Kevin

Kevin lived in a typical two storey, five bedroom house with his mother, father, older sister and dog. If you looked closely, the house was not exactly the same as the others on the street, though the only difference between it and the one on the corner was the colour Kevin’s parents chose to paint the garage door. That and the big maple tree the people on the corner planted when they moved in fourteen years ago. Kevin’s family moved into their house when he was seven, and his sister was eight. They both attended the public elementary school that could be seen from the end of the street, two blocks away.

From the time the moving truck pulled away from the newly inhabited grey brick house, everyone on the street within earshot knew Kevin’s name. It wasn’t that he was a social or friendly child who couldn’t resist talking to everyone and anyone he saw; it was the fact that no matter what he was doing he couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. Every time one of his parents came out of the house after they had carried in a box or a piece of furniture, they would shout Kevin’s name. Telling him to stop doing something, to help his sister or to stay out of the way.

My first encounter with Kevin was the year I got my driver’s licence and was finally allowed to drive my mother’s car. I had opened the garage door, then gone back into the house to get my purse. While inside the house, I decided to change my shirt, which I had just noticed had a stain on the sleeve. After changing my top, I then needed to change my shorts, and it was twenty minutes before I went back into the garage. The driver’s side door and the passenger door behind it were standing open. The box of Kleenex in the backseat was empty, tissues scattered on the cushion and the garage floor. The CDs that we kept stored in the armrest between the driver and passenger seats were on the seat and dash, opened but not taken out of the plastic. I panicked, thinking someone had stolen something or was still lurking in the garage behind one of the cars. I went back in the house to get my father, and I heard Kevin’s mother shout his name.

Over the course of that summer I found golf balls on the lawn when I cut the grass, Nerf balls in the garden and a baseball in the backyard. That last one worried me. Our neighbours behind and to either side, do not have children. Rarely is there anyone in their backyards at all. And given the ball’s location at the side of the yard, almost between the houses, I had to conclude that the ball had come from the direction of the front yard and the street. There is not a lot of space between our house and the one next to it. Probably only the minimum required setback distance of three feet between the house and the fence. In order for that baseball to have landed where it did; it missed the bay window in our living room by less than two feet.