NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE YOU

Chapter 3: Gut Shot

Dom’s scheduled to give a talk at some PTA meeting this afternoon for parents of high schoolers, and he wants me to go with him. Apparently, most people are bringing their kids. I guess they don’t want to risk leaving them home to be murdered.

“Come on, Cactus, time to skedaddle.”

I groan and tell Dom I’d rather stay at the Great Moose Motel and shove pencils in my eyeballs than listen to him embarrass me in front of the entire town. Then I crawl into my double bed and pull the covers over my face, hoping he’ll leave without me.

“I love you, Huggersmith,” he says.

“My stomach hurts,” I grumble.

For one thing I don’t really feel like running into any more tear-stained faces, especially when I can’t seem to wipe this angry look off my own face. Plus, Dom let it slip he’ll be giving a speech today titled, “Hugging Your Teenager.” He was always doing stuff like that when I was in middle school. Once for an assembly, he got on stage in front of the whole sixth grade and gave a presentation called “Love Your Body While It Changes!” There were illustrated diagrams and a mannequin, and Dom kept winking at me the entire time. It was terrible.

“Everything you’re feeling is valid, Kipster,” Dom says, putting on his counselor voice. I hear his knees crack as he crouches beside my bed. “Go on, talk at me, honey, it doesn’t have to be all pretty.”

I peek out at him from underneath the blankets. “I guess I wish you’d fart outside,” I say. “I mean, that’s where I’d start, if I started expressing myself.”

“Okay, so you’re deflecting, I get that, you betcha.” He plucks his phone out of its belt holster. “And you can stay here while I’m out, but not by yourself—no way, no how.”

So now Ralph is coming over.

Ralph Johnston has been keeping an eye on me since Mom died—which basically means he’s been my babysitter since he was two years younger than I am now. So it doesn’t really make sense that I’m not old enough to look after myself, and there’s definitely grounds for raising my voice about how sexist Dom is being. But I don’t feel like arguing.

Plus, it’s Ralph. He’s lived across the street from me my whole life, and if it weren’t for the age difference I’d probably just call him my second best friend…or promote him to hypothetical first best friend, since Ruth could give a crap. Basically I have no friends.

Ralph actually called last night to say sorry for not coming to Ruth’s memorial service. He obviously knew her pretty well—or at least, he’d exchanged basic pleasantries with her for the nine years she and I were inseparable—and so he’d barely known her for a long time. Anyway, on the phone last night he said he was sorry, but that when it came down to it he just wasn’t ready to go back to Cutter Funeral Home.

“I dragged my heels,” he said. “I wasn’t brave enough to leave the house.”

And I couldn’t argue with that. Ralph’s parents were like family to me—but when it was time for their funeral last winter, I locked myself in the bathroom and pretended to be throwing up until Dom relented and let me stay home unchaperoned. At that point it had been seven years, nine months, and four days since Mom had died. So I can’t even imagine how Ralph must have felt about returning to Cutter’s less than a year after both his parents were displayed there.

“No worries,” I told him. “You didn’t miss much except me mucking up.”

The last time Ralph and I were at Cutter Funeral Home together was when he and his parents went with Dom and me to pick up Mom’s ashes. For moral support, or whatever. I remember being downstairs while everyone else went up to help Dom fill out the paperwork. People had been holding me on their laps for weeks, and I hadn’t gotten to see her yet all by myself. Standing there with her ashes was the first time I fully realized how different it would be without her. I had been momentarily forgotten, left alone with a bag of ground-up bones. And Mom would never have allowed that. Even if the bones were hers.