Free The Schwa was Here by Neal Shusterman Page B

agreement because I didn’t want to talk about what was really going through my mind. I was thinking about bamboo. Last year, my science teacher said that when a bamboo plant is established enough, you can actually watch it growing before your eyes. I wondered if it was sometimes the same with humans—because I was feeling this weird vertigo, like I had suddenly sprouted far beyond Howie and Ira. I knew it just like I knew that no future version of “Three Fisted Fury” was going to interest me like it did a year ago.
    I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, but at first glance I didn’t see anybody there.
    “Hey, Schwa,” I said.
    The moment Howie and Ira realized who it was, they picked up their game controllers and quickly started a new game, ignoring him. It made me mad, but I didn’t say anything. For Howie and Ira, it was okay when the Schwa was just a plaything—just some weird object that had strayed into their airspacelike a UFO—but once they lost interest in him, he was no longer welcome on their radar screen.
    “I’ve solved at least part of the mystery,” the Schwa said, ignoring Ira and Howie just as well as they ignored him.
    “Which mystery?”
    “Crawley’s granddaughter.”
    At this, Ira and Howie couldn’t help but show a little bit of interest.
    “What did you find out?” I asked.
    “Take a look for yourself.”
    He hands me this printout of a page he must have gotten from some old Internet newspaper archive. An old society page from the
Daily News
. It shows a picture of a baby with the caption:
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Crawley III announce the birth of a daughter, Lexis Lynn Crawley
.
    As Ira and Howie huddled around me to look at the picture, Schwa got shouldered out of the way.
    “Lexis?” said Ira. “She’s named after a car?”
    “Spelled differently,” I pointed out.
    “Well,” says Howie, “it looks like she didn’t have a peg head at birth.”
    In fact, it didn’t look like there was anything wrong with baby Lexis at all. “Hey, wait a second,” I said. “Look at the date on that article—she’s not a little kid at all. She’s our age.”
    “Hmm,” said Ira. “Whatever’s wrong with her, maybe she wasn’t born with it.”
    “Maybe she developed leprosy at puberty,” says Howie. “I hear that happens.”
    “Yeah, maybe in Calcutta or something, but not in Brooklyn.”
    “Maybe she traveled,” says Howie, “and brought it back with her, like the flu or mad cow.”
    “Well,” says Ira, “whatever’s up with her, you’ll find out soon enough.” He and Howie returned to their spot on the floor and picked up their game controllers.
    “C’mon, Antsy, you playing or what?”
    The Schwa may have been used to being treated like he wasn’t there, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. I could see an anger beginning to rise in him, simmering like beef stew in my mother’s Crock-Pot, which meant indigestion and heartburn were only moments away.
    “Hey!” he shouted to Howie and Ira. “The ice cream man’s giving out free Popsicles,” he said. If they heard him, they ignored him. He got louder. “Did you hear Martians invaded Long Island?” No response. His Crock-Pot began to boil. “Tidal wave’s headed for Brooklyn,” the Schwa shouted at them. “We have five minutes to live.”
    Howie and Ira just kept on playing.
    I could see what was about to happen here. It was what you call “en passant.” It’s a move in chess. One pawn gives an enemy pawn the cold shoulder as it moves two squares ahead. So the ignored pawn has the right to kick the rude pawn’s sorry butt off the board, just because it wants to. It’s the only move I know where you get busted just for ignoring the enemy.
    So here I am standing in my own basement, watching Howie and Ira walking straight into an en passant. It was their way of putting our friendship to the test.
We’ve had enough of the Schwa
, is what they were silently saying.
Are you our friend, or are you