The next morning I woke up with the nagging feeling that there was something I was supposed to remember, but I had no idea what it was. It was like Lexie’s sight—a memory of a memory.

It was Sunday. Had Lexie and I made plans to do something before yesterday’s disaster? Was that what I was supposed to remember?

Mom was out early that morning and came back from the supermarket with a strange collection of groceries that included a bag of snails.

“Those French!” she said. “They can figure out ways of making anything edible.”

The sight of the snails absolutely terrified Christina. I helped Mom unpack, just so that I might have some early warning as to what else was in store for us come dinnertime.

I moved a bunch of recipe cards she had clipped together so I could unpack the last bag, and the clip fell off. The clip bounced on the linoleum floor with a tiny little clatter that I could barely hear over the refrigerator hum.

A paper clip.

I stood there with the recipes in one hand and half a pound of pig brains in the other, staring down at the clip like an idiot. I suppose only something that small, that unnoticeable, could remind me of the Schwa.

“Antsy, what’s wrong?”

I handed her the pig brains. “Gotta go!”

I hurried to the door, but before I left I grabbed a pen and wrote on my palm in big blue letters: SCHWA’S HOUSE, just in case the Schwa Effect kicked in and I forgot where I was going.

14. More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About the Schwa’s Childhood

I rode my bike at top speed and got to the Schwa’s house in just a few minutes. As I ran up to the door, I could hear Mr. Schwa playing guitar inside. I rang the bell three or four times until he finally came, answering the door with a friendly grin.

“Hi, is Calvin home? I have to talk to him.”

He looked at me strangely, and for a single, terrifying moment, I thought he’d say, Calvin who?

But instead he said, “Sure, he’s in the bedroom.”

I went in to find he wasn’t in his bedroom at all.

“Hmm,” said his father brightly. “Maybe he’s not home after all.”

“Don’t you even know when your own son is home?!”

“Yes,” he said, not so brightly this time. “Mostly.”

I looked in every room, trying to figure out where he might have gone. Then the guitar started up again, and that was the last straw. I went to the living room, to see Mr. Schwa playing and humming to himself like he didn’t have a care in the world. Well, he needed to have some cares.

“Do you even know if Calvin came home last night?”