The Schwa Was Here

"Well, if you don't want this one, you can have another one." He dug into his box and came up with one little bag after an­other. "How about this one from Michael Jordan's first basket­ball contract—or this one? It's rumored to have been clipped to the results of an alien autopsy. I got it on eBay."

"Whoa, slow down." I grabbed one of his hands, and the box flipped off his bed, dumping little packets all over the floor.

"Sorry, Schwa."

"No problem."

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's no free lunch—and no free paper clips either. We stood there looking at each other. "So what is it you want?" I asked him.

He sighed one of those breathy sighs like a convict does mo­ments before his execution—not that I've ever seen that.

"You gotta let me have her, Antsy."

"Her? Her who?"

"Lexiel Who else? Please, you gotta let mel"

He grabbed me, pleading. I shook him off. "She's a person, she's not a thing. I can't 'let you have her.'"

"You know what I mean." He got up and started pacing in short U-turns, like a condemned man waiting for a pardon from a governor who was probably out playing golf. "We were made for each otherl Don't you see? Invisible guy/blind girl— it's perfect. I even read it in a book once."

"You read too many books. Go see some movies. In the movies invisible guys never get the girl. Instead they usually turn evil and die horrible, painful deaths."

"Not always," he said.

"Always. And besides, you're only half invisible, so, I dunno, maybe you should look for a girl who's blind in one eye."

He punched me hard in the arm, and I punched him back, matching his force. We both refused to rub our aching arms, even though they hurt. For a second I wondered whether this would swell into a full-on fight.

"Hey," I said, "Lexie does what she wants—and besides, I was the one Crawley hired to hang with her, not you." "But, but . . ." The Schwa's mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish. "But she said I'm sweet-cream ..."

"Big deal. I'm Italian gelato, and there's only room for one scoop on the cone." Which technically isn't true, but he got the point.

Then the Schwa invokes the friendship clause.

"Antsy, you're my best friend," he says. "I'm asking you as a friend. Please ..."

Like I said, I was in hot water, because whether I like it or not, I got a conscience. But I also got a selfish streak, and once in a while it kicks in before the water starts to boil.

"Forget it," I told him.

Then Mr. Schwa burst happily into the room. "Okay, boys, lunch is ready. It's franks and beansl"

He left, never noticing our argument, or the paper clips on the floor. I knelt down to pick up the bags of clips. "Do these go in any order?"

"Put them in any way you want." He left for the kitchen, let­ting me pick up all the clips.

We didn't talk much over lunch, and said nothing about Lexie. The Schwa cleaned his plate, but if you ask me, he looked like a man eating his last meal.

***

The Schwa was not giving up. For a guy famous for not being noticed, he was suddenly everywhere. Somehow he managed to walk Crawley's dogs three at a time without being dragged down the street like a human dogsled. That meant he was done with the job quick enough to barge in on anything Lexie and I were doing.

I was coming up with all this clever stuff to do with her—it amazed me how clever I could be when a girl was involved. It actually gave me hope that maybe I had latent superintelligence that was activated by girls, like the way the Incredible Hulk was activated by anger.

One afternoon, I had this bright idea of playing "Name That Texture," which consisted of us challenging each other to iden­tify unusual objects just by feeling them.

"In school we do a lot of tactile learning," she warned me. "I know the whole world by touch."

Because she had an advantage, I chose really weird things for her, like a geode, and a Pisher Plastic replacement kneecap. She chose normal household things for me, because the only thing I knew by touch was my bathroom light switch in the middle of the night. And even then I turned on the fan half the time by mistake.

As soon as the Schwa showed up to walk the dogs, Lexie in­vited him to play, too. I didn't move to give him a place to sit, but he made room anyway, so I glared at him.

"Why the dirty look, Antsy?"

He knew why. He had only said it to inform Lexie I was mad- dogging him.

"Come on," said Lexie, "we're all friends."

I put my blindfold on, and the game quickly became an exer­cise in embarrassment. I had just mistaken a corkscrew for a Swiss Army knife when I heard Crawley roll by. I peeked out from under my blindfold to catch him sizing me up in his own disapproving way. "The boy cannot correctly identify a cork­screw," he said. "Don't let this moron dull your intelligence. Lexis."

I grinned at him and said, "Send in the clowns!"

Old Chuckles was not amused.