Kathleen Hale - No One Else Can Have You

I’m starting to feel crazy looking at the racing text. Radioactive green and true red. Whoever chose complementary colors is an asslord. The combination is like putting your brain in a microwave. That’s another thing I appreciate about Diane Sawyer: she keeps things simple. Vanilla stories, manageable haircut, beige suit.

Elk club cakewalk CANCELLED.

I tear a piece of toilet paper off the roll and hold it in my lap—something to do with my hands. I’m about to swap channels again when suddenly the bright-green background dissolves into static, and Sheriff Staake’s face pops up, waving in horizontal stripes across the screen.

“Bart, there’s something wrong here with this here picture, don’tcha know,” he gripes. The screen straightens out and Sheriff Staake smiles. It’s all very low budget compared to Diane Sawyer. Staake’s not even wearing makeup, for cripe’s sake. You can see every pore. His nose looks like a strawberry.

“Okay citizens,” he says. “The hunt is over.” I tuck my knees under my chin and feel my toes curl against the lid of the toilet. “The alleged killer was found with a shotgun. There were also traces of the victim’s DNA in his car.” Sheriff Staake puts his hand over the microphone, but I can still hear him say to someone off camera: “Anyone found out yet if we’re allowed to say his name?” I open my mouth to yell for Ralph but nothing comes out.

“He’s over eighteen,” someone says.

Staake licks his lips like he’s holding in a smile. “I’m sorry to say that Colt Widdacombe is being charged with murder in the first degree.” He squints at the camera. “There’s really no question, his DNA was everywhere—including some places we can’t mention on TV.” He smiles apologetically. “The good news is that our town is safe again, but our thoughts continue to go out to the victim and her family. Let’s take a moment of silence for Ruth Fried.” Staake folds his hands under his chin and closes his eyes. I look down and realize I’ve been tearing up toilet paper this whole time. My lap is covered with it.

Sheriff Staake resumes talking and I’ve got this feeling like horrible indigestion, until I realize it’s just my stomach muscles coming unclenched. Have I been this scrunched the whole time? Is this the collective sigh of relief Staake promised us? I hear myself cry out like a wounded animal and realize I am sobbing.

Colt Widdacombe is not a nice kid, but it never occurred to me to tell Ruth he was evil. He called her Honeybuns and Sweet Tits. How do you kill someone you have nicknames for? I thought love meant wanting all the time for somebody to be alive—I mean it’s not like if you don’t love someone, you want them to be dead, or anything. But if you’ve chosen somebody, like really picked them out, then death is kind of where you draw the line, right?

So I guess he didn’t love her, maybe? Or maybe you can feel both things at the same time? Like you can’t really hate someone enough to kill them unless you like them tons, too?

I remember there was this one time I picked her up from his place after another fight they’d had, and she had a fresh bruise on her chin, and a bright red cheek like she’d been slapped. When I asked her what was what she rolled her eyes and told me, “Sex, Kippy, grow up.” She said it was some totally consensual erotic thing. But now who knows.

The point is Colt was bad—definitely bad. The evidence is all there. On top of possibly beating Ruth, I feel like he also probably cheated on her—I mean, before they started dating, he certainly got around. He had this weird habit of pranking all the girls he hooked up with, as a way to embarrass them for not going far enough, or just to break up with them, I guess. Sometimes he’d even use pranks to ask them out; the way he and Ruth started dating was he toilet papered the trees in her yard over and over again, until finally she called him and was like, “What the heck?” and he left roses on her lawn.

He kind of tortured everyone, come to think of it. The police were always cleaning up after him, and he never really got in trouble—probably because he won all of our football games for us. He’d spray paint pornographic stuff on the water tower or splatter Principal Hannycack’s house with cow pies. One time he managed to send a warning on hospital stationary to every family in Friendship saying there’d been a botulism outbreak, and everyone in town needed to bring his or her poop to the police station to be tested. It was pretty convincing and the police ended up with a lot of poop. Even Dom and I brought our poop.

But his favorite thing to do was this thing he called Batting Practice, where he’d lean out of his car with a baseball bat while driving down the wrong side of the road and try to knock over a mailbox. Apparently he was pretty good at it. Ruth said he had this technique where he’d steer with one knee. He got our house twice. I’m not sure if Ruth was with him. Based on her diary, and the way she felt about me sometimes, she might have suggested it.

“It’s cool if you fantasize about him sometimes,” she used to say. “I mean, who doesn’t, am I right?”

The truth is, there was something about the way Colt ran around vandalizing things that made him look epic and talented, like Jason Bourne from all those spy movies. And the annoying thing is that Ruth was right about him being sort of irresistible. His nickname was the Honeycomb, because everyone said he attracted girls like bees to honey. I mean, the guy does look like a Ken doll and Superman had a baby—and I know that’s biologically impossible, but still.

Anyway, at first it was defacing the homes of girls who wouldn’t give him blow jobs, and now it’s murder. I guess that’s just what happens when you’re not paying close attention because you’re too busy thinking somebody’s a hunky sex muffin, or what have you.

“Jesus, Kippy!” Ralph is knocking on the bathroom door. I can hear beeping on the other television screen, and I realize he’s dragged the controller cord to full capacity, and is still playing with one hand. “Has something happened? Jesus, Kippy, it’s not fair, come out and talk to me, please!” He knocks more softly. “Is it women’s things?”

I go over to the door and lean my forehead against it. I keep thinking about all those red flags, Colt’s delinquent behavior. I never liked Colt and should have been louder about it.

“Kippy?”

I sniff in boogers, my nose smushed up against the door. I’m embarrassed about how I probably look, but I remind myself that it’s just Ralph, and I know how bad he wants to hear the news.

I open the door and Ralph immediately pauses his game without taking his eyes off me. He hasn’t seen me cry since I was seven.

“Kippy.” He drops the controller and starts patting my head and shoulders at the same time, like bongo drums, trying to comfort me, I guess. “Shhh. Stop right now, what’s going on, is it all right?”

“The TV—it’s Colt,” I blurt. All I can think about is that time Ruth confessed to me that sometimes she and Colt used fuzzy handcuffs. How I said it sounded creepy, but then she just got this look on her face, that “maybe you’ll get it one day when you’re not such a virgin” face that always made me want to scream. I should have tried to break them up right then.

“Colt did it,” I say, but somehow it sounds funny. Maybe because my mouth is screwing up in all directions. I try again: “Colt murdered Ruth.”

“Oh, that rotten boy,” Ralph says, pulling me in for a proper hug. “Of course he did.”

The more I think about it, destroying my mailbox wasn’t the first time Colt targeted my house. He did something even worse back in middle school.