But just then, Peter chimed in and ruined everything.
“I wouldn’t get too close to him,” Peter yelled louder than necessary from across the hall. “My father says that he could be contagious.”
Gemma took a step back toward the safety of her giggling group, but she kept her eye contact with Max. “What are they like?” She hushed her friends with a hand gesture. Several other girls, emboldened by Gemma’s presence, drew nearer to listen.
“Well,” said Max. “Since you asked—”
“Honestly, everyone. Keep your distance,” Peter interrupted rudely. “My father is talking to the school principal right now because he thinks Max is a health threat. He shouldn’t be allowed in public places.”
Gemma looked skeptical, but she took another step back. So did all of the other girls.
Max glared at Peter. What right did he have to tell everyone? Max opened his mouth, about to shout an angry insult, when the drinking fountain suddenly turned on, dousing the front of Peter’s pants.
Max laughed and pointed tauntingly. “Have a little accident, did we, Peter?”
But no one else was laughing.
“Oh my goodness,” Gemma breathed. “Where’s my photographer? Did anyone get a picture of that?”
The circle around Max widened as all of the students shrank away from him.
“It’s true!” Peter shouted. “He’s a menace. He’s a … Wednesday. You all just saw what he did. I’m going to tell my father and the principal.” He turned and stalked wetly down the hall as the school bell rang.
Max hurried to his classroom and scrunched down in his assigned seat as far as he could. He was utterly confused. He had been furious with Peter, it was true, but he hadn’t intentionally made the water fountain spray him. But when it happened, it was as if it had just … felt right. And he might have been thinking about Peter’s bed-wetting incident somewhere in the back of his mind. Perhaps there really was something to Two’s idea of his mind’s mind making bad things happen.
“But today is Monday,” Max said out loud, puzzled. Regina Olsen, who normally sat in the desk next to Max’s, leapt from her seat and moved hurriedly to the back of the classroom, a panicky look on her face.
Only then did Max realize that all of the desks around his were empty. The students who usually sat near him were instead standing clustered in worried groups at the front of the room. He looked around one more time for Noah, who was still missing in action. At least his best friend would stand by him—if he ever showed up, that is.
“Oh, come on, everyone,” he protested. “I’m not dangerous!”
No one responded. No one would even look him in the eye.
The classroom door opened and Mrs. Trimersnide, the teacher, walked in with Mr. Alderwood, the school principal. Max was grateful for the distraction until Mr. Alderwood pointed directly at him and then beckoned for Max to follow him out into the hall.
Max’s stomach sank. He suspected that his day was about to get even worse.
“uspended?”
Max knew the look on his mother’s face—it was the same look she’d had when she threatened to throw a large rock at Dr. Tetley’s cracked window.
“Now, Mrs. Bernard, please calm down. We have to consider the safety of all of the students, and we’ve never had a … situation quite like this before. We need to exercise an abundance of caution.” Mr. Alderwood pushed nervously on his glasses and dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief.
“You call this an ‘abundance of caution’?” His mother’s voice rose even further. “I call this an abundance of—”
Max’s father cut her off quickly. “Dear, let’s not get overly excited here. I’m sure we can talk this over and come to a nice compromise.” He was bouncing baby Leland on his lap, although he needn’t have bothered. The baby was utterly transfixed by Max, staring at him as though hypnotized.
Mr. Alderwood fidgeted and dabbed again at his damp face. “Well, sir,” he began nervously, “I’m afraid we really can’t continue this discussion here. Dr. Tetley has advised the school board that Max’s presence puts the entire educational community at risk.” His voice quavered as Max’s mother’s mouth started to open and her fists began to clench. “So I have no choice but to ask you to leave the premises.”
The principal was sweating profusely by now, and Max realized that Mr. Alderwood had pushed his chair as far away from him as the small office allowed. “I’d be happy to schedule a telephone conference to discuss the matter further, of course. Say, same time next week?” He ducked as both of Max’s parents jumped angrily to their feet. Baby Leland’s trance was broken by the sudden movement, and he started to cry.
Max couldn’t believe what was happening. “You’re all treating me like a … like some sort of a leper,” he cried out. He didn’t mind the suspension so much, but he was genuinely hurt by the way the other students had treated him. They were supposed to be his friends!
“You’ll be hearing from our lawyer,” his mother announced firmly as she snatched up baby Leland and then pulled both Max and his father from the office.
“Dear, we don’t even have a lawyer,” his father whispered as they left the school building.
His mother waved this comment away and then sniffled into a tissue.
Max felt rotten; it was the worst day of his life so far, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning yet.
• • •
They walked the rest of the way in a tense silence that was broken only by the occasional surly howl from baby Leland. When they got home, Max’s father went out to work in the garden, and his mother went in to prepare lunch. Max retreated to his tree house. He needed to do some serious thinking.
ax sat cross-legged in his tree house, replaying the morning’s events in his mind. He was particularly troubled by the drinking fountain incident. How could that happen on a Monday? He had thought his “infection,” as Dr. Conkle-Smoak called it, only showed up on Wednesdays. That was what made it “a case of the wednesdays,” after all.
But Max knew deep down that he had caused the water fountain to spray Peter. He also knew this could only mean one thing: he was getting worse.
A terrifying thought occurred to him, and he scrambled down the tree house ladder as his fear began to grow. He raced into the house, ran past his stunned mother, and headed directly for the bathroom mirror. He studied his reflection intently for several minutes, but he couldn’t make up his mind. Did his eyes look slightly silvery, or didn’t they? There seemed to be a bit of an extra sparkle, but it wasn’t quite enough for him to tell if they had changed or not. Baby Leland sure seemed fascinated by his eyes lately, though, which Max took as a bad sign. Did his little brother see something that he couldn’t?
He walked out of the bathroom so lost in thought that he stubbed his toe on the leg of the sofa before he even realized he had wandered into the living room.
“Maxwell,” his mother called to him from where she sat on the floor, playing with baby Leland. “Look at you! Your clothes hardly fit you at all—your trousers look awfully tight in the tummy, and your shirtsleeves are way too short. If you can’t be in school today, we might as well take you shopping. The other mothers in the village already think I’m the worst parent around, and I won’t have them see you walking about in ill-fitting clothes.”
Max gasped and ran back toward the bathroom. “What did I say?” his mother asked, baffled.
Max slammed the door behind him, feeling faint. He kept his back to the mirror for a moment, afraid to look. Slowly, carefully, he turned around to study his reflection again in the full-length mirror mounted on the back of the door. He felt the blood drain from his face as he realized that his mother was right—the waistband of his pants was too tight on him. His wrists poked out of his long sleeves farther than they should, too, whereas his pant legs were puddling around his ankles. A feeling of horror nearly overcame him as he twisted and turned to look at his reflection from different angles. There was no
denying it: his arms were starting to look stretched out and gangly, while his torso and legs were becoming squatter and rounder … just like the wednesdays. He peered cautiously into the mirror again. He couldn’t be entirely certain, but his neck did seem slightly shorter than it had just the day before.
He sat down on the bathroom floor, stunned. If his suspicions were true, then he didn’t just have a case of the wednesdays. It was much, much worse than that.
If his suspicions were true, he was becoming one.
• • •
Max’s father was outside watering the lawn when Max rushed out of the house. “Whoa, there, son,” he called out. “What’s your hurry?”
“Sorry, Dad. I’ll be back soon.” Max scooted past with an apologetic wave. He didn’t have time to chat. He was in search of answers.
He looked for the wednesdays in all the places he had seen them before, but he didn’t find any sign of them, naturally. It was only Monday. He was going to have to wait two whole days before he could confront the creatures to demand some answers.
The village was quiet—not as deserted as it was on Wednesdays, of course, but hardly anyone was out and about. Max was grateful for the privacy—he had an experiment to conduct, and he didn’t want anyone watching.
He spent several minutes deciding on a target. He wished that he understood more about what the mind’s mind was, and what it was capable of doing. But perhaps he could find out on his own. He spotted a trash can and got to work.
Max sat on a bench and focused all of his thoughts on the trash can. He concentrated as hard as he could manage, struggling to push through the worries and distractions. Focus. He took a deep breath, and then tried to mentally picture the can tipping over and spilling.
Nothing happened.
He tried to imagine a stiff breeze whisking away the discarded paper that was piled to the brim.
Nothing happened.
He tried to use his mind to bend the soda can sticking out of the mound of trash. He started to get a headache from squinting so hard, but nothing else happened.
He sat back on the bench and exhaled loudly. Was it possible that the water fountain incident was just a bizarre coincidence? Maybe there was nothing wrong with him after all.
Max was fidgeting on the bench, trying to get more comfortable so that he could try again, when a man wearing an obvious toupee strolled by and then sat down on a nearby bench. He unfolded a newspaper, crinkling and rustling it far more than was actually necessary, and then began to read. He whistled tunelessly as he paged through the sports section.
Max tried to ignore the man—he had enough on his mind already—but the whistling seemed to invade his every thought. Generally speaking, Max didn’t object to whistling, but for some reason this particular whistle was grating on his nerves. The noise just seemed awfully shrill and excessively loud, and the man wasn’t even bothering to follow any kind of pattern or song. The high-pitched noise droned on and on; it hardly seemed as if the man even needed to ever take a breath, his whistling was just so blasted constant. Max grimaced and put his hands over his ears, trying to block out the horrible, horrible sound. The thought occurred to him that he might go truly insane if he had to sit and listen to that terrible noise for another second.
The truth of the matter was that Max had had a very bad day, and he was in a very foul mood. The annoying whistler was the final straw, and the shrill noise became the focus of every speck of irritation, anger, and hostility that Max was feeling. Max couldn’t control much of what was happening in his life, but how he wanted that maddening, tuneless noise to stop! He was about to yell at the man to knock it off when the man’s furry hairpiece abruptly flew straight up in the air and then began to float toward the park entrance, carried by a sudden, stiff breeze. The man jumped up from his seat to grab the toupee, but his shoelaces had become tangled, and he nearly tripped. He recovered his balance just in time to keep from falling over, but he had to hobble awkwardly after his hairpiece until one of the shoelaces finally broke, allowing him to sprint after his disappearing wig.
Problem solved was the first thought that popped into Max’s head. It was followed quickly, however, by the realization that he had much bigger problems than an annoying whistler.
He had obviously caused the man’s toupee to fly away.
Max clapped his hands over his mouth, then changed his mind and covered his eyes instead. What was the use, though? He couldn’t block his thoughts by covering any part of his face. No, his face wasn’t the problem at all. How do you block a brain? he wondered.
He hadn’t been thinking anything about the man’s hairpiece in particular—he hadn’t planned anything quite so specific as that. But all of his thoughts had been focused on just how annoyed he was feeling, and just how much he had wanted the whistling to stop.
“The mind’s mind …,” Max whispered to himself as he started to realize just how complicated his problem really was. It seemed that he couldn’t choose precisely what to do with his new powers, but some part of his mind was obviously making the decisions for him. He tried to remember what the wednesdays had called it … the bottom brain? Max wondered if there was some way to learn to have more control over the power. He didn’t like it when birds pooped on his mom or when his dad’s television broke, but he did quite like the idea of being able to mess with people like Peter Tetley.
Having a case of the wednesdays might not be all terrible, he realized—especially if he could learn to control his mind’s mind. For the first time in days he suddenly felt ravenous, so he headed home for lunch.
ax didn’t have any more incidents over the next two days. But staying at home all day was mind-numbingly dull, and when he woke up on Wednesday morning, he realized that he was actually looking forward to seeing what the day would bring. That is, he was looking forward to it until, halfway through his morning shower, he discovered that his shampoo bottle had been filled with motor oil. “Argh,” he groaned as he fumbled, soaking wet, through the bathroom cabinet in search of actual soap to clean his dripping, greasy scalp. “Why do they always have to mess with the hair?”
It was definitely Wednesday.
He ate his breakfast hurriedly and then gave his mother a quick kiss on the cheek. “Sorry again about your bathrobe.”
“It’s all right, dear. I’m sure the stain will come out.” She smoothed her hand over the new ink spots on her white robe. Neither of them mentioned the incident involving the cat and the vacuum cleaner earlier that morning; Max sincerely hoped that both would be okay.
“Be very careful out there.” Max’s mother looked worried, but she didn’t bother to try to stop him from going out. Baby Leland had just slept through the entire night for the first time ever in his short life, and Max’s parents were both looking positively blissful from the unaccustomed rest. And although they didn’t speak it, Max could sense the question lingering in the air: could it have something to do with the wednesdays?
As he trudged down the front steps and headed toward the deserted village center, this unspoken question turned darker in his mind. His well-rested parents almost seemed to be turning him over willingly—sacrificing him, even—to the wednesdays in return for a less-colicky baby Leland and a full night’s sleep.
No, that’s nonsense, he told himself. It was his idea to go out on a Wednesday, after all. He shook off the thought and picked up his pace. But even as he raced off, eagerly and of his own accord, the unpleasant idea had left behind its tender bruise deep within Max’s thoughts.
• • •
He didn’t find any sign of the wednesdays in the park or behind the grocery store. Every few minutes he glanced down at the heavy mood ring Dr. Conkle-Smoak had given him. So far it hadn’t done much more than change from grayish-purple to grayish-purplish-yellow, but Max was mindful of the specialist’s instruction to keep careful track of the colors.
He finally stumbled across Ninety-eight and two other wednesdays outside the village’s small movie
theater. They were staring intently at the marquee. Max looked up and saw that the letters on the sign had been rearranged to spell something very naughty.
“That’s not very nice,” he chastised the wednesdays. “Now someone is going to have to climb up a ladder to fix it.”
“We didn’t do it,” they chimed in unison.
“Yeah, yeah, the mind’s mind and all that—I know. Look, you all need to start taking some responsibility,” Max lectured them sternly. “I’m certain you could stop doing all these mean things if you tried.”
The wednesdays just giggled stupidly, as usual. Max was starting to wonder if they weren’t a bit simpleminded.
“Wednesdays aren’t for responsibility,” Ninety-eight said very seriously, as if he were quoting someone wiser than himself. “There are plenty of other days for that.”
Max groaned—they were truly hopeless. “Who’re you?” he asked Ninety-eight’s companions. It dawned on him that he was starting to be able to tell the wednesdays apart. At first he had thought they all looked mostly the same, but now he could see that they were, in fact, each as unique as any regular person.
“Sixty-one,” answered one of the wednesdays, who was very small and had a higher and younger-sounding voice than the others.
“Sixty-two,” said the second, who was broad-shouldered and tall, but otherwise bore a strong resemblance to Sixty-one.
Max was just about to ask what it meant that their names were so close together when the smaller one told him without being asked. “We was brothers. Before, I mean.”
“What do you mean, you were brothers? Aren’t you brothers now?”
All three wednesdays looked vaguely puzzled by this question, as if they had never before even considered the possibility.
“It’s just different now,” Sixty-two finally answered, shrugging. “That’s Ninety-nine over there. He’s the newest one.” He gestured behind them. Max hadn’t even noticed there was another wednesday present; Ninety-nine was cowering in a corner, and his silver eyes were wide with fright. He didn’t speak or even acknowledge the others.
The Wednesdays Page 6