The Littlest Bigfoot by Jennifer Weiner Page B

opened her eyes. Her parents were standing by the side of her bed, smiling. Her father’s arms were filled with wrapped gifties. Her mother carried Millie’s favorite carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting, with twelve lit candles standing in a ring around its edge.
    â€œHappy Name-Night!” her parents whispered, and Millie beamed and gave her parents the biggest hug she could.
    She blew out the candles, and her father handed her the first box, wrapped in pink-and-white paper, with a card from Amazon tucked under the ribbon.
    Millie’s eyes widened. Carefully she removed the paper and the card and tucked them away for safekeeping. Then she opened the box and gasped in delight. Nestled in a cloud of tissue paper was a pair of sparkly red shoes, No-Fur shoes, with metal buckles. “Like in the movie!” she said.
    â€œJust so,” rumbled Maximus. (Her parents knew she’d seen The Wizard of Oz , because the previous winter, during a blizzard that had kept the Tribe inside for days, Old Aunt Yetta had arranged a screening and had served popcorn and hot chocolate as the littlies snuggled in piles of pillows and blankets on her floor. Tulip, Millie remembered, had refused to even watch, and Florrie had cried at the green-faced No-Fur pretending to be a witch.)
    Millie swung her legs out of bed. They dangled above the floor as she slipped on the shoes, which were the perfect size for her little feet. Next she unwrapped a heavy, beautifully bound collection of Grimm’s fairy tales, a boxed set of Anne of Green Gables books, and a dozen ribbons in pinks and yellows and blues that she could clip into her head-hair.
    There was a box of chocolate-covered cherries, a box of sea-salt caramels, and a single, slightly battered videocassette of season ten of Friends that her parents told her sternly she was only to watch with Old Aunt Yetta and was never to mention to Tulip or any of the other Yare.
    â€œI promise, I promise!” Millie said. Her father hugged her, and Septima smiled her shy smile, with one hand, as always, over her mouth. (Millie suspected that someone had told her mother at a very early age that she had ugly teeth, because every time she smiled, Septima’s hand would always wander up to cover her lips.)
    Millie walked between her parents down the slope that led to the edge of the lake, for the ritual Name-Night dunking . . . and there, feeling her happiness swell like a bubble inside of her, Millie started to sing: “Happy Name-Night to me, happy Name-Night to me, happy NAME-Night, dear MILL-EEEE . . .”
    â€œShh!” said Maximus, looking around to make sure they were alone, as Septima pinched Millie’s lips together gently but firmly.
    â€œWhen you are Leader,” she began, “you must be setting the example, Millie. You know how voices carry across the water.”
    â€œI wasn’t even being loudness.” Millie struggled notto sigh, hating the petulant, babyish sound of her voice. Hating, more than that, the constant necessity for quiet, endless quiet, even with the Tribe’s village in the center of an untouched forest far from the nearest human home, with thick woods on three sides and a wide lake on the fourth.
    â€œHappy Name-Night,” said Maximus, and handed her a penny. “Do your wishing!”
    Millie held the penny tightly and closed her eyes as she waded into the water until she was submerged. I wish, she thought, as hard as she could, I wish I could climb into a boat and paddle myself away .
    She let the penny sink to the bottom of the lake and climbed out of the water, shaking her fur briskly, then trotting to her parents, who’d been watching from the shore. Not many Yare liked the water—their muscular bodies and dense fur didn’t make it easy for them to float or swim—but Millie had always loved the lake.
    â€œLittle dreamer,” said Septima, bending to give her daughter a towel