The Kingdom of Kevin Malone

  Still staring haughtily at me, she said to the Jungle lady, “I’ll take an aardvark, in turquoise, gift-wrapped, please.”

  I stood there mute and miserable while my ex-best friend watched a blue aardvaark get wrapped. Minutes later she walked out without a backward look, swinging a pink plastic shopping bag printed with pictures of velvet palm trees.

  The Jungle lady cleared her throat. “When I was a girl, there was nobody I had such awful fights with as my best friend.”

  Tears were sliding down my cheeks.

  The lady added, “And I think you should take that stuffy back where you bought it. There isn’t nearly enough filling in it. It flops around every time you move.”

  She must have been very nearsighted. The moorim had begun drumming all four paws on my skull, like one of Rachel’s little brothers having a tantrum. I mumbled something untrue and left the store. Rachel was not in sight. I swallowed my hurt feelings and hurried to where she must be headed: Claudia’s.

  * * *

  I’d been to Claudia’s house twice before. It gave me the creeps. The apartment walls were practically papered with family photos. Even Claudia didn’t know who they all were. Some of them still lived in Italy. The pictures turned the apartment into a dark European home brooded over by generations of ancestors.

  Claudia’s aunt answered the door. She was a thin, nervous lady with dark skin around her eyes as if she never slept. She gave me a once-over you would expect from a sentry at a government installation, then yelled for Claudia, saying her name the Italian way that made it sound like “Cloudia.”

  Claudia came padding down the hallway that was lined with faded faces in wooden frames.

  “Oh, hi, Amy,” she said in that spacy way of hers. She had on loud bike tights and a huge, tummy-hiding sweatshirt, and she wore her hair down in a dark curtain to her shoulders in an attempt to make her face look thinner, which it didn’t. “Want some popcorn? Rachel and me just made a bagful.”

  She undulated down the hall ahead of me. Claudia had this gliding walk, with her hips leading and her shoulders sort of hunched and drifting after, which looked weird when she was thin. It was kind of impressive when she carried more weight.

  Her aunt yelled something after her about posture. I’ve heard this before at Claudia’s. In Italy girls are taught to walk and sit up straight, instead of slouching or leaning on the furniture. The point seems to be slow torture.

  In her room, Claudia flopped down on the floor on her stomach with her head propped on her hands so she could see the TV. The floor was covered in thick, green shag carpeting, and there were travel posters all over the walls. The TV sound was low, continuous bop-and-scream. A messy little vanity table stood by the window, covered with a litter of makeup junk. Lined up against the pillows on her bed was a row of stuffed animals wearing dresses, aprons, overalls—clothes she had made for them, all frilly and silly.

  It was a little girl’s room.

  Rachel sat cross-legged on the floor flipping through a comic book. She didn’t look at me.

  I sat down at the vanity. “Hi, Rachel,” I said, and stopped. Now what? Stalemate.

  Claudia’s eyes snapped wide open. “A RAT! There’s a rat in your hair!”

  Suddenly the little weight lifted off my head. The moorim hopped down onto the vanity table, making neat footprints in the face powder Claudia had spilled on the glass top. Claudia screamed again as the moorim scampered across the floor and stood on its hind legs by the bed, whiskers twitching. It seemed to be checking out the glassy-eyed bears, lions, lizards, even a moose, that shared the pillows.

  Claudia hugged her knees and stared with bulging eyes. “I—hate—RATS!”

  “That’s no rat,” Rachel said, frowning at the moorim. “The legs are too long.”

  “Like,” Claudia gasped, “like a WEASEL! I HATE WEASELS!”

  The moorim sprang up onto the bed, nuzzled itself quickly inside Claudia’s PetPurse, and disappeared except for two slim paws hanging out right by the zipper-pull.

  “What’s it doing?” squealed Claudia. “What’s it doing in MY PURSE?”

  “It’s a moorim, from Kevin’s Fayre Farre,” I said, “and I think it’s sleeping. I hear snores.”

  “In MY PURSE?”

  I collapsed onto the floor, wildly relieved to be rid of the warm little weight on my head and free to speak the truth. “Rachel,” I said, “will you listen to me? That wasn’t me talking in the Plush Jungle.”

  “Funny,” she said, tossing her hair. “It sounded like you and it looked like you, and I could have sworn it was you, Amy. You’ve been so weird since that funeral—”

  “Well, my cousin—”

  “I don’t want to hear any more about your cousin!” she said. “You can’t go around fixated on a dead person forever, you know? I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. I thought you’d finally lost it for good right there in that lady’s store. It was very embarrassing.”

  “I’m telling you,” I said, “that was the moorim controlling what I said!”

  “The moorim.” Rachel cocked a skeptical, plucked eyebrow. She reached up to poke one of the moorim’s paws with one finger. The paw twitched and was withdrawn into the dog-purse. “So this is a creature from Kevin Somebody’s fantasy world, and it’s followed you home into reality? That’s a lot to swallow, Amy.”

  “If it’s not a weasel, it’s a RAT,” moaned Claudia, hugging her legs tight to her as if afraid the moorim would bite off her toes if she left them exposed. “I can never use that purse AGAIN.”

  “Well, it’s a very special rat, then,” I said. “For one thing, it was the moorim that convinced the Branglefolk to give us the prophecy, and for another—”

  “It talks?” Rachel said, rolling her eyes.

  “Well, not to me,” I said. “Only to the Branglefolk, I think, and maybe only in prophecies, not conversations. Now listen, will you? This concerns both of you, too, believe it or not; at least I think it does.”

  Claudia watched her purse, which didn’t move except for the very faint rise and fall that showed the moorim was asleep rather than dead, while I told them both all about my adventures in the Brangle. Rachel ate popcorn from a blue plastic bowl, one piece at a time, pretending not to listen. I couldn’t figure out why she was acting so unfriendly.

  Claudia looked from her purse to me and back again. “Wow!” she said.

  Wow. What a fabulous, articulate response! All the tension went out of me. I suddenly wanted to do nothing but sleep. Maybe when I woke up Rachel would be my best friend again, and Claudia would talk sense. What kind of a princess was Claudia the Ditz going to make in the Fayre Farre, for goodness’ sake?

  Rachel frowned. “So how does this prophecy go, exactly?” She sounded sarcastic, but she was interested, all right.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I can only remember bits and snatches. Well, it was long—”

  “What’s it doing now?” Claudia interrupted feverishly. “What’s it doing in there in my PURSE? It’s making a noise, don’t you hear that?”

  We listened. The moorim was certainly making a noise; a noise I recognized. It was singing the tune that went with the words of the prophecy.

  I went over and lay down on the bed, putting my head close to the PursePet. The faint, wavery sound rang in my head. So did Claudia’s little screams of horror, and her helpful warning, “Amy, look out, what if it bites YOUR FACE OFF?”

  “You come listen,” I said, motioning Claudia over next to me. “It’s in your purse, Claudia, and it sounds like—I can almost hear words—”

  Claudia, her dark eyes wide, crawled onto the bed and put her head very nervously near the purse. She jumped, looking stunned. Then she shut her eyes, licked her lips, and began to sing in a very wavery, scratchy voice—the words of the prophecy:

  “A princess in mourning, a princess in gold,

  A princess with talents as yet to unfold,

  Shall join with the strength of the hero
foretold,

  And win, if their hearts be both tender and bold.

  One princess must press on through terrors and fears

  And solve the great riddle of using the years.

  One princess must choose for a guide and a friend

  A being she fears but will love in the end.

  One princess must bring from her distant home’s heart

  A magic more mighty than any smith’s art.

  These three, imprisoned in walls made of stone,

  Pressed to the uttermost, bounded by bone,

  Using a weapon they already own,

  Can bring the prince worthily home to his throne.”

  Claudia finished in a small voice, “Are you sure any of this is about me? I’m not brave.”

  Rachel ripped a sheet of notebook paper from a pad on Claudia’s bureau, and then motioned to Claudia to sing it all again, which she did—three times, one for each of us, I guess—while Rachel scribbled down the words with a chewed-up pencil stub from her pocket.

  “Well, I got it all, I think,” she said, chomping nervously on the pencil as she read and re-read her transcription. “Boy. Is this for real?”

  But she knew as well as I did that Claudia couldn’t have made up that poem.

  Somehow their getting the prophecy seemed to let me off the hook for a while. The two of them could go fix things for Rotten Kevin. I was a princess in mourning; I wasn’t supposed to be wrestling with moorims for truth. I was supposed to be back home giving visitors coffee and listening to them tell me how wonderful Cousin Shelly had been. I rolled off Claudia’s bed and stretched out on the floor.

  “Amy, when do you have to get this magic sword to Kevin?” Rachel asked.

  I tried to work it out. My brain drowsed. Maybe when the moorim slept I had to sleep, too? Or maybe I had just not had enough sleep back in the Brangle to hold me.

  “Come on, Amy,” Rachel coaxed. “I’m sorry I was snippy with you.”

  “Sure.” I yawned. “Kevin just said he needs the sword soon. Listen, I have to lie down.”

  “You are lying down,” Claudia said. She took the sheet of paper from Rachel and studied it.

  I curled up on the floor and dozed, but I could hear the two of them talking over the garble from Claudia’s TV.

  Claudia: “Let’s finish the popcorn. We don’t want to go to Kevin’s country on an empty stomach.”

  Rachel: “I thought you weren’t brave enough to go.”

  I heard getting-up sounds. I was so surprised I almost woke up.

  “It doesn’t say here that anybody dies,” Claudia said. “And I want to meet this Kevin. Isn’t it romantic, having a boy pop into Amy’s life from the past like that?”

  Romantic! Kevin and me! I snorted sarcastically, or thought I did.

  The floor under my cheek vibrated slightly as Rachel paced. The rug under my nose smelled faintly of butter. Claudia did too much eating in her room.

  “The timing is terrible,” Rachel said and thumped or kicked a piece of furniture. She got physical sometimes when she was upset. “We’ve got major reports and exams before spring break, you know? You’d think Amy could be more considerate.”

  Claudia said, “You don’t have to come with me.”

  “Who says you’re going anywhere? Amy has the only key to the place, that pin of hers. Are you going to take it?”

  “Rachel Breakstone, I am not a stealer,” Claudia said. “I have my own way into the Fayre Farre. The moorim will take me.”

  “The moorim is Amy’s, too.” Now Rachel sounded snippy with Claudia. And she said I acted weird!

  Claudia said, “Well, it’s in my purse. I’ll walk the purse through one of the park arches with the moorim inside it. Bet that will work, and I won’t even have to touch the icky little rat-thing. Don’t you want to meet this Kevin? Not everybody gets to meet a prince.”

  “If you’re going, I’ll go too,” Rachel said with an exasperated sigh. “Listen, let me borrow this scarf for the trip, okay? It might be cold and windy at the Fayre Farre. If there’s anything I hate, it’s going someplace where my hair whips all over and gets in my eyes.”

  I turned over on the floor because my left knee was hurting from leaning on it too long.

  I thought I heard Rachel say, “Are you sure about this, Claudia? It could be dangerous,” and Claudia say, “It can’t be any worse than writing my report about the Haymarket Riots for Mr. Kaplan.”

  When I woke up, the room was empty, the TV was off. Zia Cynzia, in the doorway, said, “Your mother knows you sleeping here tonight?”

  I got up from the floor. “Where are Rachel and Claudia?”

  “Gone to the movies,” Zia Cynzia said. “What they told me. Claudia’s mother want me to look after her.” She gazed somberly at me.

  I looked away.

  She sighed hugely. “Don’t worry your mother like Claudia worry me, okay?”

  On Claudia’s bed, the lineup of stuffed animals faced me: the aardvark, a pair of floppy-nosed zebras, a very beat-up looking monkey—no purse in the form of a stuffed dog.

  And no moorim on my head, either. I was really free.

  I phoned Mom and told her I was on my way home.

  Ten

  Truth and Tomato Juice

  WALKING DOWN THIRD AVENUE in the chilly evening with a million other people, I felt very confused. Rachel and Claudia had abandoned me and run off with my adventure, but I had let them go without a murmur. It had even seemed right, somehow, for them to go ahead without me. Was I losing my mind over all this?

  Well, what had I thought would happen?

  I’d thought we would figure out the prophecy and all go together into Kevin’s magic world, sort of Three Musketeers, since Claudia was apparently included whether I liked it or not. We’d be strong enough, the three of us, to make things come out all right even if we had to fight with Kevin—Prince Kavian himself—to do it.

  Not that I’d thought out any of this beforehand. No, brilliant old Amy only caught on when it was too late, and everybody had abandoned her to go gallivanting off on their own to her magic place that she had been invited into by its creator because of a childhood she shared with him. Well, that’s pushing it, but you get the idea.

  Maybe the moorim wouldn’t actually take them through to the Fayre Farre. But it seemed to me that the moorim had invited them in by singing the prophecy. So I had been used as some kind of pack-mule, carrying the moorim from the Fayre Farre to Claudia’s apartment so that the creature could take the other two, the really important princesses, back to do their stuff in Kevin’s story.

  Feeling betrayed, I stumped along with my hands in my pockets and my head down, making everybody else walk around me.

  So my job now was just to toddle off and fetch Kevin’s magic sword, lug it back into the Fayre Farre, and give it to him. Well, nuts to that. Let him send one of his other precious princesses for it. He was only Rotten Kevin the Corner Kid. He didn’t deserve three whole princesses running errands for him.

  * * *

  It was after nine when I got home. The apartment was quiet and dark and smelled of food, and it seemed . . . crowded? I turned on the living-room light. There were a dozen houseplants from Shelly’s apartment lined up on the windowsill. My eyes watered.

  “Amy?” Mom’s voice, from the kitchen.

  My parents were sitting at the table in there, surrounded by stacked, racked, freshly washed dishes. They both looked beat, but relieved. The shiva was finally over.

  All I could think of was how hungry I was, having missed dinner completely. On the table between my parents sat half a loaf of rye bread, a knife, and the butter dish. I sat down and cut myself some bread.

  Dad leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “I’m glad tonight was the end of it,” he said. “With all the things people said about Shelly, all the memories, I started missing her worse than before.”

  And I, of course, had missed it all because I’d been in the Fayre Farre, or sleeping. It seeme
d to me that I had barely thought of Shelly, really, in—days? Or was it only hours? Kevin and his world were distracting me from what really mattered.

  Nobody noticed my hot, flushed face. Dad hadn’t even been talking to me; his sad smile at Mom told me who he was really talking to. And Mom wasn’t really looking at me. She was looking at my head, and she sort of relaxed all over when she saw that the moorim was gone.

  I ripped the center out of the bread chunk I’d cut and began slathering butter on the crust. This was all I was good for, while thin, pretty, fake-best-friend Rachel and Claudia the Ditz waltzed off to play princesses for Kevin.

  Mom said, “We’ve all been missing Shell. Amy most of all, maybe.”

  “I just think it’s so incredibly stupid and unfair that she died,” I said. God, it felt great to say what I felt straight out and true, with no moorim monitoring me.

  Mom sighed, “I think so, too.” She dabbed at her eyes with a paper napkin.

  “Everybody has to come to terms with it their own way,” Dad said.

  I snarled, around a mouthful of bread, “I don’t want to come to terms with it. Everybody does everything they can to forget that a person died, and then they say they’ve ‘come to terms with it.’ I think that’s disgusting.”

  “It’s not forgetting,” Dad began, looking pained.

  “So,” Mom said, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, “what should we be doing instead?”

  “Anything to hang onto them,” I said. “Not let death have them.” I thought of Sebbian, and of the Bone Men. “I mean—suppose you could bring somebody back? Or go after them at least partway for a while, so you wouldn’t have to feel so left behind?”

  Dad said quietly, “Shelly didn’t die on purpose, Bunnyhunch. No use being angry with her.”

  “I know,” I muttered, and tore into the bread again. “I never said she did; I’m not stupid, Dad. But I miss her. I don’t have to go to her apartment or listen to people reminiscing about her to miss her, you know. There are things I’d like to talk about with her.”