Free The Littlest Bigfoot by Jennifer Weiner

MORNINGS, LEARNERS,” SANG PHIL, four weeks after Alice’s arrival, as he stood outside of Bunk Ladybug’s window. (The seventh-grade girls’ bunk had been called Bunk Seven until the week before, when Phil and Lori decided that numbers were hierarchical and that hierarchies were, by their very nature, unfair, and had renamed all the bunks after insects and birds.) “The earth says hello!”
    Alice peeked out the window to see that Phil had covered his narrow, rectangular face in face paint—lately he’d been favoring blue—and braided his beard. It hung like a second tongue, dangling at the center of his chest.
    In the bed beside hers, Alice heard Taley sniffle, then reach for her inhaler, then her embroidery hoop, and the sound of Riya’s steps as she danced through a fencing warm-up, slashing and stabbing at an imaginary opponent.
    Alice had already been awake for an hour. She’d gone for her morning run through the woods and then walked back along the lakeshore to her cabin, with wet leaves slipping underneath her feet and a cool breeze ruffling her hair.
    She got out of bed, cinched the elastic band around the Mane, made sure her socks weren’t muddy, and pulled a fleece sweatshirt over her plain blue T-shirt, feeling grateful, the way she felt every time she changed her clothes, that the Center had no uniforms. Alice, and the rest of the student body, had been encouraged to treat fashion as “a vehicle for self-expression,” which meant that you could wear anything, as long as it wasn’t see-through or low-cut and it didn’t have a logo or brand name (“Our bodies are not billboards for corporate America,” Lori liked to say).
    As the summer weather cooled and the air got crisp, with a wintry bite to the wind, Alice wore mostly yoga pants and fleece, elastic-waisted and oversize, clothes shehoped she wouldn’t grow out of before the semester ended. Taley layered tights and leggings and long-sleeved thermal shirts beneath her hand-sewn jumpers, which she’d made with extra pockets for handkerchiefs and medication. Riya wore athletic gear, leggings made of sweat-wicking fabric, and a zippered nylon jacket that proclaimed her a member of the Junior National Fencing Team.
    As Phil started up with his cowbell, the girls gathered their books and laptops and headed out of the cabin. Alice began her day with Intentional Weeding, while Taley did Morning Meditation. (“Butd really,” she said, “I mostly justb sitb there andb sleeb.”) Riya had gotten special permission to fence.
    The next activity was Daily Conversation. With the learners assembled in a semicircle beneath Mother Tree, Phil and Lori would talk about the day, whether there was anything special planned (there usually wasn’t), and whether there were any changes to the rules (there always were). Then the learners and guides would march to the Lodge for breakfast, the object of which, Alice sometimes thought, was for Kate, the Center’s cook, to get as many grains as possible into otherwise normal food. There’d be seven-grain porridge and twelve-grain toast, and apples, which the Center got by the bushel from a neighboring orchard.
    Learning sessions—which, in Alice’s previous schools, had been called “classes”—were held outside during good weather. Abigail would take a group of kids down to the shores of the lake, and the learners would take turns reading aloud from and then discussing Of Mice and Men , or Terry would teach algebra underneath Mother Tree. There was another break before lunchtime. Alice would usually wander in the forest or take out a canoe with Taley. Riya would sometimes join them, resting on her belly in the middle of the boat with a book propped up in front of her.
    Taley and Riya weren’t her friends—they hardly even tried to talk to her, on the water or at Nutrition, when they all sat together at one of