The Littlest Bigfoot (17 page)

O
VER THE NEXT WEEK MILLIE
and Alice Met twice, at midnight, on the shores of Lake Standish. As soon as she was sure her roommates were asleep, Alice would slip out of bed. She would take a snack and a glass bottle of milk from the dining-hall kitchen and would wait on the shore for Millie to arrive.

Her new friend was odd, Alice thought, watching Millie paddle to the shore in her canoe. She would only come over on moonless nights, explaining that her village adhered to the lunar calendar, and that it was bad luck to travel on nights when the moon was out. She wore oversize sweatpants that drooped past her ankles, a big plaid shirt
with sleeves that came practically to her fingertips, and a baseball cap pulled down low on her forehead. The second time she'd come, she'd hopped out of her canoe and dashed behind the bushes—to pee, Alice thought—except then she'd stayed there. Alice had been trying to figure out a polite way to ask why she was hiding when, from her spot behind the foliage, Millie had explained that she had a glandular condition that caused her to have hair on her face and hands, “And I am shy of being seen.”

“Can't you get laser treatments?”

Millie paused. “My parents don't believe in them,” she said. That made sense, because, Alice had learned, Millie belonged to a very strict religious order. Its practitioners, who called themselves the Yare, had rules that prohibited movies, music, and any television show except for
Friends
and
The Next Stage
, which Alice thought was weird, but maybe no weirder than religions that let their followers drink everything but coffee or required them to wear little hats or didn't celebrate birthdays.

Millie had been homeschooled and had lived her whole life in a Yare village that was somewhere upstate, she'd said, gesturing vaguely across the water. “Not too far from here.” The Yare were mostly farmers, although some of the women did knitting and crochet and needlework that
they sold “on-the-line,” which was how Millie referred to the Internet. Millie had hardly ever been out of her village, had never met a kid who wasn't Yare, and had about eighteen million questions every time she saw Alice. That night, after they'd shared the homemade granola bars and apple pie that Alice had made with Kate that afternoon and filched from the kitchen, they were discussing what they'd started to call “the
Friends
exception.”

“I mean, it sounds like a funny show, but I don't understand why the . . . Elders?” Alice looked at Millie, who nodded—or at least it looked like she was nodding through the bushes. “Why the Elders would think it was any better than, like,
Gilmore Girls
or
Modern Family
.”

“I cannot speak for them,” said Millie, and then gave a little giggle. “Oh, they'd laugh if they heard me saying that. I am always speaking. About everything. Old Aunt Yetta calls me a box of chatter.” She took a deep breath. Alice braced herself for the onslaught of questions that she knew was coming.

“Have you ever been to a restaurant?” Millie asked.

“Ever?” asked Alice.

“I mean to say, which restaurant is your favorite one?” Millie said quickly.

Alice told her about the candy store in Cape Cod
that served cheddar-cheese-and-chive scones and dark-chocolate-covered apricots.

“Apricots,” Millie said dreamily. “I'll have to ask my papa to order me some. What is your favorite place that you've ever been?”

Alice smiled. “The beach with my granny,” she said. “In the mornings, when there's no one there, I go running on the sand. Sometimes at low tide there are sandbars—little islands,” she explained, and told Millie how she'd wade through the shallows to reach them, and then pretend that she'd been shipwrecked and would have to survive, all alone.

“You like to be alone?” Millie asked.

Alice didn't want to answer that. She didn't want to tell Millie the truth about how lonely she was and how she longed for company, only nobody ever seemed to want to be around her. “My turn,” she said instead. After their first meeting, they'd agreed that for every ten questions Millie asked, Alice could ask two. “What's the name of your town? Is it far from here?”

“Not so far,” said Millie. “But you must not try and find it!”

“Why not?” Alice asked.

“The Elders—my parents especially—they don't like
us talking with the N— I mean, with the outsiders,” Millie said. “They wouldn't like it if they knew I had made up a friend.”

“Made a friend,” Alice said. She liked the funny way Millie said things. “If you say ‘made up,' it sounds like I'm imaginary.”

“Ah,” said Millie. “Also, we don't like people to look at us.”

“Because of the . . .” Instead of saying the word “hair,” Alice merely gestured toward her face. Millie had explained that lots of the Yare shared her affliction and didn't like going out in public.

“Exactly,” said Millie. “So are you having a best friend? At home, in New York?”

Alice looked down at her feet. She felt sick and ashamed as she heard Millie scoot closer.

“Did I ask something wrong?” Millie asked in a small voice.

Alice shook her head. “It's not your fault,” she said. “I don't really . . .” She took a deep breath. “People don't like me,” she finally said.

“I like you,” said Millie.

Alice gave an unhappy laugh. “You don't know many other girls.”

“Even if I knew one hundred girls, you would be my bestie,” Millie said.

Alice found that she was on the verge of tears. “Well, you don't go to school here,” she said. “None of the girls here are my friends.”

“What do they do?”

Alice paused . . . and then, without knowing she was going to say anything, she blurted, “They took my picture.”

“What?” Millie asked. “Who took your picture?”

“Some of the kids here. They tricked me into skinny-dipping.” Alice gave an unhappy bark of laughter. “Or fat-dipping, I guess you'd call it, in my case.”

“I don't know what that is,” said Millie.

“It's when you swim naked,” said Alice. “So, when I was in the water, they stole all my clothes, and when I came out, they took my picture, and they put it up, all over campus.” She sniffled and swiped at her cheeks. “For all I know, they even put it online for everyone to laugh at it.”

“Oh, Alice,” Millie said. “Oh no!”

“And it's not the other girls,” said Alice. She was glad for the darkness, glad that she was probably just a girl-shaped lump on the shore. Tears were slipping down her face, soaking the collar of her sweatshirt as she voiced her deepest fear. “It's me.”

“What do you mean? What about you?” asked Millie.

“Everywhere I go, every single school, the same thing happens. Nobody likes me. Nobody ever likes me! My roommates here are only nice because they have to be. My own parents . . .” Alice's voice caught. “My own parents don't even like me. They keep sending me away.”

“I like you,” said Millie. Her voice was firm. She got to her feet, emerged from the bushes, and wrapped her arms around Alice's shoulders, hugging her from behind. “Who did that?” Millie asked. “Who stole your clothes and took your picture? Who did that to you?”

Alice's voice hitched and wobbled. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “It doesn't matter which one, because if it wasn't that girl, it would have been someone else. It's me,” she said, and now there was no way that Millie wouldn't hear her crying. “There's something wrong with me.”

“There is nothing wrong with you,” Millie said, and rested her chin on the top of Alice's head. “Probably they are jealous of your beauty.”

Alice gave a bitter little snort and wondered if Millie, too, was teasing her. Millie pressed on.

“I'd give anything to look like you. If I was bigger, I could be keeping up, and the other Yare wouldn't ditch me,” she said. “If I was stronger and faster, they wouldn't
treat me like I'm a little scrap of nothing. If my fu—if my hair wasn't so strange . . .”

“My hair is strange,” said Alice.

“Your hair is perfect.” Millie released Alice and plopped down beside her, straightening the baseball cap that covered her head and shadowed her face. “If you lived in my village, you would be the most favorite of all, I promise. Even Tulip couldn't compete.”

Alice laughed . . . only now she felt lighter inside, now that she'd shared the story of what had happened. When Millie leaned against her, Alice didn't pull away. The two girls sat, shoulder to shoulder, talking and laughing until the sky lightened from black to gray and it was time for Millie to paddle back home.

S
OME BOYS RODE THEIR BIKES
home from school or walked to soccer or football practice or went into Standish's two-block-long downtown to buy cheeseburgers and ice-cream cones and hang out at the library. Jeremy had a different routine.

As soon as the last bell rang, he gathered up his books and hurried home, keeping his eyes open on the path through the woods, looking for bent twigs and broken branches and any sign of a Bigfoot nearby. Sometimes, while he walked, he imagined himself in front of a cheering crowd, explaining how he'd found and captured a Bigfoot. Sometimes he envisioned a TV interview, the suit and tie he'd be wearing
when Donnetta Dale, lead anchor from Channel 6 Eyewitness News, leaned intently toward him, asking, “How were you able to remain so committed to your quest, even in the face of relentless scorn and disbelief?”

On that fateful Thursday, he hooked his finger into the handle of a quart of milk, dumped a box of cereal into a mixing bowl, and poured the milk on top. While he ate, he made the rounds of his favorite websites: Paranormal Activity, Area 51, Weird Roswell, and AliensAmongUs. The last website was his favorite—it was where Bigfoot hunters posted rumors and, occasionally, pictures that claimed to show actual Bigfoots.

There hadn't been anything new on the site in weeks, though. Jeremy didn't feel optimistic as he clicked over and saw . . . nothing but a blank screen. He refreshed his browser and stared at the message that showed a frowny-face emoji and the words
We have crashed under heavy traffic. Please keep trying!
He hit refresh over and over, spooning cereal into his mouth with his eyes on the screen, telling himself not to get his hopes up, even as one of his feet started tapping in a jittery rhythm on the floor.

It wasn't nothing. When the site finally let him in, he saw a picture of a flyer with two photographs side by side. Jeremy's heart jumped into his throat as he recognized
the shot on the left, a picture with which he was intimately familiar, a female Bigfoot in profile, caught in midstride, the still from the Patterson-Gimlin film that he'd used in his report.

The picture on the right was what made his mouth go dry and his skin prickle. It was a photograph of a smaller person in the same sideways pose, hunched over, one arm slung across her chest, her body bristling with . . . Jeremy squinted, holding his breath, staring at the low-resolution image, trying to believe what he was seeing.

Fur. Pine needles and mud too—maybe just pine needles and mud, Jeremy cautioned himself. He couldn't see the figure's feet clearly, but it was big, big and broad-shouldered, with large hands and wild, bushy hair. More than its size and posture, though, was the attitude of shame and fear communicated in the slump of its shoulders, the curve of its neck, the way it tried to hide its face and body.

“Oh my God,” Jeremy whispered. His face was flushed; his heart was hammering so hard he was surprised his mother, in her office down the hall, hadn't heard it.

Separated at birth?
read the words underneath the pictures . . . and that was all it said. There were no names, of course, no location, no clue as to where the shot had been taken (and, his brain whispered, it could have been
a fake, was probably a fake, Photoshopped and whomped up on someone's computer as a joke).

Except his heart told him otherwise. In his two years of seeking, of research, he'd seen, he reckoned, every fake Bigfoot picture that existed online, and he'd never seen this one. He'd never seen anything that looked like this, that communicated the same kind of painful, aching fear.

“Real,” he whispered, then read the site's caption out loud. “We have no information where this image, posted anonymously online, came from,” read the text. “All we know for sure is that the computer's IP address is associated with a server in upstate New York.”

“Real,” he said again.

“Talking to yourself?” asked Noah, who'd come up from his basement hideaway. Jeremy ignored him. He slammed his laptop shut, shoved it in his backpack, and speed-dialed the first contact on his phone with one hand as he carried his empty mixing bowl to the kitchen.