This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Adam Levine 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 Levine.

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 joky 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 reason, I thought it was. I knew half the chorus and I thought I had a pretty good dance that went with it.

A chicken-looking dance where you flapped your bent arms and threw sideways punches while stepping high or jumping.

Returning from the bathroom, I danced that dance and sang half the chorus.

If I were a rich man, yababababababa badauba baba, bitty, bitty bum. All day long, I'd

biddy, bitty bum. If I were a wealthy man. Except for my dad, the adults found it cute. You could

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