Zoë got home late that night. She had spent the afternoon over at some girl’s house, working on a poster for a school project, and we had already started dinner by the time she was dropped off. She came rushing through the front door, all pink-cheeked and grinning with excitement, and I naturally assumed this was because she had scored yet another social triumph. But as it turned out, I was wrong. She was all fired up because she was absolutely dying for Mom to take her to the store right after supper. Can you guess what it was she simply had to have?
Jelly Worms.
“Put it on the grocery list,” Mom said. “I’ll get some next time I go to the store.”
“No,” Zoë wailed. “I have to have them tomorrow!”
“Why on earth?” Mom asked.
“Everybody has them,” Zoë said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Both my mom and dad looked puzzled. They really didn’t understand, and who could blame them?
“It’s true,” I admitted. “I saw it in the lunchroom today—all the kids were playing with Jelly Worms. It was beyond weird.”
“Please!” Zoë begged. “You don’t have to pay for them. I’ll use my allowance.”
Mom patted her hand. “Calm down, Zoë,” she said. “I don’t mind taking you to the store. I don’t even mind buying the candy. I’m just trying to picture a whole lunchroom full of kids playing with Jelly Worms.”
“It’s that stupid book,” said J.D., who was busy creating a starburst pattern of peas on his mountain of mashed potatoes.
“It is not stupid,” Zoë snapped.
“What are you talking about?” we all said, in more or less the same voice.
“The Worm Turns,” said J.D. “Everybody’s reading it. Jelly Worms come to life and destroy Cincinnati.”
“Not Cincinnati, you dope,” said Zoë. “Cleveland.”
“Whatever,” said J.D. “I’m just saying if there’re Jelly Worms in a Chillers book, it’s going to be the new cool thing.”
“No kidding!” said Dad. He put down his fork and gazed at J.D. like he had just proved that aliens built the pyramids. If you want my opinion, this was a lot more interest than the subject deserved.
“Is that a series of books? Chillers?”
“Uh-huh.” J.D. filched a sprig of parsley from the serving platter and inserted it in the center of his starburst. He seemed pleased with the effect.
“They’re children’s books? A whole series of books about the same characters, like Nancy Drew?”
“No, different characters every time,” Zoë said. “But they’re all scary.”
“Okay,” said Dad, “a series of scary stories for kids. And everybody reads them?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised that my dad hadn’t heard of the Chillers series before. It was in the news a lot. Every time somebody wrote an article on how my generation was going to the dogs and how it was all because of violent video games and movies and rock music, there was always some mention of Chillers.
Now, I used to read Chillers books a lot. You could always count on an exciting story that would scare the poo out of you. In practically every chapter, there’s something that makes you jump. At first, they’re usually false alarms, so that after five or six of them, you kind of relax and think, Oh, it’s just the little brother jumping out from behind the tombstone again. That’s when the really bad thing happens.
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!