Pat Richmond rapes Tully

Pat Richmond rapes Tully Hart after she accepts his invitation to her first high school party, turning a carefully imagined romance into violence. The assault is a defining rupture in Tully’s adolescence: she is left to confront not only what Pat has done, but the isolation that makes it difficult to seek help. When she tells Kate Mularkey, Kate responds with an embrace rather than blame, offering the first comfort Tully can accept since childhood.

The expected romance

A few nights before the party, Tully eats Pop-Tarts and Alpha-Bits for dinner, then takes a long, hot shower, carefully shaves her legs and underarms, and dries her hair until it hangs straight. She stands before her closet trying to choose the right clothes. It is her first high school party, and no other girls from her junior high have been invited. Pat, the best-looking boy on the football team, has chosen her as his date.

The invitation has seemed like the start of the story Tully wants. At the local hamburger hangout the previous Wednesday, Pat left his group of friends and walked over to her; their eyes met, and on the jukebox “Stairway to Heaven” was playing. Tully attaches romance and possibility to that song and to Pat’s attention. Her hopes make the coming violation more than a sudden physical danger: the same encounter she has imagined as love becomes an experience in which her wishes and her refusal are ignored.

The assault

At first, Tully presses close to Pat and expects tenderness. Then his kiss changes. His tongue moves forcefully into her mouth, and she tries to say stop but cannot make her voice work. His hands move over her body, tug at her bra, and pull it free. Tully says no and tells him not to continue. She wants romance and affection, not what is happening, but Pat does not stop.

The assault becomes painful. Tully cries; Pat continues, and penetration causes pain inside her. When it is over, he rolls away and holds her, behaving as though what he has done was an act of love. He smooths her hair and asks what is wrong, saying he thought she wanted it. His response compounds the violation by treating Tully’s distress as a misunderstanding rather than acknowledging her refusal.

Aftermath and disclosure

Tully dresses slowly and feels sick when she tries to stand. She vomits over her favorite shoes, picks up her purse, and makes her painful way back to the road. There are no cars out late, and she is relieved not to have to explain her hair full of pine needles or the vomit-stained shoes. On the walk home, she replays the evening: Pat’s smile when he invited her, the gentle first kiss, the way he had spoken as if she mattered, and then the harshness of his hands and the force of the assault. The more she revisits the contrast, the lonelier and more desolate she feels. She wants someone she trusts to talk to, but believes there is no one.

When Kate asks whether she is all right, Tully tries to insist that she is fine. Instead, she starts crying. Kate hugs her without explanation. Tully initially flinches at the unfamiliar contact and begins to pull away, but then finds she cannot. She clings to Kate, afraid that without her she will drift away and be lost. The embrace does not erase the assault; it makes visible how long Tully has gone without dependable comfort, and how much the unexpected presence of another person matters.

Naming the harm and choosing a confidante

Tully later tells Kate plainly that Pat raped her. She has been holding the truth inside as though it were a fire that could consume her if she did not let it out. Shame makes her avoid Kate’s gaze while she waits for a rebuke, but Kate asks quietly whether she is okay. Tully relives the assault in the question and begins to cry again. Kate hugs her once more, and Tully lets herself be comforted for the first time since she was little.

Kate suggests telling someone. Tully refuses, fearing that others will say it was her fault, and asks that the two of them keep it secret. This choice leaves the assault undisclosed to others in the immediate aftermath, but gives Tully a trusted witness. Her fear of being blamed is part of the harm’s continuing isolation; Kate’s response offers care without demanding that Tully disclose more than she is ready to share.

A wound carried into their friendship

The assault is not only a discrete episode in Tully’s adolescence. Its aftermath enters the emotional history of her friendship with Kate: Tully’s first reactions to comfort are flinching and fear, while Kate’s repeated, quiet embrace gives her a place to tell what happened. Later, when Tully learns that her grandmother has died, she names her anger at Cloud, her grandmother, and God; Kate holds her while she sobs. The recurrence of this care links the earlier disclosure to a larger pattern in which Kate becomes someone Tully can turn to in grief as well as in the aftermath of violence.

The same history gives particular weight to Tully’s presence during Kate’s later illness. When Kate is hospitalized with cancer that has affected her brain, Johnny warns that her faculties have been impacted and that she may not know Tully. Tully nevertheless stays close. On Kate’s last night in the hospital, she persuades Johnny to take the children home, moves the other bed until it nearly touches Kate’s, and brings a tape of her final television broadcast so they can watch together. The roles have changed: the girl who once needed Kate’s embrace now offers companionship beside Kate’s hospital bed. The scene does not resolve the harm Pat caused, but it shows the enduring relationship formed in part when Tully finally told the truth and Kate stayed with her.