Max found the helmet near the ramshackle cottage’s front stoop. It wasn’t the only unusual item being used as a planter—the weedy yard also contained a chipped bathtub sprouting sunflowers, an ancient boot with mushrooms popping out between the laces, and a porcelain toilet containing a struggling tomato vine.
The shadows cast by the fading daylight against the sagging house gave Max the creeps, so he quickly replanted the cabbage flower that had been growing in the helmet. He shook the dirt and earthworms out of the helmet as well as he could before putting it on his head and then hurried away, eager to test out the effects of steel.
He made it all the way home without a single Wednesday mishap. He didn’t trip over, step in, or get hit on the head by anything at all; his clothing remained intact; no birds or insects dive-bombed him; and as far as he could tell, nothing around him broke, went flat, or shattered. Was it a coincidence? His hopes rose slightly at the prospect of the helmet protecting him against the wednesdays.
Or, he realized grimly, it could just be that the wednesdays were too busy plotting against him at that moment.
Max hesitated when he reached his front door; he could hear baby Leland fussing inside as usual. It was dinnertime, and his parents were probably just sitting down at the table to eat. His mother had left a sandwich and a glass of milk out for him on the front step. Instead of eating outside, though, he took a deep breath, picked up the food, and entered the house.
“Oh, hello, dear,” his mother said nervously, clutching at her napkin.
“Max!” his father called out, glancing at his watch in surprise.
Neither of his parents looked thrilled to see him. Baby Leland, on the other hand, stared at him adoringly. His howl quieted to a whimper, and then a hiccup.
“I know that it’s not midnight yet, but I’d like to try something new,” Max said hopefully. “I may have found something to help keep the wednesdays away.” He explained Mr. Grimsrud’s metal plate and pointed to the steel army helmet on his head. “I’ll leave if anything bad starts to happen.”
Max sat down at the dinner table and tried not to be offended as his parents inched away from him slightly.
They ate cautiously and silently, taking small bites and tiny sips. All of them jumped when the village clock tolled seven.
Nothing spilled. No one choked. The lights stayed on. Nothing caught on fire.
Bits of soil were still making Max’s scalp itch miserably, but he didn’t dare remove the helmet. Not when everything was going so well.
Max’s father brought in bowls of ice cream for dessert; his hand trembled slightly as he poured tea for himself and Max’s mother. Still, no one spoke.
Finally, Max’s mother blotted her mouth and then laid her folded napkin down on the table. “Is it possible?” she asked in a whisper.
No one answered. It was as if they were all afraid to even hope that the helmet had cured Max.
They watched television together in silence, and when their program had ended, they said a hushed, wide-eyed good-night. On his way up the stairs, though, Max’s father stumbled slightly. Max and his mother both cried out.
“No, no. It wasn’t a Wednesday thing at all,” his father quickly reassured them. He sheepishly held up a slipper that had been lying on one of the steps. “I forgot to put this away, and I tripped over it. Entirely my fault.”
They all sighed with relief.
Max crept into bed, where he didn’t sleep a wink—in fact, he barely breathed—until the clock said it was one minute past midnight. Then and only then did he fall into an exhausted slumber.
fter a blissfully uneventful breakfast, Max’s parents decided that he should go back to school.
“But, Mom, the principal said I was a public health menace,” Max protested, even though he really did want to go back. He hadn’t been sorry to avoid math class for the last few days, but he wanted his normal life back, even if that meant geometry homework.
“Don’t you worry about that, dear. I’ll take care of him.” His mother had a determined frown on her face.
“Here you go, good as new.” His father handed him the now–sparkling clean army helmet, which he had cheerfully polished in his basement workshop. “The grime came right off with a good scrubbing.”
Max groaned slightly at the sight of it. He knew exactly how the other kids at school were going to react to him showing up to class wearing the helmet, but he put it on anyway and steeled himself against the ridicule that it was sure to bring.
When they arrived at school, Max’s mother instructed him to wait outside Mr. Alderwood’s office. She squared her shoulders, arranged her face into a determined scowl, and then strode into the principal’s office without even knocking.
Max could hear raised voices coming from behind the closed door, but he couldn’t quite make out what was being said. His mother’s voice was much louder than the principal’s, though—that much was definitely clear.
Eventually, the door opened and his mother emerged, now bearing a victorious smile. Mr. Alderwood followed, his face beet red.
“Max, dear, the principal will personally escort you to class to be sure there are no more … misunderstandings.” She shot a threatening look at Mr. Alderwood, kissed Max on the cheek, and then strode briskly out of the school.
Giving Max a wide berth, Mr. Alderwood marched him sternly down the hall toward homeroom.
“Phew. Your mother’s a tough one, all right, isn’t she?” Mr. Alderwood didn’t seem to actually expect an answer, so Max just kept quiet.
The classroom immediately fell silent when Max entered. The principal whispered something to Mrs. Trimersnide, who shook her head violently at whatever he was saying. They engaged in a hushed debate that ended only when the principal raised his hands in the air and said, “I don’t like it any more than you do, Mary.”
Looking distinctly relieved to be rid of his burden, Mr. Alderwood scampered out the door, leaving Max standing alone at the front of the silent classroom.
For several excruciating moments, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock. Several students cleared their throats nervously, and several more shifted awkwardly in their seats. No one met Max’s eyes. No one spoke.
Finally, a lone voice from the back called out rudely, “Nice helmet!”
At last, the tension was broken. Max grinned gratefully at the culprit—Noah, of course. Hopefully this meant that his best friend wasn’t angry at him for the radiator incident.
The room dissolved into twitters of nervous laughter, questions, and greetings.
With a sour look on her face, Mrs. Trimersnide shushed the room. “Calm down, everyone. Max, don’t bother with your assigned seat. Today you sit in the back of the room. The very back. I’m warning you, though. Just one incident and I don’t care what the principal says.…” The rest of her threat remained unspoken.
Max happily took the empty seat next to Noah, who leaned over and rapped twice on his helmet. It made a cheerful gonging sound. Maybe Mr. Grimsrud was right, Max thought. The sound was sort of soothing.
Mrs. Trimersnide reluctantly resumed her lesson, keeping one wary eye on Max at all times.
A folded-up note sailed through the air, landing at Max’s feet. He looked up in surprise when he realized it had been sent by Gemma Swift. Max was trying to figure out how to retrieve the note without Mrs. Trimersnide noticing when he heard a loud creak, followed by a sharp splintering sound.
It sounded an awful lot like Wednesday.
• • •
Now, Mrs. Trimersnide was a large woman. She had the type of figure that Max’s grandmother called “generous.” Students called her “Mrs. Two-yards-wide” behind her back … and they weren’t exaggerating by much.
As Max protested later, a woman Mrs. Trimersnide’s size simply had no business sitting on the corner of school furniture built with smaller-statured users in mind. And yet, she had long been in the habit of perching her bulk precariously on the edge of the
desk while she taught, ignoring the creaks and groans that sounded from the wood.
It was Max’s misfortune that on this day, of all days, the heavily burdened desk finally gave out. One of the desk’s spindly legs snapped, sending Mrs. Trimersnide and all of the desk’s contents tumbling to the floor. Books, papers, an oversize stapler, a lone apple, and a glass paperweight slid to the ground; the paperweight shattered, and glass fragments flew everywhere.
Mrs. Trimersnide struggled to her feet, looking down in horror at a long run in her stockings. She turned her angry glare to the classroom, as if daring the students to laugh. No one dared.
Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out. Her face turned pink, then red, then purple, and her whole body seemed to puff up. She looked like a mighty volcano, ready to erupt.
And then she erupted. “You!” she thundered at Max. “You … wednesday! Get out! Get out of my classroom this instant!”
“But—but—” Max stammered, as surprised as she was by her fall. “But I didn’t do it! It really wasn’t me this time. It was because …” He stopped himself, realizing that he was in a no-win situation. As he stood up to leave, though, Noah leapt to his defense, finishing Max’s sentence for him.
“It’s because you’re so fat!”
All around them, students’ jaws dropped and eyes bulged in disbelief. Max couldn’t believe his ears.
“Both of you. Principal’s office. NOW!” Mrs. Trimersnide’s voice rose to a shriek. “NOW!!”
Max and Noah took the hint. They grabbed their backpacks and fled for the hall; even as the door closed behind them, they heard the classroom erupt into a cacophony of shouts and laughter, followed by more shrieking from the enraged teacher.
They waited until they had made it around the corner before dissolving into hysterical laughter. “I can’t believe you said that,” Max exclaimed once he had caught his breath.
“That desk has been on the verge of collapse since my brother was in her class five years ago,” Noah said. “It’s not fair for you to take the blame.” He paused for a moment. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
Max reassured him that his helmet kept the wednesdays away. “No, it wasn’t me, I swear it.”
Noah looked relieved. “I believe you. But Mrs. Trimersnide sure won’t.” He snickered again.
The two boys made their way to Mr. Alderwood’s office. The frazzled principal didn’t look the least bit surprised to see them.
“t’s hard to explain.” Max and Noah sat glumly on a curb in the village square, aimlessly tossing pebbles at an empty soda can several yards away. Max had done his best to describe his interactions with the wednesdays, as well as what had been happening to him, but Noah seemed skeptical.
Clink. “That’s ten in a row for me,” Noah said without enthusiasm as he hit his target. “You’re zero for, like, a hundred, Max. It’s no fun if you won’t even try.” He frowned. “I don’t understand why you can’t just hide from the wednesdays like the rest of us. Won’t they leave you alone if you stay indoors for a few days?”
Max shrugged. His heart wasn’t in the contest, and Noah’s questions were making him feel worse than ever. “I guess it’s too late for that. Trust me, I’d be willing to try anything to get rid of them, but nothing seems to be working.” He tossed several more pebbles at the can, missing each time. “Sorry I got you suspended from school,” he said finally. “On top of what happened to your house and all.”
“Ah, it wasn’t your fault,” Noah replied generously. “Besides, it’s like getting an extra-long weekend.”
“Maybe for you. They aren’t letting me back in on Monday.” Max thought the principal was being terribly unfair.
“Tell you what. If you can manage to hit the can five times in a row, I’ll play hooky on Monday and keep you company.”
Max just shrugged again. He appreciated Noah’s attempt to cheer him up, but it wasn’t working. He had too much on his mind. Besides, he’d already gotten his friend in enough trouble.
The village clock tolled eleven, reminding Max that he had a doctor’s appointment. The ringing of the tall clock, which had been built in the town’s center over a hundred years earlier, also sparked another thought. “Noah, I have to go, but can you meet me here at the clock tomorrow? If you don’t get into too much trouble with your parents, that is?”
Noah waved off his concern. “I’ll be here. You’re the most interesting thing that’s happened in this village in … well, in forever. But you better tell me everything next time I see you. Or else …” He waggled his fist even as he grinned at Max.
Max promised and then raced off toward the doctor’s office as fast as his legs could carry him. He walked in just in time to hear the tail end of his mother’s lecture to Dr. Tetley. “… I should report you for invasion of privacy! Isn’t my son entitled to patient confidentiality just like everyone else?” Dr. Tetley, who seemed to have shrunk under the weight of the tirade, mumbled something inaudible and then slunk out of his own office, leaving Max and his mother with Dr. Conkle-Smoak.
Max’s mother noticed the parapsychologist for the first time. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she muttered, shaking her head in disbelief as she saw what he was wearing. “Is that getup really necessary?”
Dr. Conkle-Smoak seemed genuinely surprised that she would disapprove of his frayed velvet robe. “Madam, I require a garment upon which I can display my honorary regalia.”
To Max’s eyes, the robe looked suspiciously like a bathrobe, and the doctor’s “honorary regalia” looked a lot like Boy Scout badges. Instead of Boy Scout symbols, though, Dr. Conkle-Smoak’s pins and patches had pictures of various astral signs and crystal formations.
“Let’s just get on with this.” Max’s mother wore the same expression she usually had when she was suffering from a migraine.
Dr. Conkle-Smoak asked Max a series of questions that ranged from bizarre to outrageous; he took notes with a feather-tipped pen.
“Which eye do you open first when you wake—the left or the right?”
He insisted that Max’s answer of “both of them together” couldn’t possibly be correct.
“Can you feel your hair growing now?”
Max had to think about that for a moment before he responded.
“Have you recently had any dreams involving a jack-o’-lantern, a steamship, or a miniature orangutan?”
He seemed puzzled to hear that Max had not.
Dr. Conkle-Smoak then examined Max’s tongue very carefully—even drawing a detailed diagram of it in his notes—before asking anything specific about the wednesdays. His eyes widened when Max described the mood ring color changes, and he enthusiastically scribbled pages of notes. “I’m going to have to consult my manuals for that,” he murmured.
Max’s mother snorted, but didn’t otherwise comment.
The doctor grew even more interested when Max told him about the metal plate in Mr. Grimsrud’s head and his theory that the steel army helmet seemed to be reducing his wednesday symptoms. “Fascinating. And I thought your helmet was just a flash of sartorial genius. It made me fancy a visit to the haberdasher.”
Max had no idea what Dr. Conkle-Smoak was talking about.
The doctor continued excitedly. “But, really, it makes perfect sense when you think about it.”
It does? Max was having trouble following the strange man’s ramblings.
“Of course it does. It all comes down to magnets. I should have thought to measure your magnetic meridian, but it just seemed too obvious, too basic. But you see, by wearing the steel helmet, you are effectively blocking transcranial radiance. You’ve clearly altered your bioelectromagnetic field sufficiently to prevent these … wednesdays, as you call them, from influencing your psycho-vibrational perimeter.”
“So, this all makes sense to you?” Max was skeptical.
“Oh, yes—it’s all quite elementary. These are the same simple principles used in basic time travel science.” Dr. Conk
le-Smoak was so busy scribbling notes that he didn’t notice Max’s mother cradling her head in her hands and slumping dejectedly in her chair.
“So, does that mean there’s a cure?” Max asked hopefully.
“Well, I must confess that it has been quite some time since I finished my correspondence course in radiesthesia, but with intensive polarity therapy, I think we might eventually be able to restore you to normal psychic radiation levels.”
Max’s mother jumped to her feet when she heard this. “Radiation levels? Don’t you dare go anywhere near my son with anything radioactive! I won’t allow it.”
The doctor politely gestured for her to sit back down. “Well, that would be the most direct course of treatment, madam, but if you are not inclined to give your consent, then I believe that we can still be effective even if we limit ourselves to therapeutic magnetism.”
She sat back down, muttering under her breath. Max heard the words lunatic and deranged, but she didn’t interrupt again.
“Fortunately for you, I brought my field equipment along.” Dr. Conkle-Smoak hoisted a large canvas pack onto his back. “Shall we?” he asked, gesturing to the door with a dramatic flourish of his floor-length robe.
he robe-clad parapsychologist fiddled with a small box that looked suspiciously like an old-fashioned television remote control with a long antenna glued onto it. Dr. Conkle-Smoak was standing in the gazebo in the center of the village, waving the device in front of him like a metal detector.
“All readings are neutral here. Are you absolutely certain this is the first place you encountered a wednesday?” The doctor shook the device roughly, but it remained silent.
Max nodded. They had wanted to go take measurements from the storage room underneath the bleachers in the school gymnasium, but since Max had been officially banned from the school grounds, they had to start somewhere else.
“Wait just a minute.” The doctor froze, and then sniffed deeply. “I think I smell their urine. If I can collect a sample, I could run tests on it.”
The Wednesdays Page 9