The Wednesdays

by Julie Bourbeau

  ax might have been surrounded, but he also had gum in his hair and blisters on his feet, and he was starting to feel very cross.

  “Which one of you guttersnipes turned me blue?” he demanded in his gruffest, sternest voice. He didn’t know exactly what the word guttersnipe meant, but he had often heard the school principal use it, and he thought it sounded commanding and grown-up.

  One of the wednesdays giggled stupidly.

  Max spun around angrily. “Keep quiet, Ninety-eight, you bothersome little square-headed goblin!”

  The silver eyes all seemed to widen at once, and dozens of whispery voices twittered words that Max couldn’t quite make out.

  “I’m not a goblin,” said a voice from the corner where Max had last seen Ninety-eight. The voice sounded genuinely hurt. “And it wasn’t me that laughed. It was Seventy-three.”

  “Tattletale!” shouted a voice that sounded just like Ninety-eight’s but came from behind a truck parked on the opposite side of the clearing.

  Giggles and whispers erupted all around.

  “Show yourselves!” Max thundered as he picked up a rock from the ground and threw it at a cluster of silver eyes.

  To his amazement, the rock bounced back at him as if he had thrown it against some sort of invisible barrier. “Ow,” he cried as it struck his shin—not because it had actually hurt, but because he was so startled.

  There were more giggles, and then a slight rustling sound as dozens of wednesdays began to emerge out of every nook and cranny.

  They all looked more or less the same. Some were slightly taller and some were slightly fatter than others, but they all had the same silvery eyes and the same long, bendy arms and vaguely corner-shaped heads. And they all giggled incessantly.

  “Shut up, all of you!” demanded Max, who was by now truly and thoroughly annoyed.

  Surprisingly, they did. But silent, they were creepier than when they were laughing at him. They had a way of narrowing their silver eyes until they looked like daggers, and Max definitely did not like the way they were closing in around him. He raised his fists and stood in what he believed to be a boxer’s stance—not that he knew how to box, but it made him feel more prepared all the same.

  The creatures silently formed a ring around him.

  Max lunged at one of the wednesdays—except for their strangely long arms, he was bigger and taller than they were, so he thought he might be able to at least put a good scare in one or two of them. But either the ill-fitting cowboy boots or the fact that it was a Wednesday made him trip over his own feet and fall in a clumsy heap.

  As he untangled himself from his fall, the wednesdays moved in closer and started to whisper. It took Max a few moments to sort out their strange, slithery voices, but he realized that they were chanting something.

  “Don’t you cast a wednesday spell on me!” he warned, but the creatures paid no attention. They started swaying and moving slowly in a circle as they chanted.

  Max couldn’t make out all the words at first, but after they had repeated themselves a few times, he started to pick up on parts of their chant:

  Chaos, mayhem, plain bad luck.

  One day a week we run amok.

  He caught a few other words here and there, but they didn’t make much sense, and he couldn’t figure out the rest of the rhyme.

  Max sat fuming in the dirt, surrounded by the loathsome, chanting creatures. Feeling powerless and terribly frustrated, he resorted to something he knew he was far too old for: he stuck his tongue out at the wednesdays and then pushed his nose up with his fingers to make a hideous pig monster face.

  The chanting stopped immediately.

  Much to Max’s surprise, making a silly face had an enormous impact on the wednesdays. They squealed and jumped in delight, mimicking his expression.

  When Max realized they were copying him, he growled at the wednesdays and then barked at them like a dog.

  The wednesdays barked back in glee.

  Max grinned, stood up, dusted himself off, and then did a handstand. It had taken him months of practice to learn how; he was certain that the wednesdays wouldn’t be able to copy him.

  Sure enough, the wednesdays struggled with the handstand. Their long, bendy arms weren’t good for supporting their squat bodies, and they kept collapsing into tangled heaps in the dirt.

  Soon Max was giggling just as much as the creatures. He crouched down, made horns with his fingers, and then sprang upward yelling, “Booga-booga-booga!”

  The wednesdays loved this one. Some of them started adding their own touches, like a spin during the leap or an extra ooga tacked on to the boogas.

  Max paused. He wanted to come up with something really challenging for his next act. He glanced around, looking for something to leap from. He eyed the closed Dumpster, which stood between an empty wooden crate on one side and a tall pile of raked leaves on the other. Perfect. If he could manage to vault from the crate to the top of the Dumpster, he could then take a spectacular flying leap into the leaves. The only tricky part was that he had to break through the tight circle of wednesdays in order to jump onto the Dumpster.

  Max waited for just the right moment. Finally, a gap appeared between two of the smaller wednesdays, who were cackling and skipping as they made hideous faces at one another. Max took advantage of their distraction to dash through the space between the two creatures. He hopped onto the crate and then leapt with all of his might to get to the top of the Dumpster. The Dumpster that he was quite certain had been firmly closed.

  Only, when he landed, instead of launching immediately from the Dumpster lid to the pile of leaves, he found himself plunging down into a stinking, wet, vaguely warm pile of rotting grocery store refuse. The Dumpster lid, which had mysteriously opened in the split second between Max’s leap and his landing, crashed down, leaving him surrounded by foul, putrid darkness.

  “Ew, disgusting!” yelled Max, his stomach lurching from the smell of spoiled sausages and sour milk. “Very funny, everyone. You can let me out now!”

  Max fully expected to see the silly, grinning wednesdays open up the lid of the Dumpster, but none appeared. He banged on the metal wall closest to him, pulling his hand back in disgust as it made contact with something even wetter and squishier than the rest of the rotting garbage around him.

  He couldn’t hear anything at all. No chanting, no giggling, no leaping, no voices. Was this one of their wednesday tricks?

  He had sunk to the bottom of the loosely packed garbage by now; to reach the lid of the Dumpster he had to scramble up through unspeakably smelly objects that he was very glad he couldn’t identify in the dark. Cartons and containers burst and leaked under his feet, and his hands clawed through plastic-wrapped horrors as he tried to reach the lid. Finally, he managed to climb high enough to push up against the roof of the bin. It wouldn’t budge.

  Max shifted his weight to get in a better position to push upward, but the lid still held firm.

  He was trapped.

  ortunately, Max was not one to panic.

  He did, however, want out, and he wanted out NOW. It was smelly, dark, and damp in the Dumpster, and it suddenly occurred to him that this was a truly terrible way to spend one’s birthday.

  “This isn’t funny anymore!” he shouted to the wednesdays. He pounded furiously on the sides of the container, cringing each time his hands struck some unidentifiable filth.

  Finally, he heard something.

  It wasn’t a wednesday noise, though. It was the far more welcome sound of a small dog barking.

  “Thursday! Mr. Grimsrud! Anyone! Please help me, I’m in the Dumpster!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, pounding and kicking at the metal sides.

  It seemed as if an eternity passed before the lid finally began to lift. Max pushed his way out frantically, gratefully gasping the fresh air.

  Mr. Grimsrud wrinkled his nose. “Young man, now you’re blue and you smell dreadful.”

  Max thanked the old man profusely for res
cuing him as he plucked putrid gobs from his hair and did his best to rub away some of the slimy strands stuck to his face. “Did you see them? Did you see the wednesdays? Aren’t they incredible? Where did they go? Did your dog catch one?”

  “Settle down, lad. Take a deep breath. Well, on second thought, perhaps you shouldn’t do that considering how terrible you smell.” Mr. Grimsrud fanned the air in front of his face and then knocked twice on the side of his head. “The only thing I saw was Thursday sniffing the air and then running in this direction as if his little life depended on it. By the time I got here, there was nothing but the sound of you yelling for help. I probably would’ve sniffed you out, too, if I’d had a moment. Phew!”

  Max was disappointed. How could the wednesdays have disappeared so quickly? What had happened?

  He tried to explain to Mr. Grimsrud. “I was playing with the wednesdays. They were all here—dozens of them—dancing in a big circle and chanting things. We were making faces, and then I think maybe they thought I was trying to escape, because they locked me in here after I jumped.…”

  Mr. Grimsrud waved off Max’s explanation. “You’re not making any sense, lad. But I want to take a bath just looking at you, and that says a lot, since I don’t much care for bathing. Is that creamed spinach on your shirt?”

  Max did his best to wipe off the rotten food still clinging to his clothing. “Never mind. If you didn’t see them, then I guess it doesn’t matter. Thanks again for rescuing me. Sorry about your walking stick.” He sighed as he handed the cane, which was now slightly sticky with something that felt like maple syrup, back to Mr. Grimsrud. He waved farewell and then headed toward home. At least he had birthday cake to look forward to there.

  • • •

  The walk home took longer than usual because by now the cowboy boots had given Max painful blisters on both feet. To make matters worse, he could tell by the CLOMP-SQUISH sound of every step that they were filled with rotten food. He sat down on the sidewalk and pulled the boots off, grimacing at the egg yolk coating one of his socks and the curdled yogurt on the other. He tossed the ruined boots in a trash can with a silent apology to whoever they had belonged to and walked the rest of the way home in his bare feet.

  His parents were sitting at the table playing canasta when he walked into the house.

  “MAXWELL!” his mother shrieked when she saw him. She jumped up out of her chair, startling baby Leland, who had been napping in a bassinet. “What on earth?”

  The baby’s face started to pinch and contort as he worked himself up into a good loud scream.

  Max’s father stayed seated, grimly shaking his head. “I told you we shouldn’t have sent him out on a Wednesday,” he said reproachfully. “And we’d just gone nearly a full ten minutes without the baby crying.”

  “Oh, but it’s not usually this bad on a Wednesday,” Max’s mother protested weakly. “At least not indoors. Max, what is that in your hair? What is that smell? And why are you BLUE?” For a moment she looked as if she was going to faint.

  “Don’t worry, I’m fine,” Max said bravely. “I just need a quick bath.”

  “I’m not so sure about the quick part,” said his father, holding his nose and shooing Max toward the bathroom. “You’d do well to spend a good long time scrubbing at that mess. Besides, you’ve frightened your little brother coming in looking like that. Just listen to how you’ve made him cry.”

  Max resisted the urge to tell his dad that everything made Leland cry. As he closed the door to run a bath he heard his mother say that she hoped none of the neighbors had seen him come home looking that way. “They’ll think I’m the worst mother in the village for sending him out there on a Wednesday,” she wailed as his father hugged her, shushing her gently.

  Max ran the bathwater as hot as he could stand it. He scrubbed and scrubbed until both the blue dye and the smell were finally gone; his skin felt raw and chafed as he toweled himself dry. He saw that he had left a slight blue ring around the tub, but he was far too tired to do anything about it just then.

  Upstairs in his room, he changed into his pajamas even though it was still early; he didn’t think anyone could possibly object to him eating his birthday dinner in his pj’s.

  When he walked downstairs, his parents abruptly stopped their conversation and stood up quickly with large, nervous smiles on both of their faces.

  “Darling,” started his mother. “We feel just awful for sending you out there, especially on your birthday. It wasn’t too terribly unpleasant, was it?”

  “Come, Max. Sit here. Your mother has cooked your favorite meal.” His father pulled his chair out for him, at the same time plunking baby Leland into his high chair.

  Max sat, and then thought for a moment before answering. The afternoon might have ended badly, but on the whole, it had been quite an adventure. “Actually, it wasn’t terrible at all. I met the wednesdays! They’re strange and tricky, and they have the oddest silver eyes, but they’re really a lot of fun to play with.”

  His parents both gasped. Now his mother really looked as if she was going to faint. “You … met the wednesdays?” his father stammered. “What do you mean by that?”

  His mother moaned and covered her face with her hands.

  “No, no, don’t get all upset like that.” Max tried to reassure them. “Really, it was fine. They danced and chanted and we made funny faces at each other.” He tried to explain what had happened, but his parents just looked pale.

  “Well, at least it’s over,” said his mother finally. She looked uncomfortable, as if she would rather be discussing anything other than the wednesdays. “That’s enough of this nonsense, and dinner is getting cold. Let’s eat so we can have birthday cake and presents afterward.”

  • • •

  His mother might have prepared his favorite foods and baked not one, but two cakes that day, but Max’s birthday dinner did not go well at all.

  First the lights went out in the dining room. “Candlelight is nicer anyway,” said his father nervously after the replacement lightbulb also went dark.

  Then they discovered that the saltshaker had been filled with sugar. “That’s okay. Spaghetti sauce is still good when it’s a little sweet,” his mother said anxiously.

  Then the leg on Max’s chair snapped, sending him tumbling to the floor. “I was tipping back on it,” he apologized as he moved to the spare chair, even though he hadn’t been tipping back at all.

  Finally, it was time for dessert. Max’s mother and father came out of the kitchen with his birthday cake covered in brightly flaming candles, singing, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Maxwell …”

  “Mom! Look out!” Max shouted as the ends of her hair brushed against one of the candles and burst into flame.

  His father reacted quickly, picking up the pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade from the table and dumping it over his mother’s flaming head.

  All three of them stood in silence, Max cringing as he watched his mother and the cake both dripping lemonade and runny frosting onto the floor. Even baby Leland stopped his constant fussing for once. He sat quietly in his high chair and stared at Max in a most peculiar way.

  Max’s mother finally broke the long silence. “Max, darling,” she whispered, looking bedraggled and very, very sad. “I think you’ve caught a case of the wednesdays.”

  everal more unfortunate incidents in a short time span convinced the Bernard family that their suspicion was correct. Max had most definitely caught a case of the wednesdays. None of them had ever actually heard of such a thing, but it was the only explanation for an evening that ended with a small flood in the basement, a very angry cat with singed whiskers, baby Leland’s blankie in tatters, and Max’s mother in tears.

  “Son, perhaps it would be best if you slept in your tree house tonight?” Max’s father prompted gently as he passed a second and then a third tissue to his wife. She used one to dry her eyes and two to mop up the puddle of baby spit-up fro
m her lap. “I could even join you. It’d be like a campout.”

  “Sure, Dad.” Max tried his hardest to sound cheerful, but he knew he wasn’t convincing. “Mom, don’t cry. It’ll be midnight in a few hours, and I’m sure everything will be better tomorrow. It’s just a Wednesday thing.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, darling.” His mother’s attempt to sound cheerful wasn’t convincing, either.

  Max pulled his sleeping bag and some extra blankets out of his closet, but he told his dad that he’d prefer to sleep alone outside. “It’s nice of you to offer, really, but I think I’d like to be alone for a little while. Just to, you know, think about things a bit. And maybe instead of the tree house, I’ll just set up my tent in the backyard.” Max didn’t even want to think about the terrible things that could go wrong ten feet up in a tree.

  Max and his father set up the tent with only a few minor mishaps and accidents. He kissed his mother good night, and then wearily zipped himself into the pup tent.

  • • •

  Max slept surprisingly well, all things considered. Back in the house, baby Leland was in the habit of waking the entire family two or three times a night with his wailing. In contrast, the backyard was refreshingly quiet and peaceful.

  The next morning, his mother woke him up with a mug of hot cocoa and a freshly baked muffin. Unlike Max, she did not look as if she’d had a good night’s sleep.

  She set the tray down very carefully and backed away slowly to watch. Max gingerly lifted the mug and took a cautious sip. Then he took a slow nibble, and waited.

  His mother appeared to be holding her breath.

  Thirty seconds went by, and then a minute. Finally, Max grinned. “It’s good!” he announced. “No spills, no burns, and no chipped teeth!”

  “Oh, thank goodness!” cried his mother, swooping in for a hug.