No One Else Can Have You Special Content
In the darkly humorous No One Else Can Have You by Kathleen Hale, main character Kippy Bushman must uncover the truth behind the murder of her best friend and catch the killer, don’tcha know.
In this exclusive piece, meet Kippy Bushman, amateur detective and Diane Sawyer’s biggest fan, for the first time.
My name is Kippy Bushman, I live in Friendship, Wisconsin, and I’m surrounded by a bunch of superpolite, serial killers.
Well, they’re hunters, technically.
I mean, I eat meat and everything—venison burgers, venison sausage, venison steaks; all of it. I guess I’m just not into the whole murdering part, which you can find instructions for on bright green computer paper, tacked up on bulletin boards all around town.
REMINDERS FOR THIS YEAR’S HUNTERS:
1.) Shoot that deer cleanly through the neck! And whatever you do, don’t you dare hit it in the stomach! That’s called “gut shot” (remember it, add it to your vocab list) and it leaves the animal writhing on the ground, screaming like a bleeding child. Not to mention it ruins the meat!!
2.) Drain that corpse!
3.) Skin that sucker!
4.) Chop it up and freeze it! Waste not want not!
5.) Mount that head! (Preferably at Jim Steele’s taxidermy on Main Street, GO USA!)
YOURS TRULY, THE FRIENDSHIP SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT
I understand that hunting’s necessary—especially around here. Otherwise the buck and doe population balloons to the point where you can’t even drive fast or plant a proper garden without them getting in your way—don’tcha know, you betcha, the wife and I’ve been trying coyote urine on the bushes, what a big help—it’s all anybody talks about. My neighbors even died last year because they hit a ten-point buck.
But still, autumn can be pretty gross. The leaves start to fall and everything is so nice-looking—sure—but if you peak out your car window through the raining foliage on your way to school, you can always see about 10-12 gored deer hanging upside down from supposedly friendly neighbors’ basketball hoops, just bleeding like crazy onto the pavement. Once I saw somebody’s pet—a Golden Retriever, I think—lapping up the blood. It was terrible.
It makes you wonder about people, I guess. That they could be so numb to a bunch of animal intestines cooling on the ground where their kids have free throw contests, or whatever, and then they turn around and bring casseroles, all cooing about Jesus, whenever someone dies.
Anyway, if I’m in a bad mood it’s only because my best friend Ruth was supposed to come over for a sleepover last night and never showed.