Нил Шустерман: The Schwa Was Here

“I guess he kinda slipped in under everybody’s radar,” I said.

“Has anyone bothered to check if the color of his eyes really changes?” Howie asked.

“I don’t want to get that close,” said Ira.

There was silence for a second, and then Howie let off a shiver that I could feel like a tremor.

Mr. Werthog, our science teacher, has a weird twitch in his lip, like he’s always kissing the air. It’s something you never can get used to, and might explain why my science grade keeps dropping. You just can’t concentrate on his words when you look at him. The only time it gets him into trouble, though, is during parent conference night. One guy punched him out for making kissy faces at his wife.

Now he stood in front of a science experiment featuring a large beaker filled with ice and a long thermometer. On the board he writes 34°, then turned to us. “The scientific method (kiss) is one of hypothesis, trial (kiss), results, and conclusion (kiss, kiss).”

Someone next to me taps my arm. “Hi, Antsy.”

I turn, actually surprised to see someone there. It’s like I never realized there was even a desk next to me in science. For an in­stant I don’t recognize the face—like no part of it is distinctive enough to stick to my memory—a face like mental Teflon.

“It’s me—Calvin Schwa.”

“Hey, Schwa—how ya doin?”

“Mr. Bonano, are you (kiss) with us today?”

“Uh ... yeah, I guess.” I don’t kiss back, on account of I once got dragged to the office for that. Mr. Werthog is sensitive that way.

“As I was saying, (kiss) can anyone give me the hypothesis leading to today’s experiment?”

The Schwa’s hand is up in an instant, before anyone else’s. We’re in the third row, right in the middle, but Werthog looks over his hand to Amy van Zandt, in the last row.

“Water at room temperature will boil if left in the sun.”

“Abominably incorrect!” He pours a packet of powder into the icy beaker, and stirs it. The water turns cloudly. “Anyone else?”

The Schwa’s hand is still up. Werthog calls on LoQuisha Peel.

“Lemonade reacts with ice to quench thirst?” LoQuisha says.

“Even more wrong (kiss, kiss).” He pours in a second packet of powder. The ice in the beaker begins to melt quickly. By now the Schwa is waving his hand back and forth across Werthog’s field of vision like a signal flare. Werthog calls on Dennis Fiorello.

“Uh ...” Dennis puts down his hand. “Never mind.”

The Schwa turns to me, grumbling beneath his breath. “He never calls on me.”

That’s when I raise my hand.

“Ah! Mr. Bonano. Do you have the answer?”

“No, but I’ll bet the Schwa does.”

He looks at me like I’m speaking Latin. “Excuse me?”

“You know: Calvin Schwa.”

Werthog turns his head slightly and his eyes refocus. “Calvin!” he says, like he’s surprised he’s even here. “Can you (kiss) give us the answer?”

“The reaction between reagents A and B is an exothermic re­action.”

“Excellent! And is our hypothesis proven, or disproven?”

“Proven. All the ice melted when you added reagent B, so it’s exothermic.”

Werthog pulls out the thermometer, marks down the tem­perature on the board, 89°, and continues his lesson.

The Schwa turns to me and whispers, “Thanks. At least now he won’t mark me absent today.”

I shake my head and laugh. “I swear, it’s like you’re invisible or something.” I say it like a joke, but then I catch the Schwa’s eyes—eyes that match the gray clouds outside the window. He doesn’t say anything, and I know I just stumbled onto some­thing. He turns back to his notebook, but I can’t concentrate on my work. I feel like my foot is pressed down on a land mine that will blow the second I move.

Howie, Ira, and I got together the next Saturday morning to detonate Manny. I had told the Schwa about it the day before, but in a way I was hoping he wouldn’t show—almost as much as I hoped he would. I call it the “film-at-eleven factor.” You know, on the news, how they say, “Horrible train wreck. Graphic footage. Film at eleven.” And then for the rest of the night you’re disgusted by how much you actually want to see it, and you’re relieved if you fall asleep before it comes on.

The thing is, I can’t get past the feeling that there’s something... unnatural about the Schwa. I don’t do well with un­natural things. Take spiders, for instance. I mean, sorry, I don’t care what anyone says—there can’t be anything natural about spinning a web out of your butt. And then there’s those Hindu coal walkers. The way I see it, if God meant us to walk on hot coals, He would have given us asbestos hooves instead of feet—but first He probably would have smashed us in the head a couple of times to knock some sense into us, because why would we want to walk on coals in the first place? And don’t even get me started on my aunt Rose’s Christmas tree. First of all, it’s aluminum. Second of all, it’s pink. I mean, like the color of Pepto-Bismol, which makes sense, because I get sick to my stomach just looking at it.

Not that the Schwa is anything like a spider, or a coal walker, or a pink tree, but he is unnatural in his own disturbing Schwa­like way.

So anyway, it’s seven on Saturday morning as we prepare Manny Bullpucky for detonation. I’m busy taping an M-80 firecracker to his forehead, but my mind’s obviously not on my work because I bury the whole fuse beneath the duct tape.

“You’re a real pyrotechnic wizard, Antsy,” says Ira as he pulls off the tape and redoes it.

Behind me, Howie’s upturning lawn furniture, building a barricade for us to hide behind when Manny blows.

“I’ve been thinking about the Schwa,” I said, loud enough for both Howie and Ira to hear.

“Yeah, so?” said Ira.

“I’ve been thinking there’s something wrong with him.”

“Like he’s retarded, you mean?”

Howie’s disgusted by this. “The proper term is ‛mentally handicapped,’” he says. “Otherwise retards get offended.”

“No,” I tell them. “The Schwa’s not mentally handicapped—it’s something else—and don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Hey, didn’t I say there was something weird about him?” Ira said. “I mean, like the way he always just appears, like he’s spy­ing on you. He’s sneaky. Weaselly ...”

“I don’t think he means to be,” I told them. “It’s just . . . It’s just like he always happens to be standing in your blind spot.”

“Yeah, and when he’s around, every spot is a blind spot,” said Ira. “It’s friggin’ weird. It’s like he’s a ghost, or something.”

“You gotta be dead to be a ghost,” I reminded him. “No . . . It’s more like he’s ...” I search for the right word. “It’s like he’s functionally invisible.”

“The proper term is ‛observationally challenged,’” Howie says.

“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?”