The Schwa Was Here

by Neal Shusterman

  “Whadaya mean ‘proper term’? How can there be a proper term for it when I just made it up?”

  “Well, if you’re gonna make something up, make up the proper term.”

  I keep trying to think this through. “It’s like when he’s in a room and doesn’t say anything, you could walk in, walk out, and never know he was there.”

  “Like the tree falling in the forest,” says Ira.

  “Huh?”

  “You know, it’s the old question—if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it really make a sound?”

  Howie considers this. “Is it a pine forest, or oak?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Oak is a much denser wood; it’s more likely to be heard by someone on the freeway next to the forest where no one is.”

  I know I’m in over my head here, because Howie’s logic is actually starting to make sense. “What does a tree in the forest have to do with the Schwa?” I ask Ira.

  And the Schwa says, “I know.”

  We snapped our heads around so sharply, it’s like whiplash. The Schwa was there, leaning up against my backyard fence! It’s like we’re all too dumbfounded to speak.

  “I know what it has to do with me,” he said. “I’m like that tree. If I stand in a room and no one sees me, it’s like I was never there at all. Sometimes I even wonder if I was there myself.”

  “Wh-when did you get here?” I asked him.

  “I got here before Howie and Ira did. I was hoping you’d notice. You didn’t.”

  “So . . . you heard everything?”

  He nodded. I tried to run the whole conversation through my mind, to see if I had said anything bad about him. His feelings didn’t appear hurt, though—like he was used to people talking behind his back in front of his face.

  “I’ve wondered about it myself,” he said. “You know—being observationally challenged . . . functionally invisible.” He paused for a second, then looked at Manny all strung up like a scarecrow. “You ought to find a seam in the plastic, and tape the M-80 there.”

  “Huh?” It took a few seconds for me to drag my mind back to the reason why we were all here. “Oh! Right.” I went to Manny, pulled off the duct tape, and felt around his bald head for the plastic seam. I retaped the fat firecracker on the back of his head, relieved not to have to look at the Schwa. Ira fiddled with his camera, and Howie finished up our protective barricade.

  “How long will it take the fuse to burn?” I asked, as illegal fireworks are not my particular academic strength.

  “Twelve point five seconds,” says Howie. “But that’s just an estimate.”

  We let the Schwa light the fuse, as he seemed to be the only one not afraid of blowing up, and he quickly joined us behind the barricade.

  “You know, there’s gotta be a way to quantify it,” Howie says while we wait for the fuse to burn down.

  “What?”

  “The Schwa Effect. It’s like Mr. Werthog says: ‘For an experiment to be valid, the results must be quantifiable and repeatable (kiss, kiss).’”

  “We should experiment on the Schwa?”

  “Sounds good to me,” said the Schwa.

  Then a blast knocks me to the ground. My ears pop and begin to ring. The blast echoes back and forth down the row of brick duplexes. When I look up, Manny’s body has flown six feet, and his head is gone again.

  Ira zoomed in on the body. “Thus perished Manny Bullpucky.” He turned the camera off. Right about now every window in Brooklyn is snapping up as people wonder what morons are setting off fireworks at seven in the morning.

  We hurry inside so we don’t get caught. Once we’re in, I look at the Schwa. “After that, you really want us to experiment on you?”

  “Sure,” he says. “What’s life without excitement?”

  I had to hand it to the Schwa. Any other kid would have flipped us off if asked to be a lab rat, but the Schwa was a good sport. Maybe he was just as curious about his own weirdness as we were.

  LAB JOURNAL

  The Schwa Effect: Experiment #1

  Hypothesis: The Schwa will be functionally invisible in your standard classroom.

  Materials: Nine random students, one classroom, the Schwa.

  Procedure: We set nine students and the Schwa seated around an otherwise empty classroom (if you don’t count the hamsters and the guinea pig in the back). Then we dragged other students into the room, and asked them to do a head count.

  Results: Three out of five students refused to go into the classroom on account of they thought there’d be a bucket of water over the door, or something nasty like that, which is understandable because we’ve been known to play practical, and less practical, jokes. Eventually we managed to round up twenty students to go into the room, count the people in the room, then report back to us. Fifteen students said that there were nine people in the room. Four students said there were ten. One student said there were seventeen (we believe he counted the hamsters and guinea pig).

  Conclusion: Four out of five people do not see the Schwa in your standard classroom.

  I don’t know what it was about the Schwa that kept getting to me. I can’t say I was always thinking about him—I mean, he was hard to think about—that was part of the problem. You start to think about him and pretty soon you find yourself thinking about a video game, or last Christmas, or fourteen thousand other things, and you can’t remember what you were thinking about in the first place. It’s like your brain begins to twist and squirm, directing your mind away from him. Of course that’s nothing new to me—I mean, it seems like my brain is always twitching in unexpected directions, especially when there are girls around. I’ve never been the smoothest guy around girls that I like. I’ll say stupid things, like pointing out they got mud on their shoes or mustard on the tip of their nose, like Mary Ellen MacCaw did once—but with a schnoz like hers, it’s hard not to get condiments on it, and maybe even a condiment bottle lodged up inside there once in a while. My awkwardness with girls did change, though, once I met Lexie. Lots of things changed after I met Lexie—but wait a second, I’m getting way ahead of myself here. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. The Schwa.

  See? You start thinking about the Schwa, and you end up thinking about everything but. I guess this fascination I had with the Schwa was because in some small way I knew how he felt. See, I never stand out in a crowd either. I’m just your run-of-the-mill eighth-grade wiseass, which might get me somewhere in, like, Iowa, but Brooklyn is wiseass central. No one ever has anything major to say about me, good or bad, and even in my own family, I’m kind of just “there.” Frankie’s God’s gift to Brooklyn, Christina gets all the attention because she’s the youngest, and me, well, I’m like an afterthought. “You’ve got middle-child syndrome,” I’ve been told. Well, seems to me more like middle-finger syndrome. Do you ever sit and play that game where you try to imagine yourself in the future? Well, whenever I try to imagine my future, all I can see are my classmates twenty years from now asking one another, “Hey, whatever happened to Antsy Bonano?” And even in that weird little daydream no one had a clue. But the Schwa—he was worse off than me. He wouldn’t be the “whatever-happened-to” kid—he’d be the kid whose picture gets accidentally left out of the yearbook and no one notices. Although I’m a bit ashamed to say it, it felt good to be around someone more invisible than me.

  LAB JOURNAL

  The Schwa Effect: Experiment #2

  Hypothesis: The Schwa will not be noticed even when dressed weird and acting freakishly.

  Materials: The boys’ bathroom, a sombrero spray-painted Day-Glo orange, a costume from last year’s school production of Cats, and the Schwa.

  Procedure: The Schwa was asked to stand in the middle of the boys’ bathroom wearing the cat costume and the orange sombrero, and to sing “God Bless America” at the top of his lungs. We ask unsuspecting students coming out of the bathroom if they noticed anything unusual in there.

  Results: We
caught fifteen people willing to discuss their lavatory experience. When asked if there was anything strange going on, aside from the one kid who kept talking about a toilet that wouldn’t stop flushing, fourteen out of fifteen said there was someone acting weird in the bathroom. We thought the experiment was a failure until we asked them to describe the weirdo.

  “He was wearing something strange, I think,” one person said.

  “He wore like a pointed blue party hat, I think,” said another.

  Not a single person identified the orange sombrero, or the cat costume, although one person was reasonably certain that he had a tail.

  All agreed that he was singing something patriotic, but no one could remember what it was. Five people were sure it was “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Six people said it was “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Only four properly identified it as “God Bless America.”

  Conclusion: Even when acting weird and dressed like a total freak, the Schwa is only barely noticed.

  The basketball courts in our neighborhood parks have steel chain-link nets. I like that better than regular string net because when you make a basket, you don’t swish—you clank. That heavy, hearty rattle is more satisfying. More macho than a swish. It’s powerful, like the roar of a crowd—something invisible kids like the Schwa and semi-invisible kids like me never get to hear except in our own heads.

  It was on the basketball court that I came up with the Big Idea.

  By now the Schwa was hanging around with us more—I mean when we actually noticed him there. Ira was not too thrilled about it. See, Ira was not invisible. He had made great advances into the visible world. Take his video camera for instance. You’d think it would make him a behind-the-scenes type of guy. Not so—because when Ira has his eye to the viewfinder, he becomes the center of attention. He directs the world, and the world allows it. So I guess I could see why he kept his distance from the Schwa. Invisibility threatened him.

  Ira did join us on the basketball court, though. Couldn’t resist that, I guess, and in playing “friendly” choose-up games, we had quickly learned how to turn the Schwa Effect to our advantage.

  Move number one: Fake to the left, pass right to the Schwa, shoot, score!

  “Hey—where did he come from?” someone on the other team would always yell.

  Move number two: Dribble up the middle, flip it back to the Schwa, who’d drive down the sidelines for a layup—shoot—score!

  “What?! Who’s guarding that guy?” It was great watching the other teams get all frustrated, never noticing the Schwa until the ball was already in his hands.

  Move number three: Pass to Howie, back to me, and then to the Schwa, who’s right under the basket. A quick hook shot—score!

  As for the other team, there would be much weeping and gnashing of teeth, as the Bible says.

  On this particular day, after the other kids went off to console themselves in their humiliating loss, Howie, the Schwa, and I hung around on the court just shooting around. Ira also left right after the game, not wanting to hang around the Schwa any longer than he had to.

  “We oughta go out for the team,” Howie suggested as we shot baskets. “We’ve got a system.”

  “The Schwa oughta go out for the team, you mean,” I said.

  The Schwa dribbled the ball a bit, took a hook shot, and sunk it. “I played peewee basketball a few years back, but it didn’t work out.”

  “Don’t tell me—the coach always forgot to put you in, and even when you were in, nobody passed to you.”

  He shrugs like it’s a given. “My father never showed up for the games either. So I figured, what was the point?”

  “How about your mother?” says Howie. I might be the prince of foot-in-mouth disease, but Howie’s the king. He grimaces the moment after he says it, but it’s already out.

  The Schwa doesn’t say anything at first. He takes another shot. He misses. “My mother’s not around anymore.”

  Howie keeps looking at me, like I’m gonna cough up the guts to ask about it, but I won’t do it. I mean, what am I supposed to say? “Is it true that your mom was abducted by aliens in the middle of Waldbaum’s supermarket?” or “Is it true your father got a samurai sword and went Benihana on her?”

  No. Instead I change the subject, changing all of our lives from that moment on, because that’s when I come up with what would forever be known as Stealth Economics.

  “Hey, if the Schwa Effect works on the basketball court, there’s got to be other ways to put it to good use.”

  The Schwa stopped dribbling. “Like how?”

  “I don’t know . . . Spy on people and stuff.”

  Howie’s ears perked up at the mention of spy stuff. “The government would pay big bucks for someone who’s invisible.”

  “He’s not invisible,” I reminded him. “He’s invisible-ish. Like a stealth fighter.”

  “The CIA could still use him.”

  “And abuse him.” I grabbed the ball away from the Schwa, went in for a layup, and made it.

  “I don’t want to go to the government,” the Schwa says.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’d dissect him and put him in a formaldehyde fish tank in Area 51.”

  Howie shook his head. “Area 51 is for aliens,” he says. “They’d probably put him in Area 52.”

  “Maybe we should try something that isn’t so big,” I suggested. “Maybe just stuff around school. I’m sure there are people around here who would pay for the services of a Stealth Schwa.” At first this had just been my lips flapping, like they often do—but every once in a while my lips flap and something brilliant flies out. I realized that maybe I was onto something here.

  “How much do you think people would pay?” the Schwa asked.

  I took an outside shot. “How much is the stealth fighter worth?” Clank! Nothing but chain. I reveled in the sound.

  LAB JOURNAL

  The Schwa Effect: Experiment #3

  Hypothesis: The Schwa can pass through airport security with an iron bar in his pocket.

  Materials: JFK American Airlines terminal, a six-inch iron bar, and the Schwa.

  Procedure: The Schwa was asked to walk through the security checkpoint, go to Gate B-17, then walk back.

  Results: The Schwa stood in line at the security checkpoint, but the guy who was checking IDs and airplane tickets skipped right past him. The Schwa gave us the A-okay sign. Then he walked through the metal detector, and it buzzed. Security then noticed him. They made him raise his arms, passing a wand all over him until finding the iron bar. They called more security over and two national guardsmen dressed in camouflage. They asked where his parents were and wanted to see his ticket. That’s when the rest of us came forward to explain that it was just an experiment and not to get all bent out of shape. The national guardsmen and security officers weren’t happy. They called our parents. They were not happy either. This ends our experimentation on the Schwa Effect.

  Conclusion:

  1. The Schwa is unnoticed by your generic security guard unless he’s tipped off to his presence by advanced technology like a metal detector.

  2. Iron bars in the Schwa’s pocket are still iron bars.

  4. Making Big Bucks off of Stealth Economics, Because Maybe I Got Some Business Sense

  Once we decided to turn the Schwa Effect into a money-making proposition, it wasn’t hard to get the ball rolling. When we had presented our series of Schwa experiments to the class, most everyone laughed, figuring it was a joke—but enough of our classmates had been part of the experiments to suspect there was something more to it. You know, it’s like that TV show where the psychic dude talked to your dead relatives—all of whom seem to be just hanging around, watching everything you do . . . which is really disturbing when you stop to think about it. You don’t really believe it, but there’s enough borderline credibility to make you wonder.

  That’s how it was with the Schwa. It was too much for most kids to really believe the Schwa Effect, but people were cu
rious—and curiosity was a key element of Stealth Economics. Mary Ellen MacCaw was the first to offer hard cash.

  “I wanna see the Schwa do something,” she said to me in the hall after school. Most everyone else had left, so we were pretty much alone.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  “The Schwa doesn’t do things for free.”

  Mary Ellen reached into her pocket, jangled around in there for a while, and came up with four quarters. She handed them to me.

  “For a dollar, the Schwa will appear out of thin air.”

  “Where?” said Mary Ellen. “When?”

  “Here and now,” said the Schwa.

  And she jumped. I’ve never seen anyone jump like that except while watching a horror movie—because the Schwa had been standing right next to her all along.

  She bumped into a locker and the sound echoed down the hallway. “How do you do that?!” she asked the Schwa.

  “Guess you could call it a ‘hidden’ talent.”

  As Mary Ellen’s mouth was almost as big as her nose, by the next day people were waiting in line to pay the price and share in the Schwa Experience.

  My dad says that at Pisher Plastics they believe anything can be marketed and sold. “They’d put a price tag on a dead rat if they thought it would sell,” he once told me. “Then they’d hire an advertising firm to show beautiful women wearing them on their shoulders. It’s all part of a free-market economy.”

  I can’t vouch for the dead-rat theory, but I do know that in our local free-market economy, the Schwa was a high-ticket item—and as his manager, lining up his jobs, I got a decent percentage of the money he made. I gotta admit, though, the money was just gravy. It was great for once to be the center of attention—or at least positioned next to the center of attention. Funny how the Schwa could be right in the middle and still go unseen.

  “It’s a waste of time,” Ira said, when I asked him if he and Howie wanted in on our business venture.