The Best Kind of People

by Zoe Whittall

  “Chai tea?” she said.

  He nodded, a smile breaking across his face. Her pretence wasn’t just working on the group, it was working on him. Was he dumb or did he just wish the appearances were reality? Sadie wondered: if she kept faking it, would she start to feel normal again too? Could she trick herself with muscle memory and routine?

  She was trying to hide the fact that she was elsewhere, in her head mostly. She was trying to keep up with reading and homework, keep her eye on the prize even if actually attending class was a problem. She had developed strategies — such as using the third-floor bathroom, which was the least populated and where she would likely see Amanda. She went there after the meeting to crack the window and lean outside, get some air. She texted Amanda a bunny emoji, their code for her to join her, and she arrived promptly, thankfully without a cigarette this time.

  “Miranda Steele told your dad all about her parents’ divorce, and she felt like he was her only confidant, fyi. Now she’s so pissed. Like he betrayed her.”

  “Betrayed her how?” Sadie asked. “If he listened to her, how was that a betrayal?”

  “You don’t want to know the details,” Amanda replied.

  “C’mon, it can’t be true. Just tell me. I’ve read everything in the papers,” she said, trying to appear impenetrable.

  “They would never be allowed to print these details in the paper,” she said, like a threat.

  Sadie paled. Yesterday Amanda had hugged her and told her things would be okay soon and that she loved her. Today she seemed like one of the catty girls from the hallway.

  “And it sounded true to me,” she said. “Plus, she’s more of a social pariah than you now.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “Girl, you haven’t been around. Someone set her dad’s car on fire in their driveway, and Jonah Stewart was apparently bragging about it. The cops don’t even care — they all remember your dad as some hero who took down that gunman. They think the girls are all liars, especially Miranda, because she’s so pretty and because she’s had sex with so many guys.”

  “How do you know how many guys she’s had sex with?”

  “Everybody does.”

  “I didn’t realize she was getting harassed too.”

  “Some people might be giving your family side-eye and being assholes, but she’s getting it worse, believe me. She convinced all the other girls to come forward, so now that their lives are being scrutinized, they’re blaming her. And you know her parents — they’re, like, always travelling.”

  “Wow, that’s terrible.”

  “Anyway, gotta jet,” she said, leaving Sadie in the bathroom alone.

  Above the sink someone had written, Sadie Woodbury sucks big dicks!

  Sadie returned to the lounge, where Jimmy was waiting with her tea. She’d booked the couch room for their study period. Since she’d stopped attending class regularly, the school administrators were letting her use the room to study, especially if she told them she was too emotionally fragile to be in a classroom with other students. She took her tests in the student government room while Mrs. Caribou watched.

  Sadie had been reading Kevin’s novels. She had decided to use one as an example of omniscient narration in an essay for her advanced English class. She described his second novel as “purposely tearing apart our expectations of narrative,” but in truth she thought he likely balked under the pressure of his first realist novel and went surreal because it was easier. That’s what Jimmy had hinted at, anyway.

  Jimmy was hanging out with his friend Jason, who was so cute most girls couldn’t even speak around him.

  “Why don’t you use Joyce instead? Or someone the teacher will be more impressed with?”

  “Everyone will use Joyce. She seemed plenty impressed by the fact that I’m staying in the author’s house.”

  He scoffed. “It’s my mom’s house. He’s not as cool as you think he is. He’s, like, a total slack-off. He doesn’t even pay bills. Before you came, he like hardly ever hung out with me. He just wrote and then smoked joints all night and sometimes hung out with my mom.”

  “Well, maybe we strive too much, you and I? Like, how important is getting As, really?”

  “You know I don’t care about grades.”

  “That’s because you get As without even giving a shit. You’re just smart like that. But I bet if you started to get Bs, you would start to give a shit.”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “Jason and I are going to skip the afternoon, go to the park. Wanna come?”

  “Well, it sounds … delightful, but no.”

  “What is with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re just extra snotty today, like extra, extra superior.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I thought things were going to be okay again, because, you know, of last night. That was … beautiful.”

  Beautiful? Ugh. There was a long pause. Jason spun the wheels of his skateboard over and over, obviously feeling awkward.

  “You going to Amanda’s party tonight?” Jason asked. “Her folks are gone. Remember how fun it was last time?”

  Sadie remembered watching the sunrise on the beach. It was when she and Jimmy had first got together. They’d kissed at the end of the night for the first time.

  But she hadn’t been invited to Amanda’s party. No wonder Amanda had been weird with her in the bathroom.

  “Nah, I don’t really feel like it. Just a bunch of kids getting trashed, kinda boring.”

  Jimmy scoffed. “Uh, that last party was the best ever,” he said.

  Sadie shrugged, opened her book again. “I don’t remember,” she mumbled.

  Jimmy glared at her. “Maybe it’s not just that people are freaked out about your dad. Maybe it’s ’cause you’re acting like a total bitch.”

  Jason laughed, covering his mouth in shock.

  She frowned. She tried not to let the insult throw her, looked down at her fingernails and picked at the skin around her thumb. Jimmy had never said an unkind word to her before.

  “Sorry, Sadie. Fuck, I didn’t mean that.”

  Sadie turned away, pretending to gaze out the small window of the couch room, which looked out onto a sliver of the school’s roof. She was determined not to let him see her cry. She saw a fat squirrel with a full piece of bread in its mouth hopping along a drainpipe. She watched it until she heard him leave. When the door closed, the squirrel turned and locked eyes with her until it had swallowed the entire piece of bread.

  she went to Jimmy’s house after school to pack her things. Forget about breaking it to Jimmy. What would he care? She’d gathered everything together in the guest room when she heard his skateboard in the driveway. She decided to ice him out, hauling her bags downstairs as he was coming in, but he looked suitably contrite.

  “Baby, I’m so sorry about earlier. Come to my room?” He grabbed her hand. His fingers were red and freezing. It was getting too cold out to skateboard.

  She obliged, reluctantly, following him down the hall, knocking one of the sunflower frames off its hook with her shoulder by accident. She set it right. She sat on the edge of his bed, which she noted he had actually made. He’d also picked up the strewn clothes and the room smelled less of decay and corporal pleasures and more like fresh air blowing in through the open window. He had prepared for her to be here. He wanted her to come back to his room.

  “Nice cleanup job, babe,” she said. She got up and ran her hand over a stack of magazines on his desk, all in order, fiddling with a pen stacked neatly amongst its peers in a Mason jar beside his computer.

  “You’re not my fucking sister,” he said. “It was starting to seem like we’re siblings instead of lovers. I love you, Sadie. I thought last night changed things back, but it doesn’t seem like it.”

  He patted the space
beside him. She sat down, but she didn’t want to.

  “I was super stoned last night. I don’t even remember,” she said.

  Jimmy’s eyes widened and then contracted, hurt. “I don’t care if we don’t fuck right now. I mean, I care, but more important is our love, right?” He spoke to the bookshelf, hands balled up.

  “Yes, it’s important. I’m just so … stressed.”

  She sat down on the carpet and grabbed his guitar. She played the C chord, the only one she knew. She heard herself being a jerk again but couldn’t stop. This was important to him, maybe the most important moment of his day. And she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  “I know, but, like, being boyfriend-girlfriend is more than just doing it. You don’t even look at me, not the way you used to. You bristle when I touch you, even just a hug.”

  She played the chord over and over again, feeling like a failure as a girlfriend.

  “I’m going to move back home.”

  Jimmy just stared at her. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting to hear.

  “Maybe it would be better if we took a break from each other. Get some space, like, not break up but, like, spend less time together,” she said, lifting the guitar back up and placing it on its metal stand in the corner of the room.

  He looked as if he might start crying. “I guess so,” he said.

  She reached out to him, traced her hand along his jaw and tried to kiss his face.

  He turned away, got up, and stormed out.

  there was nothing left to do but go back home. She decided to knock on Kevin’s door before leaving, to say goodbye. She opened the door and found his laptop was gone, and his clothes were actually neatly ordered into piles. She ran downstairs.

  “Where’s Kev?” Sadie asked Elaine. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

  Elaine was folding towels on the kitchen table. “Oh, honey, he went to Iowa today, remember?”

  “Okay,” she said, pretending to be fine with that.

  “I see you’re leaving us,” she said. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, you’ve been so nice, but I should go back home.”

  “I’ll give you a ride, then,” she said.

  Sadie shoved her backpack in the back seat of Elaine’s little Kia. Jimmy was skateboarding in the driveway, ignoring her. She pretended to look at her phone but kept him in her periphery.

  When she got home, she curled up on the couch in the den and watched a marathon of home improvement shows. It was something she knew absolutely nothing about. If forced to build a house, she wouldn’t know where to start. She appreciated that feeling.

  She pressed Mute, and heard her mom on the phone with Aunt Clara.

  “She’s moody, she’s stomping around with a sour look on her face. I’m so happy to have her back.”

  Every few hours she went out to the boathouse and used the one-hitter she’d stolen from Kevin to smoke what was left of the secret pot stash he’d hidden in the film canisters. She dropped the last bit between the boards of the floor and it fell into the water. Out on the dock she could see a bonfire on the beach at Amanda’s house, the sound of Amanda’s favourite song playing on repeat.

  She was supposed to be writing in her feelings journal every day for Eleanor. So far she’d scrawled aaaaaaaaaaaaaah across every page.

  Fuck it, she decided. She got on her bike, not bothering with a helmet or a reflective jacket the way she normally did at night. She biked close to the edge of the ditch, her resolve strengthening the closer she got to Amanda’s house, the music growing louder. She parked her bike against the oak tree and wandered around the house to the front, where a large crowd had gathered around a bonfire. A bunch of kids were drunk enough to be making out on the grass despite the cold weather. She felt a lurch in her stomach at the thought of coming across Jimmy making out with some other girl.

  The kids sober enough to notice her gave her curious looks. Some said hello or nodded. She walked into the kitchen to get a drink and looked for Amanda. She’d been in this kitchen a hundred times before. She took a plastic cup and filled it with vodka from a bottle on the kitchen island. It was hard to believe, she thought, but she’d never really been all that drunk before. A little bit tipsy on wine once, but that was it. Never enough to forget anything, or do anything regrettable. She took a long swig and nearly threw up in the sink, but held it down. Her face burned hot, and she could feel the liquid going all the way down. When she regained her composure, and filled the rest of the cup with Coke, she noted a different group of kids in the room, all staring at her. They were young. Amanda’s sister rose from the group.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you mean? I’m here all the time,” Sadie said, shrugging, her high quickly sharpening.

  “I love that you’re just pretending everything is normal. Not everything is normal. I don’t want anyone from your disgusting family coming here ever again, do you hear me? Everything has been fucked up since that dumb trip!” She was screaming now, her friends gathering around her in a huddle.

  Sadie stepped back, shocked. It stung, right in the middle of her chest, as though she’d had the wind knocked out of her entirely. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t do anything to you.”

  The face she’d seen as a toddler, and on the annoying seven-year-old who followed them around, had become this girl’s face, full of rage, with circles of black eyeliner around each eye.

  A girl stood up behind Amanda’s sister. “It’s not Sadie’s fault,” she said. Sadie recognized her long wheat-blond hair. Miranda.

  “Shut up, Miranda. You know what? Maybe it’s your fault. We weren’t going to say anything before you convinced us, and now my mom reads every text message, and no one will date me, and Mrs. Clarke suggested we all write essays about a time when we were dishonest and our lies ruined an innocent person’s life, and she looked at me the entire time.”

  “We can’t turn against each other,” Miranda said weakly.

  “Get out of my house, both of you,” Amanda’s sister said.

  Sadie downed the cup of Coke, watching Miranda gather her oversized purse and leave, walking deliberately slowly with her head held high. No matter what she did, she seemed to have the grace of someone twice her age. Sadie gave her a head start before pushing through the dancers on the porch and stumbling down onto the grass. She watched Miranda peel out of the driveway in her mom’s Lexus. She felt bad for her.

  “Sadie,” she heard a voice say before realizing it was Amanda, who put a hand on her arm. “Uh, listen, I’m sorry I didn’t invite you, but you’re not allowed here anymore, remember?”

  Sadie nodded. She felt so foolish. Everyone was staring. One girl laughed, high-pitched and drunken.

  She noticed Jimmy sitting by the fire, nursing a tall can of pbr, looking her way but not getting up. He was sitting next to Brooke Neissen, who was poking at the fire with a long stick and looking casual and beautiful and calm in a way that made Sadie want to push her into the flames. Sadie stared at Jimmy for a few beats, waiting for him to get up and come to her. When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she ran around the house and got back on her bike. She peddled to the end of the driveway and paused, watching the darkness, hoping to see Jimmy, her ally, come into focus. The song switched, the crowd sang along with the chorus. She was already forgotten. She left, trying to stifle her sobs until she was surrounded only by forest. Then she began sobbing loudly, her cries echoing all around the lake.

  Her phone beeped and she stopped on the side of the road, hoping it was Jimmy or Amanda. But it was an email from Kevin. “I’ve been thinking about you, a lot. I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye. How are you holding up?”

  Instead of biking around Lakeside Road, she turned left at the Coffee Hut, which was the exact midpoint between her and Amanda’s houses. At first she rode just to feel herself go, and then pick
ed a destination: the park close to the public high school. There was Billy’s One-Stop Burgers at one end, a parking lot, and a circle of picnic tables near the edge of the woods that led into the state park. Teenagers hung out there at night. Everybody knew that. Sadie didn’t, though. That area was for townie girls and the punk kids and people who did drugs. When she was thirteen, her father had bought them ice cream from Billy’s after a piano recital. They’d walked by a group of teenagers, one with high blue hair that looked like cotton candy. As her father unlocked the car, he’d said, “I don’t want to ever see you here hanging out with these kids, okay? This is what happens when teenagers don’t have enough guidance.”

  Sometimes Amanda went there on Fridays with her friend from gymnastics club, but mostly Sadie thought it seemed dumb to just sit around and look cool, drinking beer out of soda cups and watching whoever inevitably started to fight. She’d been there with Jimmy before, but only to stop for food.

  The area was pretty dead that night. Maybe she could just disappear. This was the kind of place where teen girls just faded into the trees, or wound up in Dumpsters, maybe not in Avalon Hills but certainly on tv. The cops must have come around. It seemed too quiet.

  Inside Billy’s One-Stop, the lights were so bright that her inebriation came roaring back. The restaurant hadn’t been renovated in years, and still looked the same as it had when she was a kid. The radio played classic rock, and a girl was singing along, mopping the far corner and staring out at the parking lot. There was only one table occupied, by a woman who was feeding french fries to a chihuahua. Sadie stood near the counter and watched the dog eat a few fries. The woman smiled at her as though they knew each other somehow. Sadie thought that she had never seen anyone look so lonely. Although the woman didn’t seem sad at all.

  Sadie ordered a Diet Coke from an acne-scarred red-haired kid. She gripped the edge of the counter, watching the kid fill the cup and glancing towards the door, where she saw Dorothy enter with a teenaged girl. She looked down at the counter, staring only at the cup and removing the paper slip from the straw, hoping Dorothy wouldn’t talk to her. She didn’t want to be invited back to one of those fucked-up meetings. She was aware of them behind her, heard Dorothy say, “Buy whatever you want, Miranda, it’s on me. Have a sundae! A burger — really, anything you want.”