The Mysterious Matter of I. M. Fine Page 3

  “What, the book?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re right—that is totally weird.”

  “Come on, Beamer, think about it. The last I. M. Fine book caused the Jelly Worm fad.”

  “Yeah, but that’s totally different,” he said. “Kids thought it was fun to play with Jelly Worms because they were in that book and they ate Cleveland or whatever. Like it was really hilarious. But nobody’s going to read a story about an exploding head and say, ‘Way cool! I think I’ll have a headache!’”

  “Yeah, I know it isn’t logical. But I just have this feeling.”

  “Yeah, well,” Beamer said. Then there was this long pause.

  “All right,” I said. “Forget I even mentioned it.”

  I couldn’t get to sleep that night, thinking about Mind Wave and the headaches. I had to admit that Beamer was probably right—my idea was way out there in cuckooland. And yet . . . I just couldn’t let it go. Finally, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to gather a little information.

  So the next day, I started casually asking some of the kids who had been sick—Jacob and Mark and Felicia and lots more—if they had read the book. Every one of them said yes. I wrote it all down in my notebook. Then I started asking other kids, every chance I got—like on the playground or in the lunchroom—whether they had gotten the terrible headache and whether they had read the book. By the end of the day, I had it all down in writing. Out of the twenty-three people I had asked, there was a perfect correlation. Everyone who had read the book had gotten the headache. Nobody who hadn’t read the book had gotten the headache. You have to admit, those are pretty impressive numbers!

  That afternoon, at Beamer’s house, I pulled out my notebook and showed it to him.

  “Come on, Beamer,” I said. “Check this out—one hundred percent!”

  He raised his eyebrows and kind of shrugged. “It’s interesting,” he said, “but, Franny, it doesn’t make any sense at all. How could you get a headache from reading a book?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it works by suggestion. Like when someone yawns, you have to yawn, too. Sometimes all you have to do is say the word yawn to make it happen.”

  This made us both yawn and laugh, more or less at the same time.

  “Right, but a yawn is one thing. A splitting headache that lasts for three days is something else.”

  “True,” I admitted. “But will you admit that the numbers are really amazing?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t like my explanation?”

  “Not really.”

  “Maybe the description of the head explosion is really, really vivid.”

  “Maybe you should read it and find out,” he said.

  So I did.

  And at first, I remembered exactly why I had liked the Chillers books so much. The story was really exciting. And though it wasn’t David Copperfield or anything, I couldn’t put it down.

  Basically, here’s the plot: There is this family, and they are all happy because they have just bought a new microwave oven. Only what they don’t realize is that this is no ordinary microwave oven. It sends out these bizarre pulsing waves that make everybody in the house get headaches. The worst headaches happen when people are thinking bad thoughts.

  Then one night, the parents go out and the kids are left alone with this really demonic baby-sitter. She makes the kids go to their rooms, even though they haven’t done anything wrong. She just doesn’t want them to bother her while she’s watching TV and talking to her boyfriend on the phone. She decides to raid the cupboard for something to eat, and she finds some microwave popcorn. So she’s standing there, watching through the little window and listening to the popping, when all of a sudden she grabs her head with both hands and screams. The kids run down the stairs and into the kitchen just in time to see her head explode!

  That was as far as I got. My head started throbbing. It hurt like crazy. I tried taking deep breaths, and lying down with a pillow over my eyes. But it just got worse and worse, until I started moaning and wailing and my parents came in to see what was going on.

  They did all they could for me, just like they had for Zoë and J.D. They tried Tylenol, ice packs, soft music, complete silence, back rubs, orange juice—the whole nine yards. Let me tell you, nothing worked. I wanted to call Beamer and say, “See!” only I was too miserable to move.

  After three days of moaning and weeping and three nights of fitful sleep, I awoke one morning and felt absolutely, positively normal.

  Mom made me stay home one more day, since I was really tired from not getting enough sleep. And it’s kind of fun, staying home from school when you feel perfectly fine. I watched a lot of television and napped some. At about four o’clock, I called Beamer.

  “Thanks for the suggestion,” I said.

  “I called you—only your mom said you were too sick to come to the phone.”

  “That’s the understatement of the century!”

  “Are you okay now?”

  “Yeah, magically, I am okay. But I have a book you might want to read. Just to see what happens.”

  “Franny . . .”

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t prove anything. Except that you read that book expecting something bad to happen, and it did.”

  “You know what, Beamer? In the immortal words of Bart Simpson, ‘Eat my shorts!’” Then I hung up. It was a really stupid thing to say, but it made me feel brilliant for about half an hour.

  6

  Since Beamer didn’t believe me, I decided to try my dad. After all, he was the one who was so impressed by I. M. Fine’s powers of persuasion.

  That night over dinner, I laid the whole thing out step by step, beginning with the connection between the Jelly Worm fad and The Worm Turns. Then I moved on to the amazing numerical correlation between readers of Mind Wave and the horrible headaches. I finished up with a description of my own personal experience, to which J.D. and Zoë added gory details of their own. The more I talked, the more I was sure they would have to believe me.

  “Honey,” my mom said, “I really don’t think this has anything to do with those books. It was just a virus.”

  “A virus that only struck children who were reading this one book? A book about an exploding head?”

  Now my dad chimed in. “Franny, let’s say I slip and fall on the stairs just as you turn on the radio—do you assume the radio caused my fall?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No . . .” I said. “Unless the radio was really, really loud and I blasted you with it all of a sudden and scared you so that you lost your balance.”

  “That’s how superstitions get started,” Dad said. “Like this one: It’s winter and it’s cold outside. People get sick. They decide that cold weather causes colds. Hence the name.”

  “Well, doesn’t it?” asked Zoë.

  “No, viruses cause colds. They even did a study where people stood barefoot in draughty hallways, went outside in the winter with wet hair, all those things that old wives say will make you ‘catch your death.’ It didn’t do anything. It’s just that people congregate more inside during the winter and pass germs back and forth.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “Don’t say ‘whatever,’ Franny. I’m just trying to help you think scientifically.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, discouraged. “Never mind.”

  The next day, I was back at school. Nobody made a big fuss over me, since practically the whole class had been home with the same thing and it was already old news. I was a little embarrassed to face Beamer after the “Eat my shorts” remark, so at lunch, I went out on the playground and ate by myself. It would pass, I knew, because Beamer and I had the kind of friendship that doesn’t fall apart over little things. I just needed to get my dignity back and work a few things out in my head, that was all.

  Like, for instance, what was going on with the I. M. Fine books? Unfortunately, it was clear I would have to figure it out by myself.
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br />   After school, I did not go to Beamer’s house. Instead, I hopped on my bike and went to the library. I thought—what the heck!—I would look up I. M. Fine in Something About the Author. Who knew what I might find?

  Well, nothing, as it turned out. I. M. Fine wasn’t even listed—and this was a guy who had published thirty-six books!

  I went over to the shelf where all his books were kept and picked one up. I have to admit that I did it with a certain dread—like I thought it would bite me or something. Of course nothing happened. It was just a regular paperback, though pretty ragged from being handled by so many readers. I checked the back cover, but there was nothing there about I. M. Fine. Just stuff about the other titles in the series.

  Sometimes, with paperbacks, they put the author’s bio on the last page, so I looked there, too. Nothing.

  The librarian came up behind me and looked over my shoulder. “So, are you a fan of I. M. Fine?”

  “No!” I practically shrieked. Well, see, she kind of startled me.

  The librarian smiled. She didn’t ask why, if that was the case, I was standing there holding a copy of Meet My Mummy, number twenty-seven, by I. M. Fine.

  “I’m just trying to figure something out,” I explained. “I mean, here’s this guy who’s so famous and has written all these books—and he’s not in Something About the Author.”

  “Really? That is odd,” the librarian admitted.

  “Can you think of any reason why he wouldn’t be?”

  “Well,” she said. “I wonder. You know, sometimes books in a series are actually written by a whole flock of different writers. The publisher gives them a plot outline to follow. I know they did that with the Nancy Drew books. There never really was an author named Carolyn Keene. It was just a name they made up.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Maybe that’s it—maybe there is no I. M. Fine. That would explain why he’s not listed.”

  “Yes,” the librarian agreed. “It would.”

  I thanked the librarian and went home, feeling strangely unsatisfied.

  You see, while her theory explained why I. M. Fine wasn’t listed in Something About the Author, and it also explained how he could write them so fast, it didn’t explain all the other stuff. For example, if you just had a bunch of writers cranking out stories according to some formula, then any strange effects the books were having on their readers had to be an accident. And that seemed unlikely, somehow. I mean, why didn’t other books have the same effects? What was so special about Chillers?

  On the other hand, the accident theory was comforting. I mean, it would be better than if there really was some psycho guy out there making weird things happen on purpose! And since I liked that theory better and had pretty much hit a dead end anyway, I decided to forget the whole stupid thing and get on with my life.

  And I did, too, for a while—until the business with the snakes.

  7

  In March, book number thirty-seven in the Chillers series was published. It was called Sinister Serpent Surprise.

  The weather was unusually warm, though naturally the school thermostat was still set for winter, so hot air was being pumped in through the vents at full throttle, till we thought we’d all suffocate. Mrs. Lamb had to open all the windows just so we could breathe. I looked at Beamer several times, back there in the last row, slumped down in his seat, with those long legs sprawling out into the aisle. He was gazing out the window, like he was a million miles away. Probably creating constructions in his head. If I’d been close enough, I would have poked him. I wasn’t, though, so I didn’t.

  The morning dragged on miserably. I think the only thing that kept us going was the prospect of lunch. Beamer and I ate out on the far side of the playground, where there are a few trees and a nice cool grassy place to sit. There was even a little breeze.

  Then the bell rang and we trudged back to the classroom.

  During the lunch break, Mrs. Lamb had put some math problems up on the board. I guess she figured that going up there to solve them was more entertaining than sitting at our desks doing work sheets.

  She asked Adam, Claire, and DeeDee to go first. They all went up to the board, got some chalk, and went to work. I secretly enjoyed watching DeeDee do this, because for once she was the one on the spot. I’m no great shakes at math, but compared to DeeDee, I’m a regular Einstein. She went through all sorts of poses as she studied the problem (resting chin in hand, crossing arms and leaning back for a really good look, tapping her teeth), but she didn’t come up with an answer.

  Adam and Claire finished their problems and went back to their seats. DeeDee just stood there, chalk in gracefully upraised hand, smiling beautifully, with her eyebrows raised in a positively adorable plea for help. This never failed. Mrs. Lamb went over and talked her through the problem.

  “Okay, DeeDee,” she said, “nine times five is . . .”

  “Forty . . . forty-five?”

  “That’s right.”

  DeeDee beamed.

  “So put down the five and carry the four.” Mrs. Lamb showed DeeDee where to put the four.

  “Now, nine times eight is . . .”

  “Ssss . . .” DeeDee said.

  “Seventy . . .”

  “Sssssssssssssssss!” DeeDee said, only now she had dropped the chalk and was beginning to slide down toward the floor. Mrs. Lamb just stood there, stunned, while everybody gasped.

  “SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” DeeDee hissed, and she was stretched out on the linoleum now, slithering like a snake. Her skirt rode up, so you could see her panties; her beautiful hair was dragging around in the chalk dust under the board.

  Mrs. Lamb knelt down and took DeeDee’s face in her hands to keep it from thrashing around. “Will somebody please run get the nurse,” she said urgently. “I think she might be having a seizure.”

  “I’ll go,” I said, and leapt out of my seat. But before I could reach the door, Jonah rolled out onto the floor and began hissing and slithering, too.

  “NOW!” shouted Mrs. Lamb. “Hurry!”

  I practically killed myself tripping over backpacks and Beamer’s legs on the way to the door. Once I was out in the hall, I heard the sound of hissing coming from other rooms. I took off in a dash down the hall. To my left, a door opened and out came a third grader with a panicked expression on his little round face. We sprinted side by side the rest of the way to the nurse’s office.

  I knew, even before I opened the door, what I would find in there. I could hear it. But I had been sent to fetch the nurse, and my brain was slow to adjust to a new plan. The infirmary was like the snake pit at the zoo. The floor was filled with writhing, slithering students. The nurse gave me a frantic look and shut the door. “I’m busy!” she said.

  Well, obviously.

  I put my hand to my chest and took a big, deep breath. Then I headed for the principal’s office, with the third grader trailing behind me in tears. I knocked.

  “Not now!” called a voice from inside. I opened the door anyway. Mrs. Jessup was holding the telephone receiver with one hand and a pale, writhing, hissing child with the other.

  “Hang up and dial 911,” I said.

  She didn’t have a free hand to wave me away, so she sort of bared her fangs at me.

  “Yes, please get here as soon as you can!” she was saying into the phone. “You will probably need to take her to the emergency room. . . . No, I have no idea. Really. Please just get here as soon as you can!” Then she hung up and got a better grip on the little girl, who was hissing loudly and sliding back down toward the floor.

  “Can’t you see I’m busy!” she shouted.

  “Dial 911!” I repeated. “She’s not the only one. The infirmary is full of them. This is going on all over the school!” She looked at me for a moment in stunned disbelief, then dialed the emergency number.

  “This is Martha Jessup at Park Place Intermediate. We have something strange going on here. . . . A large number of students seem to be having seizures or something.” />
  After a pause, she said, “No, it’s more like—well, this will sound really strange, but it’s as if they’re pretending to be snakes. Slithering, hissing.”

  I was sure the emergency personnel on the other end of the line could hear the hissing perfectly well. It was very loud.

  “Oh, no. I hadn’t considered that. It has been very hot in the building, but I don’t smell any fumes or anything. And I believe that most of the kids are fine. Should we take them all outside till the ambulances come?”

  Another pause.

  “I couldn’t begin to tell you,” she said. Then she looked up at me. “How many, do you think?”

  “Well, two in my class. . . .” I turned to the third grader, who was cowering in terror behind me. “How many in yours?”

  “Just Alicia,” he whimpered.

  “That’s three, plus this one.” I indicated the child in the principal’s arms. “At least seven in the infirmary, and I heard hissing all down the hall. I’d guess at least fifteen, but maybe a whole lot more.”

  “Did you hear that?” Mrs. Jessup said into the phone. “Send as many as you can.”

  She hung up and flipped on the loudspeaker. “May I have your attention!” she said. “We are having a medical emergency here. Teachers, will you please assist your affected students out onto the front lawn. The rest of you, please stay with your teacher and exit the building in an orderly manner. I repeat: Walk, don’t run, but please leave the building.”

  It was a madhouse, of course. The principal and I managed to get the little girl outside; then Mrs. Jessup went back in to help get more kids out. I was impressed by how fast the ambulances came. Hissing students were fitted with neck braces and loaded onto stretchers, two or three per ambulance. A few of the kids who had been just fine when they left the building suddenly fell down and started hissing, too.

  While they waited in little clusters outside the school, a couple of the teachers started passing their cell phones around so the students could call their parents. Within minutes, frantic moms arrived in droves, managing to block the exit, so the ambulances couldn’t get out. Mr. Clark, the PE teacher, had to wade into the mess and direct traffic.