“Are you looking for this?” I heard another voice say. The voice was scratchy, like a kid who’s screamed a little too much. I turned, and I swear to you, the first thing I see is Manny’s mannequin head floating in midair. I only see it for a split second, but it’s the creepiest thing. Then in that split second my brain does a quick retake and I see that there’s a kid holding the head under his armpit. I couldn’t really see the kid at first on accounta his clothes are kind of a brownish gray, like the rocks around him, and you know how your mind can play tricks on you when the light is just right.

“Excuse me,” said Ira, “this is a closed set.”

The kid ignored him. “That was pretty cool,” he said. “You should have dressed him up, though, so when he fell he looked like a person and not a dummy on film.”

Ira pursed his lips and got a little red, annoyed that he didn’t think of it.

“Don’t I know you?” I asked the kid. I took a good look at him. His hair was kinda ashen blond—real wispy, like if you held a magnetized balloon over his head, all his hair would stand on end. He was about a head shorter than me; a little too thin. Other than that, there was nothing remarkable about him, nothing at all. He wasn’t good-looking; he wasn’t ugly; he wasn’t buff and he wasn’t scrawny. He was just, like, average. Like if you looked up “kid” in the dictionary, his face would be there.

“I’m in some class with you, right?” I asked him.

“Science,” he said. “I sit next to you in science class.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, now I remember.” Although for the life of me I have no memory of him sitting next to me.

“I’m Calvin,” he said. “Calvin Schwa.”

With that Ira gasped, “You’re the kid they call the Schwa?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Ira took a step back.

“I’m Anthony Bonano,” I told him, “but everyone calls me Antsy. These are my friends Howie and Ira.” Then I pointed to the head in his hands. “You already met Manny.”

He took Manny’s head back to his body. “So what’s all this for, anyway?”

“Pisher Plastics product stress test,” I told him, trying to sound professional.

“Manny gets an F,” Howie said. “He’s supposed to be unbreakable.”

“Technology fails again,” I said, all the while noticing how Ira still kept his distance from the Schwa, as if he were radioactive, like some of those flounder they found off Canarsie Pier.

The Schwa knelt next to Manny’s headless body.

“Technically he’s not broken,” the Schwa said.

“If your head comes off, you’re broken,” says Howie. “Trust me.”