This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman fiction at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Adam Levin read his story

Kid Positive from the March 2nd 2020 issue of the magazine. Levine is the author of the novel The

Instructions and the story collection Hot Pink.

A new novel, Bubblegum, will be published in April.

Now here's Adam Levin.

Kid positive.

Shitty Little Tevia, Big Brother, 1980.

I liked dinner with my parents and their friends in the dining room.

The chairs were large and hard to move.

Whenever I had to go to the bathroom, I would crawl my way under the table to get there.

Some of the adults, as I brushed against their legs, made surprised sounds and said jokey things.

Is there a dog in here? I didn't know you had a dog.

This house must be haunted. A ghost touched my leg.

I knew they knew, I knew they were pretending. We were all in on the

joke together, people. Once we people were in the middle of the joke and my father said

honey to my mom in his hard voice. He didn't like that I was under the table.

After using the toilet, I stepped up on the crate and washed my hands twice so my father would be proud of me.

Then I remembered he couldn't see everything.

He wouldn't know what I'd done unless I told him and I knew that if I told him he'd tell me not

to show off so I decided I would sing. Singing beat twice washed hands by a mile.

My father's favorite song was not if I were a rich man from Fiddler on the roof, and yet for some

...