Forgive what I have done;
it means my soul's survival.
I need you so, it's sin;
put an end to my suffering.
Why am I so blind with my eyes wide open?
Trying to get my hands clean in dirty water.
Tim struggled in a dream.
They were on the road again. There was dust, and bright headlights, and Guy laughing, and the only thing worse than the barrel of the gun pressed into the nape of his neck was the way the headlights shone in Julie's eyes when she looked up at him and whispered, Please don't do this.
He groaned aloud and woke himself up.
Julie had said she forgave him and that she didn't blame him, but Tim couldn't stop himself from returning constantly to that night in his mind. He mostly managed not to think about it during the day, but there was nothing he could do about his dreams. The event itself had been terrible enough, but the aftermath was, in many ways, worse. After driving Julie home that harsh, grey morning, he'd returned to his place completely numb. He hadn't cried or raged or done anything, really, beyond sitting on the couch and staring at the wall for a few hours, an open case of beer at his feet.
He wasn't shaken out of his stupor until two days later when he went to take out the trash and found Julie's blood-stained underwear balled up at the bottom of the bathroom garbage can.
It was lucky that he was already in the bathroom at the time, because Billy was getting pretty tired of him throwing up in the living room.
Blinking in a futile effort to clear the dream from his mind, Tim lifted his head. There was a faint tapping sound coming from across the room. He considered ignoring it, but thought better of it. He turned on the lights over his bed and peered at the window.
Standing outside his bedroom, wrapped up in a hoodie and pyjama pants, was Julie. Tim got up and slid the window open, and she climbed in.
"I can't sleep," she said in a scratchy voice. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles, and she looked exhausted. She brushed past him, into the room, and immediately curled up in his unmade bed. Her feet were bare and dirty; she'd walked over in nothing but her pyjamas.
"Do you want me to..." he stammered, unsure of himself. She nodded once without looking up at him. Tim walked around the other side of the bed and climbed in next to her, shutting off his light as he did so.
They lay there facing one another, blinking slowly as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the moonlight vaguely illuminating their faces.
"I haven't been sleeping much," she said, after a long pause.
"Me neither," he replied.
"Have you and Billy paid him his money yet?"
"No."
"What are you going to do?"
"I haven't given it a whole lot of thought, to be honest."
"You owe a meth dealer three thousand dollars and you haven't given it a lot of thought?" she whispered, her voice carrying a trace of her usual sardonic tone. It made Tim glad to hear it.
"I've been preoccupied."
A pause. "Football?"
"No. You."
"Oh."
Silence fell, and lasted so long that Tim thought perhaps Julie had fallen asleep, until her soft voice broke through the darkness.
"I saw them today."
Tim didn't bother asking who she meant. He knew.
"Where?"
"You know the gas station out on route 12?"
"Yeah."
"My mom stopped to go in and get something, and I was waiting in the car. They pulled up and parked a couple of spots down."
"They see you?"
"No, I hunched down. I was afraid they'd say something, with my mom right there."
"So what happened?"
"Nothing – they just went inside, and we left before they came out again."
"Good," Tim said, his hand tentatively brushing against hers where it rested between them on the bed. She hooked her pinkie finger with his.
"It was so..." Julie began, before her voice trailed away suddenly and silence fell.
Tim watched her pale, troubled face in the dim light. "What?"
"I hate that they're out there, just going around doing their thing, after what they did. While we're here, like this. It's like he's still standing there holding that gun to your head."
Tim didn't respond, just listened to the soft sound of Julie breathing in the dark. It seemed as though he could feel the tense energy of all those thoughts and feelings banging around inside her. He wrapped his hand around hers.
"I wish they were dead, I really do," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She inhaled sharply, and began to cry. "I've never thought that about anyone before. Not ever."
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Tim reached out and touched her arm, pulling her gently towards him. She went readily, burying her face against his chest and shuddering with tears.
"I hate feeling like this," she whispered.
"I know," Tim replied, absently stroking her long, tangled hair.
"I just want it to go away. I want it to be over, but it's never over."
Tim tucked her head under his chin, listening to her breathing slow as she calmed and eventually fell asleep. He played the ends of her hair through his fingers, staring into the darkness of his bedroom.
He knew what he had to do.
***
Julie was running out of excuses for her behaviour. Cramps, school-related stress, Matt-related heartbreak, general teenage angst; she had trotted them all out to explain to her mother and her friends why she was so jumpy and tired and restless and humourless lately. She had a feeling her mother didn't really believe her, but so far she hadn't carried it beyond a quiet, "You sure, Jules?" and a hug.
Julie had hoped that it would get better with time. That with school and dance and football games and being helpful around the house and babysitting Gracie as much as possible, she could move on and somehow forget what had happened. But with time, it only worsened. She slept less, and got used to being exhausted. She earned worse grades, and got used to lowering her expectations. She talked less, and got used to keeping a secret. She avoided her friends, and got used to being alone.
She was completely alone, isolated inside fifteen minutes spent by the side of a dusty back road. All except for Tim.
She almost told Tyra once. They had gone to see a movie one Saturday night, and in the silent truck on the way home, it dawned on Julie that Tyra was the only other person she knew who could come close to understanding what had happened to her. Wildly, Julie imagined blurting the words out, but as soon as she imagined how that conversation would go, she knew she couldn't say anything. Tyra would take from her words that Tim had raped her, and Julie could only guess what Tyra would do with that information.
That wasn't the way Julie felt about it. She felt raped, without a doubt, but Tim was not the person she held responsible. When she examined things as objectively as she could, she knew that the events of that night revolved around him. Tim was the one Guy was after, she was just convenient. Tim had stolen from Guy, and Guy wanted to punish and humiliate him. It made a sick kind of sense, really. But it wasn't Tim's fault that his brother was an irresponsible jackass, or that Guy was crazy, or that Julie had gotten caught in the crossfire. He'd offered her a ride when she was stranded; he'd only been trying to be nice.
In the end, she didn't tell Tyra anything. Julie simply bid her goodnight with a forced smile, and then started ignoring her calls. There was less temptation that way.
Julie thought that perhaps she should blame Tim, but now he was the only one in whom she could confide, and the only one who could understand what happened to her, because it happened to him, too.
That was how she found herself sneaking out of her bedroom window night after night to tread silently through the yards of a sleeping Dillon to Tim's house.
She had tried to resist the urge. It happened a couple of times, and then she told herself she would stop. She needed to be strong and move on. But when spending the night alone in her own bedroom faced her with the choice of either sleeplessness or nightmares, she conceded defeat. She threw a hoodie on over her pyjamas and walked to Tim's, filled with reckless hope that this wouldn't be the night when her mother would come into her bedroom to check on her.
Tim never questioned it; he merely nodded a greeting before silently climbing into bed beside her once she was settled. He kept his distance until she initiated a touch, and then they slept wrapped up in one another's bodies.
Julie was simultaneously relieved and horrified to find that Tim suffered nightmares, too.
Their arrangement didn't make any of it go away. But it made it possible for Julie to sleep for a while, and she had resigned herself to being thankful for small mercies.
This went on for weeks and became such an ingrained routine for the two of them that Tim started leaving his window open, allowing Julie to just climb in and close it behind her. Her surprise was great, then, when one night in December she found the window closed and the bedroom empty. Tim wasn't there.
After forcing her way in, she sat down on the end of his bed, dumbfounded, as though she didn't know how to leave if it wasn't nearly 5 AM and he wasn't nudging her awake so he could drive her home before her parents woke up.
Lonely and confused and with a sense of foreboding prickling her neck, Julie did the only thing she could think of to do.
She waited.
***
Planning ahead had never been Tim's strong suit. He preferred to sail in the direction the wind blew than to chart a definite course for himself.
Getting rid of Guy Raston, as it turned out, required a change in attitude. Tim had been trolling Dillon for weeks in the half-formed intention of killing Guy on the spot, should their paths cross. The few times he did see him, Guy was accompanied by his gang of meth heads, and although Tim would gladly have taken them all on if it meant Guy got what was coming to him, even he was smart enough to realise that they'd likely kill him before he had a chance to deal with Guy.
Tim tried to be more calculating. He drove by Guy's house at irregular times to figure out when Guy tended to have company, and when he tended to be alone. But the place was like a flophouse, and there always seemed to be a car or two parked haphazardly out front.
It went on this way for weeks. Every day he got through as many classes as he could and then cut out, driving across town to East Dillon to check on Guy's place. Every night he would lie awake until Julie pulled herself through his window, her sad, silent presence the only thing that could lull him to sleep.
Tim knew that this holding pattern would carry on endlessly, and that the only way to put a stop to Julie's torment and his own was to get revenge on Guy Raston. That was how these things worked.
One night when he knew that Billy was going to be staying over at his new gal's place, Tim took his brother's deer rifle, loaded it, and placed it carefully in the passenger seat of his truck. He drove to Guy's neighbourhood and parked two blocks away. He waited in the truck as the sun set, and once it was dark, grabbed the rifle and walked the rest of the way to Guy's.
He stood in the empty, garbage-strewn lot across the street from the house. The driveway had one car in it, and the lights were on inside. Tim took this to mean that it was time.
Tim walked silently up to the house and stood by the door. He could hear the indistinct hum of the TV inside and what sounded like the voices of maybe two or three people. He was sure he could handle two or three.
Holding the rifle against his chest, Tim waited for the right moment to arrive. Then he would do what he needed to do.
A thump sounded inside the house, and Tim tensed. The door suddenly swung open right next to him, and Tim jumped back in surprise. The porch light was turned on, and standing there staring down at him in the moth-infested glare were Guy and the other one, Petey, as well as a third man Tim recognized.
"No kidding," laughed Guy, stepping down onto the driveway. "What you got there, superstar? You wanna go hunting again, Timmy?"
Tim backed up, his mind scrambling for his next move. Just shoot! a voice inside him said, but as he began to lift the rifle, Guy slapped it out of his hands. Tim stumbled back again, and the two other men followed him.
"I gotta be honest with you, Timmy-boy. I was kinda hoping you'd stop by for a visit. I hate making house calls, you know? I'd much rather do business on my own turf. Petey?"
The other man stepped around Guy, and Tim barely had a moment to recognize that he had a pool cue in his hands before Petey swung hard and it connected with his face.
Falling to his knees, Tim clutched his cheekbone as blood ran down his face. Panic rose in him. How was he supposed to get back at these guys like this? What had he been thinking? They were gonna kill him right here on this piece of shit gravel driveway, and they'd get away with it, and then what would happen to Billy? What would happen to Julie?
Tim tried to stand, only to be kicked sharply in the ribs by Guy, who was standing over him. He still hadn't really healed after last time, and he felt the sickening sensation of something snap inside him.
Glass shattered against his temple and he reeled back again. He scrabbled in the gravel to get up, but a knee pressed into his chest and held him down. He blinked, trying to clear the hot blood out of his eyes.
"Shit!" one of them hissed, and suddenly no one was holding him down. Tim flailed an arm out, turning over and sitting up slowly on his knees. The three men had climbed into the nearby car and were squealing out of the driveway, the wheels pelting Tim with loose gravel. Only then did Tim become aware of the sound of sirens. One of the neighbours must have called the police.
Not wanting to be caught anywhere even close to Guy's, Tim stumbled to his feet, trying to use his shirt to wipe the blood out of his eyes. He grabbed Billy's rifle and, on shaky legs, moved as quickly as he could between houses until he found his truck again. It took him several tries to get the keys in the door. Once inside, he shut the door and leaned back against the seat, groaning in pain despite himself.
Groping around in the darkness, he found an old shirt on the floor and shook it out before balling it up against his face as a makeshift bandage. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and took several deep breaths. His side burned sharply and his head felt like one giant open wound. Carefully, he examined his ribs with his fingers. It felt like one might be broken, but he wasn't sure. He could still breathe, which he figured was good enough.
Eventually, Tim started the truck and drove slowly home, thankful that it was so late that the streets of Dillon were basically empty.
Tim pulled into his driveway and sighed, leaning tiredly against the steering wheel. He was screwed, no two ways about it. Despair began to take hold, but he hoped that maybe he'd luck out, and they wouldn't come looking to kill him tonight.
***
Julie sat pensively at Tim's kitchen counter, almost beside herself with worry. It was nearly 1 AM, and there was still no sign of Tim. She had no idea where he was or what to do about it. At first Julie had been glad that Billy wasn't there, but now she wished that he would come home, if only so she could have someone to shout hysterically at.
She chewed her thumbnail, frowning down at the ugly Formica countertop. For all she knew, Tim was out having a good time with a six-pack and a rally girl, but something inside her told her this was not the case. The feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach told her that something much worse was happening.
The familiar rumble of a truck engine in the driveway startled Julie out of her troubled thoughts. She hopped off her barstool and stood frozen, her mouth dry.
Seconds later, the front door opened and Tim entered, closing it behind him and scarcely seeming to notice her presence.
"Where were you?" Julie asked, trying not to sound annoyed. It's not like they were boyfriend and girlfriend; she had no right to be angry if he was out, especially when she just showed up unannounced. She knew this, but finding his house empty when she came looking for him had scared her. Didn't he know that he was the only person she could rely on right now?
"Out," he said, his voice even lower and quieter than usual. Julie peered at him, confused. Tim looked up and, behind the curtain of his unkempt hair, his face showed that he had recently been beaten up. Really, really badly beaten up. Both eyes were bruised and one was nearly swollen shut, and the rest of his face was covered with cuts and bruises. Two particularly bad gashes on his forehead and cheekbone were bleeding freely; his shirt and jacket spattered with partially dried blood.
"Oh my god," Julie breathed, taking a step closer. Tim awkwardly shrugged off his jacket, the rest of his body obviously hurting as much as his face. "Who did this to you?"
Tim shot her a pained look which basically said, Who do you think?
"What happened?" she asked tightly, her face pale and wary.
"Nothing," he mumbled, wincing as his swollen face throbbed even with the few words he spoke.
Julie stood watching him, her hands floating awkwardly in the space before her. She twisted them together suddenly, shaking her head and taking two quick steps forward and into his arms. She buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms tightly around him.
"I was so worried," she sighed. "What were you ithinking/i?"
Tim grunted uncomfortably and Julie pulled back to look at him.
"Too hard? Does that hurt?"
He nodded. Julie took his hand and led him into the bathroom, pushing him to sit on the edge of the bathtub before turning around to see what first aid supplies she could scrounge up. Having found peroxide and bandages and what looked like a clean wash cloth, she turned back to find him sitting shirtless, his head resting wearily in his hands. It took Julie a couple of seconds to realise that he was crying silently, his shoulders shaking as he hid his face.
She stood there for a moment, stunned and confused and sad and completely unsure of what to do. Finally, she knelt down to his eye level and gently pulled his hands away from his face.
"Tim?" she said quietly. "I need to see your face."
He acquiesced without protest, and dropped his arms to rest on his knees, his eyes staring off into the middle distance.
Julie turned and grabbed the washcloth, quickly soaking it with lukewarm water. She pushed Tim's hair out of his eyes and carefully began to dab at the ugly cuts that marred his face. She worked silently, trying not to worry at how one deep gash on his forehead kept producing fresh blood even after she cleaned it. Frowning, she picked up a square of clean gauze and pressed it into Tim's hand.
"Here," she said, lifting his hand and holding it and the gauze against his forehead. "It's still bleeding – just hold that there."
Tim didn't respond or indicate that he had even heard her, but he did as he was told. Julie sat back on her heels and began cleaning off the knuckles of his other hand, which were torn and bloody, bits of gravel and dirt embedded in his skin.
"I went to his house," Tim mumbled. Julie looked up to see him staring fixedly down at her, the vacant expression in his eyes replaced by something far more intense. "I went there to kill him. For what he did to you."
Julie stopped what she was doing, watching him closely, but didn't reply.
"I took Billy's deer rifle. But I – I chickened out, I dunno, I couldn't do it. They beat the shit out of me. I only got away because someone called the cops."
"Oh," Julie replied, at a complete loss for words.
"I wanted to," he sighed. "You've gotta believe me. But... I'm sorry."
"No," Julie said, shaking her head fiercely and placing her hands gently against either side of his head, forcing him to look right at her. "I'm not sorry. I never wanted... I wish you hadn't even gone over there."
Tim suddenly wrapped his arms around her, hugging her fiercely.
"If I could – if I could have-" he said, his voice breaking as he buried his face against her neck.
"No," Julie insisted, hugging him back, trying not to hurt him. "I don't want you to kill anyone, not for any reason. It's not worth it."
Julie pulled back and looked into Tim's beaten, tear-streaked face. She brushed the stubborn hair out of his eyes once more, then leaned forward and gently kissed him.
Tim didn't respond right away, seeming stunned by Julie's action, but after a moment he exhaled harshly and pulled her close, kissing her back.
After a minute, Julie pulled away, her hands still resting against his neck. She smiled a bittersweet smile and brushed her thumb over the cut on his bottom lip. "Sorry," she said.
Tim stared at her for a moment like he'd never seen anything like her before in his life, before dropping his gaze and loosening his arms enough that she was able to edge back and retrieve the bottle of peroxide from where she'd abandoned it on the bathroom floor.
"We'd better get you cleaned up," Julie muttered, reaching for more clean bandages.
"Yeah," Tim gruffed, clearing his throat and resting his hands on his knees. He sat still as Julie cleaned and bandaged his cuts and bruises. When she was finished doing that, she gingerly felt the bruises on his ribs. He winced, and she pulled her hands away.
"I don't think they're broken," she said, standing up and leaning back against the sink. "But you should probably see a doctor tomorrow just in case."
"Yes ma'am," he said, his voice tired but gently teasing.
"Come on," she said, taking his hand again. She led him to his bedroom and left him alone to get changed while she returned to the bathroom to clean up. After throwing out all the tissues and gauze she had used, she picked up his shirt. It was torn and stained with blood, but it was a Panthers shirt, so Tim would probably be sad to lose it. Julie removed the stains as best as she could, then threw his shirt over the back of a chair to dry.
She stood in the middle of Tim's living room and sighed, feeling more exhausted than she had ever felt in her life.
Tim looked like he was asleep when she entered his bedroom, but when she closed the door and climbed into bed next to him, his eyes were open.
"You okay?" he rasped.
"You're asking me?" Julie asked, looking at his beaten face in the half-light.
"Yeah."
"Go to sleep, Tim."
"Gotta drive you home," he mumbled, his eyes closing. "Your parents are gonna worry."
"Don't worry about it right now."
"Hmm."
Julie watched as Tim's breathing evened out and he fell asleep, snoring very softly.
She didn't fall asleep herself for a very long time.
***
In the morning, the sun rose.
Julie stood at Tim's kitchen counter and wrote him a long note on the back of a takeout menu stained with barbecue sauce. She left the note on his bed in the spot where she had slept, knowing it was the first place he would look.
She left before he woke up, and walked the whole way home alone, the cuffs of her pants drenched with morning dew. When she got in, her parents were sitting at the kitchen table, wide-eyed and clutching cold, full cups of coffee between anxious hands. They'd been up all night waiting for her.
They stood and met her halfway down the hallway, but before they could open their mouths to yell and tell her how grounded she was, she opened hers.
"I have something to tell you," she said.
Two hours later, they drove her to the Dillon Police Station, and it happened exactly the way Tyra once described it to her. Only unlike Tyra, Julie did not tell the truth.
"Then the second guy held the gun to Tim's head, and the first guy, the one with the handgun, forced me down onto the ground. Then he raped me."
Julie stared straight ahead the entire time, refusing to look at her mother or her father. The sound of her mom's sobs muffled into her dad's chest was bad enough without seeing what their faces must look like.
She explained that she believed that the first guy had some kind of vendetta against Tim, but that there was no other reason she was aware of that he would want to harm either of them. Just like she told Tim to say in the note.
The deputy took down every word Julie said, then had her look through a book of mug shots. It had been dark, but she had stared right at both of them over Tim's shoulder that night, and it was easy to identify them. When she did, the deputy nodded grimly.
"I don't mind telling you that this guy has been a problem in Dillon for years," the deputy said, tapping the photo of Guy. "He's been in and out since he was a minor, and he's got a lengthy criminal record. I honestly cannot promise you that we can make your accusation stick, given the lack of evidence, but if Riggins corroborates your story, it may be enough for us to obtain a warrant and get him on another charge."
Julie nodded. Now the rest was up to Tim. All he had to do was say exactly what she told him to. She glanced warily over at her father, taking in the hard, fierce line of his mouth.
Not that she'd be allowed to see Tim ever again, of course.
Two days later, the police executed a search warrant on Guy Raston's townhouse and confiscated drugs and drug production paraphernalia with an estimated street value of $450,000. That's how they put it in the local paper. He was arrested, and did not make bail, and he disappeared from the streets of Dillon. Weeks later, Julie heard that he had been tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison for the drug charges. He never stood trial for rape. Julie didn't mind.
Although her parents knew that Tim had tried to protect her, they blamed him for getting Julie involved in the first place, and it became an unspoken rule that Julie was not to have anything to do with him. Julie obeyed. Tim never objected, and gave her a wide berth from then on.
She still had nightmares and sleepless nights, but she learned to deal with them on her own. She moved on. She was bruised and battered and never the same as she was before the night of the party, but still, she moved on.
Years later, she was home from college on summer break, and one afternoon her mother sent her to the pharmacy to buy cough syrup for Gracie Belle. Walking down the fluorescent-lit aisles, she turned a corner and saw Tim standing in front of a large rack of magazines, flipping through a glossy rag with a truck on the cover. He was wearing jeans and boots and a grey button-down shirt with Riggins Rigs embroidered in red thread over his heart.
Julie looked down and away, hesitating. When she looked back up, Tim was staring at her, the magazine hanging limply in his hands. Knowing she couldn't run away now, she took a deep, steadying breath and walked down the aisle, coming to a stop next to him.
"Hi," she said.
"Hey," he replied, replacing the magazine on the shelf and running an anxious hand through his hair. "How are you?"
"I'm okay. How are you?"
"Fine. I'm fine," he nodded, obviously looking anywhere but directly at her.
They stood in silence, neither one knowing what to say to the other. Julie looked up at Tim's face. A small silver scar ran along the top of his cheekbone where his skin had been split the night he tried to kill Guy. There was another just like it above his eyebrow.
"Listen, I don't know if you're busy or whatever, but do you want to maybe-"
"Yeah," Tim said, interrupting her.
"You don't even know what the rest of my question was," Julie said, her mouth quirking up in a half-smile.
"I know. But the answer's yes."
"Okay," she said, smiling. Tim smiled back.
He reached down and took her hand in his, and they walked out into the sun.