The Schwa Was Here

That’s when Lexie comes up the stairs with Moxie, and some­one else. It takes me a moment to realize it’s the Schwa.

I hadn’t invited him. Not intentionally, of course—he just slipped my mind like always. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would come with Lexie. That’s how far out of my mind he had slipped. It spooked me out, the way it spooks you out when you can’t remember something simple, like your phone number, or how to spell your middle name. I heard someone say that when that happens, it means the brain cells that held the information just died, and your brain’s gotta find the infor­mation in some backup file. This was not a good thing, because if the Schwa Effect was actually killing all the brain cells that re­membered him, I could end up as brain-dead as a Tiggorhoid.

“Hi, Antsy,” said the Schwa.

“Hi, Anthony,” said Lexie.

The Schwa introduced Lexie, and everyone was polite enough, although Ira and Howie made secret cracks about how they look together—then snickered like a couple of fifth graders. I couldn’t get past how awkward this all felt. But the Schwa didn’t seem to feel awkward at all. He stood there grinning like an idiot, and clutching Lexie’s arm like he was escorting her to the Academy Awards.

“Who’s gonna do the honors?” Ira asked.

Usually Howie volunteered to throw Manny to his death, but right now he was too busy staring at Lexie, waving his hand in front of her face. “So you don’t see anything at all?” he says. “Not even shadows?”

“Nope.”

“When you’re blind, you’re blind,” I said.

“Not always,” Howie says. “There are blind people who can read large-print books.”

“That’s ?legally blind,’” Lexie explained. “I’m not legally blind.”

“Yeah,” I said, “she’s illegally blind. Now can we get on with this?”

“Lexie,” said the Schwa, still holding her by the elbow, “would you like me to guide you to a bench?”

“That’s all right, Calvin, I’d rather stand.”

Ira and Howie shared a look that could have meant any one of a dozen nasty things, then Howie turned to the Schwa. “So, Schwa, done any good vanishing tricks lately?”

While Howie taunted the Schwa, Lexie whispered my name to Moxie, and he led her over to me. “It doesn’t sound like you’re having fun,” she said.

“How do you know? I’ve barely said a thing.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Well, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

A train crashed past on the far track, and Lexie reached up to touch my face.

“Don’t,” I told her. “Not in front of the Schwa.” But she couldn’t hear me over the roar of the train. As soon as the train had passed, she leaned in close and whispered, “I really had fun the other night. Let’s go to the movies again.” Then she kissed me.

When I looked up, the Schwa was standing right behind her.

I had no idea how long he had been there, or what he had seen. All I know is that the sky up above was a clear ice blue, and so were his eyes. Piercing ice blue.

Usually Lexie knows exactly where everyone’s standing, but not all the time. I could tell she had no idea that the Schwa was right there. “Moxie, bench.” Moxie led her over to a bench, and she sat down.

The Schwa waited until she was gone, just staring at me with those icy eyes. He seemed calm, but there was this vein pulsing in the translucent skin of his forehead. “Why did she kiss you?”

I shrugged. “Don’t read too much into it. That’s just the way she is.”

“No,” he said. “She doesn’t kiss me like that. I mean, some­times she kisses me on the forehead like ...”

He looked over to see Lexie stroking Moxie. He licked her face, and she gave him a kiss. On the head.

“Like that...” the Schwa said. Until that moment I suppose he had been legally blind to the situation, but now it was spread out for him in large print. I knew it would have to hap­pen eventually, but I was hoping I’d get lucky, and the world would get struck by a comet or something first.

“I’m sorry, Schwa, okay? I’m really sorry.”

He responded with icy eyes, and a pulsing vein.

Far off a horn blew, and I could see the headlights of a train coming around the bend.

“It’s an express!” yells Howie, all excited. “It’s not gonna stop here—it won’t even slow down! Maximum breakage potential!”

I didn’t need a second invitation. Anything to look away from the Schwa’s eyes. I grabbed Manny by the scruff of his neck, dragged him to the caution line, and hurled him into the path of the approaching train. I caught a quick glimpse of the conductor’s surprised face before Manny disappeared beneath the wheels. Car after car raced past, and in a few moments the train was gone.

“Did it work?” Lexie asked. “What happened?”

Long story short, Manny Bullpucky was not stronger than a locomotive. Manny didn’t just break, he shattered. He was hit so hard, pieces of him flew out of the station, to the street below. There were body parts around Brighton Beach for weeks, which was nothing new, only these parts were plastic. The Q express train had sent Manny to the great recycling bin in the sky.

“I’m gonna miss him,” Ira said as he packed up his camera and turned to go.

When I looked for the Schwa, I didn’t see him anywhere, and for the life of me I didn’t know whether he had left or just blended into the station. It wasn’t until Lexie asked me to es­cort her home that I really knew he was gone.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “That’s not like him to leave without saying good-bye.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” I said. “How could you be so . . . so ...”

“So what?”

“Never mind. Forget I said anything.” I reached over and took Moxie’s harness, putting it gently into her hand. “Better hold on to Amoxicillin,” I told her. “I have a feeling you’re gonna need him to make you feel better.”

***

“How could you have done that to him?” I asked Lexie after I had gotten her home.

She glared at me. Not with her eyes, but with her whole face, which was worse. “In case you’ve forgotten, you did it, too.”

I knew she was right, and it just made me angrier. We sat in the living room of her grandfather’s apartment, listening to the sudden November downpour. Crawley’s nurse, who had al­ready made it clear that she was a cat person, had walked the dogs in the rain because I hadn’t shown up on time to do it. Now the whole apartment was toxic with wet dog, and the nurse gave me dirty looks every time she passed by.

“I thought he understood that we were friends,” Lexie said.

“I don’t believe you. Just because you couldn’t see the dopey love-look on his face doesn’t mean you couldn’t hear it in his voice.”

Lexie was getting teary-eyed, but I wasn’t feeling too sympa­thetic.

“Maybe I just didn’t want to hear it, okay? Maybe I wanted a little bit of both of you. Is that so terrible?”

Then something occurred to me. “You’ve never really gone out with boys before, have you?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

By her tone of voice, I knew it was true. “A lot more than you think,” I told her. See, I know girls and guys who have become masters of manipulation when it came to dating. Instinctively I knew Lexie wasn’t one of those slippery types. Yes, she had manipulated us, but there was an innocence about it. Like she got tossed too many boys to juggle, and so she was doing it not because she enjoyed it, but because she didn’t know what else to do.

She didn’t speak for a long time. She just wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then reached down to pet Moxie. Moxie was pushed away by the sins and virtues, who wanted attention as well, and that just frustrated her even more.

“I tend to intimidate the boys at my school,” she finally said. “I’m very outgoing, and most of them aren’t. You see, it’s a very exclusive school, and a lot of the kids have been much more sheltered than me. I guess they