The Schwa Was Here
( Antsy Bonano - 1 )
Нил Шустерман
They say if you stare at him long enough, you can see what’s written on the wall behind him. They say a lot of things about the Schwa, but one thing’s for sure: no one ever noticed him. Except me. My name is Antsy Bonano—and I can tall you what’s true and what’s not. ’Cause I was there. I was the one who realized the Schwa was “functionally invisible” and used it to make some big bucks. But I was also the one who caused him more grief than a friend should. So if you all just shut up and listen, I’ll spill everything. Unless, of course, “the Schwa Effect” wiped him out of my brain before I’m done...
Neal Shusterman
The Schwa Was Here
For my grandparents Gussie and Dave Altman, who will always be the spirit of Brooklyn to me
schwa: The faint vowel sound in many unstressed syllables in the English language. It is signified by the pronunciation “uh” and represented by the symbol ə. For example, the e in overlook, the a in forgettable, and the o in run-of-the-mill.
It is the most common vowel sound in the English language.
1. Manny Bullpucky Gets His Sorry Butt Hurled Off the Marine Park Bridge
I don’t really remember when I first met the Schwa, he was just kind of always there, like the killer potholes on Avenue U or the Afghans barking out the windows above Crawley’s restaurant—a whole truck load of ’em, if you believed the rumors. Old Man Crawley, by the way, was a certifiable loony tune. A shut-in, like Brooklyn’s own Howard Hughes, almost as legendary as the lobsters served up in his restaurant below. See, there was this staircase that went up from the restaurant to the residence on the second floor, but with each step it got darker around you, so when you tried to climb it, you kept thinking you heard the horror audience behind you yelling, “No, don’t go up the stairs!” Because who but a moron would go up to search for Old Man Crawley, who had fingernails like Ginsu knives that could dice, slice, and julienne you, then serve you up in like fourteen thousand plastic dog bowls. Those bowls, by the way, would probably be made by my father, the Vice-Executive Vice-Vice-President of Product Development for Pisher Plastic Products. If you’re a guy, I’m sure you already know that their most famous product is that little plastic strainer at the bottom of urinals, and you probably still laugh every time you look down while taking a leak and see PISHER written in happy bold letters, like maybe it was to remind you why you were standing there.
But what was I talking about?
Oh, yeah—the Schwa. See, that was the whole point with the Schwa: You couldn’t even think about him without losing track of your own thoughts—like even in your head he was somehow becoming invisible.
Okay, so like I said, I don’t remember when I met him—nobody does—but I can tell you the first time I remembered actually noticing him. It was the day Manny Bullpucky jumped from the Marine Park Bridge.
It was Saturday, and my friends and I were bored, as usual. I was hanging out with Howie Bogerton, whose one goal in life was not to have any goals in life, and Ira Goldfarb, who was a self-proclaimed cinematic genius. With the digital video camera his grandparents had gotten him for his bar mitzvah last year, Ira was determined to be Steven Spielberg by the time he got to high school. As for Manny Bullpucky, we kinda dragged him along with us to various places we went. We had to drag him around, on accounta he was a dummy. Not a dummy like Wendell Tiggor, who had to repeat the fifth grade like fourteen thousand times, but a real dummy. More snooty people might call him a mannequin, or even a prosthetic personage, because nobody calls things what they really are anymore. But to us normal people in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, he was a dummy, plain and simple.
As for his name, it came in the natural course of human events. Dad had brought him home from work one day. “Look at this guy,” he says proudly, holding him up by the scruff of his neck. “He’s made of a new ultra-high-grade lightweight plastic. Completely unbreakable.”
My older brother Frank looks up from his dinner. “Bullpucky,” he says—although I’m editing out the bad word here, on accounta my mother might read this, and I don’t like the taste of soap.
As soon as Frankie says it, Mom, without missing a beat, hauls off and whacks him on the head in her own special way, starting low, and swinging up, like a tennis player giving a ball topspin, just grazing the thin spot on his head that’s gonna be bald someday, probably from Mom slapping him there. “You watch ya mout!” Mom says. “Mout,” not “mouth.” We got a problem here with the “th” sound. It’s not just us—it’s all a Brooklyn, maybe Queens, too. My English teacher says I also drop vowels like a bad juggler, and have an infuriating tense problem, whatever that meant. So anyway, if you put the “th” problem and the vowel thing together, our family’s Catlick, instead of Catholic, and my name’s Antny instead of Anthony. Somehow that got changed into Antsy when I was little, and they’ve called me Antsy ever since. It don’t bother me no more. Used to, but, y’know, you grow into your name.
Anyway, Dad tosses me the dummy. “Here, take it,” he says.
“Whadaya giving it to me for?”
“Why do you think? I want you to break it.”
“I thought you said it was unbreakable.”
“Yeah, and you’re the test, capische?”
I smile, proud to figure in my father’s product development job. This was the first time in recorded history that either of my parents had singled me out to do anything.
“Do I get to break something?” my little sister Christina asks.
“Yeah,” said Dad. “Wait a few years and you’ll be breaking hearts.”
Christina must have liked the sound of that, because she flips open the journal that’s practically glued to her hand and makes a note of it.
So, Howie, Ira, and me, we started doin’ unpleasant things to Manny that might break him. Ira loves this, because he can get the whole thing on him. We rode our bikes down Flatbush Avenue to the Marine Park Bidge, which is no easy task considering I gotta carry Manny on my handlebars. God forbid Frankie, who just got his license, could give us a ride in the old Toyota he just got. No, he’s too busy hanging out with all the other perfect people—but don’t get me started on Frankie.
We got to the bridge, and the three of us, not including Manny, worked out our game plan.
“I should go down to the rocks to film,” Ira said. “I’ll get a good view of him falling from there.”
“Nah,” says Howie, “let’s go to the middle of the bridge—I wanna see him hit the water.”
“If he hits the water,” I reminded them, “we won’t get him back.”
Howie shrugs. “There’s lots of boats goin’ by, maybe we can time it so he hits a boat.”
“We still won’t get him back,” I said, “and we might sink the boat.”
“That’d look good on film,” Ira said.
Now all this time I got this creepy feeling like we’re being watched. But then of course we are being watched. Everybody driving by has got to be wondering what we’re doing standing with a dummy by the guardrail of the bridge—but this feeling is more than that. Anyway, I ignore the feeling because we had important business here.
“We’ll drop him onto the rocks,” I told them.
“Yeah,” says Howie. “Maximum breakage potential.”
“Great. Howie, you stay up here on the bridge to push him over; Ira and me’ll go down and watch.”
We climbed down to the rocks and looked up to where Howie stood holding Manny by the scruff of the neck—it’s a pretty high drop. I didn’t envy Manny. Still that feeling of being watched just won’t go away.
“Should I push him or should I t
hrow him?” Howie asks.
“Do what comes naturally,” I yelled back.
“I don’t know,” he says. “This is a very unnatural thing.”
“Rolling,” says Ira. “ And ... action.”
Howie backs up for a second, and a moment later Manny Bullpucky comes hurtling over the side of the bridge, arms and legs flailing like he’s really alive, and he does a swan dive headfirst toward the rocks. WHAM! He hits the jagged boulders, and it’s all over for him. His bald head goes flying like a cannonball shot straight at me. I hit the deck, narrowly miss being decapitated, and when I get up again, a headless mannequin lies with his arms strewn on the rocks, just another casualty of the fast life.
Howie comes running down from the bridge.
“What happened? Did he break? Did he break?”
“Yeah,” I told him, picking myself off of the ground. “We’re gonna have to change his name to ’Headless Joe.’”
Ira, still behind the camera, moved in closer to the body, paused dramatically, and finally stopped filming. “Where’d his head go?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, over there somewhere. So much for unbreakable plastic.”
“Are you looking for this?” I heard another voice say. The voice was scratchy, like a kid who’s screamed a little too much. I turned, and I swear to you, the first thing I see is Manny’s mannequin head floating in midair. I only see it for a split second, but it’s the creepiest thing. Then in that split second my brain does a quick retake and I see that there’s a kid holding the head under his armpit. I couldn’t really see the kid at first on accounta his clothes are kind of a brownish gray, like the rocks around him, and you know how your mind can play tricks on you when the light is just right.
“Excuse me,” said Ira, “this is a closed set.”
The kid ignored him. “That was pretty cool,” he said. “You should have dressed him up, though, so when he fell he looked like a person and not a dummy on film.”
Ira pursed his lips and got a little red, annoyed that he didn’t think of it.
“Don’t I know you?” I asked the kid. I took a good look at him. His hair was kinda ashen blond—real wispy, like if you held a magnetized balloon over his head, all his hair would stand on end. He was about a head shorter than me; a little too thin. Other than that, there was nothing remarkable about him, nothing at all. He wasn’t good-looking; he wasn’t ugly; he wasn’t buff and he wasn’t scrawny. He was just, like, average. Like if you looked up “kid” in the dictionary, his face would be there.
“I’m in some class with you, right?” I asked him.
“Science,” he said. “I sit next to you in science class.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right, now I remember.” Although for the life of me I have no memory of him sitting next to me.
“I’m Calvin,” he said. “Calvin Schwa.”
With that Ira gasped, “You’re the kid they call the Schwa?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Ira took a step back.
“I’m Anthony Bonano,” I told him, “but everyone calls me Antsy. These are my friends Howie and Ira.” Then I pointed to the head in his hands. “You already met Manny.”
He took Manny’s head back to his body. “So what’s all this for, anyway?”
“Pisher Plastics product stress test,” I told him, trying to sound professional.
“Manny gets an F,” Howie said. “He’s supposed to be unbreakable.”
“Technology fails again,” I said, all the while noticing how Ira still kept his distance from the Schwa, as if he were radioactive, like some of those flounder they found off Canarsie Pier.
The Schwa knelt next to Manny’s headless body.
“Technically he’s not broken,” the Schwa said.
“If your head comes off, you’re broken,” says Howie. “Trust me.
“See? Look here.” He pointed to the neck. “His head is held on by a ball-and-socket joint. It just popped off—watch.” Then the Schwa snapped Manny’s head back on as if it were a giant Barbie. I was both relieved and disappointed. It was good to know my dad’s work was successful, but upsetting to know that I couldn’t destroy it.
“So what do we do to him next?” Howie asked.
“Pyrotechnics,” said Ira. “We try to blow him up.”
“Can I come, too?” asked the Schwa.
“Yeah, sure, why not?” I turned to him, but he’s gone. “Hey, where’d ya go?”
“I’m right here.”
I squinted to get the sun out of my eyes, and I saw him. He’s waving his hands, like to get my attention or something.
“I don’t know,” said Ira. “You know what they say about too many cooks.”
“No, what?” asks Howie.
“You know—too many cooks stink up the kitchen.”
Howie still looks confused. “What, don’t these cooks know from deodorant?”
“It’s an expression, Howie,” I explained. Howie, you gotta understand, ain’t dumb. He just doesn’t think out of the box. Of course, if I ever told him that, he’d wonder what box I was talking about. He’s the kinda guy who’s hardwired to take everything literally. Which is why he’s so good at math and science, but when it comes to anything creative—he tanks. He’s about as creative as a bar code. Even when he was little, he would do real good at coloring when there were nice thick black lines in the coloring book—but give him some crayons and a blank page, and his forehead would start to bleed. So, anyways, by a two-to-one vote the Schwa is allowed to join us in our next attempt to bust Manny. Ira voted no, but he wouldn’t look at any of us when he did.
“So what’s up with you?” I asked him.
“It’s my opinion. I got a right to an opinion.”
“Okay, okay, don’t get so touchy.”
With Ira suddenly unsociable, the Schwa decided to leave rather than make any further waves.
“See you in science,” he said.
Only after he’s gone does Ira pull me aside and say, “I wish I would’ve gotten that on film.”
“Gotten what on film?”
“Remember a second ago when you asked the Schwa where he went, and he practically had to jump up and down to get your attention?”
“Yeah?”
“He was standing right in front of you all along.”
I waved my hand like I’m shooing away a fly. “What are you talking about? He moved behind me. That’s why I couldn’t see him.”
But Howie shook his head. “He never moved, Antsy.”
I scowled at them like this is some conspiracy to make me look stupid.
“And I’ve heard things about him, too,” Ira said. “Crazy stuff.”
“Such as?”
Ira came in close enough so I could smell last night’s garlic-whatever on his breath. “His eyes,” Ira whispered. “They say his eyes change color to match the sky. They say his shoes are always the same color as the ground. They say if you stare at him long enough, you can read what’s written on the wall behind him.”
“That’s called ’persistence of vision,’” Howie says, reminding us that behind his veil of idiocy is a keen analytical mind. “That’s when your brain fills in the gaps of what it thinks ought to be there.”
“He’s not a gap,” I reminded him. “He’s a kid.”
“He’s a freak,” said Ira. “Ten-foot-pole material.”
Well, I didn’t know about Howie and Ira, but I’ve spent enough of my life keeping weird things at ten-foot-pole distance.
“If any of this is true,” I told them, “there are ways of finding out.”
2. The Weird and Mostly Tragic History of the Schwa, Which Is Entirely True If You Trust My Sources
My family lives in a duplex—that’s two homes attached like Siamese twins with one wall in common. On the other side of the wall is a Jewish family. Ira knows them from his temple, but we just know their names. Once a year we exchange Christmas cookies and potato latkes. Funny how you can live six i
nches away from people and barely even know them. Our neighborhood is a Jewish-Italian neighborhood. Jews and Italians seem to get along just fine. I think it has something to do with the way both cultures have a high regard for food and guilt.
The Schwa was about six inches away, too, in science class, but I had never noticed him. It was weird, because in school I notice almost anything as long as it doesn’t actually have to do with the lesson. And then there was the way Ira got all freaked out about him. It made me want to do some investigating. It took a couple of days, but I did come up with something.
I called Ira and Howie over for a war council, which I guess is the guy version of gossiping. Of course we couldn’t talk in the living room, because Frankie was sleeping on the sofa, hogging the most comfortable place in the house, like always. Lately it’s like Frankie slept all the time.
“It comes with being sixteen,” Mom said. “You teenagers, you go into a cocoon when you turn fifteen and don’t come out for years.”
“So they become butterflies when they finally come out?” my little sister Christina asked.
“No,” Mom said. “They’re still caterpillars, only now they’re big fat caterpillars that smell.”
Christina laughed and Frankie rolled over on the sofa, sticking his butt out toward us.
“So when do we get to be butterflies?” I asked.
“You don’t,” Mom answered. “You go off to college, or wherever, and then I get to be a butterfly.”
She was looking at me when she said “wherever,” so I said, “Maybe I’ll just stay here all my life. With a butterfly net.”
“Yeah,” said Mom. “Then you can use it to drag me off to the nuthouse.”
When it comes to Frankie, Mom always talks about college like it’s a given, but not me. I looked at Frankie snoring away. Sometimes I think God made an inventory error and gave Frankie some brain cells that were supposed to go to me. He could sleep away the afternoon and still pull straight A’s, but me? There were only two A’s I ever saw on my papers: the A in Anthony, and the A in Bonano. What made it worse was that Christina already seemed to be following in Frankie’s footsteps, gradewise, so it cleared the path for me to be the family disappointment.
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