“I don’t think he means to be,” I told them. “It’s just . . . It’s just like he always happens to be standing in your blind spot.”

“Yeah, and when he’s around, every spot is a blind spot,” said Ira. “It’s friggin’ weird. It’s like he’s a ghost, or something.”

“You gotta be dead to be a ghost,” I reminded him. “No . . . It’s more like he’s . . .” I search for the right word. “It’s like he’s functionally invisible.”

“The proper term is ‘observationally challenged,’” Howie says.

“Whadaya mean ‘proper term’? How can there be a proper term for it when I just made it up?”

“Well, if you’re gonna make something up, make up the proper term.”

I keep trying to think this through. “It’s like when he’s in a room and doesn’t say anything, you could walk in, walk out, and never know he was there.”

“Like the tree falling in the forest,” says Ira.

“Huh?”

“You know, it’s the old question—if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it really make a sound?”

Howie considers this. “Is it a pine forest, or oak?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Oak is a much denser wood; it’s more likely to be heard by someone on the freeway next to the forest where no one is.”

I know I’m in over my head here, because Howie’s logic is actually starting to make sense. “What does a tree in the forest have to do with the Schwa?” I ask Ira.

And the Schwa says, “I know.”

We snapped our heads around so sharply, it’s like whiplash. The Schwa was there, leaning up against my backyard fence! It’s like we’re all too dumbfounded to speak.

“I know what it has to do with me,” he said. “I’m like that tree. If I stand in a room and no one sees me, it’s like I was never there at all. Sometimes I even wonder if I was there myself.”

“Wh-when did you get here?” I asked him.

“I got here before Howie and Ira did. I was hoping you’d notice. You didn’t.”

“So . . . you heard everything?”

He nodded. I tried to run the whole conversation through my mind, to see if I had said anything bad about him. His feelings didn’t appear hurt, though—like he was used to people talking behind his back in front of his face.

“I’ve wondered about it myself,” he said. “You know—being observationally challenged . . . functionally invisible.” He paused for a second, then looked at Manny all strung up like a scarecrow. “You ought to find a seam in the plastic, and tape the M-80 there.”