Нил Шустерман - The Schwa Was Here

“I’ve solved at least part of the mystery,” the Schwa said, ignoring Ira and Howie just as well as they ignored him.

“Which mystery?”

“Crawley’s granddaughter.”

At this, Ira and Howie couldn’t help but show a little bit of interest.

“What did you find out?” I asked.

“Take a look for yourself.”

He hands me this printout of a page he must have gotten from some old Internet newpaper archive. An old society page from the Daily News. It shows a picture of a baby with the cap­tion: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Crawley III announce the birth of a daughter, Lexis Lynn Crawley.

As Ira and Howie huddled around me to look at the picture, Schwa got shouldered out of the way.

“Lexis?” said Ira. “She’s named after a car?”

“Spelled differently,” I pointed out.

“Well,” says Howie, “it looks like she didn’t have a peg head at birth.”

In fact, it didn’t look like there was anything wrong with baby Lexis at all. “Hey, wait a second,” I said. “Look at the date on that article—she’s not a little kid at all. She’s our age.”

“Hmm,” said Ira. “Whatever’s wrong with her, maybe she wasn’t born with it.”

“Maybe she developed leprosy at puberty,” says Howie. “I hear that happens.”

“Yeah, maybe in Calcutta or something, but not in Brooklyn.”

“Maybe she traveled,” says Howie, “and brought it back with her, like the flu or mad cow.”

“Well,” says Ira, “whatever’s up with her, you’ll find out soon enough.” He and Howie returned to their spot on the floor and picked up their game controllers.

“C’mon, Antsy, you playing or what?”

The Schwa may have been used to being treated like he wasn’t there, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. I could see an anger beginning to rise in him, simmering like beef stew in my mother’s Crock-Pot, which meant indigestion and heartburn were only moments away.

“Hey!” he shouted to Howie and Ira. “The ice cream man’s giving out free Popsicles,” he said. If they heard him, they ig­nored him. He got louder. “Did you hear Martians invaded Long Island?” No response. His Crock-Pot began to boil. “Tidal wave’s headed for Brooklyn,” the Schwa shouted at them. “We have five minutes to live.”

Howie and Ira just kept on playing.

I could see what was about to happen here. It was what you call “en passant.” It’s a move in chess. One pawn gives an enemy pawn the cold shoulder as it moves two squares ahead. So the ignored pawn has the right to kick the rude pawn’s sorry butt off the board, just because it wants to. It’s the only move I know where you get busted just for ignoring the enemy.

So here I am standing in my own basement, watching Howie and Ira walking straight into an en passant. It was their way of putting our friendship to the test. We’ve had enough of the Schwa, is what they were silently saying. Are you our friend, or are you his?

I should have done what I always do when I’m losing a chess match: accidentally knock over the board. But the Schwa made his move before I could do a thing, cutting in front of me and advancing on Howie and Ira. I stood back and let him do it. It was his right, and I wasn’t going to rob him of it. He got in front of them, blocking their view of their video game. “Hey, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m here.”

Ira paused the game to keep his character from getting mauled by Howie’s mutant. “We know you’re here,” Ira says. “Now do us all a favor and stop being here.”

Then the Schwa reached over and ejected the game from the system. The screen went black.

“Let’s see if you notice me now!” And he cracked the game disc in half.

This was the unthinkable. All three of us stared at the Schwa in shock. The Schwa dropped the broken disc and stormed up­stairs. Howie and Ira looked at me, still in denial that the game had indeed been destroyed.

“You gonna let him get away with that?” Ira asked.

“Shut up! Just shut up, okay?” I ran upstairs after the Schwa, taking three steps at a time, not even sure what I was gonna do when I caught him. He broke my game, so a pounding was in order, right? But I didn’t feel like pounding him. I felt more like pounding Ira and Howie. By the time I got upstairs, the Schwa was already out the front door. I didn’t catch up with him until he was halfway to the corner, and I practically had to wrestle him until he stopped.

“What, are you totally psycho?” I shouted.

“Maybe I am!” he screamed back at me. “Maybe that’s just what I am. Maybe I’m that quiet guy who suddenly goes nuts and then you find half the neighborhood in his freezer.”

I gotta admit, that one stumped me for a second—but only for a second. “Which half?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Which half of the neighborhood? Could you make it the people on the other side of Avenue T, because I never really liked them anyway.”

I could see him trying to force down a grin. “You’re not funny.”

“So you gonna tell me why you trashed my game?”

“You said I’d be a legend.”

“What?”

“Going into Old Man Crawley’s—surviving to talk about it. ‛You’ll be a legend,’ you said. But I’m not. Not even Tiggor and the Tiggorhoids care. They’ve already forgotten I exist.”

“Why do you even care about those boneheads?”

“It’s not just them,” he says. “It’s everyone. I’m sick of being looked over. Shut out. And now even Crawley’s forgetting about me, and picking you for granddaughter duty.”

“So what? It doesn’t look like it’s gonna be much fun.”

He took a deep breath. “Sometimes . . . sometimes I’m just afraid I’ll end up like ...”

But he refused to finish the thought. He left and I didn’t follow him, because I knew he didn’t want me to. Instead I just went back home. Dump the board. End the game. Nobody loses.

When I got back home, Howie and Ira were playing another video game.

“That guy’s one egg short of a full deck,” Howie says.

“You should sue,” says Ira.

I tried to say something, but words failed me. I understood why the Schwa did what he did. He had stood in front of them, and still he wasn’t visible. He broke the game, and even then it didn’t change anything. By tomorrow Howie and Ira will have forgotten about it.

Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll end up just like . ..

Just like who? And suddenly I could hear the Schwa’s voice in my head. Just like my mother. That’s what he was going to say!

“Are you gonna play, Antsy, or just stand there?”

I wanted to talk to them about what the Schwa had said, but I knew it was pointless. It was like Howie and Ira were now on the other side of thick soundproof glass.

“I’m not feeling too good,” I told them. “Maybe you guys should go.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I feel a case of leprosy coming on.”

They stood and said their good-byes. It took a bit longer and was a bit more awkward than the usual “see ya.” Maybe be­cause somewhere deep down we all knew that this wasn’t “see ya.” This was more like “so long.”

I put the Schwa out of my mind, which is not hard to do, as you already know. Even with his meltdown, even with the broken game disc, I woke up in the morning without him crossing my mind once. My thoughts were occupied with the mystery of Lexie Crawley. She was fourteen, not four. I wish Crawley would have told me that up front. It put a whole new spin on the situation.