The Best Kind of People

by Zoe Whittall

  90% of rapists assault people they already know.

  She clicked around, looked at Facebook, which was already filled up with status updates that were variations of “wtf, I can’t believe it, he was such a nice teacher!” Penelope Braydon wrote: “Don’t believe everything you hear. Innocent until proven guilty, right?” Others weren’t so democratic: “Bitches lie.”

  Sadie padded upstairs to Jimmy’s room, which was right across from his mother’s, walking softly on the carpet and trying not to breathe. She saw tv light flickering under her door but heard some gentle snoring. Jimmy’s room smelled of sweat and cum and she involuntarily wrinkled her nose, shutting his door quietly, and shoved some sweatshirts against the crack between the door and the carpeting. She opened his window slightly to air out the room and turned to look at him. He was lying with his head back.

  “Babe. Baby.”

  He didn’t move.

  She didn’t really want to have a conversation with him, but she didn’t want to be alone either. She sat on the edge of his bed and placed her hand on his leg, feeling comforted by the warmth. For a moment her mind relaxed enough that she felt normal, drifting off. Her head fell forward, and she curled up beside him. Then she remembered with a start, and sat up again, dangling her legs over the edge of the bed. She shivered, uncomfortable, unsure what to do with herself. There was no way she could sleep, feeling like a hundred sparkling wires. How do people calm down? She’d never had to think about it before; calm was her default state. Then her body had an idea. Throwing one leg overtop of Jimmy, her knees sinking into his duvet on either side of him, she inched her hand up under the blanket and slipped it inside his boxers. He moaned, and then startled awake. She had never started anything before, not like this.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered, his eyes popping open. She smiled, leaned in to kiss him. “Is this a dream?” She didn’t answer, just kept at it. He was making all the sounds he normally made, only usually she was also feeling turned on, so she didn’t hear him this clearly, or stare at him so closely. She was fascinated, watching him become someone else, undone by a simple movement of her hand. He was trying to be quiet but eventually couldn’t be, letting forth a series of indecipherable sounds when he finished. His eyes went from blurred slits to wide again, embarrassed. He pulled her close to him in a hug. She leaned her ear against his chest to hear his heart racing. He drew back and looked at her curiously. “That was kind of weird,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Weird how?” she asked, but she knew exactly what he meant.

  “Come here,” he said. She curled around him. “I love you, Sadie. You should try to get some sleep. Do you want me to, you know?”

  “No, it’s okay.” He’d only done that once, and she mostly just felt embarrassed and eventually made him stop. He went back to snoring. She listened to him breathing for a while then felt the surge of restlessness return, so she left him there and went back downstairs to her computer.

  an email had come in from her brother. “The arraignment hearing is Tuesday at 3. If you’re not home, text me your location and I’ll pick you up. We need to support Dad as a family. Stay calm, I’m confident this is going to blow over. Stay home from school to get some sleep and remember to eat, ok? I’m so sorry your birthday is ruined. Let’s have a do-over, ok? Big cake!”

  Andrew had always been a calm and rational person, a considerate person. His opinion almost slowed Sadie’s heartbeat enough for her to fall asleep, face pressed into the corduroy couch cushions. But after a few moments of rest she considered this: if even a portion of the allegations against him were true, then what would her support mean? She was hit with a powerful surge of guilt. When your family needs you, you should be there. He was a man capable of throwing his body between her and a murderous madman, he was a generous mentor, he was the role model of the freaking century.

  But what if he wasn’t? Or what if he was a bunch of different things, a mix of good and bad? Of course, real people aren’t the way they are in action movies or Disney films. We all have the capacity to behave in moral ways and to make mistakes, right? But still, these allegations went beyond that, would cancel out the good things. Even though Sadie had recently begun the transition from agnostic to atheist, there was no ignoring the impact that going to church every Sunday for her entire life had made on her psyche. Those things you learn at the age of five come right back to you in times of crisis. Do unto others; honour thy father and thy mother. If I was in prison and I believed I had done nothing wrong, would I want my father to abandon me? She sat with these thoughts. There were no answers.

  She kept replaying the memory of watching a cop grab their family photo albums and carry them outside to a waiting truck. All of their memories, clutched in a bear hug.

  just before six in the morning, she drifted into a shallow sleep, waking half an hour later when she heard a noise. She leaned over the top of the couch, pulling the blankets close around her, and saw Jimmy’s mother’s boyfriend, Kevin, sitting at the kitchen table eating a giant bowl of cereal, a stack of papers in front of him.

  Kevin had moved in when Jimmy was six. He was a novelist who was always home, locked away in a second-floor office that was so dusty and filled with crap that Jimmy said he half expected to have to go in and find his body there someday. He was generally quiet and uninterested in them. Whenever he did leave the house, Jimmy went into the office and stole pot from the film canisters in the bottom of his filing cabinet, and borrowed porn magazines he had filed in a folder called “Civil War Research 1998–2000.”

  “The life of a writer, huh?” Sadie said now, waking Kevin from his daze, chin resting on the back of the couch.

  “Hello, little girlfriend-of-Jim.”

  Girlfriend-of-Jim was what he liked to call Sadie because, she suspected, he rarely remembered her name.

  “What are you doing up so early?”

  “I have to go to the city today, meet my agent.”

  “Oh.”

  When Kevin’s first novel came out, he had been compared to Jonathan Franzen in the New York Times. He had the review laminated on the wall of his study. Kevin had been trying to live up to that review ever since, and Jimmy’s mother, Elaine, was fond of remarking that it was ruining his creative spirit and he should take it down for a while.

  Kevin loved Elaine. It was clear to anyone around them, from the way he looked at her — with quiet awe — and the way he’d leave her love notes almost every morning, on Post-it Notes on top of the coffee maker. He bought her presents every time he went anywhere, and this extended to picking up red licorice and an Almond Joy every time he went to the grocery store or to buy gas. But he never wanted children, so he wasn’t involved in any parenting decisions. He actually wasn’t involved in many decisions at all. Jimmy suspected he didn’t contribute financially to their house, except for the occasional evening when he’d make pasta or homemade pizzas to give Elaine the night off. Jimmy said he didn’t mind, that he liked to have the extra company and the occasional male perspective on things.

  “He’s a man-whore, essentially,” Sadie had joked, as they leafed through the pages of Kevin’s Barely Legal. They’d both seen their share of online porn, easily bypassing the blockers their parents had set up, but the magazines felt like real pornography somehow. Online porn to Sadie was like watching surgery: too much to see, too much sound. Jimmy felt differently, but rarely shared his opinion on the subject. Kevin’s mags, all of the fake-teen variety, made them laugh and roll their eyes, and then made them horny like dogs. Sadie would put the pages down and imitate the ridiculous poses, which looked really funny when you were wearing sweatpants. She was always kind of embarrassed later when she thought about it, but a few days would go by and they’d both want to look at the pictures again. Sometimes when she looked at Kevin she’d think of the magazines and would feel sick and nervous and make an excuse to leave the room.


  “How’s your book going, the one about … the mountain climbers?”

  “Good, good. Lots of interesting research, you know.”

  Sadie thought of Kevin’s research file and blushed.

  “It’s my birthday today,” she said. “I’m seventeen.”

  “That’s a big-deal birthday,” he said, eyebrows raised.

  She nodded, and then felt foolish. As if she’d just said “I’m this many” and held out her fingers. “Anyway, see ya,” she said, and ducked down the carpeted basement stairs to the bathroom, where she dressed quickly, and left Jimmy’s house in the pre-dawn light through the back door.

  She didn’t have the keys to Jimmy’s car, so she borrowed Elaine’s bicycle, intending to practise her sprints at the track outside the school. The bike was heavier than the one she was used to, and it took her two blocks to feel like she wasn’t about to fall at the slightest provocation. She stood up and pumped as fast as she could. The streets of the subdivision were empty, only a few lights on in the uniform front windows.

  Outside the Circle K convenience store she paused at a stoplight, jarred by the row of newspaper boxes, two of them with her father’s face weighing down the front page. She felt as though the early morning commuters and the guy filling up his suv all knew who she was, all saw her shame. She darted as soon as the light changed, biking so fast that when she leaned the steel frame against the bleachers by the track her chest was heaving and her sweatshirt glued to her back.

  She walked right to the starting line, trying to slow her breathing and focus. Running always made sense to her, but even more so now. She knew where to go and she got there. After a few laps, she collapsed on the grass still dotted with dew, breathing in the earthy smell and staring at the sky as it changed from pinky orange to blue.

  She lay still while her breath evened out. Hearing footsteps approach, she didn’t turn; she knew it would be Jimmy, lumbering towards her, pillow lines across his cheeks, his hooded sweatshirt pulled tight around his head.

  “I figured you’d be here,” he said, loosening the strings, pulling off the hood to free his matted hair. “Make good time?”

  Sadie shrugged and pulled him down onto the grass beside her. “Didn’t clock it.”

  When Sadie was growing up, until she was about thirteen and learned to stream anything she wanted, her parents only allowed her to watch pbs, and that for only one hour every week. There were no video games systems, because Joan thought they contributed to societal violence and anti-social behaviour. George would sit reading Harper’s while she ran track meets. “So, they just run back and forth and jump over that bar?” she remembered her father asking her, watching the athletics field filled with ecstatic children, a mix of bewilderment and boredom on his face. “Well, good for you, champ!” he’d said, reaching out to touch her first-place ribbon. But he was never more proud than if she won the science fair or a speech contest. Fair enough. What’s going to serve you better in life, she’d thought — to be able to run back and forth really fast, or to possess critical thinking skills and the ability to innovate?

  Still, nothing made her feel more present and alive than running back and forth idiotically between lines on the ground and beating her best time. She liked the literal quality of the action. Jimmy put his hand on her shin and squeezed, and that one sweet motion prompted sharp shots of tears. He rolled on top of her, propped himself up on his elbows, and kissed her nose. His breath smelled of cereal. She ran her hand under his shirt, grabbed him on each side, and kissed his mouth. They broke apart and lay back against the grass.

  He handed her a small box. She popped it open, and inside was a gold antique locket with a large heart that she opened up with her thumbnail. Inside was a small scrap of paper. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “I went to the hospital and asked your mom if I could have an ecg test, and then I cut a scrap of it. It’s my heartbeat!”

  “Wow, wow. That’s so cool,” she said, and kissed him. “So romantic.” She was having a hard time faking enthusiasm; she knew this was supposed to be such a special moment, one he’d planned for weeks. She dangled the necklace, pretended to admire it, then handed it to him to clasp around her neck.

  They were silent for a few minutes, both thinking about her father. “It’s so weird. Of all the people to be accused of something like this, your father would be last on the list,” Jimmy said, taking off his ball cap and replacing it twice — a nervous habit. He reached out and straightened the locket on her chest.

  “I would never have suspected him of even cheating on my mother. He has always been an example of one of the ‘good guys,’ like” — she started counting things off on her fingers — “one, he’s pro-choice; two, he donates to the local women’s shelter every single year; three, he’s been giving me the ‘girls can be whatever they want to be’ speech since first grade!” She was sitting up now, shouting and using her hands for emphasis. “He taught me how to defend myself against an attacker! He read the Gloria Steinem biography!”

  “I’ve always been a little bit jealous that you have such a good father.”

  “I mean, besides his inability to notice dirty dishes and bring them into the kitchen to be washed, he is pretty much, like, a perfect man. Other women have always wondered how my mom ended up with such a great guy. I’ve noticed that my whole life.”

  She knew that feeling, the one that would spread across her chest when she realized an adult was flagrantly ignoring the social codes that dictated when kids were kids and not sexual objects. She’d had coaches with the propensity to stare too long; a camp counsellor who liked to tell dirty jokes and take Missy Lederman on long walks to discuss what Jesus thought about her virginity. She could see it. She had a keen sense of people. Her dad treated her like an equal; he was interested in her opinions. He never seemed to care about whether or not she had made her bed; those kinds of life lessons were reserved for her mother.

  She knew that Jimmy trusted his mom. Elaine was like a rock of stability. Boring, boring stability, he joked, but it comforted him. From her thick brown horn-rimmed glasses to her wraparound wool sweater from the L.L. Bean catalogue of the mid-nineties that was neither brown nor grey but a colour so basic and earthy it didn’t even need a name — everything about her was consistent.

  “I don’t think we have to go to school today,” he said. “At least, you don’t. Cheryl can run the meeting.”

  Cheryl was student council vice-president. Sadie was president, Jimmy treasurer. Cheryl was odd, obsessed with animated Disney movies and playing the trombone. Sadie was nice to her, because she was nice to everyone, but she felt an uncontrollable sense of both pity and disdain whenever she watched her brushing her hair and gazing at the collection of Mickey Mouse postcards she had taped to her locker.

  The kids at Avalon prep school had everything that most children in America lacked. Not just money, food, and shelter, but the vast majority also had attentive parents who wanted them to achieve. Parent–teacher nights scared the crap out of the teachers, because almost all of the parents seemed to care, wanting to know what was going on and keeping their own scorecards on each teacher. Some of them even brought their lawyers along. The town seemed ripe for parody, with its perfect greenery, cafés boasting fair-trade coffee and chocolate, a yoga studio on every block, and its low high school dropout rate. Sadie was the kind of kid other parents used as an example. But now she was going to be the kind of kid who would be talked about for at least a decade: the daughter of Mr. Woodbury, the man who had once stopped a gunman from killing all the children, the school’s most popular teacher, arrested for being a predator. Sadie stared up at the sky while Jimmy talked, but she couldn’t hear him.

  george woodbury had nearly completed his PhD in physics in his mid-twenties. He did everything besides defend his thesis, which he’d been constantly updating ever since, during the summer months. Joan was studying journa
lism when they met — which was baffling to Sadie now, that her mother ever had such aspirations. She switched to nursing when she got pregnant and was living in Boston, where George was studying. Andrew lived in that city for the first few years of his life — something he still clung to, defining himself as not being from this town — and in his last year before defending his thesis George decided to quit and move back to Avalon Hills to be a teacher. “Happiness can be a lot more simple than you think, bug,” he used to say to Sadie, explaining how he gave up this dream. “I wasn’t cut out for the competition. I want to nurture the basics and watch kids’ eyes light up when they first understand something about classical mechanics. That’s where pure joy is. And I wanted to raise a family somewhere stable, so your mother would be happy. She wasn’t happy in the city. She’s a small-town girl.”

  Joan always used to say, when she told this story, “I don’t know why he gave it all up for me,” and she’d smile. George would say, “Oh Joan, you know how special you are.”

  jimmy drew an energy bar from his sweatshirt pocket, unwrapped it, and pulled it into two chewy pieces. “You shouldn’t have to go to the hearing if you don’t want to. You’re the kid, not the parent. You don’t have to accept everything they do.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Sadie said, pushing her thumb into the protein bar, making a thin fingerprint.

  Jimmy didn’t have a father. Elaine used an anonymous sperm donor to get pregnant when she was tired of waiting around for a good man to marry. This made sense to Sadie; a woman has more chance of contracting the plague than of marrying after the age of forty. In this town, however, a diy pregnancy made her a bit suspect. She was older than most mothers in the town, although a year younger than Joan. Sadie hadn’t been planned, she’d realized only recently. “A beautiful surprise,” her mother had said.