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 something 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!”
“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.