“And I’ve heard things about him, too,” Ira said. “Crazy stuff.”

“Such as?”

Ira came in close enough so I could smell last night’s garlic-whatever on his breath. “His eyes,” Ira whispered. “They say his eyes change color to match the sky. They say his shoes are always the same color as the ground. They say if you stare at him long enough, you can read what’s written on the wall behind him.”

“That’s called ‘persistence of vision,’” Howie says, reminding us that behind his veil of idiocy is a keen analytical mind. “That’s when your brain fills in the gaps of what it thinks ought to be there.”

“He’s not a gap,” I reminded him. “He’s a kid.”

“He’s a freak,” said Ira. “Ten-foot-pole material.”

Well, I didn’t know about Howie and Ira, but I’ve spent enough of my life keeping weird things at ten-foot-pole distance.

“If any of this is true,” I told them, “there are ways of finding out.”

2. The Weird and Mostly Tragic History of the Schwa, Which Is Entirely True If You Trust My Sources

My family lives in a duplex—that’s two homes attached like Siamese twins with one wall in common. On the other side of the wall is a Jewish family. Ira knows them from his temple, but we just know their names. Once a year we exchange Christmas cookies and potato latkes. Funny how you can live six inches away from people and barely even know them. Our neighborhood is a Jewish-Italian neighborhood. Jews and Italians seem to get along just fine. I think it has something to do with the way both cultures have a high regard for food and guilt.

The Schwa was about six inches away, too, in science class, but I had never noticed him. It was weird, because in school I notice almost anything as long as it doesn’t actually have to do with the lesson. And then there was the way Ira got all freaked out about him. It made me want to do some investigating. It took a couple of days, but I did come up with something.

I called Ira and Howie over for a war council, which I guess is the guy version of gossiping. Of course we couldn’t talk in the living room, because Frankie was sleeping on the sofa, hogging the most comfortable place in the house, like always. Lately it’s like Frankie slept all the time.

“It comes with being sixteen,” Mom said. “You teenagers, you go into a cocoon when you turn fifteen and don’t come out for years.”

“So they become butterflies when they finally come out?” my little sister Christina asked.

“No,” Mom said. “They’re still caterpillars, only now they’re big fat caterpillars that smell.”

Christina laughed and Frankie rolled over on the sofa, sticking his butt out toward us.