Chapters (28)
- Cover
- LAB JOURNAL
- Title Page
- Dedication
- 1. Manny Bullpucky Gets His Sorry Butt Hurled Off the Marine Park Bridge
- 2. The Weird and Mostly Tragic History of the Schwa, Which Is Entirely True If You Trust My Sources
- 3. Quantizing the Schwa Effect Using the Scientific Method, and All That Garbage
- 4. Making Big Bucks off of Stealth Economics, Because Maybe I Got Some Business Sense
- 5. Which Is Worse: Getting Mauled by a Pack of Dogs, or Getting Your Brains Bashed Out by a Steel Poker?
- 6. As If I Didn’t Already Have Enough Annoying Things to Do Every Day, Now I Gotta Do This
- 7. The Lowest-Paid Male Escort on the Entire Eastern Seaboard, Except for Maybe the Bronx
- 8. Are Those Your Fingers in My Mouth, or Are You Just Happy to Not See Me?
- 9. Maybe They Had It Right in France Because Getting My Head Lopped Off by a Guillotine Would Have Been Easier
- 10. Earthquakes, Nuclear Winter, and the End of Life as We Know It, over Linguini
- 11. The Youngest Doctor in Sheepshead Bay Gets Held Hostage When He Least Expects It
- 12. A Horror Movie Blow-by-Blow, with the Undisputed Queen of the 3-B Club
- 13. A Russian Train, a Pulsing Vein, and My Mother’s Bag of Snails
- 14. More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About the Schwa’s Childhood
- 15. Vortex in Aisle Three—Can Someone Please Clean Up the Ectoplasmic Slime?
- 16. A Late-Night Trip to the Land of Beef That Could Turn a Person into a Vegetarian
- 17. A Traumatic Experience I’ll Live to Regret, Assuming I Live
- 18. Larger Than Life, in Your Face, Undeniable Schwa
- 19. The Schwa Gets Radiation Therapy in a Room That Doesn’t Smell Too Good No Matter How Much It’s Disinfected
- 20. The Weird Things Kids Do Don’t Even Come Close to the Weird Things Parents Do
- 21. Why I Started Vandalizing Brooklyn
- 22. My Anonymous Contribution to Popular Culture and to My Parents’ Phone Bill
- DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Special Excerpt from SHIP OUT OF LUCK
“Weird stuff—not just about him this time, but about the whole family.”
“Weird, like Twilight Zone weird?” Howie asked. “Or weird like Eyewitness News weird?”
“I don’t know,” said Ira. “Maybe a little bit of both.”
“So what did you hear?” I asked again.
“I heard his mom went to the market one day and disappeared right before everyone’s eyes in the ten-items-or-less line. Nothing was left but a pile of coupons and a broken jar of pickles where she stood.”
“Disappeared? What do you mean disappeared?”
“And why a pile of coupons, if all she had was a jar of pickles?” Howie asked.
“It’s just what I heard.” Then Ira gets real quiet. “Of course . . . there’s another story.”
Howie and I leaned close to listen.
“Some say the Schwa’s father cut her up into fifty pieces and mailed each piece . . . to a PO box . . . in a different state . . .”
“Not Puerto Rico?” says Howie.
“Puerto Rico’s not a state,” I reminded him.
“It’s almost a state.”
“Fine, so maybe he saved a piece to send to Puerto Rico when it becomes a state. Okay, are you happy?”
To tell you the truth, I didn’t believe either of Ira’s stories. “If any of this stuff happened, the whole neighborhood would know about it—wouldn’t they?”
Ira leaned in close and smirked. “Not if it happened before he moved here.”
“When did he move here?” asked Howie.
But neither Ira or I knew for sure. The thing is, there are always kids moving in and out of neighborhoods, and no matter how quietly a kid tries to come into a new school, he can’t do it without being noticed. But the Schwa did.
“I guess he kinda slipped in under everybody’s radar,” I said.
“Has anyone bothered to check if the color of his eyes really changes?” Howie asked.
“I don’t want to get that close,” said Ira.
There was silence for a second, and then Howie let off a shiver that I could feel like a tremor.
3. Quantizing the Schwa Effect Using the Scientific Method, and All That Garbage
Mr. Werthog, our science teacher, has a weird twitch in his lip, like he’s always kissing the air. It’s something you never can get used to, and might explain why my science grade keeps dropping. You just can’t concentrate on his words when you look at him. The only time it gets him into trouble, though, is during parent conference night. One guy punched him out for making kissy faces at his wife.
Now he stood in front of a science experiment featuring a large beaker filled with ice and a long thermometer. On the board he writes 34°, then turned to us. “The scientific method (kiss) is one of hypothesis, trial (kiss), results, and conclusion (kiss, kiss).”
Someone next to me taps my arm. “Hi, Antsy.”