The Kingdom of Kevin Malone

  Overnight in the Fayre Farre had been just an afternoon in the real world. Thank goodness: otherwise I’d have some really mammoth lies to tell my parents, and as a consequence would probably die of moorim-bites.

  Shivering, I slipped and stumbled up the bank of the lake beside the stone foot of the bridge. Instead of impenetrable thorn scrub, ahead of me rose the woodsy slope of the wild little section of the park called the Ramble.

  Ramble—Brangle. Kevin wasn’t going to win any prizes for originality.

  Eight

  A Very Clean Moorim

  SO I ENDED UP WALKING HOME in squishy shoes that Sunday afternoon, with the moorim, also wet, clinging to my head. I was starving and freezing, too, since a brisk spring breeze was blowing right through my wet clothes.

  I walked into the apartment. People were yelling, which was not a usual thing in my house. Mom and Dad were in their bedroom, discussing really loudly Aunt Jennie’s comments to one of the cousins, of course, not Mom or Dad directly, on the shiva, which she had said we weren’t doing right.

  As quietly as I could, I got a package of sliced meat, a rye roll, and a jar of pickles from the fridge, and tried to sneak past the open bedroom door.

  “Amy Sachs, where have you been?” Mom, rushing at me, stopped short in the doorway and stared. “And why are you wet? Where do you keep disappearing to, anyway, and at a time like this? Are you part of this family or aren’t you?”

  Peering at me over Mom’s shoulder, Dad looked frazzled too. I tilted my head back in a way that I hoped would hide the moorim from them both without actually dumping it off backward onto the floor and spoke up as cheerfully as I could.

  “I told you this morning, Dad,” I said. “I went to the museum with a girl from my class for a report we’re doing together next week.”

  No moorim-nibbles on my scalp, what was going on up there?

  “Nathan?” Mom said to Dad in a dangerous tone, keeping her eyes on me.

  Dad frowned. “I don’t remember anything about the museum,” he said.

  “You were on the phone at the time,” I said.

  This was almost true. He had just started that phone conversation as I’d left, which was why, I guessed, the moorim was letting me get away with this part of my completely untrue excuse.

  Mom’s mouth turned down. “That I can believe: talking with those crap-artists in Los Angeles.”

  Dad chose not to be deflected from the topic under discussion.

  “So where have you been?” he asked.

  “I told you, I went to the museum with my friend Joyce,” I improvised. “And after, we were playing around the fountains out in front and the wind blew the water all over the place and got us wet. Anyway, it was more fun than sitting shiva.”

  The looks on their faces told me to correct that last part fast. “I mean, I needed a break, you know? What’s the big deal, anyway? It was schoolwork.”

  “Joyce?” Mom said. “I don’t remember meeting a girl named Joyce.”

  Dad said, “You don’t look as if you’ve been at a museum. You look as if you’ve been running relay races in a barbed-wire factory.”

  “Underwater,” Mom added.

  I was fed up. “Well, I’m glad everybody’s so happy to see me,” I said. “I wouldn’t have come home at all if I’d known I was in for a police interrogation.”

  Okay, I was being pretty uncool here, but I was really distracted, wondering when the darn moorim was going to chomp down on me for the lies I was telling. Maybe only lies told to actual Branglemen counted?

  Mom pointed. “Amy, go get cleaned up. I don’t want you sitting down to dinner looking like some—some street waif!”

  She went back into the bedroom with Dad, starting some comment about what a pain in the neck Aunt Jennie was. Their door closed. I breathed in deeply—the moorim seemed to sigh a tiny warm sigh into my hair, too—and I bolted for my own room.

  At last.

  While I ate what I’d grabbed from the kitchen, sitting on my bed, I hurriedly made notes on what I could remember of the prophecy. I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. Aside from the junk about princesses, there was that line about being “imprisoned.” And what weapon did we already have? It made no sense. Prophecies are supposed to be sort of obscure, but this one seemed like pure, frustrating gobbledygook.

  In the shower I thought things over.

  What was important was that I was home now, out of the Fayre Farre, with a souvenir to remind me that it had not been just a dream. The moorim, nattering frantically to itself in a high, breathy voice, had one foot braced on my left ear and was trying to winch its way back up to the top of my skull via my wet, slippery hair, hanks of which were clutched painfully in its other three feet. I finally gave the creature a boost with my hand for fear of being plucked bald by its desperate mountaineering.

  But, moorim or no moorim, I didn’t absolutely have to go back, did I? The prophecy was only a prophecy, not a history of something that had already happened. Even the moorim couldn’t make me return. Probably.

  So what did I want to do about Kevin and his Fayre Farre? What should I do? Anything?

  I mean, a magic sword, for Pete’s sake, and Kevin the Promised Champion! Should he be in charge of a whole world? What kind of supreme ruler would he be to Scarneck and Singer, and Sebbian’s poor bereaved family, and all the giants and trolls he’d stocked the place with?

  Could I even be sure that Kevin really was the hero of the story? For all I knew, Anglower was a freedom fighter leading an uprising against a rotten royal family of which Prince Kavian was the current and terrible heir apparent.

  God, it was so complicated. And it was so real.

  It now seemed obvious to me that if the Branglemen decided to chop Kevin’s head off because I didn’t play my part in the epic of the Fayre Farre, well, Kevin’s head would be off. Really. In his world and mine. My smarting knuckles and millions of scratches told me that, not to mention the moorim’s warm little weight on my skull.

  Speaking of which: I turned the shower on harder and hotter, to see what would happen. But the moorim hung on tightly, making pathetic muffled moans into my scalp. Since I didn’t really want to drown it, I let up on the water. The moorim shifted its sopping little weight higher onto the top of my head and lay there gasping faintly.

  I needed someone wise and understanding to consult with, but talking to Cousin Shell was not an option.

  I couldn’t dry my hair because the moorim kept skipping around up there and kind of grabbing my fingers when I got too close. It had sharp little claws, and small rivulets of water seeped off it into my hair and down my skin.

  Pulling on my bathrobe, I flopped down on my bed with Claudia’s park book. The moorim sat on my head and fidgeted. Maybe it was grooming itself, combing its fur with its tiny clawed fingers. I didn’t let myself think about what it might be looking for.

  * * *

  Hours later I heard my mother’s quick footsteps heading my way. The moorim dove for cover, deeper into the back of my hair, which had dried into a Brangle-like mass without the smoothing effects of my hair dryer, brush, or comb.

  “Amy?” Mom said, sticking her head in my bedroom doorway. She looked composed but red-eyed. I braced myself for the worst.

  “Have you been sitting in here alone thinking about Shelly?” she said, taking the park book out of my hands and looking at it. “No, I guess not. Well, come on—it’s dinnertime.”

  “I’m really not hungry,” I said, trying to look meek and contrite.

  She sat on the end of my bed and looked at me. “I don’t understand you. I thought you were close to Shelly, but you’re acting so selfish and unpredictable—running off yesterday with Rachel, and today with some kid I’ve never even heard of, and coming back here looking like a drowned rat!”

  “I told you what happened,” I mumbled.

  “You’re not dressed,” she said. “Are you sick? Did you catch cold, getting wet like that?”

&n
bsp; “I’m fine,” I said.

  “This girl—Joyce—what’s her last name? I’m going to call up her mother.” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that on your head?”

  “It’s a hamster,” I said.

  She stared incredulously. “A hamster?”

  The moorim lay very still. Was it sick? In shock over the humongous lies I was telling? Maybe I had burned out its judgmental system by overloading it.

  “It’s a toy, actually,” I gabbled brightly. “Somebody was handing them out in school last week, a kid in the Modern Issues elective who’s doing a paper on deviant experience.”

  “Deviant experience?” my mom said. “Wearing animals on your head? That’s a bit much even for the Cornford School. Teaching kids about deviance isn’t on the curriculum that I remember, and frankly I’m not sure it’s what your father and I meant your tuition money to pay for.”

  As she spoke, I was thinking: tomorrow was a school day. If I wanted a chance to tell Rachel about the prophecy without the whole world poking their nose into our business, I was going to have to do it now, tonight. If I could just get away from my mom. . . . I got up and began digging clean clothes out of my closet.

  Mom watched me thoughtfully. “Amy,” she said, “while in some ways it’s rather diverting, and God knows I need diversion these days, I am not very happy seeing you walk around with a rodent-doll on your head. How long are you going to wear it?”

  “Just today,” I said. “I have to test people’s reactions to it for twenty-four hours.”

  “I think I smell baloney,” Mom said dangerously.

  “Where did Dad go?” I asked. “He’s not due back in Los Angeles until tomorrow, he told me.”

  “He went over to Shelly’s apartment,” Mom said, her eyes tearing up again. “I left my keys there, and I just couldn’t bring myself to go back again—where are you going? I’m about to put dinner on the table.”

  “I have to go out,” I said, dressing fast. “Rachel is thinking of running for class president. She wants me to help plan her campaign.”

  Rachel, in school politics? What a hoot! But my lie brought no response from the moorim. Maybe it had caught pneumonia in the shower and expired? I could feel it sprawled on my scalp like a miniature tigerskin rug. It made a soft humming noise, like purring. I hoped Mom couldn’t hear it.

  “You just spent all day running around with this Joyce from school instead of being here with us,” Mom said as I sidled past her and headed for the front door. “Friends are important, but at a time like this you have to think of your family, Amy. Can’t Rachel’s political career wait an evening?”

  Mom thought Rachel was snooty and spoiled and fixated on her looks, which was true but not exactly in the way Mom thought. In fact, Rachel lived for the day when she could get her nose fixed because she thought it ruined her looks. We’d argued about all this before. I wasn’t in any mood to take up the subject again, so Mom tore on uninterrupted.

  “I think you should stay here tonight"—Her eyes focused on my head again and widened. “It moved!”

  “Oh, that’s the fun part,” I said. “They’re plastic. I squeeze a bulb in my pocket and the hamster wiggles.”

  The moorim not only wiggled; it nuzzled my ear. I felt triumphant: Take that, Branglemen! You think you’re so smart!

  Mom’s jaw dropped. “That thing,” she said flatly, “is alive. Get rid of it, Amy. I don’t care what arcane science project they are doing at that school, you are not going around with a rat on your head.”

  “It’s not a rat, it’s a moorim.” I backed down the hallway away from her. “And I’m stuck with it until I can do something about Kevin and the Fayre Farre. YOW!”

  The moorim had given my ear a sharp nip with its needly little teeth, and suddenly—as I zipped out the door of our apartment with Mom yelling something after me—I realized what had happened. I was in a sort of backward pattern here, a mirror effect. In the Fayre Farre the moorim insisted on truth, but in the real world it allowed only lies! Welcome through the looking glass, only it’s this side that’s backward.

  Nine

  The Plush Jungle

  I HEADED DOWN SECOND AVENUE toward Rachel’s, hoping she’d be home. I should have phoned first, but I hadn’t been thinking too clearly. Of course with the moorim on my head, when I found her I wouldn’t be able to utter one true sentence unless I was ready to get my poor head chewed to a nubbin.

  The moorim tugged on my hair.

  “Whaddaya want?” I howled, trying to look up into my own hairline.

  The moorim squeaked distressfully and pulled harder. Had it gone crazy? Maybe I should lie down like Daisy, since the creature was riding me like a horse. That was it! The moorim was trying to steer me.

  Might as well be steered. And so I ended up outside the Plush Jungle, on Lexington Avenue, at about six P.M. on Sunday. The place was always open at weird hours. I guess the owner was a free spirit, like Shell.

  I am too old for stuffed animals, even very expensive ones that people give to each other in the throes of infantile love. My own dad bought something there for Mom after his third trip to Los Angeles, as a peace offering I guess. I won’t say what it was—it’s too embarrassing. There are times when one’s parents are unbelievable.

  There was an audience outside the store as usual. Two women studied the window display, commenting admiringly in a foreign language I didn’t recognize.

  What we had here was a beach scene: a large stuffed gorilla lazed in a hammock with a fake drink in its foot among stuffed palm trees that were being climbed and variously nestled into by smaller toys, like a couple of sloths and a goggle-eyed python. Two stuffed dolphins and a shark lolled among crepe-paper waves, cheered on by a crowd of stuffed penguins.

  Rachel was inside talking to the owner, a round, short woman who wore a frilly pink housecoat type of dress.

  I walked in. Startled, Rachel looked at me with a peculiar, guilty expression. “Oh, hi, Amy. What’s that on your head?”

  “Brainmuff, I’m cold,” I lied. Then, naturally as could be, I lied some more. “I don’t need any help with it, thanks.”

  The moorim purred. Clearly I was far gone: I couldn’t tell the truth now even if I was willing to pay the moorim’s price of lacerated hair.

  “No kidding,” Rachel said, grinning a little sickly. What was wrong with her? Warily she added, “How’d you find me, anyhow?”

  I shrugged, putting off the next mess of lies my mouth seemed bound to utter. I couldn’t tell her about the moorim or the prophecy, not here anyway.

  Rachel turned away nervously and picked up a Raggedy Anne doll from a hill of similar horrors. “Ugly thing,” she said scornfully. Appearance was a big thing with Rachel.

  The Jungle lady laughed a merry, sales-making laugh and kept on working over her papers with a pencil with a small plastic cow stuck on the eraser end. The cow probably was an eraser. She said, “Take one for yourself. If you buy two, I can give you a break on the price.”

  “No thanks,” Rachel said, suddenly talking loudly and shooting me a defiant look. “It’s not my style, and my friend needs every bit of space for her collection as it is. She doesn’t go in for duplicates.”

  Collection? I knew only one person with a stuffed animal collection.

  “You’re not buying Claudia another stupid stuffed animal?” I protested. “She’s drowning in the things already.” The moorim moved restlessly in my hair. I wanted to bash the little beast, and Rachel too. Why was my best friend getting a present for Claudia?

  Rachel avoided my eyes. “Yeah, I am, actually. She’d like something small and furry right now because of her Mom and all. She knows these things are pretty babyish, but she likes the comfort.”

  I was staggered by the idea of Rachel having heart-to-heart talks with Claudia, as well as—instead of—with me. It was more than I could deal with right then, things being as they were, so I decided to change the subject. Surely once Rachel knew about the mess I was in
, she would turn back into my good, true, best-in-the-world old friend and let Claudia the Ditz buy her own toys.

  But how could I explain if I couldn’t talk straight?

  I fished a piece of paper out of my bag—an old receipt from Cannibal’s, as it happened, which gave me a confusing pang of memory, a flash of Cousin Shelly’s bright, expectant face—and tried writing on the back, hiding the words from the moorim with my hand as best I could.

  I wrote, “Weird news, but first I need help getting this thing off my head.”

  That’s what I thought I wrote, anyway.

  I held out the note. Rachel took it.

  “Well, this is a comical message,” Rachel drawled, holding up the receipt from Cannibal’s. “ ‘Don’t come around me anymore,’ ” she read out loud, slowly and distinctly. “ ‘You have nothing to do with Kevin, so don’t try to horn in.’ You came here to give me this?” She glared at me.

  I shook my head violently. The moorim fastened itself more firmly, using its teeth as well as all four paws.

  “Ooog,” I said, and being afflicted with lies I added, “that sure feels good.” I began to panic.

  “Excuse me, girls,” the Jungle lady said, staring at my head. “Could you tell me where you got that little stuffed animal? What’s it supposed to be, exactly?”

  “It’s a Cambodian charivari,” I burbled, “from Cuddly Cousins on Madison.”

  Rachel tossed her hair and folded her arms, like an impatient palomino pony fretting to gallop away. “Amy,” she said, “you are talking crazy and acting totally weird. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “Anyway I wouldn’t come to you for help if something was wrong.” Terrible, terrible, nothing true came out of my mouth. Couldn’t Rachel read desperation in my expression or hear it in my voice? Why didn’t she want to understand?