The Kingdom of Kevin Malone Read Free Page A

or Dad sent me to a store on Columbus to get something, inevitably there would be a gang of what all the children in my building used to call “Corner Kids” hanging out on the brownstone stoops. They mugged us, for fun and profit.
    Kevin, their ringleader, was skinny and fast and loud, with the dirtiest neck you ever saw. He had specialized in ambushing me in particular, and taking my stuff—money, bubble gum, my rhinestone pin.
    Finally my mom had gone to have a talk with his mother, which had left me absolutely terrified that the whole Malone family would come wreak terrible vengeance on me. But I didn’t see Kevin at all after that. The next thing I heard was that he had run away from home.
    Then my father got his first screenwriting job in California, and though we stayed in New York—Mom didn’t want to leave her job in the textile business—we did change neighborhoods. Living on the East Side, going to a new school, I forgot all about Kevin Malone.
    This was really Kevin, wasn’t it? Who else would have my old pin? On the other hand, for the old Kevin to give something back instead of taking something away was a reversal of the laws of nature on the order of dirt raining up into the sky. So maybe he had changed.
    Everything else sure had. People had bought the West Side brownstones and fixed them up. Burglar bars leaking philodendron stems guarded all the windows of Kevin’s building now. Last time I’d walked by there, I’d seen a huge Akita looking out of one of the bow windows. I think they’re ugly dogs, but buying an Akita costs about as much as adopting a baby. The people living in Kevin’s building now were definitely not Corner-Kid types.
    But what type was it, exactly, who could drag me into a made-up place where I walked on real stone slabs with real grass between, among real ruins?
    Take it easy, Amy, I told myself. Just because you are having a psychotic episode brought on by the shock of Cousin Shell’s completely unexpected and unfair death, that doesn’t mean you are crazy forever. It will pass. That’s what Shelly used to say, shaking her head and making her earrings jingle: “Whatever it is, Amy, it will pass.”
    What would Shelly have thought of Kevin, I wondered. She’d been a social worker; she must have known a lot of Corner Kids.
    I studied Kevin covertly as we hurried along, which was a lot more interesting than listening to what he was saying. The last time I’d seen him he’d been about three inches shorter than me, with dirty black hair chopped off at ear-level, missing front teeth, and a piercing voice.
    His voice was broken now, his teeth white and even, and he had filled out with muscle. He was taller than I was, and looked especially big, because he stuck his elbows out to take up extra room when he walked with the swagger that I remembered, not fondly, from our shared youth.
    He also had a shadow of a mustache, dark like his hair, and frowning eyebrows over light gray eyes. His skin was very white and clear, with what looked like a permanent flush in the form of a red strip down each cheek.
    Talk about unfair; bad Kevin had become good-looking.
    â€œShit,” he said, stopping so suddenly that I almost walked into him. Good-looking, and dirty-mouthed as ever.
    At the foot of a long, gently sloping meadow bisected by our paved pathway I saw a huge wall of gray stone blocking the gap between two hillsides. A black-painted grillwork gate filled the arch.
    â€œWe’re too late!” he said. “The Denesmouth is locked up for the night.”
    Nevertheless, he hurried down the valley. Feeling like Alice pursuing a juvenile-delinquent rabbit through a very creepy Wonderland, I trotted after him. My stockinged feet were a little sore by now, and I had to clutch the skates under my arms to avoid having them thump me to death as I ran.
    I caught up with Kevin right under the high, grim wall, which was