Dead Wednesday

Robbie Tarnauer, an eighth grader known by his nickname Worm, wakes on the morning of Dead Wednesday genuinely eager for school for the first time. Dead Wednesday is an annual tradition in the small town of Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, in which every eighth grader is treated as invisible for a day to confront the reality of preventable teen death before entering high school. The day also promises a half day, summer vacation only seven days away, and a long-anticipated fight between two classmates.

Worm is deeply shy, self-conscious about his acne, and most comfortable as a watcher rather than a participant. He lives with his parents in the rural Pocono Mountains, where they run a writers' retreat. His mother insists he come straight home after school for chores. Worm refuses.

On the bus, Worm saves the seat beside him for Eddie Fusco, his best friend, who is everything Worm is not: good-looking, popular, athletic, and confident. Monica Biddle, a classmate, boards without acknowledging Worm. Over a year ago, she publicly told him to "Get a life, Worm" and has not spoken to him since. Bijou Newton, the most admired girl in their grade, boards last. Eddie whispers that Bijou just dumped her high school boyfriend. As Bijou walks down the aisle, her smile seems to land directly on Worm, an unprecedented event that stuns him.

In homeroom, the Dead Wednesday ritual begins. Twenty-three poster-size photos of dead teenagers, colloquially called "Wrappers," cover the blackboard. The teacher reads names one per minute, and each student retrieves a card taped under their seat and leaves to get a black shirt, becoming a "Deader" for the day. Worm's card reads: "Rebecca Ann Finch," nicknamed Becca, age 17, from Elwood, Pennsylvania, who died in an auto crash. Called last, he puts on the shirt but refuses to button it.

In Science, Worm whispers to Eddie about Bijou until Eddie abruptly announces he is making his own move on her, revealing that the smile on the bus was aimed at Eddie, not Worm. Devastation quickly gives way to relief as Worm returns to his comfort zone: invisible, underground, watching.

In Language Arts, a girl in raspberry pajamas hits Worm's ear with a Tic Tac, tells him to keep them in his mouth in case someone wants to kiss him, and speaks as though she knows him. He looks at her face, and it is the face on his card: Rebecca Ann Finch. Worm faints. When he comes to, no one else can see the girl sitting on his desk.

Becca confirms she is visible only to him. She dislikes the word "ghost," settling on "spectral maiden." She tells him she was trapped in a "bottle," a timeless limbo with no past or future, for 167 of his days before appearing at his school. She addresses his acne directly, running a fingertip across the bumps and telling him it does not matter, then kisses him on one. She drags him to the auditorium, performs a song she wrote, and he cries.

When school lets out, Becca pulls Worm away from the fight and into a day of walking through Amber Springs. At a thrift shop, she acquires a floppy gray felt hat with a yellow feather. They hip-bump-dance on the sidewalk, and Worm realizes he has just danced with a girl for the first time.

She tells him about her boyfriend, Pooter (Harmon Dean Baker), the golden boy of their school, whom she met at a pizza place called Waldo's. Their secret ritual was a double-heart emoji texted morning and night. On Christmas Eve, unable to reach Pooter by phone, Becca snuck out in her pajamas and slippers to drive to his house and carve a giant double-heart emoji in the snow on his yard. A man in a yellow vest at a roadblock warned her to turn back. She detoured anyway. Lost on icy roads, her car slid down a hill and hit a tree. She insists Worm acknowledge it was her fault: She destroyed four lives because she refused to listen to every warning.

Becca tries to "fix" Worm. She tells him, "This is your life you're missing." She coaxes him into a terrible moonwalk on a public sidewalk, has him smell a gardenia, and tells him: "Be bold." When Worm mentions that a writer named Daisy Chimes is staying at the retreat, Becca is electrified. Chimes's novel Wendy Wins changed Becca's life by giving her permission to be imperfect. Worm brings Becca home and finds the book on the coffee table. Becca steps back, leaving him to act on his own. He knocks on the author's cabin door, asks Daisy Chimes to sign the book "To Becca," and tells her it changed his life. Charmed, Chimes signs it "With love."

That evening, they enter the woods behind the retreat. Becca teaches Worm the natural world: salamanders, sassafras root that smells like root beer, fiddlehead ferns. She tears the watch from his wrist and buries it, severing his leash to measured time. At a brook, she collapses, crying, "Oh, Robbie, I was only seventeen!" Worm erupts, accusing her of being a "fake changer" who claimed the book freed her yet ended up moping in a bottle. The rage passes quickly. He calls after her: She was a girl in love, the fireflies forgive her, and she must forgive herself.

Becca stops. "I had it backward," she says. "I'm not here for you. You're here for me." She removes the hat and tosses it to him, blows him a kiss, and walks into the trees until she is gone. Worm finds a single raspberry slipper left in a patch of mayapples; she kept the other so they each have one. He walks home through the darkening woods. The fireflies are out.

On Thursday, changes take root. Eddie reveals the fight never happened and that Bijou rejected his advance. Worm scans every face at school for signs of an experience like his and finds only Monica, who wears her black Dead Wednesday shirt a second day, enduring mockery with a quiet smile. He reflects that Monica's old challenge echoes Becca's words. When he looks in the mirror, the old pain about his acne is simply gone. Words come out of him more freely.

On the first day of summer, Worm bikes 27 miles to Becca's grave in Elwood, carrying a vinegar bottle duct-taped under his bike seat. He smashes it against her headstone, a symbolic gesture to free her from the bottle. Pooter appears, and Worm reveals enough knowledge, including Pooter's nickname and how they met at Waldo's, to earn a handshake over the gravestone. Worm restrains himself from sharing Becca's Christmas Eve plan, understanding it would be wrong to give Pooter a memory he cannot own.

On the Fourth of July, Worm's transformation reaches its fullest expression. He joins the egg toss instead of watching. During the fireworks, a firefly drifts past his nose, and he stands, the only person among 5,000. He hears Becca's voice: "Be bold, Worm." He walks through the crowd and says one word: "Monica." She stands. He tells her, "There's a better show." They walk through the deserted town, talking and laughing. He asks why she told him to get a life. She whispers, "I got your attention, didn't I?" Despite appearing to ignore him for a year, she was always watching. They arrive at an empty lot alive with fireflies and wander hand in hand through the dancing lights. She cups his acne-marked cheeks without flinching and says, "Robbie, Robbie, Robbie . . . where have you been?" Worm thinks: Becca, you'd love this girl.