The Schwa Was Here

by Neal Shusterman

  “We shoulda done this on a weekday, during rush hour,” Howie says. “The more people on the train, the higher gross tonnage. Maximum breakage potential.”

  “Yeah, but we could derail it,” I said, for like the fourteen thousandth time. “Better an empty train than a crowded one.”

  That’s when Lexie comes up the stairs with Moxie, and someone else. It takes me a moment to realize it’s the Schwa.

  I hadn’t invited him. Not intentionally, of course—he just slipped my mind like always. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would come with Lexie. That’s how far out of my mind he had slipped. It spooked me out, the way it spooks you out when you can’t remember something simple, like your phone number, or how to spell your middle name. I heard someone say that when that happens, it means the brain cells that held the information just died, and your brain’s gotta find the information in some backup file. This was not a good thing, because if the Schwa Effect was actually killing all the brain cells that remembered him, I could end up as brain-dead as a Tiggorhoid.

  “Hi, Antsy,” said the Schwa.

  “Hi, Anthony,” said Lexie.

  The Schwa introduced Lexie, and everyone was polite enough, although Ira and Howie made secret cracks about how they look together—then snickered like a couple of fifth graders. I couldn’t get past how awkward this all felt. But the Schwa didn’t seem to feel awkward at all. He stood there grinning like an idiot, and clutching Lexie’s arm like he was escorting her to the Academy Awards.

  “Who’s gonna do the honors?” Ira asked.

  Usually Howie volunteered to throw Manny to his death, but right now he was too busy staring at Lexie, waving his hand in front of her face. “So you don’t see anything at all?” he says. “Not even shadows?”

  “Nope.”

  “When you’re blind, you’re blind,” I said.

  “Not always,” Howie says. “There are blind people who can read large-print books.”

  “That’s ‘legally blind,’” Lexie explained. “I’m not legally blind.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “she’s illegally blind. Now can we get on with this?”

  “Lexie,” said the Schwa, still holding her by the elbow, “would you like me to guide you to a bench?”

  “That’s all right, Calvin, I’d rather stand.”

  Ira and Howie shared a look that could have meant any one of a dozen nasty things, then Howie turned to the Schwa. “So, Schwa, done any good vanishing tricks lately?”

  While Howie taunted the Schwa, Lexie whispered my name to Moxie, and he led her over to me. “It doesn’t sound like you’re having fun,” she said.

  “How do you know? I’ve barely said a thing.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Well, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  A train crashed past on the far track, and Lexie reached up to touch my face.

  “Don’t,” I told her. “Not in front of the Schwa.” But she couldn’t hear me over the roar of the train. As soon as the train had passed, she leaned in close and whispered, “I really had fun the other night. Let’s go to the movies again.” Then she kissed me.

  When I looked up, the Schwa was standing right behind her.

  I had no idea how long he had been there, or what he had seen. All I know is that the sky up above was a clear ice blue, and so were his eyes. Piercing ice blue.

  Usually Lexie knows exactly where everyone’s standing, but not all the time. I could tell she had no idea that the Schwa was right there. “Moxie, bench.” Moxie led her over to a bench, and she sat down.

  The Schwa waited until she was gone, just staring at me with those icy eyes. He seemed calm, but there was this vein pulsing in the translucent skin of his forehead. “Why did she kiss you?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t read too much into it. That’s just the way she is.”

  “No,” he said. “She doesn’t kiss me like that. I mean, sometimes she kisses me on the forehead like . . .”

  He looked over to see Lexie stroking Moxie. He licked her face, and she gave him a kiss. On the head.

  “Like that . . .” the Schwa said. Until that moment I suppose he had been legally blind to the situation, but now it was spread out for him in large print. I knew it would have to happen eventually, but I was hoping I’d get lucky, and the world would get struck by a comet or something first.

  “I’m sorry, Schwa, okay? I’m really sorry.”

  He responded with icy eyes, and a pulsing vein.

  Far off a horn blew, and I could see the headlights of a train coming around the bend.

  “It’s an express!” yells Howie, all excited. “It’s not gonna stop here—it won’t even slow down! Maximum breakage potential!”

  I didn’t need a second invitation. Anything to look away from the Schwa’s eyes. I grabbed Manny by the scruff of his neck, dragged him to the caution line, and hurled him into the path of the approaching train. I caught a quick glimpse of the conductor’s surprised face before Manny disappeared beneath the wheels. Car after car raced past, and in a few moments the train was gone.

  “Did it work?” Lexie asked. “What happened?”

  Long story short, Manny Bullpucky was not stronger than a locomotive. Manny didn’t just break, he shattered. He was hit so hard, pieces of him flew out of the station, to the street below. There were body parts around Brighton Beach for weeks, which was nothing new, only these parts were plastic. The Q express train had sent Manny to the great recycling bin in the sky.

  “I’m gonna miss him,” Ira said as he packed up his camera and turned to go.

  When I looked for the Schwa, I didn’t see him anywhere, and for the life of me I didn’t know whether he had left or just blended into the station. It wasn’t until Lexie asked me to escort her home that I really knew he was gone.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “That’s not like him to leave without saying good-bye.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” I said. “How could you be so . . . so . . .”

  “So what?”

  “Never mind. Forget I said anything.” I reached over and took Moxie’s harness, putting it gently into her hand. “Better hold on to Amoxicillin,” I told her. “I have a feeling you’re gonna need him to make you feel better.”

  “How could you have done that to him?” I asked Lexie after I had gotten her home.

  She glared at me. Not with her eyes, but with her whole face, which was worse. “In case you’ve forgotten, you did it, too.”

  I knew she was right, and it just made me angrier. We sat in the living room of her grandfather’s apartment, listening to the sudden November downpour. Crawley’s nurse, who had already made it clear that she was a cat person, had walked the dogs in the rain because I hadn’t shown up on time to do it. Now the whole apartment was toxic with wet dog, and the nurse gave me dirty looks every time she passed by.

  “I thought he understood that we were friends,” Lexie said.

  “I don’t believe you. Just because you couldn’t see the dopey love-look on his face doesn’t mean you couldn’t hear it in his voice.”

  Lexie was getting teary-eyed, but I wasn’t feeling too sympathetic.

  “Maybe I just didn’t want to hear it, okay? Maybe I wanted a little bit of both of you. Is that so terrible?”

  Then something occurred to me. “You’ve never really gone out with boys before, have you?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  By her tone of voice, I knew it was true. “A lot more than you think,” I told her. See, I know girls and guys who have become masters of manipulation when it came to dating. Instinctively I knew Lexie wasn’t one of those slippery types. Yes, she had manipulated us, but there was an innocence about it. Like she got tossed too many boys to juggle, and so she was doing it not because she enjoyed it, but because she didn’t know what else to do.

  She didn’t speak for a long time. She just wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then reached down to pet M
oxie. Moxie was pushed away by the sins and virtues, who wanted attention as well, and that just frustrated her even more.

  “I tend to intimidate the boys at my school,” she finally said. “I’m very outgoing, and most of them aren’t. You see, it’s a very exclusive school, and a lot of the kids have been much more sheltered than me. I guess they just don’t know what to make of me.”

  “What about your other escorts? The ones before me and the Schwa?”

  “They were always older,” she said, “and to them it was just a job. Besides, they were always church boys—you know, boys who are so weirdly polite, you always feel like you’re in church when you’re with them. My escorts were always boys who were safe . . . which is why I was so surprised that my grandfather chose you.”

  “He must be going senile.”

  “I heard that!” Crawley shouted from his bedroom. A few of the dogs perked up at the sound of his voice and ran off to torment him. Served him right for eavesdropping.

  “So I guess we were like training wheels,” I said to her.

  “What?”

  “You know, like on a bicycle. One on either side. Me and Schwa. Dating wheels.”

  “I can’t ride a bicycle. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But I think she did.

  “Calvin must hate me,” she said, nervously picking at her fingernails.

  “He doesn’t hate you. He just feels a little worked over, is all.”

  “How about you?”

  “No, of course I don’t hate you.”

  She reached out and touched my cheek. I thought about how that felt. I’ll bet no one had ever touched the Schwa’s face until Lexie had. Touch is a freaky thing when you’re not used to it. It makes you feel all kinds of things.

  I guess I didn’t respond the way she wanted, because she took her hand away. “What happens now?”

  I had to think about my answer because my own feelings hadn’t settled yet. Were we going to keep seeing each other? I wanted to. Being with her made me feel like Anthony instead of Antsy. But my selfish streak had run its course, and my conscience kicked in with a vengeance. It would never be right if I did this at the Schwa’s expense.

  “I think you’re going to have to ride without training wheels for a while,” I told her.

  “So then . . . what are we? Are we friends?”

  I took real care in my answer. “I’m your grandfather’s dog walker,” I told her. “Let’s start from there.”

  Remember the Schwa.

  Go to his house.

  Go talk to him.

  Remember the Schwa.

  After I left Lexie, I kept repeating things about the Schwa over and over in my mind. I didn’t care how many brain cells it killed trying to think of him, I knew I had to go see him, or call him, or something. I couldn’t let him sneak out of my mind like he always did. Right then I knew how bad he must have been feeling.

  Remember the Schwa.

  Go talk to him.

  But when I got home, Dad called a family meeting. Everyone was there but Mom. He had us sit at the dining-room table, where we never sat. The dining-room table was for holidays and taxes, that was it. As I sat down, I suddenly realized I didn’t want to hear this.

  “We all need to have a talk,” he said. “Because things will be changing around here.”

  I swallowed hard. “Changing how?”

  Dad sighed. It was the truth sigh. I hated the truth sigh more than anything in the world right then. “Well, for one, I’m going to be cooking a lot more.”

  “And?” said Frankie.

  “And?” said Christina.

  “And your mom . . .”

  “What about Mom?”

  Dad sighed again. “Your mom is taking a cooking class three nights a week.”

  Us kids looked at one another, waiting for more, but that’s all Dad offered.

  “That’s it?” I said. “She’s taking a cooking class?”

  “And she’s looking for a job. Probably part-time at first.”

  Nothing from any of us for a few moments.

  “It’s a French cooking class,” Dad continued. “Now I want you to listen to me, and listen to me closely.” He looked us all in the eye to make sure he had our attention. “When she cooks something, you have to tell her EXACTLY what you think of it. Capische? Don’t pull any punches. If it’s the foulest thing you’ve ever tasted, tell her the truth. You’ve got to be honest about it. Just like Antsy was the other day.”

  “That ain’t right,” says Frankie.

  “I’m scared,” says Christina.

  “I know it’s going to be difficult for a while,” Dad said, “but we’ll get used to it.”

  And suddenly, out of nowhere, I found myself bursting into tears. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. I didn’t even try to stop it, because it was like one of those floods that washes cars away. I guess my brother and sister were freaked out by it, because they took off, leaving me alone with Dad.

  “It’s okay, Anthony,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay.” He called me Anthony instead of Antsy, and for some reason that just made me cry even more.

  Finally my eyes cleared, and I was looking down at the little drops of tears on the polished wood table.

  “I should have used a coaster,” I said. We both laughed a tiny bit.

  “Wanna tell me what that was about?”

  I sighed the truth sigh. “I thought you were gonna tell us that you guys were splitting up. You know? Getting divorced.” It hurt to say the word aloud. Almost got me crying again.

  Dad raised his eyebrows then folded his arms and looked at his reflection in the shiny wooden table. “Not today, Antsy.”

  “So what about tomorrow?”

  He offered me the slimmest of grins. “Tomorrow we eat French.”

  The next morning I woke up with the nagging feeling that there was something I was supposed to remember, but I had no idea what it was. It was like Lexie’s sight—a memory of a memory.

  It was Sunday. Had Lexie and I made plans to do something before yesterday’s disaster? Was that what I was supposed to remember?

  Mom was out early that morning and came back from the supermarket with a strange collection of groceries that included a bag of snails.

  “Those French!” she said. “They can figure out ways of making anything edible.”

  The sight of the snails absolutely terrified Christina. I helped Mom unpack, just so that I might have some early warning as to what else was in store for us come dinnertime.

  I moved a bunch of recipe cards she had clipped together so I could unpack the last bag, and the clip fell off. The clip bounced on the linoleum floor with a tiny little clatter that I could barely hear over the refrigerator hum.

  A paper clip.

  I stood there with the recipes in one hand and half a pound of pig brains in the other, staring down at the clip like an idiot. I suppose only something that small, that unnoticeable, could remind me of the Schwa.

  “Antsy, what’s wrong?”

  I handed her the pig brains. “Gotta go!”

  I hurried to the door, but before I left I grabbed a pen and wrote on my palm in big blue letters: SCHWA’S HOUSE, just in case the Schwa Effect kicked in and I forgot where I was going.

  14. More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About the Schwa’s Childhood

  I rode my bike at top speed and got to the Schwa’s house in just a few minutes. As I ran up to the door, I could hear Mr. Schwa playing guitar inside. I rang the bell three or four times until he finally came, answering the door with a friendly grin.

  “Hi, is Calvin home? I have to talk to him.”

  He looked at me strangely, and for a single, terrifying moment, I thought he’d say, Calvin who?

  But instead he said, “Sure, he’s in the bedroom.”

  I went in to find he wasn’t in his bedroom at all.

  “Hmm,” said his father brightly. “Maybe he’s not home after
all.”

  “Don’t you even know when your own son is home?!”

  “Yes,” he said, not so brightly this time. “Mostly.”

  I looked in every room, trying to figure out where he might have gone. Then the guitar started up again, and that was the last straw. I went to the living room, to see Mr. Schwa playing and humming to himself like he didn’t have a care in the world. Well, he needed to have some cares.

  “Do you even know if Calvin came home last night?”

  He looked at me confused. “Calvin always comes home. Why wouldn’t he come home?”

  “For all you know, he could be floating facedown in Sheepshead Bay!”

  He stopped playing, but didn’t look at me.

  “Or maybe he’s with his mother,” I said. “What do you think? You think maybe that’s where he is?”

  “That’s enough, Antsy,” said the Schwa. “Leave him alone.”

  He stood in front of the brick fireplace, wearing a dark red sweater. Blending in. Always blending in.

  “There’s Calvin,” said Mr. Schwa. “He’s standing over there. No worries.”

  “Where’ve you been?” I asked.

  “Here and there,” he said. “Mostly here.”

  His father returned to playing guitar.

  “Dad,” said the Schwa, “Marco and Sam will be here at noon to pick you up. You have a painting job in Mill Basin.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  I went with the Schwa into his room, and he closed the door. The curtains were drawn, and the only light was what little spilled over the edges of the closed blinds.

  “It looks like you’re turning into Old Man Crawley.”

  “I quit yesterday,” the Schwa said. “Crawley made a big stink, threatened to get my dad fired and all, but I didn’t care. My dad’s friends would never fire him anyway.”

  “I thought you might quit,” I said.

  “I’m quitting you, too, Antsy.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you can stop pretending to be my friend now. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

  “I don’t! Well . . . actually I do, but only because I’m your friend. I’m not pretending about that.”