Tully and Kate’s Friendship Begins

Tully and Kate’s friendship begins on the worst night of Tully’s life, when a quiet meeting by a field turns into the first experience of trust and comfort she can accept. Kate does not demand an explanation or recoil from Tully’s pain: she listens, embraces her, and stays. Their bond grows from that response into a promise to remain best friends forever, a commitment that will be tested by loss and renewed through years of care.

The First Encounter

The relationship takes shape in an unlikely setting: beside a field where a horse has just sniffed the grass Tully offered and trotted away. Tully looks up to see Kate sitting on the fence rail. They are neighbors, but the encounter becomes more than a casual conversation when Tully, already crying, cannot sustain her claim that she is fine. Kate pauses, then hugs her without saying anything. Tully flinches at the unfamiliar contact before finding herself unable to pull away; she has little memory of anyone holding her that way. The scene’s decisive change is physical before it is verbal: an unexpected embrace makes staying with another person possible.

Kate tells Tully she is sure her mother will get better, but the comfort does not depend on solving the problem. Later, looking out over the field, Tully takes a deep breath and confesses that a boy raped her. Shame keeps her from turning to meet Kate’s gaze. Kate lets the silence stand, then asks whether Tully is okay. The question brings the memory back sharply enough to make Tully’s eyes fill, and Kate embraces her again. Tully accepts the comfort for the first time since she was little, then tries to ease the moment by saying she is drowning Kate.

Kate says they should tell someone. Tully refuses, afraid that adults would blame her, and insists that what happened remain their secret. Kate agrees, though she frowns. The exchange establishes both the intimacy and the limit of their first trust: Kate offers help beyond the two of them, while Tully is not ready to risk disclosure. The friendship starts not because the danger has been resolved, but because Kate stays present when Tully names it.

From Disclosure to Friendship

After Tully finishes a cigarette, the two sit together for an hour, sometimes talking and sometimes silent. They are markedly different, yet Tully finds conversation with Kate unexpectedly easy. It is the worst night of her life, but she almost smiles. Neither girl needs to fill the quiet with another secret or a grand declaration; the simple fact that they can remain beside each other is already a change.

The next day, Kate searches for Tully through morning classes and finds her at lunch at the far end of the cafeteria, among the students who keep their heads down. Tully approaches in a striking outfit of miniskirt, go-go boots, shiny tights, tube top, and peace-symbol necklaces, with a large macramé purse at her side. Her first question is whether Kate has told anyone about the previous night. When Kate says she has not, Tully asks if they are friends. Kate answers yes. The vulnerability in Tully’s eyes surprises her; so does the directness of the question.

Tully turns that uncertain moment into the beginning of an ordinary shared day. She pulls Twinkies from her purse, sits beside Kate, asks for her milk, and offers advice about makeup and fashion. The abrupt shift from a guarded conversation about trauma to snack-sharing and talk of clothes does not erase what happened. It gives the two girls a way to continue together in the everyday world, with Tully proposing a visit to Kate’s house after school.

A Promise of Permanence

The friendship’s early closeness is tested by honesty. When Tully finally looks at Kate, she admits that she lied because she wanted Kate to like her. Kate laughs at the admission, then asks for no more lies. Tully agrees. Kate promises that they will be best friends forever and says she will always be there, no matter what. Tully asks whether that means Kate will always stay; Kate answers that it does. Tully promises the same in return.

For Tully, the vow is more than a youthful flourish. The promise makes her feel safe with someone for the first time in her life. Its importance lies in the contrast between the fear of being left and the assurance of being accompanied: after a night in which she could hardly bear to show Kate her shame, she now has a friend who has explicitly pledged to remain. The vow gives a name and a future to the trust first expressed in silence and embraces.

Kate’s recollection of the summer after eighth grade reinforces how friendship becomes part of a shared routine. She hurries through chores and babysits her brother until her mother returns from errands and volunteer work with the 4-H council; after that, her time is free, especially on weekends. The friendship is not sustained only by declarations at moments of crisis. It also takes root in the ordinary hours the girls can spend together.

The Bond Through Loss and Crisis

The care established in the field returns when Tully tells Kate that her grandmother has died while Kate was away. Tully names the people and forces she is angry with—Cloud, Gran, and God—before disclosing the loss. Kate’s response is to hold her as she breaks into sobs. She does not hurry to explain the grief or make Tully stop crying; she lets the grief happen while remaining physically present. The scene recalls the first night’s embrace, but the circumstances have changed: Kate is now the friend to whom Tully can bring bereavement as well as trauma.

Much later, when Kate is taken to the hospital after a severe medical emergency, Tully insists on riding in the ambulance. Sitting beside her, she repeats that she is right there. At the hospital she is pushed aside as the staff hurry Kate inside, and she watches her best friend disappear through the open doorway. The moment makes the old promise painfully concrete: presence is what Tully can offer, even when she cannot control what is happening to Kate.

In Kate’s final hospitalization, care is reciprocal but constrained by illness. Johnny warns Tully that cancer in Kate’s brain has affected her faculties and that she may not recognize her. The warning makes the possibility of recognition uncertain, but Tully continues to seek closeness. On Kate’s last night in the hospital, she persuades Johnny to take the children home and takes his place in the other bed. She pushes her bed across the linoleum until it nearly touches Kate’s and brings a tape of her final show. The two watch it together like girls at a sleepover, an adult echo of the childhood friendship. Their beginning in an embrace beside a field has become a final bedside vigil: the circumstances have darkened, but the basic act of staying remains.

Narrative Significance

The friendship’s beginning links disclosure to witness rather than to an easy cure. Tully’s account of rape is met first by Kate’s attention and touch, while Kate’s suggestion that they tell someone makes clear that private comfort is not the only form of help available. Tully’s fear of being blamed keeps her from accepting that wider support then. The scene therefore marks both the protection friendship can provide and the burden placed on two young friends when trauma is kept secret.

The narrative also makes the friendship legible through repeated gestures. Kate holds Tully after the assault and again after Gran’s death; Tully insists on accompanying Kate in the ambulance and later moves her bed close to Kate’s hospital bed. These are distinct moments, separated by years and by very different crises, but each turns the promise of permanence into action. The first night gives the friendship its emotional foundation; the later scenes show how that foundation endures when comfort cannot undo loss, injury, or illness.