The Schwa Was Here

destination.”

I gotta admit, I impressed myself with how well I could pre­tend to be clever, until she said, “You’re so full of crap!”

I laughed so hard practically my whole Coke sprayed out of my nose.

“Tell me something about you that I don’t know,” she asked.

“Okay, let’s see ...” I scanned through all the things she didn’t know about me, which was about everything.

“I got two webbed toes on each foot.”

“Ooh! A mutant!”

“Yeah, and if you ask to feel them, I’m out of here.”

“Well, maybe when we go swimming someday.”

“Okay, your turn.”

“I’ll tell you about Moxie,” she said. “Most people think it’s for ’moxie’, the word that means ’gutsy’, but it’s not. You see, when I was little and I got sick, that’s what I used to say to my parents—’Moxie! Moxie!’ Because they always gave me amoxi­cillin, and I knew it was supposed to make me feel better. So when they brought me a Seeing Eye dog, I called him Moxie, because from the moment I had him, I felt better about being blind.”

“That’s nice,” I said, avoiding the more common “that’s cool,” because her story deserved more respect than that.

“You know, I wasn’t born blind,” she said. “I fell out of my stroller when I was a year old, and hit the back of my head on the curb.”

Just imagining it made me grimace. “The back of your head?”

“That’s where the visual cortex is. It’s kind of like a movie screen at the back of your brain. Without it your eyes can work just fine, but there’s no place to show the movie.”

“Wow,” I said, wishing I knew a more respectful word for wow.

“I’m lucky. It happened early enough that I was able to com­pensate and adjust. It’s harder the older you are.”

“Do you remember seeing at all?”

It took a while for her to answer that one. “I remember . . . remembering. But that’s as close as I can get.”

“Do you miss it?”

She shrugged. “How can you miss what you don’t remember?”

Whether she liked it or not, Lexie had a bit of her grandfather in her when it came to bending the world to suit her. She could wrap the world around her finger like a yo-yo string and play with it to her heart’s content. She definitely toyed with me on a regular basis, but that was only because she knew I liked being her yo-yo.

She also knew all the right strings to pull once she finally set­tled on how to give her grandfather “trauma therapy.”

“It took lots of money,” she told me, “and lots of favors, but it will be worth it because it’s exactly what my grandfather needs to break him out of his shell.” Then she said, “Of course I can’t tell you what I’m planning, but I promise when it happens, you’ll be in on it.”

This was one of those times I didn’t like being toyed with. I kept no secrets from her, except of course for the secrets I kept from everybody, so why couldn’t she tell me what she was plan­ning?

“Aw, please?” I begged, feeling stupid, but heck, if she could give Moxie a treat when he begged, maybe her compassion ex­tended to two-legged creatures. No such luck.

“It’s no use,” she said, putting her palm against my lips to shut me up. “You’ll find out when you find out.” Then she added, “And don’t ask Calvin, because he won’t tell you either.”

I moved her hand off my face so I could gape in deeply offended disbelief, and it really annoyed me that she was blind, because my deeply offended gape fell on deaf ears.

“You told the Schwa, but you won’t tell me?”

“Calvin can keep a secret.”

“So can I!”

She laughed. “You? You’re like Radio Antsy—all news, all the time. If I told you, even the dogs would be barking it by morning.”

“Very funny.”

So the Schwa and Lexie were sharing things that Lexie wouldn’t share with me. So what. I put my arm around her in a way that only a boyfriend can. That was something she and the Schwa didn’t share. I hoped.

Okay, I admit feeling pretty jealousy about it (that’s feeling jealous and lousy all at once). For a few seconds ... well, maybe more than just a few seconds, I wished the Schwa would really disappear.

Later I’d feel real guilty about that.

13. A Russian Train, a Pulsing Vein, and My Mother’s Bag of Snails

Mrs. Greenblatt, who lived two doors down from us, was not blind, but she was extremely nearsighted. I figured she never had laser surgery on her eyes because it would have been physically impossible to implant the Hubble Telescope in her cornea, which is what she needed. Her near­sightedness wasn’t really a problem, except for the fact that she often mistook me for my brother, and lately even my father. However, things came to a head one day. Literally. I wasn’t home when it happened, but I heard the story from so many different people it was like watching on one of those multi-angle DVDs. About three in the afternoon, while Mrs. Green­blatt was trimming her hedges, she came across a human head wedged in the bushes. She died of a heart attack about three times, then ran inside to call the police. I’d love to hear that 911 tape.

By the time the police arrived, half the neighborhood had heard the screaming and came over to investigate. The police went into her yard and came out with a head, just like Mrs. Greenblatt said. She claimed to be having several more heart attacks, until she found out the head wasn’t human. It was the head of Manny Bullpucky— slightly dented and singed from our attempt to blow him up, but otherwise completely intact.

My brother Frankie got it back for us, and that evening I snapped it onto Manny’s body, then called Ira and Howie to let them know. We began to plan his death one more time.

“Can I come to one of your demolition sessions?” Lexie asked when I told her about it. “It sounds like fun.”

“Sure,” I told her, although I was doubtful about how much she would get out of merely hearing Manny’s destruction. I figured it would be good to have her there, because things were strained between Howie, Ira, and me. Killing Manny was the only thing we had in common anymore.

We met at about four o’clock on Saturday. Our crime scene was the elevated subway station in Brighton Beach, which was pretty deserted on weekends this time of year.

“I don’t like this place,” Howie says as we climbed the steps. “I mean, is it elevated? Or is it a subway? It can’t be both. It gives me the creeps.”

We figured we could get away with making Manny a subway victim here, because Brighton Beach is mostly Russian these days, therefore normal laws, rules, and space-time physics don’t always apply. Besides, the police are more worried about the Russian Mafia than about a bunch of kids. You don’t want to mess with the Russian Mafia. They make Mob guys like John Gotti look like Mr. Rogers. In Brighton Beach it’s always a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and if you don’t agree, you may end up sleeping with the beluga.

So anyways, Ira’s got his camera filming Manny, who’s slouch­ing on a bench, looking like a postapocalyptic crash-test dummy. “With what this guy’s been through, he could be a superhero.”

“We shoulda done this on a weekday, during rush hour,” Howie says. “The more people on the train, the higher gross tonnage. Maximum breakage potential.”

“Yeah, but we could derail it,” I said, for like the fourteen thousandth time. “Better an empty train than a crowded one.”