Antsy and his friends throw a plastic mannequin off a bridge to test an unbreakable plastic claim made by Antsy's dad.

Antsy meets Calvin Schwa, a nondescript boy nearly impossible to notice, after the Schwa retrieves the mannequin's severed head.

Antsy and his friends run three scientific experiments that confirm the Schwa is functionally invisible to almost everyone around him.

Antsy becomes the Schwa's manager and launches Stealth Economics, hiring out the Schwa's invisibility for paid dares and spying jobs.

A classmate dares the Schwa to break into Old Man Crawley's apartment and steal one of his Afghan hounds' dog bowls.

Old Man Crawley catches Antsy inside his apartment and sentences both boys to walk his dogs instead of calling the police.

Mr. Crawley reassigns Antsy from dog walking to paid escort for his visiting blind granddaughter, Lexie.

Antsy meets Lexie and she reads his face with her hands, leaving him flustered and unsure if they are now dating.

During a massive family argument, Antsy names Dad the better cook and Mom pours their dinner sauce down the drain and leaves.

Mr. Crawley falls in the shower and fractures his hip again, and Antsy accompanies him to the hospital.

Antsy and Lexie trick Mr. Crawley into leaving his apartment and bundle him into a car headed for a helicopter ride.

The Schwa reveals a lighted billboard bearing his face and name to Antsy, but the expressway it faces is closed for construction.

Gunther the Night Butcher tells the Schwa, Antsy, and Lexie that the Schwa's mother ran away with a coworker named Oscar.

Antsy discovers the Schwa's house is empty and for sale, then covers Brooklyn with Schwa graffiti to keep him visible.

Antsy receives a letter and beach photo from the Schwa showing him smiling with his mother, held together by a special paperclip.

Antsy Bonano meets the functionally invisible Calvin Schwa after a bridge experiment, and the two boys begin cashing in on the Schwa's uncanny ability to go unnoticed by everyone around him. Their daring scheme lands them in the hands of curmudgeonly recluse Old Man Crawley, who recruits them as dog walkers and assigns Antsy to escort his blind granddaughter, Lexie. A tense family dinner forces Antsy to take an honest stand, rattling the Bonano household and exposing deeper tensions between his parents. As Antsy searches for the truth about the Schwa's vanished mother, the Schwa's desperate billboard scheme to be seen collapses when the expressway it faces turns out to be closed for construction. With Antsy and Lexie's help, the Schwa finally hears what really happened to his mother and confronts a childhood trauma he has carried for years. Antsy ultimately discovers that his invisible friend has quietly disappeared from Brooklyn to find his mother, leaving behind only graffiti, a photograph, and a promise to remember.

The central story of Antsy, the Schwa, and their unlikely friendship with Old Man Crawley.

Antsy, Howie, and Ira debate the dark and disturbing rumors surrounding the Schwa's family history in Antsy's basement.

The airport Schwa Effect experiment ends badly when the Schwa triggers a metal detector and security officers respond in force.

Antsy visits the Schwa's house for dinner and discovers the Schwa's father has suffered serious brain damage from a fall.

The Schwa snaps Ira's video game disc in half and storms out after Howie and Ira refuse to acknowledge his presence.

Lexie touches the Schwa's face for the first time and declares his features are pure and subtle, like sweet cream ice cream.

The Schwa offers Antsy a prized paperclip and asks him to step aside so the Schwa can pursue a relationship with Lexie.

Antsy takes Lexie to an outdoor salsa concert and is amazed by what she perceives that he completely misses.

Antsy and Lexie go to a movie and dinner, where Lexie forces the restaurant manager to read her the entire menu aloud.

Antsy's mom returns home after the big argument and announces she will enroll in a French cooking class and seek outside work.

Antsy visits Lexie at her school for the blind and is struck by the wide range of how students cope with blindness.

Antsy sneaks out at night to confront Gunther the Night Butcher alone at Waldbaum's and learns Gunther knows what really happened.

Antsy arrives home late from Waldbaum's to find police at his house after Frankie's arrest for drunk driving.

Antsy confronts Mr. Crawley about getting Dad fired, and Crawley reveals he wants to offer Dad a restaurant partnership instead.

Howie and Ira become Mr. Crawley's new dog walkers, keeping a thread of connection between them and Antsy.

Antsy's parents open a successful Italian-French fusion restaurant called Paris, capisce? in partnership with Mr. Crawley.

Skepticism about the Schwa runs high among Antsy's old friends Howie and Ira, who resent the new friendship until a confrontation finally drives a permanent wedge between them. Lexie's arrival sets off a quiet rivalry between Antsy and the Schwa, played out through a salsa concert, a movie date, and a restaurant standoff that reveals Lexie's fierce independence and complicated feelings for both boys. Antsy gets a window into the Schwa's difficult home life through a dismal dinner and a paperclip collection that carries far more meaning than it first appears. As the fallout from the family's big argument settles, Antsy's mom reinvents herself with French cooking classes and a new job, while his dad steps quietly toward his dream of running a restaurant. A late-night visit to Waldbaum's supermarket moves the search for the Schwa's mother forward, and a shocking revelation about Antsy's brother Frankie reminds him that secrets run through every family. In the end, new arrangements settle the lives of nearly everyone around Antsy, from the dog walkers replacing him to the fusion restaurant his parents build with Mr. Crawley.

Friendships tested and family tensions explored through the Schwa's world and Antsy's growing up.

After the argument with Howie and Ira, Antsy realizes the Schwa is terrified of vanishing from existence just as his mother did.

Lexie kisses Antsy in the car on the way home from her school, shifting the nature of their relationship.

The Schwa witnesses Lexie kiss Antsy at Brighton Beach and angrily demands to know what is happening between them.

Antsy decides to stop seeing Lexie romantically because pursuing her would come entirely at the Schwa's expense.

Dad calls a family meeting and announces he will cook at home while Mom will look for work outside the house.

The Schwa quits his dog-walking job and tries to end his friendship with Antsy, but Antsy refuses to leave.

The Schwa describes being left alone in a supermarket cart at age five and believing his own forgetfulness caused his mother's disappearance.

The Schwa reveals his only physical link to his mother: the paperclip that held the missing persons report filed after she vanished.

Antsy's mom reassures him that she and Dad are not getting a divorce and that she will not abandon the family.

Antsy, Lexie, and a neighborhood dowser visit Waldbaum's supermarket together to search for traces of what happened to the Schwa's mother.

The Schwa sits on the deserted expressway staring up at his own billboard and declares that his fate is simply to vanish.

The Schwa rages and weeps after learning his mother deliberately chose to run away with another man rather than disappearing by accident.

The Schwa's father produces a shoebox of roughly fifty hidden and unopened letters from the Schwa's mother, sent over many years.

The Schwa vows to track down his mother in person and demand a face-to-face apology for abandoning him as a child.

Antsy learns from Aunt Peggy that the Schwa secretly listed Antsy's house as the friend's place he was staying with.

A quiet moment after the falling-out with Howie and Ira reveals the depth of the Schwa's fear: he believes he will vanish just as his mother did, and that briefly forgetting her in a supermarket caused her to disappear. Romantic complications escalate when Lexie's kiss reshapes the relationships among all three friends, forcing Antsy to make a painful choice between his own feelings and loyalty to the Schwa. Antsy refuses to abandon the Schwa even when the Schwa tries to push him away, and the Schwa's confession about his abandonment reveals the traumatic root of his fear of invisibility. A dowser, a shoebox of hidden letters, and a Night Butcher's decades-old story all converge to give the Schwa the truth he has always needed but dreaded. The revelation that his mother chose to leave — and that his father hid her letters — forces the Schwa to confront his guilt, his anger, and finally his own right to exist. With a vow to find his mother and a quiet farewell hidden inside a friendship, the Schwa takes his first deliberate step into the visible world.

The key decisions and discoveries that transform Antsy, the Schwa, and everyone around them.