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
I turn, actually surprised to see someone there. It’s like I never realized there was even a desk next to me in science. For an instant I don’t recognize the face—like no part of it is distinctive enough to stick to my memory—a face like mental Teflon.
“It’s me—Calvin Schwa.”
“Hey, Schwa—how ya doin?”
“Mr. Bonano, are you (kiss) with us today?”
“Uh . . . yeah, I guess.” I don’t kiss back, on account of I once got dragged to the office for that. Mr. Werthog is sensitive that way.
“As I was saying, (kiss) can anyone give me the hypothesis leading to today’s experiment?”
The Schwa’s hand is up in an instant, before anyone else’s. We’re in the third row, right in the middle, but Werthog looks over his hand to Amy van Zandt, in the last row.
“Water at room temperature will boil if left in the sun.”
“Abominably incorrect!” He pours a packet of powder into the icy beaker, and stirs it. The water turns cloudly. “Anyone else?”
The Schwa’s hand is still up. Werthog calls on LoQuisha Peel.
“Lemonade reacts with ice to quench thirst?” LoQuisha says.
“Even more wrong (kiss, kiss).” He pours in a second packet of powder. The ice in the beaker begins to melt quickly. By now the Schwa is waving his hand back and forth across Werthog’s field of vision like a signal flare. Werthog calls on Dennis Fiorello.
“Uh . . .” Dennis puts down his hand. “Never mind.”
The Schwa turns to me, grumbling beneath his breath. “He never calls on me.”
That’s when I raise my hand.
“Ah! Mr. Bonano. Do you have the answer?”
“No, but I’ll bet the Schwa does.”
He looks at me like I’m speaking Latin. “Excuse me?”
“You know: Calvin Schwa.”
Werthog turns his head slightly and his eyes refocus. “Calvin!” he says, like he’s surprised he’s even here. “Can you (kiss) give us the answer?”
“The reaction between reagents A and B is an exothermic reaction.”
“Excellent! And is our hypothesis proven, or disproven?”
“Proven. All the ice melted when you added reagent B, so it’s exothermic.”
Werthog pulls out the thermometer, marks down the temperature on the board, 89°, and continues his lesson.
The Schwa turns to me and whispers, “Thanks. At least now he won’t mark me absent today.”
I shake my head and laugh. “I swear, it’s like you’re invisible or something.” I say it like a joke, but then I catch the Schwa’s eyes—eyes that match the gray clouds outside the window. He doesn’t say anything, and I know I just stumbled onto something. He turns back to his notebook, but I can’t concentrate on my work. I feel like my foot is pressed down on a land mine that will blow the second I move.
