The Schwa was Here (5 page)

“Don’t tell me—the coach always forgot to put you in, and even when you were in, nobody passed to you.”

He shrugs like it’s a given. “My father never showed up for the games either. So I figured, what was the point?”

“How about your mother?” says Howie. I might be the prince of foot-in-mouth disease, but Howie’s the king. He grimaces the moment after he says it, but it’s already out.

The Schwa doesn’t say anything at first. He takes another shot. He misses. “My mother’s not around anymore.”

Howie keeps looking at me, like I’m gonna cough up the guts to ask about it, but I won’t do it. I mean, what am I supposed to say? “Is it true that your mom was abducted by aliens in the middle of Waldbaum’s supermarket?” or “Is it true your father got a samurai sword and went Benihana on her?”

No. Instead I change the subject, changing all of our lives from that moment on, because that’s when I come up with what would forever be known as Stealth Economics.

“Hey, if the Schwa Effect works on the basketball court, there’s got to be other ways to put it to good use.”

The Schwa stopped dribbling. “Like how?”

“I don’t know . . . Spy on people and stuff.”

Howie’s ears perked up at the mention of spy stuff. “The government would pay big bucks for someone who’s invisible.”

“He’s not invisible,” I reminded him. “He’s
invisible-ish
. Like a stealth fighter.”

“The CIA could still use him.”

“And abuse him.” I grabbed the ball away from the Schwa, went in for a layup, and made it.

“I don’t want to go to the government,” the Schwa says.

“Yeah,” I said. “They’d dissect him and put him in a formaldehyde fish tank in Area 51.”

Howie shook his head. “Area 51 is for aliens,” he says. “They’d probably put him in Area 52.”

“Maybe we should try something that isn’t so big,” I suggested.
“Maybe just stuff around school. I’m sure there are people around here who would pay for the services of a Stealth Schwa.” At first this had just been my lips flapping, like they often do—but every once in a while my lips flap and something brilliant flies out. I realized that maybe I was onto something here.

“How much do you think people would pay?” the Schwa asked.

I took an outside shot. “How much is the stealth fighter worth?”
Clank!
Nothing but chain. I reveled in the sound.

Once we decided to turn the Schwa Effect into a money-making proposition, it wasn’t hard to get the ball rolling. When we had presented our series of Schwa experiments to the class, most everyone laughed, figuring it was a joke—but enough of our classmates had been part of the experiments to suspect there was something more to it. You know, it’s like that TV show where the psychic dude talked to your dead relatives—all of whom seem to be just hanging around, watching everything you do . . . which is really disturbing when you stop to think about it. You don’t
really
believe it, but there’s enough borderline credibility to make you wonder.

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?!” 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?”