Kathleen Hale - No One Else Can Have You

Ruth here . . . made out with Jim Steele today. Officially cheating on Colt

Okay, seriously, what the heck. For the record, Jim Steele is, like, one hundred years old. Well, fifty, but still, ew. Rumor is he used to be some badass New York lawyer who came back to the Midwest to remind himself what life’s about, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s practically a grandpa. He’s got a bunch of sisters in Friendship—he grew up here, I guess—so he’s got tons of nieces and nephews. People call him Uncle Jimmy, which, given the fact that he was making out with Ruth, is probably just as perverted as it sounds. Mostly I can’t believe she never told me.

There’s a knock on the door. “Chompers?”

“Go away,” I snap, and roll onto my back. The memorial service is in three hours and I’m all out of ideas. I mean, Ruth was my best friend, but what are you supposed to say about someone who lies and sometimes secretly hates you and also hooks up with old men? Someone who you’ve already been trying not to be mad at for being dead in the first place?

Friendship, Wisconsin, has a population of 689 people—well, technically it’s 688 now, I guess. Anyway it feels like pretty much everyone is at the memorial service. The fact that Ruth’s family is Jewish—the only Jewish family in town, actually—means they’re having the memorial at Cutter Funeral Home instead of at a church. There’s a line out the door that wraps all the way around the sidewalk. About fifty people are just milling about on the front lawn, occasionally standing on their tiptoes, trying to see what’s going on inside. I’m just sort of standing there, watching them—my arms wrapped around the food we brought and the wind whipping through my tights. I’d pretty much rather be anywhere else.

“You can do it, Chocolate Butt,” Dom calls from the car. He’s running his engine in the parking lot. He was planning to come with me but then I asked him if I could please do this one thing by myself, since we’ve sort of been up each other’s butts the past week. The truth is I’m hoping it’ll be easier for me to improvise a eulogy without him staring at me. I didn’t end up writing anything.

“Honey, that’s one hundred percent reasonable to want to go it alone,” Dom said. “But just so you know I’ll keep an eye out from the Subaru.” Dom’s all about standing watch these days now that there’s a killer on the loose. “I’ll meet you at the wake.”

Robert Cutter is outside, playing bouncer, instructing everyone who’s just arrived to stay on the grass.

“The service room and hallways are filled to capacity,” he shouts. “I’ll open the windows so you guys can hear the rites, but that’s all I got, okeydokey?”

He takes one look at my face and nods, waving me through. Rob’s dad and grandpa cremated my mom, so he knows me, and everyone who knows me knows that I was Ruth’s best friend. I mean, apparently. Who knows anymore if she even liked me, and it’s not like I can confront her about it.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Kippy Bushman,” Rob says as I walk by.

“Okay,” I grumble. I wish I could go back to being demented with grief. Feeling angry at a time like this is enough to make you hate yourself.

Inside everybody’s smashed together in a buzzing ruckus. They’re playing Ruth’s iPod over the speakers. I recognize the playlist, but it’s the wrong sort, and someone really needs to change the track. Whatever’s on is, like, sexy dance music or something.

All of a sudden, a bunch of girls run up to me and attack me with stiff hugs, the kind where you’re pulling away just as much as embracing, the kind Olympic gymnasts give that say, “Great job on the high bars! Now I’m going to put poison in your face glitter!” It’s Libby Quinn and those girls. Ruth was kind of a loner, but she was dating the most popular boy at school, so the popular girls sort of took an interest in her.

They’re all bawling. “We’re so sorry for you,” they keep saying. “You’re so sad. Bless you, honey.”

Something about all the popular girls at my school is that they’re really Christian, or at least they pretend to be. Libby’s the worst of them though. She’s always screaming, “Oh my Gah,” because she refuses to say, “Oh my God.” And if she hears you saying, “Oh my God,” she’ll correct you (“Gah, say Gah!”). Ruth always said it was annoying how both her and Libby got held back a grade, because Libby gave it a bad name, being so mean and legitimately slow, and all. With Ruth it wasn’t about a learning disability. She got held back because she couldn’t name ten animals in two minutes, which they had us do back in kindergarten. Or at least that’s what she told me. Who knows now whether it was true.

“Oh my Gah, Kippy,” the girls are saying. I hold the cookies I’ve brought protectively above my head while each one drapes her arms around my shoulders. Before driving over here, Dom and I went back to the house and he stood watch so I could bake. He was reluctant at first to return to “the scene of the crime,” but Dom knows firsthand how important it is to bring homemade food to a thing like this. He’s always reminding me how when Mom died, he and I existed on funeral food for like a month. The two of us were comatose—hardly able to move, much less pick up the phone and order pizza. If it hadn’t been for all those sweets and casseroles, we probably would have starved.

Libby Quinn walks up last, like some kind of queen about to knight me. She presses at the corners of her eyes, trying to push away the tears without messing up her mascara. One of her girls plucks the tray of cookies from my hands.

“Oh, Katie!” Libby coos. She’s about a head taller than me in her heels, and when she pulls me toward her I land face-first against her gigantic boobs. “How are you, honey?”

“It’s Kippy,” I say, and hear the words vibrate dully against her sternum.

“We’re all so worried about you,” she says, shoving me off her. One of the girls hands me my cookies back and the whole group smiles in unison. Before I know it, they’re all skittering off in their high heels, looking around to see who else is coming inside.

“Thank you?” I call after them.

Friendship is small enough that you can all sort of recognize one another. But so far I don’t think most of these people knew Ruth. Not really, anyway. It was the same at my mom’s funeral. Lots more people came than we actually knew. Dom called them Grief Gawkers. Still, it wasn’t this crowded. I mean, Ruth was popular by association, but nobody has this many fake friends.

So far I don’t even see Colt, but he’s probably around somewhere, unless he was too sad to come. Sheriff Staake (pronounced Steak-y ) usually makes a point of coming to important town events, but he must be out prowling for the killer, or standing watch like Dom, because there aren’t any cop cars in the parking lot. Friendship police vehicles are pretty conspicuous. They have big yellow smiley faces on the sides. The sheriff’s car is different because the smiley face has sunglasses on it.

I wiggle and weave through the hordes, still holding the tray of cookies above my head. “Sorry,” I’m saying. “Excuse me, I’m doing the eulogy, sorry.” After a while the crowd becomes a single-file line. I stand on my tiptoes and see Ruth’s family, all lined up and letting people grab on to them and kiss their heads. Davey’s with them, Ruth’s big brother. I haven’t seen him since freshman year of high school. He never came back to Friendship after he was deployed. I guess the army gave him leave or something for the tragedy. He was special ops. My neighbor Ralph said that means he’s trained to kill.