,” said Phil, “let’s meet our learning guides.”

  The people formerly known as teachers, Alice thought, as Phil introduced a woman with pale, freckled skin and dreadlocks.

  “Kara comes to us from the Kripalu Center, where she trained as a monk for three years.”

  Kara folded her hands in prayer against her chest and wished them namaste. An amiable, round-faced guy named Clem was in charge of the gardens; a serious-looking woman with a cap of steel-gray curls named Abigail would be “your guide through the wonders of poetry and Shakespeare.” Their math guide was a stocky person with a neat goatee and a skirt named Terry.

  “Terry’s preferred pronouns are ze, hir, and hirs,” Phil said. “And Kate’s in charge of the kitchens and all things culinary.”

  A very large woman with a crown of dark-brown braids stepped forward. She was possibly the largest person Alice had ever seen who wasn’t on one of the extreme weight-loss TV shows that Felicia liked—the ones where they’d sometimes have to cut a hole in a wall to get a person out of a house so that he or she could begin their fitness journey, a trip that typically involved gym equipment donated by the same companies that advertised during the show, and an attractive trainer who yelled a lot. The large woman gave an abrupt nod, then stepped back again, staring at her heavy leather boots.

  “Looks like Kate enjoys her work,” whispered a boy a few rows back, and a girl giggled. “Would you even want a skinny cook?”

  Alice tried not to sigh as she wrapped her arms around herself and hunched her head down, trying to look smaller. As the introductions continued, Alice looked down at the lake, then over toward the forest. She’d gone through this process so many times, at so many different kinds of schools, but it never got easy. New kids to meet, new routines to learn, a new campus to get to know, and then holding her breath, waiting for the inevitable moment when the other kids would turn on her.

 
; Alice pictured her bed, with its soft down pillows, white down comforter, and crisp white sheets. She thought about how at night, instead of smog and city lights, she would be able to see the stars. Maybe she would sleep deeply, with no bad dreams, and wake up to see the sunrise over the lake. Maybe she’d get up early and she’d run in the forest, feeling the dew soak her sneakers and the cool air against her face, her feet skimming the paths, jumping over fallen trees and snarls of branches and brambles, leaping lightly over streams, running and running until her lungs burned in her chest and the world swam in starbursts in front of her eyes and her muscles felt warm and easy against her bones, like she could sit still and listen all day.

  Eventually, she knew, things would go wrong, because things always did, no matter how careful she was, no matter how hard she tried. At some point in October or November, Alice would expose herself as different, abnormal, like at the École, when she’d bent over in gym class and split her pants right down the middle, or at Swifton, where, on parents’ day, one of the mothers, glimpsing Alice from behind with the Mane tucked under her hood, had thought that Alice was a boy and had yelled at her for being in the girls’ room.

  No matter how it happened, she would do something or say something or trip or rip or break something and give herself away. That was the way it always was. But until that day came, she would enjoy this place, with its quiet woods and its oddball “learning guides” and the kids, some of whom seemed to be almost as weird as she was.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE MORNING AFTER THE ELDERS’ meeting, the other littlies—Jacobus and Tulip, six-year-old Madder, and four-year-old Florrie, who was already bigger than Millie—filed into the underground school-burrow.

  Millie had been excused for the morning. After First Breakfast she had nodded solemnly at her father, given her anxious mother a smile, then clambered up the Lookout Tree. From her perch she would watch the new school across the lake and do her lessons by herself, and at the snackle, which was served between Second Breakfast and lunch, she’d report to Old Aunt Yetta and her father about what she’d seen. She was to count how many No-Furs there were, how many grown-ups and how many littlies, how many vehicles they had, whether she saw any weapons, and most important, whether the setup on the lakeshore seemed to be permanent or temporary. Old Aunt Yetta had lent her the Tribe’s single pair of antique binoculars, and Maximus had given her a new notebook and a black felt-tipped pen. So far Millie had written her name on the cover with a flourish and made note of the eight cars that had come down the dirt path, as well as the sixteen littlies who’d gotten out. She was looping the binoculars’ leather carrying case around her neck and readjusting her position when a furry head popped out of the school-burrow door and a voice announced, “Teacher Greenleaf says it’s time for you to come down.”

  Millie sighed. There were only three other littlie girls in the Yare Tribe. Florrie was such a baby that she nibbled on her cheek-fur when no one was looking, and Madder was almost an Elder. Tulip was the only girl close to Millie’s age. Tulip was tall and strong and sure-footed. Tulip was always quiet, always good. Last Halloween she’d decided to stay home, virtuously announcing that safety was more important to her than candy.

  Millie and Tulip did not get along.

  “I am occupied,” said Millie.

  “Teacher says now,” Tulip said.

  “Nugget,” sighed Millie—a Yare expression of regret—and started to scramble down the tree. Tulip’s schoolbooks were arranged in a neat stack beneath her arm, and her light-brown fur, neatly brushed and dressed with a dark-blue bow, was already beginning to darken at the tips of her ears.

  More unfairness, Millie thought. When Millie was born, her birth-fur, called duff, was pure white. No one in the Tribe, not even Old Aunt Yetta, had ever seen a newborn with white duff, and none of them knew what it meant—only that it had never happened before. Her parents tried to assure each other that this was probably normal, and that they’d each had or heard of relatives whose light fur had darkened over time. But Millie’s fur never became a normal Yare shade, brown or chestnut or reddish or black. Instead it stayed silvery gray and was not coarse or curly, but as light and sleek as corn silk.

  Nor did Millie’s oddness stop with her strange fur. Most of the Yare were tall and solid. Millie was short and small. With her thin wrists and delicate fingers, she was the littlest Yare anyone had ever seen. Although Millie had spoken early, she’d been slow to walk, slow to run, and she’d never been able to to keep up with her packmates. Worse than all that, though, was the way she pestered her folks about the No-Fur world and why the Yare lived the way they did, questioning every rule and restriction that other littlies simply accepted.

  “Why are we having to be quiet?” she had asked when she was three years old and Teacher Greenleaf had shushed her six times before morning snackle.

  “Because the No-Furs will hear us,” Teacher Greenleaf lectured, “and then do us harm.”

  “Why can’t I go with you?” she asked Maximus each month, when her father put on his biggest hat and longest coat and put an empty packsack over his back. He was preparing for the Mailing, a dangerous mission entrusted to the Leader of the Tribe. The Yare supported themselves, living off the land, sewing their own clothes, eating the food they’d grown or made . . . but for as long as Millie had been alive, the Yare had earned No-Fur currency by selling things they made in an Etsy shop called Into the Woods. Millie wasn’t sure whether Etsy was a person or a place, but she knew how it worked. Each month the members of the Tribe would give Maximus what they’d made: mittens and caps in bright colors; soft scarves and shrugs and woolen wraps; carved cutting boards and birdhouses; special scrubs and decoctions made with the herbs and leaves and blossoms the Yare would grow and gather—all labeled “Organic” and “Handmade.” They’d wrap and package the goods for mailing, and then carefully glue on the No-Fur addresses that Old Aunt Yetta had printed, weigh each parcel, and cover it with the correct number of stamps.

  Millie loved the night before the Mailing. At three, she’d declared herself the Package Inspector and would carefully examine each labeled parcel, tasting the No-Fur names and addresses on her tongue, imagining the different towns and states where the Yare-made goods would go. The next morning Maximus would gather up the goods and walk ten miles to the town of Standish. He’d drop the packages at the posting-office counter, all stamped and ready to go, and he’d use his key to open up the mailbox and take out whatever goods the Yare had ordered on-the-line—white sugar, and reading glasses, and the Snickers bars that all Yare loved.

  When Millie was four, she’d tried to follow her father on the Mailing. He’d caught her, of course, and she’d been punished most severely: sent to her room every day after lessons were through, and then again after dinner. Worse than the punishment, worse than her father’s anger, was the way her mother had cried until the fur on her face was sodden, holding Millie in a panicky grip and saying, over and over, that she didn’t know what she’d do if she ever lost her Little Bit.

  That should have been enough to end Millie’s fascination with the No-Fur world, but it wasn’t. Every night Millie would listen for voices coming from across the lake, the five miles of water that separated the Yare village from the campground where the No-Furs would come to pitch their tents and light their fires, roast their delicious-smelling meat on sticks, and sometimes, sing.

  Tulip, of course, had no interest in No-Fur foods and No-Fur songs. Tulip was a head taller and much heavier than Millie, and she would probably rusticate first. As soon as her ear tips and the circles around her eyes were completely dark, she’d be an Elder, able to hold the Speaking Stick, a grown-up with a voice and with power. Tulip’s parents, Millie knew, thought their daughter would be a much better Ruler than Millie, even though they’d never dared to say so to Maximus.

  “Mill-ee.” Tulip was tapping one large bare foot against the dirt. “I am losing the patience with you.”

  “Wait.” Milli
e’s sharp ears had picked up more car sounds. She scrambled back up the tree.

  Across the water, a procession of cars was rolling down the dirt road, stirring up a cloud of dust. She could hear raised voices, slammed doors, the sound of drums and someone strumming a guitar, and No-Furs calling greetings, asking, “How was your summer?” and saying, “Good to see you!”

  Millie was so excited that she could barely breathe. She wanted to jump up and down, to wave her arms and shout, “I’m here!” or go racing across the water. Instead, to calm herself, she sang a lullaby that Old Aunt Yetta had taught her.

  “The summer wind, came blowin’ in from across the sea,” Millie sang softly. She watched a boy open the back end of a car and lift out a heavy bag and a suitcase. “It lingered there to touch your hair and walk with me,” she sang. If she ever had the chance to audition for The Next Stage, she’d sing that song. She could see herself, in a silvery dress the exact color of her silvery fur, clutching the slim stalk of the microphone and closing her eyes as she sang. Except, in the daydream, she didn’t have fur but skin, smooth, lovely skin, sometimes pinky white, sometimes golden brown, sometimes a radiant black that was almost blue. Human skin.

  She closed her eyes and listened. There were women singing on the other side of the shore, their voices, thin and warbling, raised in a wobbly three-part harmony. “When John Henry was a little baby, sittin’ on his mama’s knee . . .”