The Schwa Was Here

Which brings me to the biggest and potentially most profitable dare that our little invisibility enterprise with the Schwa took on. Like I said, it was Wendell Tiggor’s dare. It was a pretty clever one, which makes me think he didn’t actually come up with it, because Wendell Tiggor had about the intelli­gence of my mother’s meat loaf if you took out the onions. It was at the bus stop after school that Tiggor came up to me.

“So, I’ve been hearing about this Schwa kid.” (Tiggor begins every sentence with the word “so.”)

“Yeah?”

“So, I hear he goes invisible or something.”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I say. “He’s standing right here.”

“Where?”

“Right in front of your face.”

“Hi,” said Schwa, who happened to be next to me and, I might add, directly in Tiggor’s line of sight.

“Oh.” Tiggor squinted his beady eyes and looked him over. “So, he doesn’t look invisible to me.”

“Then why didn’t you see him when you were staring straight at him?” Tiggor has to think about that one. You can almost hear rusty gears turning in his head, like one of those farm combines that sat out in the rain too long. I figured if I let those gears turn anymore, one might come flying out of his ear and kill some i

“So, I hear you do stuff,” he says to the Schwa.

“Talk to my manager,” says the Schwa. Tiggor’s lip curls in confusion.

“He means me. Is it a service you wish my client to provide? Because if it’s a service, you’ll have to clear it with the student officers, who have him on retainer. Government regulations. You know how it is. Of course if it’s a dare instead of a service, we can do that, no problem.” At the word “dare,” even more kids moved into listening range. Six or seven were clustered around us, and as everyone knows, when there’s a few kids in a group it draws more and more, like curiosity has its own gravity.

“It’s a dare,” says Tiggor.

“Dares come with a price, too; what do you want the Schwa to do?”

“You say he can do things and not be seen,” Tiggor says. “So let’s see if he can go into Old Man Crawley’s and bring some­thing back.” A bus came and went, but none of the kids got on. The public buses run every ten minutes, and this was worth ten minutes of everyone’s time.

“Let me consult with my client.”

I pull the Schwa aside, and he whispers, “I don’t know, Antsy.”

Tiggor laughs. “See, I told you,” he says to the other kids. “He’s a fake. Ain’t no such thing as an invisible boy.”

“Well, he did walk through the girls’ locker room without getting seen,” one kid says.

“So,” says Tiggor, “does he have the pictures to prove it?”

“Yeah,” I tell Tiggor, “you wish you had pictures.”

Tiggor looks at me and hooks his thumbs in his pockets like he’s a gunslinger ready to draw. “Twenty bucks says he can’t do it.”

“You’re on,” I said without a second thought—such is my faith in the Schwa. But the Schwa tugs my sleeve.

“Antsy...”

“What do you want him to bring back?”

“So, how about a dog bowl,” Tiggor says. Everybody agrees that’s the perfect item. There’s about twenty kids around us now.

“Anybody else care to take the wager?” I ask.

The kids who had seen the Schwa in action all looked down and shook their heads. Only those who were not yet believers would bet against the Schwa.

“I’m in for five bucks,” says one kid.

“Two bucks over here,” says another. And by the time the bet­ting frenzy’s over, fifty-four bucks are on the line.

We caught the next bus, and all the way home the Schwa was bouncing his knees up and down like he’s gotta go pee, but I know it’s because he’s all nervous,

“Come on, Schwa, take it easy. There are so many dogs in there, you’ll probably trip on a bowl on the way in.” “And if I get caught?”

“If you get caught, I pay everyone fifty-four bucks out of my own pocket—no loss to you, except maybe loss of life—but that’s a real long shot.” I was only kidding but he took it seri­ously. I began to feel a bit lousy for rushing into the dare with­out checking out his feelings first.

“We can always back out,” I told him.

He didn’t like the sound of that either—it would make him look chicken. “It’s just that everyone’s heard how creepy Old Man Crawley is. There are all these rumors about him.”

“So? There are rumors about you, too.”

“Yeah,” said the Schwa. “And some of them are true.”

He had me there, although I didn’t have the nerve to ask which ones. “Listen; if you actually go in there, you’ll be going in as just some guy—but you’ll be coming out as a legend: the one kid ever to penetrate Brooklyn’s last great mystery.”

That hooked him. “People remember legends, don’t they?”

“Always.”

The Schwa nodded. “Okay, then. I’m go

5. Which Is Worse: Getting Mauled by a Pack of Dogs, or Getting Your Brains Bashed Out by a Steel Poker?

We set the operation for Sunday morning, 10 a.m.

Wendell Tiggor and a cluster of Tiggorhoids showed up to witness and make sure we didn’t just go out and buy a dog dish somewhere, then say we got it from Crawley’s. A bunch of the other kids who had bet against us were there, too, leaning against a railing across the street, so when the Schwa and I ride up on our bikes there are all these kids already there, looking way too suspicious. It’s called loitering, which is like littering with human beings as the trash. I checked to see if Crawley’s looking out on us, but all I see in the dark windows above the restaurant are a couple of furry dog faces in front of closed curtains.

“So we thought you’d chickened out,” Tiggor says.

The Schwa took off his jacket. He was strategically dressed in dark brown; the same color as Crawley’s curtains. He walked over to the railing that overlooked the murky water of the bay, and stretched like this was an Olympic event.

At this point I was begi

He sniffed his armpit, then looked at me. “I smell stealthy to me. Want a whiff?”

“I’ll pass.”

“So what’s taking so long?” says Tiggor. “Are you go

“Hey, this is a delicate procedure,” I tell him. “The Schwa’s gotta get himself mentally prepared.”

Tiggor gave an apelike grunt. I took the Schwa aside. “Just remember, I’ll be right outside. If you need help, you signal to me and I’ll be there in a second.”

“I know you will, Antsy. Thanks.”

I swear, it felt like he was going off to war and not into some cranky old geezer’s place. The thing is, none of the other dares had the Schwa venturing into the unknown, unless you count the locker room. Crawley, even without ever being seen, was scary—and who knew if any of those Afghans were trained to kill.

I went around back with him, where a fire-escape ladder led up to the building’s second story. Old Man Crawley’s apartment was huge, filling the whole second floor—the only way in was through the restaurant itself—but by looking down from the roof of an apartment building a few blocks away, we had learned that there was a little courtyard patio in the middle of his apart­ment, open to the sky. That would be our point of entry.

The stench of yesterday’s lobster wafted out of the Dumpster behind the restaurant, smelling like a fish market on a hot day, or my aunt Mona (trust me, you don’t wa