The Wednesdays

by Julie Bourbeau

  “Happy Thursday!” they both sang out.

  Max hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, but he had been awfully worried. As far as he could tell, coming down with a case of the wednesdays meant being generally unlucky, breaking lots of things around the house without meaning to, and making your mother cry a lot. He’d much rather have chicken pox or even the stomach flu than a case of the wednesdays, he decided. The fact that Thursday came and went without a single incident made him feel loads happier. And when the rest of the week proved to be quite good, all around, he concluded that the whole thing must have been a silly misunderstanding.

  Although he felt certain that his bout of the wednesdays was over, he still told only one of his schoolmates about meeting the creatures. Noah was his best friend, and therefore presumably more likely to believe him than anyone else. He didn’t want to risk telling anybody else until he understood what had happened a little better. Or until he had proof.

  Noah’s reaction was to punch Max on the arm. Twice. “Yeah, right! And did you see any flying saucers while you were at it? Or maybe a talking rabbit?”

  Max rubbed his arm. “Ow, stop. I did see them, I swear it!”

  “Well, then, you’ve either gone completely crazy, or …” He paused, thinking. “Nope, that’s the only possibility. You’ve gone mad. Bonkers, off your trolley, foaming at the mouth, loony tunes, insane.” He punched Max’s arm one more time for good measure. “Just please tell me that the fact that you’re now a certifiable lunatic won’t stop you from playing soccer after school today?”

  Nothing Max said could convince Noah he was telling the truth.

  “All right, I’ll prove it to you,” he said finally.

  Noah crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “How?”

  “Listen for a tap at your bedroom window next Wednesday. Open up when you hear it.”

  This got Noah’s attention. “Nooooo … Really? But …” For once, he was speechless.

  Max grinned, feeling oddly proud. “Unless you’re scared, of course.” He returned one of Noah’s arm punches, but Noah didn’t even seem to notice.

  “If you’re lying …,” Noah said, doing his best to sound threatening. Though with his round, freckled face and ever-present grin, threatening was not a quality Noah pulled off easily.

  “Just open the window,” Max promised.

  Now he just needed to come up with a plan to show Noah the wednesdays. He could hardly wait.

  • • •

  His parents did not like his plan one bit.

  “Maxwell Valentino Bernard, I absolutely forbid it!” His mother stomped her foot and crossed her arms. “You are NOT leaving this house tomorrow.”

  It was Tuesday night, and his plans were falling apart.

  First, his father refused to let him use the family video camera. “They’ve broken my television set more times than I can count, and let’s not even talk about what they’ve done to my car. That video camera is practically brand-new, and I’m not letting it go anywhere near the wednesdays.”

  Max knew that without video evidence of the wednesdays, Noah wouldn’t be the only one accusing him of being a liar. Theirs was a small village, and nothing stayed secret for long. Besides his parents, both Noah and Mr. Grimsrud knew about Max’s encounter. Someone, at some point, was sure to let something slip. And once word got out about his Wednesday adventures, the other villagers were sure to wonder if he was telling the truth. If Max wanted anyone to believe his story, he was going to have to get creative.

  His mother, however, would not compromise on any of his ideas. “You will stay in this house all day long,” she insisted. “No windows, no doors, no peeking out curtains.”

  Nothing Max said would make her budge.

  Max went to bed frustrated. He spent most of the night coming up with new arguments to use to convince his parents. He had to get his proof.

  In the morning, though, his arguments all became unnecessary.

  His case of the wednesdays was back.

  ax’s mother gripped his shoulder tightly as she marched him across the village square. Her hair dryer had gone on the fritz that morning, so half her hair looked smooth and dry while the rest was matted damply to her skull. Her eyes darted nervously from side to side, and she was walking so fast that Max almost had to run to keep up with her.

  “Do you see them?” she hissed. One of her contact lenses had fallen—or rather leapt, as she shakily claimed—into a pan of scrambled eggs that morning, and she was having trouble seeing straight.

  Max shook his head. He hadn’t seen any sign of the wednesdays yet, but they had only been walking for two blocks.

  “Here we are,” his mother announced. She banged loudly on the door of the doctor’s office.

  “But, Mom, it’s Wednesday. He won’t be at work today,” Max protested.

  “That may be true, but he lives upstairs, so we’ll just have to make enough noise to get him to come to work.” She picked up a handful of pebbles and began tossing them at the second-story window. The curtains didn’t so much as flutter.

  She handed Max some of the pebbles and gestured for him to throw them at the window, too.

  Whether it was because it was a Wednesday or whether it would have happened anyway was unclear, but Max’s first pebble hit the windowpane dead center and caused a spiderweb of cracks to appear.

  The curtains were yanked open immediately.

  “Are you people completely insane?” Dr. Tetley’s face was scarlet as he opened the window to shout down to them. “It’s Wednesday!”

  “I’m very sorry, but we have a bit of an emergency. Max seems to have come down with a slight case of the wednesdays,” Max’s mother called out hopefully.

  The color drained from Dr. Tetley’s face, and he slammed the window shut so hard that the cracks marring the glass grew even worse.

  The doctor appeared to be trying to speak to them through the closed window, but they couldn’t hear what he was saying. Max’s mother promptly picked up a much larger rock than the one that had cracked the window and gestured to the doctor that she intended to throw it.

  “Wait!” the doctor mouthed, and then pointed downstairs.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll break his lousy window if he doesn’t help us,” growled his mother.

  Max was a little bit impressed, and also slightly intimidated by this new side of his mother. He did not doubt her threat at all.

  Fortunately, Dr. Tetley soon appeared at the glass door of the medical office, holding a mug of coffee in both hands as if it were a shield protecting him from Max. He refused to open the door. “This will be fine.” He bent down and called through the mail slot. “We can take turns speaking through here.”

  Max’s mother sighed, but kneeled down and began a hurried conversation with the doctor through the slot.

  Max wandered off while the grown-ups spoke. He could tell that he was making Dr. Tetley nervous, and besides, he wanted to look for the wednesdays.

  He looked up and down the deserted streets, but he didn’t see any trace of them. He thought about calling out to them, but he didn’t really know what to say. “Here, wednesdays, c’mere, little fellas,” he finally called in the same way that he called the cat when it wandered off outside. Nothing—or no one—responded, though.

  Bored, he headed back to the doctor’s office. His mother was bent at the waist, shouting into the door slot. “This is absolutely unacceptable! We can’t possibly wait that long!” She sounded furious.

  As Max got closer, two things happened at the same time: the handle broke off Dr. Tetley’s coffee mug, causing hot coffee to spill all over his shirt, and a great big dollop of bird poop landed in his mom’s hair. Dr. Tetley looked terrified, and he scuttled backward away from Max, even though the glass door still separated them. Max’s mother sighed and pulled a tissue out of her purse. “Not again,” she moaned quietly.

  It was the third time since they had left the house that morning that a bird had scored a d
irect hit on her.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Max whispered, and took a few steps back. He wished he knew how far away from her he’d have to stand to keep from bringing her bad luck.

  “We’re almost done here, darling.” She turned back toward the doctor and her tone hardened. “Well, at least tell me whether it’s contagious.”

  His voice was muffled, since he now refused to even come close enough to Max to open the mail slot. “I don’t know, and I don’t wish to find out. You’ll just have to wait until the specialist comes. Good luck to you.” With that, he hurried away upstairs. Max was pleased to see as the doctor turned around that his pants had split wide open.

  “Well done, dear.” His mother had seen Dr. Tetley’s pants, too. “That man is simply not helpful at all. He says he can’t get a specialist here until the end of the week.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” protested Max. But he felt a tad confused. It was true that he hadn’t intentionally broken the doctor’s window or split his pants, but a part of him wondered if he could somehow be responsible. The only way he could describe it was that it just wasn’t a surprise when those things occurred—as if somewhere, deep in his brain, he already knew they were going to happen.

  Dr. Tetley was no help at all, and the specialist wouldn’t be there for days. Max knew that the only way he could learn more about his case of the wednesdays was to go out and simply ask the wednesdays himself.

  “Mom.” He tugged at her sleeve. “Let me go out and play. It’s going to be like this all day.” Another bird plop landed on his mother’s shoe.

  “Oh, dear. I’m out of tissues.” She looked as if she was going to cry.

  “Besides”—Max could tell she was starting to waver—“don’t you have to go home to take care of baby Leland’s hair?” Somehow, during the course of the unusually chaotic morning, Leland had coated himself from head to toe in black shoe polish. Most of it had washed off his skin (although his complexion was still a bit on the grayish side), but no amount of shampoo or scrubbing could remove it from his previously light blond hair. With his new, shiny black waves, Max thought he looked a bit like a baby Elvis.

  “My poor little cherub.” Max’s mother sighed. “His beautiful golden curls are ruined!” Now she started to sob in earnest.

  “I’ll be fine by myself,” he reassured her, patting her hand sympathetically. “The baby needs you.” That one always did the trick, he knew.

  She finally relented, but she insisted that he ring the doorbell at their house at least once every two hours to let her know he was all right.

  “And stay away from those awful wednesdays!” she called out tearfully as Max ran off.

  Max pretended that he hadn’t heard her. He had every intention of finding the wednesdays. After a quick stop, that was.

  ax crept around to the side of the sprawling brick house and tapped lightly on the third window on the first floor. It was Wednesday, so the window was shuttered, of course. Since he couldn’t see in, Max could only hope that Noah was alone inside his bedroom. He had two dreadfully screechy older sisters who Max definitely didn’t want to run into today.

  For once, luck was on Max’s side. The shutters snapped open to reveal Noah’s wide eyes.

  “Hiya!” Max waved cheerfully.

  Noah tilted his head and frowned, rubbing sleep from one eye. “Wait a minute. Isn’t it …?”

  “Wednesday. Indeed it is.” Max danced a little jig for Noah. He couldn’t help but feel a bit giddy being out and about on the forbidden day. “And here you are, sleeping the morning away!”

  “But … but …”

  “Noah, my friend, you’ve had nearly a week to get used to the idea that I’m now acquainted with the wednesdays. I really hope you’ll get your ability to speak in complete sentences back soon.” Max couldn’t help but tease his friend. Noah just looked so ridiculous standing there in his striped pajamas with his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “I told you so!” Max crowed, just to rub it in even further.

  “Shhhhh!” Noah hushed him, looking around wildly. “You really have gone crazy, haven’t you? You must have, to be out on a Wednesday. If my parents see you, they’re likely to call the constable.” Noah looked as if he still couldn’t decide whether to believe Max’s story.

  “The constable? What’s he going to do, arrest me? He’s just as scared of the wednesdays as everyone else.” Max added an extra flourish to his jig. “How about you? Want to meet them?”

  Noah knew exactly who Max meant by “them.” “So, they really and truly exist? You weren’t lying to me?”

  Max just kept dancing his silly jig.

  Noah hesitated. “I don’t … I mean, I think … I’m just …” He stopped himself and then grinned widely. “What the heck. If you can do it, then so can I. But my parents would absolutely murder me if they knew I snuck out of the house on a Wednesday, so I can’t stay long.”

  Noah pulled on his sneakers and hoisted one leg over the windowsill. It was an easy drop down to where Max was standing, but he went no farther.

  “C’mon, then.” Max waved him on impatiently.

  “I can’t, I’m stuck on something.” Noah leaned back into his room. “No worries. My shoelace just got wrapped around the radiator. I’ll just give it a good tug.”

  It was at that moment, a split second before anything actually occurred, that Max knew with absolute certainty that something very bad was about to happen. “The wednesdays,” he whispered, just as Noah tugged so hard on the radiator that the whole thing tore apart from his bedroom wall with a mighty creak, followed by a thunderous groan and then a loud and ominous WHOOOSHing sound.

  “Ow!” Max jumped back in pain as his ankle was scalded by hot steam coming out of an air vent on the side of the house. “What the …?”

  “Oh, no,” Noah breathed, his eyes wide. He tottered precariously above Max, with one foot in his room and the other dangling out the window. “I think that’s from the boiler in the basement. I must have pulled so hard that I broke the pipes.…”

  As if to confirm Noah’s suspicion, a bloodcurdling scream sounded from an upstairs window. “Aaaah! My shower’s gone ice-cold!” the voice shrieked.

  “Is that Allison?” Max asked, hoping it was the slightly less screechy of Noah’s two sisters.

  Noah shook his head, a look of utter panic spreading across his face. “Worse. The other one.”

  Max heard the sound of a door opening and then another shriek, this time from a different voice. “What’s going on in here? Noah?”

  Max recognized the voice as belonging to Noah’s mother. He dove behind a bush just in the nick of time as she rushed over to the window. “Why is this window open, Noah? Don’t you realize what day it is?”

  Max cowered in his hiding place as he heard Noah’s father stomp into the room. “Young man, you’d better have an explanation for all of this!”

  Max inched forward in the shrubbery, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was happening. Noah, still stuck halfway out the window, spotted him and waved him away frantically.

  “Noah?” His mother’s voice, which was shrill on a good day, was now sharp enough to cut glass. “Is there something out there?” Her voice turned panicky as she called to Noah’s father. “Gunther, I think there’s something out there. On a Wednesday!”

  “I’m getting my shotgun!” Max heard the sound of Noah’s father running through the house in search of his gun.

  Max didn’t wait around to hear more. He darted from his hiding place and ran as if his life depended on it. His life probably did depend on it, he realized, and then ran even faster.

  He didn’t stop until he reached the park, where he collapsed on a bench, nearly doubled over with a nasty cramp in his side. He had really wanted to show Noah the wednesdays, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen now.

  In fact, it was rapidly becoming apparent to Max that he was very much on his own as far as wednesdays were concerned.

  ore w
ith disappointment that Noah couldn’t join him, Max decided he might as well start looking for the wednesdays in the park. It wasn’t as if he had anywhere else to go. He headed toward the playground, feeling very alone and terribly sorry for himself.

  Mr. Grimsrud was sitting on the park bench again. He had one shoe off and was carefully examining an impressive crop of bunions on his foot. Max approached, intending simply to say hello, but before he had even said a word, Thursday leapt from the old man’s lap and growled at him ferociously.

  “What has gotten into you, Thursday?” Mr. Grimsrud shrugged apologetically at Max. “He normally loves people. I’ve never seen him growl like that, except when he smells the wednesdays.”

  Max didn’t feel like talking to anyone about his “condition,” as his mother called it, so he simply waved and kept walking. He hoped that Thursday’s growling meant the wednesdays were nearby, but it seemed more like the dog was growling at him. “Stupid mutt,” he grumbled.

  When Max didn’t find any trace of the wednesdays in the park, he decided to look in the last place he had seen them—behind the grocery store. As he cut through the woods, he eyed several fallen branches and wondered if he should bring one along to use as a club, just in case things went badly. Remembering what had happened when he tried to throw the rock at one of the creatures, though, he thought better of it. Better to just go in peacefully and get some answers, he told himself, reluctantly leaving the large sticks behind.

  Max emerged from the trees and then stopped dead in his tracks. The wednesdays were there. All of them, it seemed—clustered in one large group. They didn’t look threatening, though. In fact, Max thought they looked rather friendly. Most of them had smiles on their squarish faces, and their silvery eyes sparkled cheerfully in the sunlight. One of them, who Max suspected was Ninety-eight, waved shyly.

  “Next!” they called in unison in their strange, whispery voices.

  “I told you, it’s MAX, not Next,” corrected Max, who was beginning to suspect that perhaps their hearing wasn’t very good. Why else would they keep calling him that?