The Schwa Was Here and Antsy Does Time both by Neal Shusterman.

  

Antsy feels like he is invisible. He isn’t as good at school as his brother and sister and spends his time at home making peace between his mother and father. He doesn’t think he has ever done anything noteworthy except by accident and a lot of the time he feels unimportant and unnoticed. Calvin Schwa actually is nearly invisible. He can sit in a room and no one will see him or remember that he was there. Half his class think he isn’t real, just an urban legend. But Antsy gets to know him, and by helping the Schwa he manages to stand up for himself, get in a lot of trouble and have a go at making both of them more noticed.

A book all about being seen, how people can be very different from what you hear and making decisions about your own life. This book is nothing like Neal Shusterman’s Unwind (although that’s also an awesome book in different ways!). Recommended if you liked The 10pm Question by Kate De Goldi.

In Antsy Does Time, Antsy finds out completely by chance that a friend is dying. He only has 6 months left. To try and make him feel better Antsy officially gives him 1 month of his own life, signed and witnessed. And then suddenly everything gets out of hand. He’s a hero, he has a secret, and somehow he has to make things right again with his family, the crazy old man who’s threatening to fire his Dad, his girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend and most of the town. Plus he’s managed to kill off all the plants in most of one street.

A crazy, funny story that’s pretty much all about death and dying. Read after reading The Schwa Was Here – it’s a different story, but you do need to know who the characters are and how they got where they are.