The Best People in the World by Justin Tussing

when she is not one hundred percent in your corner and she called me because she is very upset to be in this position. Do you understand? She asked me if there’s something she’s not picking up on. It’s important to her that she’s being fair with you. What do I think? I think that, yes, she’s being fair with you, but she also has never been a boy, right, so there are certain codes of, right, chivalry, basically, that we have to broach.
    â€œNow apparently you don’t want to give the name of this young girl who you were with. I understand it can be embarrassing, for one thing, to have your mother inquire into your personal habits. I can see your side of it and I can see your mother’s side of it. It puts me in a sticky position. And, I don’t try to misrepresent myself here. How can I, or your mother, guarantee that we’re doing the right thing here? We have to go by feel. Well, in the same vein, I can’t expect that you can undo some of your decisions. What I do expect is that you’ll take responsibility, and not telling the girl’s name is not taking responsibility. Not telling the girl’s name is shirking responsibility. Are you listing to me, ace?”
    I was listening to him.
    â€œRight now your mother’s upset and, obviously, you’re upset. The thing you have to do is get past that and move toward making it less upsetting. And I’m saying this as your friend, right, not just your father.”
    â€œI really can’t talk about it.”
    â€œWell, your mother isn’t going to have much interest in talking with you until you do.”
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    Who took the trouble to pilot the police cruiser past the fragile inconvenience of ornamental trees, flower boxes, and vacant benches? And after he had gone through that trouble, to point it at something as resilient as concrete? What sort of sense did that make? It made no sense. So who had the opportunity? When the chief of police drove the car at the head of the River Parade, no one asked him about opportunity. Presumably he had as much opportunity every other day of the year.
    And what about the dump-truck driver? Some people found it a bit too convenient how the driver was cast as a heroic figure. They saw evidence in the dump-truck driver’s behavior to justify their suspicions. On the night in question, and under highly trying circumstances, he, a municipal worker, did a job exactly as had been expected of him. Come to think of it, hadn’t he been a bit of a striver, a Johnny-come-lately?
    No one, not the police (who were waiting for the river to recede before they could remove the sandbags and give the car a thorough once-over), or the John Birch Society (who’d offered a cash reward for the opportunity to interrogate the vandal), or the court of public opinion, for that matter, was able to get to the bottom of these questions. And though Mary and I weren’t talking, I heard her say something that put the situation in sharper focus. Pawpaw had voiced his respect for such a clear message against the police department, or, as he put it, “those uniformed thugs.”
    â€œWait,” said Mary. “You think someone was trying to get back at the police?”
    â€œThey totaled the damn car,” Pawpaw reminded her.
    â€œSure,” said Mary, “the car was ruined, but what makes you think that was the intention? The car getting ruined was just incidental. Don’t you see? They weren’t trying to destroy the car. They were trying to let the river in.”
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    For the next couple of days, Alice flat out ignored me. If I lingered after the bell, she walked out. When I raised my hand to ask a question, she called on someone else. She allowed Ray to eat up half an hour of class explaining his feelings about the origin of Atlantis. I called her, but she never answered her phone.
    So I showed up at her place unannounced on a Sunday afternoon. She threw the door