Max remembered that he was supposed to be keeping track of the mood ring colors. He looked down and was surprised to see that although the stone was still mostly grayish, there were now also several bright yellow stripes rippling across the surface.
“Ooh, pretty,” admired Ninety-eight, who was looking at the ring so covetously that Max felt compelled to let him try it on.
Ninety-eight danced and shrieked happily as he tried on the mood ring. It was way too big for his long, skinny finger, but the ring began to change color anyway as soon as Ninety-eight took it in his hand. Max and the others leaned in and watched as bright colors began to swirl around the ring’s surface in a constantly changing rainbow pattern.
“I didn’t know mood rings could do that,” whispered Max, who wished that Dr. Conkle-Smoak was there to interpret the colors for him.
“Ooooh,” admired the two other wednesdays.
Ninety-eight gawked at the ring for several minutes before passing it to the brothers. The ring continued to change colors when both Sixty-one and Sixty-two wore it; on their fingers the colors were even brighter, and the patterns even more dramatic.
A thought began to grow in Max’s head as he watched the wednesdays playing with the ring. “You really like that ring, don’t you?” he asked slyly.
The wednesdays nodded, but they were so entranced by the ring that they hardly seemed to hear him.
“Maybe I could let you keep the ring for a little while.…” He smiled as the wednesdays’ silver eyes widened hopefully. “In exchange for some information, that is.”
The three wednesdays eagerly agreed, and then began to wrestle for control over the ring. “Me first,” shouted Sixty-two, holding it out of Sixty-one’s reach.
Max let them bicker over the ring for a few minutes while he considered what to ask them. He figured it was better to ask them questions while they were distracted anyway, so that they didn’t get suspicious.
He started with the basics. “Who is in charge?”
“Oldest first, number One,” answered Sixty-one in a singsong voice.
Sixty-two gave his little brother an abrupt shove. “No. Two is in charge—I told you that. Don’t let him hear you talking about One.”
“Wait, so your names are in order?” Max was starting to understand. “But then One would be older than Two. Shouldn’t he be the leader?”
None of the wednesdays seemed to want to answer. “We don’t talk about One anymore,” Ninety-eight finally answered.
“You’ll be One!” The squeaky voice came from several feet away. Max had completely forgotten about Ninety-nine, who was still hiding in the corner.
Ninety-eight shushed him dismissively. “One-Hundred. That’s different.”
“Two doesn’t think so,” said the squeaky voice in the corner.
Max was struggling to understand. He didn’t want to understand. “You mean … I’m next,” he finally whispered. “I’m going to be a wednesday?”
The other wednesdays had become distracted by the ring again, though, and no one answered him. They were tossing it back and forth, squealing each time the color shifted. Soon they started chanting as they tossed the ring:
Chaos, mayhem, plain bad luck.
One day a week we run amok.
Making trouble is what we do.
In a week of Wednesdays, so will you!
Even Ninety-nine joined in the chanting. After a few minutes Max couldn’t take it anymore. “Stop!” he shouted. “What do you mean, a week of Wednesdays?”
Ninety-eight giggled. “In seven Wednesdays, silly. Then you’ll be one of us. You’ll be One Hundred.” He continued to toss the ring with the others, oblivious to Max’s panicked reaction.
Max broke into a clammy sweat. On a hunch, he asked a question that he didn’t entirely want to hear the answer to. “Where did you all come from?” It came out in a whisper.
“Here and there. Everywhere!” Sixty-one answered in a singsong voice, and Max wondered if he was confused by the question. But the others soon joined in with him, skipping rhythmically to their latest chant:
One from here,
One from there.
Wednesdays come from everywhere.
There to here,
Once a year.
Once a year of Wednesdays!
“Except me,” Sixty-two interrupted with a sulky expression on his face. “I wasn’t supposed to come.”
“He wouldn’t let go when the week ended,” Sixty-one added in his babyish voice, as if that explained anything at all.
The possibility that these … these creatures might have once been boys just like himself filled Max with a sense of horror. While the others continued their dancing and chanting, Ninety-eight leaned in toward him. In a quiet, conspiratorial tone, the wednesday began to speak. “Watch out for Two. He’s planning to—”
Ninety-eight broke off suddenly as an impossibly long arm appeared from out of nowhere and a hand that looked like an animal’s claw snatched the ring out of midair. The other wednesdays abruptly stopped their chanting and cowered in fear as Two slowly fit the ring onto one of his long, snakelike fingers.
“That’ll be enough out of you,” Two hissed at Ninety-eight, who whimpered slightly.
Max’s eyes widened as he watched the ring turn a dull black with a crimson dot surrounded by a poisonous-looking green band in the center.
Max didn’t need Dr. Conkle-Smoak’s help to interpret the ring. If evil had a color, then this was it.
“axwell,” Two purred insincerely. A smell of mold and decay wafted from his body, and his teeth seemed to have added yet another layer of moss.
Max glared at the wednesday. Only his mother called him Maxwell.
“It’s only natural that you have questions. But they don’t know anything.” Two waved dismissively at the others.
Sixty-one looked like he was about to cry, and Ninety-nine had vanished completely.
“Come. Join us at Council,” invited Two smoothly. “You’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know.”
The other wednesdays, who were already pale to begin with, turned a shade even lighter with the mention of the word Council.
Max, on the other hand, welcomed the chance to finally get some answers. “Lead the way,” he dared.
Two’s face twisted into a sneer and Max realized that he must be learning to tell the difference between the various wednesdays. He now saw that Two was easily distinguishable from the others. His eyes were a duller silver, more of a gunmetal gray, really—and they gave his expression a cold, cruel edge. Two’s mossy teeth looked longer and pointier than Max remembered from the previous week, too. He definitely looked … meaner than the other wednesdays.
Max followed as Two glided toward the Council. Sixty-two had to tug on Sixty-one’s hand to persuade him to follow, and Ninety-eight shuffled reluctantly behind them.
Two led the motley group toward the school and then into the gymnasium. Max wasn’t at all surprised to see that the lock on the door had been broken. The room looked as if there had been quite a wednesday party inside: streamers and torn paper were littered about, and the floor was covered in a sticky liquid. Two clambered underneath the bleachers and then disappeared. Max had to search for a moment before he spotted the opening. There was no door, but a makeshift entrance had been created by cutting a ragged, gaping hole in the wall. It looked like the world’s largest rat had chewed its way through the plaster and wood.
He was barely able to squeeze through the hole—he was still taller than most of the wednesdays, after all, at least for the moment. He’d had to roll his pants up when he dressed that morning, though, so his height advantage might not be for long. Strands of cobwebs and several actual spiders clung to his hair and clothing by the time he made it through the hole. He brushed himself off with disgust and looked around. They were in some sort of large storage room that had obviously been long since forgotten by school officials. The room was in a state of utter chaos—broken desks we
re stacked like kindling, mildewed textbooks were scattered everywhere, and the walls were lined with dusty shelves containing everything from crusty tubs of long-dried paste to broken sticks of chalk.
Most of the wednesdays were already in the room, and their wrestling and dancing about had stirred up great clouds of dust. Max sneezed, and then rolled his eyes in exasperation when several of the wednesdays imitated him.
Two brought the meeting to order by running his claw-like fingernails down an old chalkboard. The horrible sound made Max cover his ears, but it didn’t seem to faze anyone else. Several of the wednesdays continued to frolic noisily in the corner. Two narrowed his gray eyes at them, and they were suddenly flung violently to the ground. One of the wednesdays whimpered slightly and slunk away, but otherwise the room grew silent.
“Welcome to Council, my fellow wednesdays. It’s been far too long.” Two was grinning his brutish, malevolent grin again. He was the only one smiling. None of the other wednesdays looked particularly happy to be there.
“We’ll start with the good news—the first item on our agenda is Awards and Recognition. Let’s all give a hand to Six, who not only let all of the cows escape from the dairy barn, but also managed to curdle every last bit of the cream in the storage tank.”
This cheered the group slightly. They stomped and hissed happily as Two hung what looked like a garland made out of yarn and rusty metal springs around Six’s neck.
Two rattled off several more awards, including Most Tires Flattened, Best Use of Glue, and an honorable mention for Most Loud Screams.
Max noticed that each of the award recipients had a name lower than Ten. The older wednesdays appeared to be hairier and broader than the rest of the group. They still had the same stringy, bendy arms and short, squat torsos and legs as the younger wednesdays, but their fingernails were longer, their eyes narrower, and they were just plain uglier. Max wondered if they got smellier as they aged, too, when one of the award recipients brushed by him and he got a powerful whiff of what smelled like a combination of cheese gone bad, public restroom, and unwashed feet.
By the time Two finished handing out awards, he was surrounded by all of the most senior wednesdays. In the dim light of the storage room they looked like a jury of ghouls. Two was still wearing the mood ring, and even in the cobweb-darkened room, the center of the stone glowed blood red.
The other wednesdays still seemed to be having a good time with the awards ceremony, though. Several of the smaller wednesdays had formed an impromptu cheerleading squad. Using ancient, stained mopheads as pompoms, they chanted enthusiastically as each winner was announced:
Hooray for messes!
Bravo for screams!
If it distresses,
It’s from one of our team!
The wednesdays stomped their feet and clapped for each award. Their stomping stirred up so much dust that Max’s eyes started to water in protest. Some of the cheerleaders attempted to form a pyramid, but after teetering briefly in a formation three wednesdays high, they collapsed in a heap, creating a huge dust cloud.
Perhaps because there was so much dust in the air, Max didn’t notice any sort of signal, but suddenly the mood of the room changed. A hush fell over the wednesdays, and they silently began arranging themselves into neat rows by order of name.
The wednesdays were usually a giggling, fidgeting group, but now they stood at crisp attention. The group started to chant again, but now their chant lacked any of the singsong happiness of their earlier rhymes. This time they sounded robotic and cheerless:
We are in order.
We are in rows.
The Council can start,
And anything goes.
The sudden shift gave Max chills. He shivered, wishing he hadn’t agreed to come to Council after all.
Two began to speak in a low, authoritarian tone. “The wednesday Tribunal”—he gestured at the oldest and the ugliest wednesdays, who stood tightly clustered behind him—“has met. We have some very serious infractions to address.” His face broke into his menacing, toothy sneer. “And I will warn you now that the punishments will be severe.”
wo read the charges while Three, a hunchbacked wednesday with a gruesome scar crisscrossing his face, acted as a bailiff, yanking the offenders out of their rows to stand in judgment.
“Reckless Goodwill.”
Three shoved one of the wednesdays to the front of the room for this charge, while the rest of the group stood stiffly, their silver eyes cast downward.
“Failure to Destroy.”
The accused wednesday started to protest, but he stopped immediately when Three bared his teeth and growled threateningly.
“Orderly Conduct, and an additional charge of Absence of Malice.”
A wide-eyed Ninety-eight was pulled from the crowd.
“And, finally, this individual is charged with one count of each of the following crimes: Neglect of Negligence, Mutiny Against Bedlam, and Gross Disregard for Pandemonium.”
The other wednesdays gasped at the severity of the charges as Ninety-nine was dragged roughly from his hiding place in the darkest corner of the room. He was mute with terror.
Max felt sorry for the youngest wednesday, who was visibly trembling. He simply couldn’t just sit back and watch. “Those are absolutely ridiculous charges,” he called out loudly, stepping forward. “None of those things are even real crimes.”
Even as the words left his mouth, he knew that it would probably be wiser to stay out of the wednesdays’ affairs, but he didn’t like the way the older creatures bullied the younger, smaller ones. It simply wasn’t right.
“My, my. Aren’t you a cheeky young human.” Far from becoming angry, though, Two smiled slyly at Max’s outburst—almost as if he had been waiting for it. “If you object to our charges, then you are certain to find our punishments even worse.” Two snapped with his long, spidery fingers at Three, who lumbered over to the first of the accused wednesdays.
The smaller creature tried to run away, but Three, whose arms seemed freakishly long, even by wednesday standards, grabbed him roughly by the spot on his body that would have been a throat, if he’d had more of a neck.
As Three held the whimpering wednesday up by his nearly nonexistent neck, Two announced his verdict. “We find you guilty as charged.”
He paused as the rest of the wednesdays solemnly chanted “guilty” in their eerie, trancelike chorus.
Two continued cheerfully. “I hereby sentence you to tipping over forty full garbage cans, stealing fifteen completed homework assignments, and jamming the locks of three dozen doors.”
“But that will take forever,” the convicted wednesday protested in a squeaky, strangled voice.
“Nonsense. It’s just a matter of hard work and dedication.” Two dismissed him with a wave of the hand.
Max had to say something. “You’re deranged. You’re telling him to do things that are just horrible!” He turned to the other wednesdays in the rows. “Why do you all listen to him? He’s positively savage. There’s no need for you to be so destructive. There’s no call for any of this Tribunal nonsense!” But none of the other wednesdays responded. They remained silent, staring down at their feet.
Once again, it seemed that Two had been anticipating Max’s actions. Two widened his flinty eyes in mock innocence and spoke in a taunting tone. “Well, then, Max, perhaps you might prefer to come up with the rest of the sentences yourself.” He gestured toward the remaining three wednesday convicts.
Max knew that this was some kind of trick. It had to be. But he couldn’t tell what Two was up to.
Watching Max struggle to make sense of everything, Two made a further offer. “For every sentence you impose, we will respond to one question. I know that you have lots of questions, don’t you?”
That clinched it. Knowing full well that Two was up to no good, Max nodded his agreement. He needed information, even if this was a trick.
Without being told, the wednesdays broke their ranks
and formed a large circle with Max in the center. Max tried to read their expressions, but none of the creatures would meet his eyes.
“Will the accused step forward,” demanded Two. Three didn’t wait for anyone to step forward, though—he grabbed the small wednesday by the arm and flung him into the center of the circle.
“Max, this wednesday has been found guilty of the crime of Failure to Destroy. He was seen walking by a rose garden without so much as wilting a single flower or uprooting a single bush. This is clearly unacceptable.” Two prompted the others by raising an eyebrow.
“Guilty,” the other wednesdays chanted in unison.
“And now, dear Max, your job is to assign a fitting punishment.” Two’s voice lowered into a threatening growl: “Or else we will.” The senior Tribunal members all bared their teeth and hissed like wild animals.
Max turned to face the convicted wednesday, who cowered before him. He winked at the small creature to reassure him that nothing bad would happen.
And then he realized that he had absolutely no idea what to do next.
First he tried to think of a punishment. On more than one occasion during his life in the village Max had been the victim of what the locals called a “wednesday pants-ing.” This involved having your trousers suddenly fall to your ankles, usually while you were walking or running, which caused the victim to stumble and fall. This common occurrence alone was embarrassing enough to keep many villagers from venturing out of the safety—and privacy—of their homes on Wednesdays. It seemed like a suitable punishment to Max, and he had enough experience with it that he thought he might be able to make it happen.
But, just as he couldn’t use his new powers in the park when he tried to focus on the trash can, neither could he drop the wednesday’s trousers, no matter how hard he concentrated.
He tried with his eyes open. He tried with his eyes closed. Nothing happened.
The Wednesdays Page 7