The Littlest Bigfoot by Jennifer Weiner Page A

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!”
    â€œOh, 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.
    â€œWill 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.
    â€œHow did we get the Mailing box?” Millie asked.
    â€œWe did it on-the-line,” said Old Aunt Yetta, in a tone that let Millie know not to pursue the subject.
    â€œBut 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!”
    â€œMillie . . .” 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 . . .”
    â€œMillie,” said Old Aunt Yetta, speaking in a sharp tone she rarely used with her young friend. “That’s enough.”
    â€œThere must be a way, and if there is, I will find it.”
    Old Aunt Yetta stifled another groan.
    â€œSo 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.
    â€œShaving does not work,” Old Aunt Yetta said.
    â€œWhy? Why does it not work?”
    â€œBecause the fur comes back.”
    â€œWhy? How fast? And when we are un-furred, do we look like them?”
    â€œNo,” 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.
    â€œShmeh,” 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?”
    â€œJust 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.

    â€œMillie.”
    At midnight Millie