The Schwa Was Here

I smile, proud to figure in my father's product development job. This was the first time in recorded historey that either of my parents had singled me out to do anything.

"Do I get to break something?" my little sister Christina asks.

"Yeah," said Dad. "Wait a few years and you'll be breaking hearts."

Christina must have liked the sound of that, because she flips open the journal that's practically glued to her hand and makes a note of it.

So, Howie, Ira, and mewe started doin' unpleasant things to Manny that might break him. Ira loves this, because he can get the whole thing on him. We rode our bikes down Flatbush Avenue to the Marine Park Bidge, which is no easy task considering I gotta carry Manny on my handlebars. God forbid Frankie, who just got his license, could give us a ride in the old Toyotahe just got. No, he's too busy hanging out with all the other perfect people—but don't get me started on Frankie.

We got to the bridge, and the three of us, not including Manny, worked out our game plan.

"I should go down to the rocks to film," Ira said. "I'll get a good view of him falling from there."

"Nah," says Howie, "let's go to the middle of the bridge—I wanna see him hit the water."

"If he hits the water," I reminded them, "we won't get him back."

Howie shrugs. "There's lots of boats goin' by, maybe we can time it so he hits a boat."

"We still won't get him back," I said, "and we might sink the boat."

"That'd look good on film," Ira said.

Now all this time I got this creepy feeling like we're being watched. But then of course we are being watched. Everybody driving by has got to be wondering what we're doing standing with a dummy by the guardrail of the bridge—but this feeling is more than that. Anyway, 1 ignore the feeling because we had important business here.

"We'll drop him onto the rocks," I told them.

"Yeah," says Howie. "Maximum breakage potential."

"Great. Howie, you stay up here on the bridge to push him over; Ira and me'll go down and watch."

We climbed down to the rocks and looked up to where Howie stood holding Manny by the scruff of the neck—it's a pretty high drop. I didn't envy Manny. Still that feeling of being watched just won't go away.

"Should I push him or should I throw him?" Howie asks.

"Do what comes naturally," I yelled back.

"I don't know," he says. "This is a very unnatural thing."

"Rolling," says Ira. " And ... action."

Howie backs up for a second, and a moment later Manny Bullpucky comes hurtling over the side of the bridge, arms and legs flailing like he's really alive, and he does a swan dive headfirst toward the rocks. WHAM! He hits the jagged boul­ders, and it's all over for him. His bald head goes flying like a cannonball shot straight at me. I hit the deck, narrowly miss being decapitated, and when I get up again, a headless man­nequin lies with his arms strewn on the rocks, just another ca­sualty of the fast life.

Howie comes running down from the bridge.

"What happened? Did he break? Did he break?"

"Yeah," I told him, picking myself off of the ground. "We're gonna have to change his name to 'Headless Joe.'"

Ira, still behind the camera, moved in closer to the body, paused dramatically, and finally stopped filming. "Where'd his head go?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, over there somewhere. So much for unbreakable plastic."

"Arc you looking for this?" I heard another voice say. The voice was scratchy, like a kid who's screamed a little too much. I turned, and I swear to you, the first thing I see is Manny's mannequin head floating in midair. I only see it for a split second, but it's the creepiest thing. Then in that split second my brain does a quick retake and I see that there's a kid holding the head iunder his armpit. I couldn't really see the kid at first on accounta his clothes are kind of a brownish gray, like the rocks around him, and you know how your mind can play tricks on you when the light is just right.

"Excuse me," said Ira, "this is a closed set."

The kid ignored him. "That was pretty cool," he said. "You should have dressed him up, though, so when he fell he looked like a person and not a dummy on film."

Ira pursed his lips and got a little red, annoyed that he didn't think of it.

"Don't I know you?" I asked the kid. I took a good look at him. His hair was kinda ashen blond—real wispy, like if you held a magnetized balloon over his head, all his hair would stand on end. He was about a head shorter than me; a little too thin. Other than that, there was nothing remarkable about him, nothing at all. He wasn't good-looking; he wasn't ugly; he wasn't buff and he wasn't scrawny. He was just, like, average. Like if you looked up "kid" in the dictionary, his face would be there.

"I'm in some class with you, right?" I asked him.

"Science," he said. "I sit next to you in science class."

"Oh yeah, that's right, now I remember." Although for the life of me I have no memory of him sitting next to me.

"I'm Calvin," he said. "Calvin Schwa."

With that Ira gasped, "You're the kid they call the Schwa?"