The Schwa Was Here

and be the big hero. Craw­ley was so good at pulling strings, and at underhanded manip­ulation. Did I want my father under Crawley’s thumb? And then I realized with a little bit of relief that it wasn’t my deci­sion to make. It was my father’s.

“Tell him to pay me a visit,” Crawley said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, sure.” I turned to go, in a bit of a daze. All that was left of my anger was a whole lot of smoke for me to choke on. But before I escaped, Crawley stopped me.

“One more thing. I have a job for you, too.”

“Walking dogs?”

“No.” He grabbed his cane, stood up, and crossed the room toward me. “I understand that you are no longer dating my granddaughter.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I would like you to pretend that you are when her parents return from Europe.”

“Excuse me?”

“You see, her parents absolutely despise you, so that makes you my best friend.”

“How can they despise me? They’ve never even met me!”

“They despise the concept of you.”

There are a whole lot of things about rich people I don’t think I’ll ever understand. But somehow I think it’s better that way. “I don’t want to be paid to date Lexie, so keep your money in your grubby little hands where it belongs.”

“That’s not the job I’m talking about.” He took another step closer, and for the first time, I sensed in him just a little bit of uncertainty. He squinted, like he was examining me, but I could tell he was deciding whether or not to offer me this “job” at all.

“For the monthly stipend of one hundred dollars, plus ex­penses, I would like you and my granddaughter to kidnap me once each month.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he snapped. “You are to kidnap me. You are to catch me by surprise. You are to plan some creative and ad­venturous event. And if I don’t threaten to have you jailed at least once during the day, then you shall be fired.”

Then he turned around and went back to the sofa, refusing to look at me again.

“Kidnap you, huh? I woulda done that for free.”

“Telling me that is bad business,” he grunted. “Now leave.”

***

Even before I mentioned it to my father, I called the Schwa. He knew Crawley—he’d be able to commiserate. But when I dial his number, I get this recording. The number’s been discon­nected. At first I thought it must be a mistake, so I dialed again, and got the same thing. There was no forwarding number.

The feeling I had deep down in my gut was even worse than what I felt when my dad told me how he got fired. It was sun­down now. Flurries were falling, and the wind had gotten bliz­zard cold. Still, I got on my bike and rode at full speed to the Schwa’s house.

***

There was a FOR SALE sign on the lawn.

It had red lettering and featured the picture of a realtor, her face grinning out at me. Rona Josephson, million-dollar seller. I had never met the woman, but I already hated her.

I hurried up to the Schwa’s front door, knocked, and didn’t wait for an answer before I tried the knob. It was locked. I peeked in the little window next to the door, and my worst fear was confirmed. I didn’t see any furniture. I went around the house, looking in every window. The place had been emptied out. There wasn’t even any of the usual junk left in corners when you move—the entire place was clean.

I was scared now, the way you’re scared when you come home to find someone’s broken in and stolen your stuff. I took down the number of the realtor and left. I don’t carry a cell phone, because my parents told me I’d have to pay for it myself, and there’s no one I’d pay to talk to. The nearest set of pay phones was by the gas station a few blocks away. Four phones. One had a jammed coin slot, two had no receivers, and the last one was hogged by some guy telling his life story. When he saw me coming, he turned his back to me, making it clear he wasn’t giving up the phone. It was only when I started hanging around his car, trying to look as suspicious as possible, that he got off the phone and left.

I fed whatever change I had in my pocket into the phone and dialed the realtor’s number. A receptionist put me through to Rona Josephson, million-dollar seller.

“I’m calling about a house for sale. I don’t want to buy it, I just need to get in touch with the people selling it.” Then I gave her the address.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all, “we can’t give out that kind of information.”

“I don’t care! I need the phone number!”

“Don’t you take that tone of voice with me! Who do you think you are?”

This was not going well. I took a deep breath and tried to pretend I wasn’t talking to an imbecile. “I’m sorry. The kid who lived there, he . . . he’s a friend and, uh . . . he left his medicine in my house. But now I don’t know where he is. I have to get him back his medicine.”

Silence on the other end. I could almost hear the wheels turning in her little realtor’s brain.

“Do you really want to be responsible for him not getting his medication. Miss Josephson?”

More silence. I heard her clicking on her computer, then flip­ping pages in a notebook. “It says here the property is being sold by a Mrs. Margaret Taylor. The address is in Queens, but I can’t quite read my assistant’s writing.”

“That can’t be right. What about Schwa? Somebody named Schwa should be selling it.”

“Sorry, it’s Taylor.” I heard more flipping pages. “And my as­sistant’s notes seem to indicate it has been vacant for months, so you obviously have the wrong house.”

Now it was my turn to be silent. I could hear the gears turn­ing in my own brain, and I didn’t like it at all.

A recording broke in, announcing that I needed another twenty-five cents to continue the call.

“Hello, are you there?” asked Rona Josephson, million-dollar seller.

“No,” I said. “I’m not.” And hung up.

At first I was freaked, then I was mad. So the Schwa finally did it. He not only disappeared, but he became like a black hole, sucking in his father, too, and everything they owned. I was going to call Lexie, but I didn’t have any more change. What was the point anyway—she would just tell me what she always told me: “There’s got to be a rational explanation.” But what if there wasn’t? And what if when I called Lexie, she said, “Calvin who?” What if I was the only person left who remembered him—and what if I woke up tomorrow morning and didn’t remember him either?

No! It wouldn’t happen. I would not allow it to happen, but I didn’t see how I had any choice in the matter. If the Schwa was right, and he was destined to disappear from memory, what could I do to change that?

As for what I did next, it came, as most of the world’s great ideas do, while I was on the can. Maybe the shock of the Schwa’s vanishing act did something to my insides, but what­ever it was, there was no way I was making it home on a bicycle without a pit stop. So there I am in the stall at Fuggettaburger, trying not to look at the Pisher toilet-paper dispenser, and I catch sight of the things people have scrawled into the wall. The stuff you usually find on the walls of a bathroom is about as Neanderthal as you can get—which is why we often call the boys’ bathroom at school the Wendell Tiggor Reading Room. The Fuggettaburger bathroom had its share of unreadable phone numbers, and poems that started. Here I sit, broken­hearted. Then, suddenly, as I’m looking at all this drivel, I get an uncontrollable urge to put something up there myself. I take a pen from my jacket pocket, and I start scratching a picture onto the wall. I’m not on the short list when it comes to artistic tal­ent, but I can do faces okay. So I draw this face. Just a few sim­ple lines, wispy hair. Then beneath it I write. The Schwa Was Here. And, for a final touch, right on his forehead, I draw an upside down e—you know, like a schwa in the dictionary.