The Schwa Was Here

by Neal Shusterman

  “Huh?”

  “Severance package. Money enough to hold me until I get another job. If I get one.”

  “Did you tell Mom?”

  “No!” he said sharply. “And you don’t tell her either. I’ll tell her when I’m good and ready.”

  I was going to ask him why he told me, but stopped myself. I decided just to feel grateful that he did.

  I sat down on the couch, feeling awkward about the whole thing, but still not wanting to leave. I offered to get him a beer, but he said no, that he just wanted to sit there for a while getting used to the feeling of being jobless. Like maybe the air might be thinner for the unemployed.

  “So what’s new with you?” he asked.

  “Not a whole lot,” I told him. “Remember my friend? The one who’s invisible-ish?”

  “Vaguely,” he said, which was better than “not at all.”

  I told him the whole story. Everything—from the butcher to the billboard to the box of letters.

  “Ran away with the butcher!” Dad said. “Ya gotta love that.”

  “So, was letting him know the right thing to do?”

  He thought about it. “Probably,” he said. “Did you do it because you wanted to tell him, or because he needed to hear it?”

  I didn’t even have to think about the answer to that one. “He needed to hear it. Definitely.”

  “So your intentions were good. That’s what matters.”

  “But isn’t, like, the road to hell paved with good intentions?”

  “Yeah, well, so’s the road to heaven. And if you spend too much time thinking about where those good intentions are taking you, you know where you end up?”

  “Jersey?”

  “I was thinking ‘nowhere,’ but you get the point.” The expression on his face darkened again. I could tell he was thinking about work.

  “I’m really sorry about your job,” I told him.

  “I was just fired from a company whose biggest contribution to civilization is a urinal strainer,” he said. “That’s nothing to feel sorry about.” He smiled as he thought about it, then shook his head. “Although sometimes I wonder if ‘the Man Upstairs’ is working me over for something I did.”

  The Man Upstairs, I thought, and something began to trouble me. Because I knew a man upstairs, too.

  “Uh . . . Dad. What reason did they give for firing you?”

  “It was the weirdest thing. They gave me this story about someone making a massive investment in our product development, but only if they fired me.”

  I suddenly felt my skin begin to pull tight, like shrink-wrap on the Night Butcher’s steaks.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Why would anyone do that?”

  Someone gave a ton of money . . . but only if my dad was fired. There was only one person I knew twisted enough to do something like that. Someone who had made a threat to get my dad fired once before.

  When I got to Crawley’s place, the old man didn’t seem surprised to see me. That was my first clue that my suspicions were right on target.

  “I need someone to walk my dogs,” he said as he opened the door.

  “I couldn’t care less,” I told him. “You got my dad fired, didn’t you, you twisted old—”

  “Careful, Mr. Bonano. I don’t take kindly to crude insults.”

  I paced away from him, my fists clenched. Controlling your temper isn’t easy when you really don’t want to control it. If I blew a gasket now, though, I knew it could be a whole lot worse. This guy could end up punishing my whole family for the things I did.

  “You’re a monster,” I told him. “My father worked nine years for that company, and now what is he going to do?”

  He calmly returned to his place on the living-room sofa. “Why is that my problem?”

  I felt like charging at him, but instead let loose a scream of pure rage that got all the dogs barking. And when the dogs quieted down, Crawley said, “Perhaps I can offer him some menial position.” He gave me the nastiest of smirks. “Floor scrubber . . . janitor . . . dog walker.”

  I was about to tell him exactly what he could do with his menial position, but then he said, “Of course there is that new restaurant I recently acquired . . .” He looked off, scratching his temple like this was something that just occurred to him, when clearly it wasn’t.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve decided one restaurant isn’t enough, so I bought a second one a few miles away. An Italian place.”

  “My father is not sweeping your floors!”

  “No, I don’t expect he would.” Crawley looked at me, dragging this out like a sick kid pulling the wings off a fly. “What I really need is a business partner for the new restaurant. Someone who can run it. Someone who knows Italian cooking.”

  I tried to speak, but all that came out was a stuttering, “Duh . . . duh . . . duh.”

  “Do you know of anyone in need of employment who might fit those qualifications?”

  “H-h-how much does it pay?”

  Crawley grinned like the Grinch. “Certainly more than Pisher Plastics.”

  How was I supposed to respond to this? Did Crawley get my father fired just so he could offer him what he always wanted? How twisted is that? It’s like the guy who throws somebody overboard just so he can rescue him and be the big hero. Crawley was so good at pulling strings, and at underhanded manipulation. Did I want my father under Crawley’s thumb? And then I realized with a little bit of relief that it wasn’t my decision to make. It was my father’s.

  “Tell him to pay me a visit,” Crawley said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, sure.” I turned to go, in a bit of a daze. All that was left of my anger was a whole lot of smoke for me to choke on. But before I escaped, Crawley stopped me.

  “One more thing. I have a job for you, too.”

  “Walking dogs?”

  ‘No.’ He grabbed his cane, stood up, and crossed the room toward me. “I understand that you are no longer dating my granddaughter.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “I would like you to pretend that you are when her parents return from Europe.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You see, her parents absolutely despise you, so that makes you my best friend.”

  “How can they despise me? They’ve never even met me!”

  “They despise the concept of you.”

  There are a whole lot of things about rich people I don’t think I’ll ever understand. But somehow I think it’s better that way. “I don’t want to be paid to date Lexie, so keep your money in your grubby little hands where it belongs.”

  “That’s not the job I’m talking about.” He took another step closer, and for the first time, I sensed in him just a little bit of uncertainty. He squinted, like he was examining me, but I could tell he was deciding whether or not to offer me this “job” at all.

  “For the monthly stipend of one hundred dollars, plus expenses, I would like you and my granddaughter to kidnap me once each month.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” he snapped. “You are to kidnap me. You are to catch me by surprise. You are to plan some creative and adventurous event. And if I don’t threaten to have you jailed at least once during the day, then you shall be fired.”

  Then he turned around and went back to the sofa, refusing to look at me again.

  “Kidnap you, huh? I woulda done that for free.”

  “Telling me that is bad business,” he grunted. “Now leave.”

  Even before I mentioned it to my father, I called the Schwa. He knew Crawley—he’d be able to commiserate. But when I dial his number, I get this recording. The number’s been disconnected. At first I thought it must be a mistake, so I dialed again, and got the same thing. There was no forwarding number.

  The feeling I had deep down in my gut was even worse than what I felt when my dad told me how he got fired. It was sundown now. Flurries were falling, and the wind had gotten blizza
rd cold. Still, I got on my bike and rode at full speed to the Schwa’s house.

  There was a FOR SALE sign on the lawn.

  It had red lettering and featured the picture of a realtor, her face grinning out at me. Rona Josephson, million-dollar seller. I had never met the woman, but I already hated her.

  I hurried up to the Schwa’s front door, knocked, and didn’t wait for an answer before I tried the knob. It was locked. I peeked in the little window next to the door, and my worst fear was confirmed. I didn’t see any furniture. I went around the house, looking in every window. The place had been emptied out. There wasn’t even any of the usual junk left in corners when you move—the entire place was clean.

  I was scared now, the way you’re scared when you come home to find someone’s broken in and stolen your stuff. I took down the number of the realtor and left. I don’t carry a cell phone, because my parents told me I’d have to pay for it myself, and there’s no one I’d pay to talk to. The nearest set of pay phones was by the gas station a few blocks away. Four phones. One had a jammed coin slot, two had no receivers, and the last one was hogged by some guy telling his life story. When he saw me coming, he turned his back to me, making it clear he wasn’t giving up the phone. It was only when I started hanging around his car, trying to look as suspicious as possible, that he got off the phone and left.

  I fed whatever change I had in my pocket into the phone and dialed the realtor’s number. A receptionist put me through to Rona Josephson, million-dollar seller.

  “I’m calling about a house for sale. I don’t want to buy it, I just need to get in touch with the people selling it.” Then I gave her the address.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all, “we can’t give out that kind of information.”

  “I don’t care! I need the phone number!”

  “Don’t you take that tone of voice with me! Who do you think you are?”

  This was not going well. I took a deep breath and tried to pretend I wasn’t talking to an imbecile. “I’m sorry. The kid who lived there, he . . . he’s a friend and, uh . . . he left his medicine in my house. But now I don’t know where he is. I have to get him back his medicine.”

  Silence on the other end. I could almost hear the wheels turning in her little realtor’s brain.

  “Do you really want to be responsible for him not getting his medication, Miss Josephson?”

  More silence. I heard her clicking on her computer, then flipping pages in a notebook. “It says here the property is being sold by a Mrs. Margaret Taylor. The address is in Queens, but I can’t quite read my assistant’s writing.”

  “That can’t be right. What about Schwa? Somebody named Schwa should be selling it.”

  “Sorry, it’s Taylor.” I heard more flipping pages. “And my assistant’s notes seem to indicate it has been vacant for months, so you obviously have the wrong house.”

  Now it was my turn to be silent. I could hear the gears turning in my own brain, and I didn’t like it at all.

  A recording broke in, announcing that I needed another twenty-five cents to continue the call.

  “Hello, are you there?” asked Rona Josephson, million-dollar seller.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.” And hung up.

  At first I was freaked, then I was mad. So the Schwa finally did it. He not only disappeared, but he became like a black hole, sucking in his father, too, and everything they owned. I was going to call Lexie, but I didn’t have any more change. What was the point anyway—she would just tell me what she always told me: “There’s got to be a rational explanation.” But what if there wasn’t? And what if when I called Lexie, she said, “Calvin who?” What if I was the only person left who remembered him—and what if I woke up tomorrow morning and didn’t remember him either?

  No! It wouldn’t happen. I would not allow it to happen, but I didn’t see how I had any choice in the matter. If the Schwa was right, and he was destined to disappear from memory, what could I do to change that?

  As for what I did next, it came, as most of the world’s great ideas do, while I was on the can. Maybe the shock of the Schwa’s vanishing act did something to my insides, but whatever it was, there was no way I was making it home on a bicycle without a pit stop. So there I am in the stall at Fuggettaburger, trying not to look at the Pisher toilet-paper dispenser, and I catch sight of the things people have scrawled into the wall. The stuff you usually find on the walls of a bathroom is about as Neanderthal as you can get—which is why we often call the boys’ bathroom at school the Wendell Tiggor Reading Room. The Fuggettaburger bathroom had its share of unreadable phone numbers, and poems that started, Here I sit, brokenhearted. Then, suddenly, as I’m looking at all this drivel, I get an uncontrollable urge to put something up there myself. I take a pen from my jacket pocket, and I start scratching a picture onto the wall. I’m not on the short list when it comes to artistic talent, but I can do faces okay. So I draw this face. Just a few simple lines, wispy hair. Then beneath it I write, The Schwa Was Here. And, for a final touch, right on his forehead, I draw an upside down e—you know, like a schwa in the dictionary.

  Just like that.

  By the time I leave Fuggettaburger, I’m a man with a mission. I went down the street to the pharmacy and bought myself one of those black permanent markers. Not the skinny kind, but the real thick ones. I drew the same thing right over a bus-stop billboard, only this time it was with much thicker lines. I did it on a park bench. I got on the subway and put Schwas inside as many cars as I could. A few people made noises. Mumbled words like “vandal” and stuff like that, but I just ignored them, because I knew this wasn’t graffiti. This wasn’t tagging. That’s all about making your mark and labeling territory. I was making someone else’s mark. The Schwa Was Here. I didn’t care if people saw me, I didn’t care if I got caught, because what I was doing was noble, and God help anyone who tried to stop me.

  That day I must have put up maybe a hundred Schwas all over Brooklyn, and when I finally got home, my hand was covered in black ink. I felt like I had run a marathon—that feeling of exhaustion and incredible accomplishment all rolled together.

  It was past eleven, and my mother was waiting at the door. “Where were you?” she yelled. “We almost called the police.”

  “I was vandalizing bus stops and public restrooms,” I said. She grounded me until the fall of civilization, and I took it like a man.

  Dad was sitting in the living room watching TV, with Christina dozing in his lap. Frankie was asleep after a day of community service. I told my dad he should give Old Man Crawley a call. I told him it was important. He gave me that “what?” expression, and I gave him that “don’t ask me” look.

  When I got to my room, I didn’t go to sleep. I knew what I had to do. I got online and pulled up the Queens phone book. Margaret Taylor. She was the person selling the house. There were fifty-six Margaret Taylors in Queens, and two hundred sixty-seven M. Taylors. The next morning, I began making calls.

  22. My Anonymous Contribution to Popular Culture and to My Parents’ Phone Bill

  “Hello, is this Margaret Taylor?”

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “Are you selling a house in Brooklyn?”

  “Brooklyn? No, I’m sorry.”

  “Okay. Thanks anyway.”

  The Schwa didn’t show up the next week, or the next, or the next. I wasn’t surprised. I went to the attendance office to check if his school records had been transferred, but someone had misplaced his entire file. That didn’t surprise me either. What surprised me was the Schwa face I saw drawn in the Wendell Tiggor Reading Room. It looked like the faces I had drawn around town, but I hadn’t drawn one in this bathroom. Plus, The Schwa Was Here was written in a handwriting that didn’t look like mine at all.

  “Hello, I’m calling for Margaret Taylor.”

  “You found her. What can I do for you?”

  “I hear you’re selling a house in Brooklyn.”

  “Ho
ney, if I owned a house anywhere, I wouldn’t be selling it.”

  I dreamed about the Schwa one night. In the dream I was standing in the middle of Times Square. A bus goes by, and on the side of the bus, instead of an advertisement for a Broadway show, it’s a picture of the Schwa. I look at a bus stop—there he is again. I look up in the sky, he’s on the Goodyear Blimp—and finally the giant electronic billboard overlooking Times Square has him on a live video feed.

  “Antsy!” the Schwa yells down from the giant screen. “Antsy—tell them to look! Make them look at me, Antsy!” I glance around, and even though there’s like fourteen thousand people hurrying by, not one of them is looking at the billboards. “Make them look, Antsy! Make them look!”

  Then suddenly I’m standing inside the gondola of the Goodyear Blimp, and the New York Jets are there. So’s Darth Vader. You know how dreams are.

  I rode the bus to school that day, thinking about the dream. There were no advertisements featuring the Schwa on the bus to school, or on the bus home. But on the way home, I caught sight of something strange. It was snowing. Just a dusting, really. The kind of stuff that sticks, but doesn’t hang around till morning. You might be able to scrape a snowball or two off a cold car hood, but it’s not worth the effort.

  So I’m looking out of the window of the bus, thinking about Lexie, and how her parents were due home any day, and wondering if they might send her to some private school on an uncharted island to get her away from me, when all of a sudden I see a schwa drawn in the thin layer of snow on the back window of a parked Chevy. I get out at the next stop and go back to find it, but by the time I get there, the car’s gone.

  “Hello, I’d like to speak to M. Taylor.”

  “Speaking. Who’s this?”

  “Sorry, sir. Wrong number.”

  My mother thought I was nuts, the way I spent an hour every evening making these calls. She thought I must have been driven temporarily insane by puberty, or something. In addition to giving me zits and body odor, it made me a phone freak. The way I saw it, though, it was a kind of a penance. My personal punishment for taking advantage of the Schwa the way I did when we first discovered the Schwa Effect, and for pushing him away because I wanted to be the one dating Lexie. And for not taking him to the Night Butcher before he blew all that money on the billboard. Picking up that phone and calmly dialing one stranger after another was like some weird badge of honor. It became a part of my daily routine—something I did without thinking—like the way I would look for schwas drawn in new places each time I went out. I was finding a lot of them. Christina must have seen them, too, because she drew one on her lunch box. I couldn’t explain it any more than I could explain why I felt compelled to make those calls every day.