The Mysterious Matter of I. M. Fine Page 2

  So, like I said, they’re totally exciting to read, only after a while, they started giving me nightmares. Plus, I got a little tired of all those monsters, ghosts, vampires, blood, gore, beheadings, and rotting corpses. I moved on to Anne of Green Gables and books like that, which are also exciting, but in a different way.

  They must not give other kids bad dreams, though. Or maybe they do, but the kids read them anyway—I don’t know. But whenever a new book in the series is due to be released, kids practically camp out in front of their neighborhood bookstores to be the first in line to buy one. The author, I. M. Fine, writes four or five books a year—which, you have to admit, is pretty impressive, speedwise—and every one of them sells about a zillion copies.

  “Come on,” my dad said, “don’t you think it’s amazing that a writer of children’s books could have that kind of influence over so many kids? That he could just pick something at random—a particular brand of candy—and, simply by putting it in his story, cause a nationwide fad? And look at it from a financial standpoint: What if before he wrote that book he went out and bought stock in the Jelly Worm company? Then he scribbles off his little book, through which he controls the market forces—and makes himself a rich man!”

  “Honey,” Mom said, “if every kid in America is buying his books, then he’s already a rich man.”

  “Right, okay, he probably is,” Dad agreed, “but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. It’s his ability to influence people to buy whatever he wants that impresses me.”

  “Why?” Mom asked. “Advertisers do it all the time. The film industry does it. Name one recent children’s movie where they didn’t sell action figures and decorated lunch boxes and all kinds of toys based on the main characters. It’s just capitalism in action.”

  “I still say this is different,” Dad said, a little bit annoyed. “It’s more indirect. It’s more insidious. This guy isn’t selling Chillers lunch boxes. He’s just sitting in his office writing away, and he just happens to feature a certain brand of candy in his book—and overnight, the purchasing power of millions of children comes into play.”

  You could tell he was disappointed that we weren’t all falling down with amazement.

  “Maybe I should start reading Chillers for stock tips,” Dad muttered.

  Dinner was pretty much over by then. Well, except that J.D. was still eating his mashed potato mountain—very carefully, from around the edges, so as to make a scalloped design—and he was taking forever. Dad usually doesn’t mind hanging around the table waiting for him to finish playing with his food, but that night Dad was really wound up. He slid his chair back, got to his feet, and, without even clearing his plate, said, “Come on, Zoë. Let’s go to the store.”

  They were back in half an hour, both of them grinning from ear to ear. Zoë was clutching her little bag of Jelly Worms—blissfully reassured that she was once again in step with the crowd. Dad told us excitedly that the Mini-Mart had almost completely sold out of Jelly Worms (though they still had plenty of Jelly Bears left), and that he was positive he had hit on something really big, something the Wall Street gurus hadn’t noticed yet. He had the name of the manufacturer, the Kute Kandy Corporation of Wimberly, Pennsylvania, and he planned to call his broker first thing in the morning and buy stock in the company.

  I will relieve the suspense by telling you that he bought a whole lot of Kute Kandy stock, and within a week, the price had doubled. Then it doubled again. Three weeks later, Dad sold his shares at four times the price he had paid for them. He made enough money to buy us a new car!

  4

  It was a book, The Worm Turns, that brought Beamer and me together. And it was another book that made us friends. Let me explain.

  While Dad was busy watching the stock market, Beamer and I were observing the progression of the Jelly Worm fad. At lunch, we pretended we were anthropologists studying the curious customs of some exotic tribe. We got really scientific about it—counting how many kids had Jelly Worms each day and then plugging the numbers into a “Jelly Worm Fad Frequency Graph.” It made a very pretty little sloping curve.

  By late November, Jelly Worms were just a memory.

  It was at about that time that Mrs. Lamb assigned our first book report. Now, generally speaking, kids my age tend to think that reading a book and then writing a one-page paper on it is about as much fun as washing a cat (I don’t know why that is; it’s my absolute favorite thing). So there was already a lot of negative feeling in the air. Mrs. Lamb added to it by saying that, since we were sixth graders now, she thought we were ready to stretch ourselves a bit.

  Most of the time with book reports, you get to pick any book you want, though it usually has to be a certain number of pages, because otherwise, kids would do reports on The Cat in the Hat or something. But Mrs. Lamb wanted to make sure we all read something good. She handed out a list of twenty books for us to choose from.

  More than half the class was already reading the latest book in the Chillers series, Mind Wave. Immediately, hands shot up all over the room. “Mrs. Lamb! Mrs. Lamb!” What everybody wanted to know was whether they could do the report on Mind Wave instead.

  Mrs. Lamb wilted a little. Then she took a deep breath and said that while Mind Wave might be a fun book to read—and she herself was very fond of murder mysteries—still, we were stretching ourselves with this assignment. Remember?

  Apparently, most of the kids in the class felt a certain lack of enthusiasm for stretching themselves, though they didn’t say so out loud. There was a lot of slouching and grimacing. But Mrs. Lamb soldiered on.

  The assignment had an added twist, she told us. We were to choose a partner, read the same book, then do the report together. The project would count as a major grade—the equivalent of two tests. Plus, there was opportunity for extra credit.

  Now, since I already had a reputation as the girl who reads all the time, I was suddenly swamped with eager classmates who wanted to be my partner. This felt pretty good, I have to admit.

  But I chose Beamer.

  He suggested we read Hatchet—mostly, I suspect, because it was the shortest book on the list. I told him that I had already read Hatchet, though that wasn’t the real reason I didn’t want to choose it. See, I wanted the extra credit.

  Most of the books on the list were on the sixth-grade reading level, some a bit harder. There were lots of Newbery winners and classics. But at the bottom of the page, there was one more book. If you chose that one and wrote a decent report on it, you got an extra twenty points added to your grade. So theoretically, you could make 120, which would do great things for your average, since the grade was counted twice.

  And that wasn’t all. As a reward for the extra time you were putting into the book report, you got an additional twenty points, which you could apply to your lowest test grade—in any subject!

  Now, I figured I could use those extra points. Without going into any gory details, let me just say that math is not my thing. And twenty points is the difference between a D and a B. The only problem was how to convince Beamer to go along with my plan—because, you see, the book was David Copperfield.

  “No way!” Beamer said.

  I had expected that. I figured it might take some persuading. And, in fact, it took a lot of persuading. I think he only agreed to it in the end because he felt sorry for me, what with my math problem and all. That, and the fact that I volunteered to read the book aloud to him. “It’ll be painless,” I said.

  “All right, Franny,” he grumbled. “But you owe me.”

  After that, I went over to Beamer’s house every afternoon to read David Copperfield to him.

  Up until that time, I hadn’t been to Beamer’s house and he hadn’t been to mine. We just hung out together at school. So I was kind of curious and excited to meet his parents and see what kind of house he lived in.

  But before I met his parents or saw his house, I met Beamer’s dogs. Five of them—I kid you not—in all sizes and breeds. B
eamer said they all came from the ASPCA and would have been dead if his family hadn’t adopted them.

  The minute we opened the door, the dogs were waiting in the front hall, madly wagging their tails and barking and skipping around with excitement. The big dogs like to jump up and put their paws on your chest so they can lick you in the face and sniff you and drool on you. The smaller dogs dance around your feet, poking your ankles with their wet little noses. You have to be careful not to step on the little dogs while trying not to get knocked over by the big ones.

  Once Beamer got the dogs calmed down, and we were safe to go into the house without stepping on someone’s tail, I had a chance to look around.

  Everything is really plain at Beamer’s house. All the pictures and rugs and throw pillows and knickknacks my family packs up and moves from place to place—they didn’t have any of those. He says his family likes it that way. They don’t believe in having too many things—only what you really need. So the floors are bare wood and there aren’t any curtains on the windows. Actually, after you get over the shock, it’s really nice and sunny and restful there—or at least it would be if it weren’t for the dogs.

  As you might expect, there is a dog smell in the air, but that’s sort of balanced out by the nice smell from the roses. That’s the one thing (besides dogs) they have lots of—some in real vases and some in jelly jars. Beamer’s mom owns a florist shop, called Perfect Petals, so they can have all the flowers they want.

  Since Beamer’s mom is busy at the shop all day, and since his dad is a drummer in a band and works at night, he’s the one who is there in the afternoons.

  Mr. Connolly is not your average dad. He has this really long hair, which makes him look like a hippie. He doesn’t wear tie-dyed shirts or love beads or anything like that, but I bet he doesn’t own a suit. I’ve never seen him in anything fancier than jeans and an old denim work shirt.

  He does all the cooking for the family, and he’s really good at it. He said he was thinking about going into catering someday, if the music business didn’t pan out. I think he may have been showing off for me, just a little, but you should see what passes for after-school snacks at Beamer’s house! Like, he baked these brownies, then cut them into shapes—stars and moons—and drizzled warm chocolate sauce over the plate in swirls. Then he dusted the whole thing with powdered sugar.

  Every afternoon, after we’d eaten some fabulous snack, we’d go into Beamer’s room. He has one of those kiddie gates set up in his doorway to keep the dogs out, because otherwise they’d mess with his stuff and drive him crazy. They’re not all that easily discouraged, though. Maybe they think he’ll change his mind someday, so they just sit there, hanging their heads over the gate and staring at us—except for the littlest one, Cricket, who just peeks through the slats.

  While I read David Copperfield to Beamer, he would work on his construction. A few years back, his parents bought him this building kit. It’s got metal pieces—some are like bars and others are flat—with little nuts and bolts to hold them together. You’re supposed to build bridges or skyscrapers with it, and each kit comes with all the stuff you need to make the Eiffel Tower or whatever is pictured on the box.

  Well, Beamer decided he wanted to make his own thing, which doesn’t look like anything you ever saw before. Beamer’s dad calls it a “sculpture,” which I guess is what it is. He’s gone through four kits and is on the fifth, just adding shapes wherever he thinks it would look good. I’ll tell you the truth: Beamer’s sculpture looks better than a lot of stuff you see in museums. But it isn’t finished yet. He says it’s a “work in progress.”

  Beamer admitted that it was more fun to work on his construction with me reading to him—he said it kept two parts of his brain happy, whatever that means. He also admitted that he actually liked David Copperfield.

  Granted, it’s really long and some of the words are weird, since it was written a long time ago. But we got the hang of it pretty quickly, and from the first, we were never bored. In fact, Beamer and I got to where we hated to stop reading when my dad showed up to drive me home. We were dying to find out what would happen next—like my aunt Carol with her soap operas.

  There are a lot of characters in David Copperfield. They usually have crazy names—like Traddles and Mr. Creakle—and every one of them is interesting in one way or another. Even the evil characters, and there are plenty of them. The story has lots of twists and turns and suspense and surprises and amazing coincidences. It’s funny one minute and really sad the next. It just took my breath away.

  All sorts of terrible things happen to poor David Copperfield, the main character. First, his father dies before he’s even born; then his mother marries this horrible man, Mr. Murdstone, who beats David and sends him away. And then his mother dies and he is left penniless.

  But he makes his way in the world with the help of his crazy aunt, Betsey Trotwood, who is always shooing donkeys away from her property, and Mr. Peggotty, who lives with his family in an upside-down boat, and Mr. Micawber, who has to hide from the bill collectors but is still very jolly and keeps expecting the money to “turn up” any day.

  Then there are the villains—Mr. Murdstone, of course, and the awful Uriah Heep, who tells everybody how humble he is, only he’s secretly planning to ruin kind Mr. Spenlow and steal all his money. David falls in love with three different girls, but he ends up with the right one just in time for a happy ending.

  Now I know why Charles Dickens is such a famous author.

  When the book was finally over, Beamer and I really missed it. It had made our lives more exciting for a while. All those dramatic things that happened to David—it was like they were happening to us, too, you see. Then the book ended and we were dropped back into our ordinary, boring lives.

  Or so I thought.

  5

  There was a virus going around. Lots of kids went down to the nurse’s office, rubbing their foreheads and groaning. They’d be out for a few days and then they’d be back, completely normal. Everybody who had had it said that there were no other symptoms. Just a really terrible headache that wouldn’t go away, no matter what you took for it.

  Zoë got it right at the start of the epidemic, and she was absolutely miserable. She lay in bed for days with the blinds down and a wet washcloth on her forehead. She said it felt like her head was about to explode.

  I kept expecting to catch it, but I never did. Neither did my mom and dad. No one in Beamer’s family was sick, either.

  Later, when more than half the school was out with the headache, it was even reported on the news. Lots of other schools were experiencing the same thing. The news lady interviewed a doctor, who said there wasn’t much you could do for it besides take Tylenol, get bed rest, and drink plenty of fluids.

  Most of the kids had recovered and were back at school when I got the first hint of what was really going on. I had just come home from Beamer’s and was heading down the hall to dump my backpack in my room. As I passed J.D.’s room, I saw him lying on the floor, with his feet up on the bed and his head resting on his favorite stuffed bear, holding a book in his hands.

  I peeked my head in and asked what he was reading. He flipped the book around so I could see the cover. It was Mind Wave.

  A couple of hours later, I heard J.D. let out this horrible moan. At first, I thought a lamp had fallen on him or something. But when I dashed into his room, I saw him sitting on the edge of his bed, clutching his head and groaning. He was even crying and—trust me on this—J.D. never cries.

  “What?” I said.

  “It feels like my head is going to explode,” he moaned.

  I called Mom and she hurried upstairs. Of course there wasn’t much she could do to help him, but she did give him some Tylenol and a wet cloth to put on his forehead. Then she tucked him into bed and turned out the lights. She put her finger to her lips, indicating I should be really quiet and let him rest.

  I went back to my room and lay down to think. There was some
thing tickling my mind, something important I knew I would figure out if I just kept very quiet and concentrated. It was what J.D. had said—that he felt like his head was about to explode. Zoë had said it, too, in almost the exact same words. Now, I know people exaggerate when they feel bad; they say they think they’re going to die and stuff like that. But I had the feeling that this was different. And it reminded me of something I had heard kids talking about at school. I hadn’t paid all that much attention—still . . . exploding heads . . .

  After a while, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I tiptoed into J.D.’s room and patted his arm.

  “How’re you doing?” I whispered.

  “Horrible,” he said.

  “J.D.,” I said, “can I just ask you one question? And then I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

  He just sort of grunted. I took that for a yes.

  “That book you were reading, did it have anything in it about an exploding head?”

  Big sigh. Then, reluctantly, “Yes.”

  Wow!

  “Thanks, J.D.,” I said. “Try to go to sleep, if you can.” I crept out of the room and closed the door very quietly. Then I ran downstairs and picked up the phone.

  “Beamer!” I said. “You want to hear this really, really weird idea I just had?”

  “Go for it,” he said.

  “Well, you know that book Mind Wave? The new I. M. Fine book?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s about an exploding head.”

  “Thanks for sharing that.”

  “No, wait. I haven’t gotten to the weird part yet. J.D. was reading it this afternoon, and tonight he came down with that horrible headache that’s been going around. Beamer, I think that’s what’s causing the headaches!”