Нил Шустерман: The Schwa Was Here

That’s how it was with the Schwa. It was too much for most kids to really believe the Schwa Effect, but people were curi­ous—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?I” 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.

“Yeah,” said Howie. “I can think of a hundred better ways to make money.”

They were still pretty annoyed about the grade we had got­ten on our Schwa experiments. “F for eFFort,” Mr. Werthog had said. He thought the whole thing was a scam when, for once, it wasn’t. After that, Ira and Howie wanted nothing to do with Stealth Economics.

“Why don’t you forget this Schwa thing and help with my next movie,” Ira said. “Gerritsen Beach Beauties.”

“I’m casting director,” says Howie, beaming with pride that may have just been hormones.

I told them no, because I couldn’t just bail on the Schwa.

“Suit yourself,” Ira said. “But when we’re surrounded by babes begging for a part in the film, don’t come crying to us.”

In the end no girls were stupid enough to audition for them, so they had to settle for Claymation. Stealth Economics, on the other hand, turned out to be a much better business decision than anyone thought.

Once Mary Ellen MacCaw spread the word, people began to devise more and more uses for the Schwa’s unique talent. A bunch of jocks paid the Schwa ten bucks to eavesdrop on a gaggle of cheerleaders and find out which guys they were talk­ing about. I negotiated an eighteen-dollar deal for the Schwa to slip a kid’s late book report into a teacher’s briefcase, right be­neath the teacher’s nose.

“We want to put the Schwa on retainer,” our eighth-grade student officers told us barely a week into our little business. In other words, they wanted to pay him a lot of money ahead of time so they could ask him to do whatever they wanted, when­ever they wanted it.

“Cool,” the Schwa said.

“How much?” I asked.

I negotiated them up to ten bucks a week for service-on-de­mand. The Schwa cost more than cable!

They used him a lot in the first few weeks he was on retainer. Mostly they asked him to go into the teachers’ lounge, hang out in a corner, and report back to the student government on all gossip. He always slipped in right behind one of the fatter teachers, and never got caught. The student officers also had him hang out in the cafeteria kitchen to see who was mooching all those missing snack cakes, because the principal was blam­ing it on students. It turned out to be Mr. Spanks, the school security guard.

“We’d like to sign him up as an investigative reporter,” the journalism class said, after they heard how old Spanky got busted. But the class officers made a big stink since they al­ready had him on retainer, claiming we couldn’t work for both government and the press, so we had to tell them no.

The jobs made us decent money for doing nothing more than not getting noticed—but it was dares that payed the most, depending on how many kids paid into it. Since I acted as the bank, paying out of my own pocket when we lost, the Schwa and I shared our dare winnings fifty-fifty.

“I dare the Schwa to walk into the principal’s office, thumb his nose at Principal Assinette, then leave, without being seen.”

Piece of cake. Total take: $32.

“I dare the Schwa to cut in front of Guido Buccafeo in the lunch line without being noticed, then dip his finger in Guido’s mashed potatoes, and not get beaten up.”

No problem. Total take: $26.

“I dare the Schwa to spend an entire day at school wearing nothing but a Speedo and not be noticed by his teachers.”

We lost twenty-two bucks on that one, but he made it all the way to third period!

I told the Schwa he was like Millard Fillmore—the president famous for going unnoticed—and as his manager, I found my middle-finger syndrome fading away. I was suddenly being treated with respect.

“It’s all gonna crash and burn,” Ira kept telling me after Ralphy Sherman started spreading the rumor that the Schwa could teleport. No one believed it, but it still damaged our credibility. “It’s like Las Vegas,” Ira said. “No matter how much you think you’re winning, the odds are stacked against you.”

I reminded him we had already scientifically proven that the odds were on our side. “We can still cut you in on the action,” I offered him—and then I had to add, “You can take your money and buy more clay.” Ira was not amused.

Still, no matter how much he and Howie frowned on our scheme, it didn’t faze the Schwa, so I tried not to let it faze me.

“You oughta go into business school, Antsy,” the Schwa told me as we scarfed down fries at Fuggettaburger. “You’ve got a real knack for it.”

“Naah,” I said. “I’m just leeching off of you.” But still, what he said struck a chord in me—and no minor chord either. It was the first time anyone ever accused me of having any real talent. I mean, my mother sometimes says I should go into astrophysics, but that’s just because I’m good at taking up time and space.

I don’t know what came over me then. Maybe I felt I knew the Schwa well enough—or maybe I was just talented at screw­ing up a good situation. Whatever the reason, I turned to him and asked: “So, Schwa—what really happened to your mother?”

I felt him go stiff. I mean I really felt it, like we were con­nected in some freaky way. He finished his fries, I finished mine. We left. Then, just as we hit the street, he said, “She dis­appeared when I was five.” And then he added, “Don’t ask me again, okay?”

As for what happened next, call it fate, call it luck, call it what­ever you want, but the next dare was the one that changed our lives. It could be that both of our lives were leading up to this moment. But I always wonder what would have happened if we didn’t take Wendell Tiggor’s dare.