The first time Tim had sex with someone else, Tyra cried. She stood in the bathroom she shared with her mom and Mindy, and she sobbed, shoulders shaking and mascara sliding down her cheeks in oily rivers.
She had heard about it during gym class, when she was in the second floor washroom with some of the other girls, passing around a bottle of Boone's Farm. Krista Weller and a few of the rally girls came in, chattering about car washes and bake sales and other lame garbage Tyra couldn't pretend to give a crap about.
They were all crammed into the end stall with the broken toilet. Tyra was sitting on the tank with her feet on the seat, which brought her about eye-level with Whitney and Jessica and Sarah, who leaned with studied boredom against the walls.
The rally girls flooded in, filling the bathroom with the clamour of conversation and the squeak of faucets being turned. Whitney rolled her eyes at Tyra and mimicked puking to convey her disdain. Tyra grinned and raised her eyebrows and took another swig of Boone's.
"-anyway, Dawn said he was so drunk that at first they could barely fool around, but later it was fine. She said they did it and then he passed out and she had to get a ride home with Bryce Phillips."
An outburst of giggling. "What, was Dawn surprised? This is Riggins we're talking about."
"Right? As if he's ever sober."
"Yeah, but he's so hot." A pause. "Dawn's such a slut."
"Seriously. And she's going to be totally annoying about it, too, you know?"
"I know. She's been driving me nuts lately. Like Dawn, nobody thinks it's that great that your college dropout sister can get us wine coolers. Maybe that was a big deal in middle school, but God! Get a life already."
The rally girls trooped out as abruptly as they'd entered, their discussion cut off as the bathroom door closed behind them with a quiet thump.
Her friends watched her in silence, their eyes baldly displaying the pity they so obviously felt for her. Tyra's mouth went dry and her heart pounded. She glanced at Whitney and realised that they were all waiting to see what she would do, what she would say about this indignity.
She took a deep, unsteady breath, and cleared her throat. She swept her hair over her shoulder and stood up, pushing past them. At the sink, she washed her hands and fixed her hair, avoiding her own eyes in the mirror.
"Bet you anything that scrawny bitch is lying," Tyra said flatly, smoothing Mindy's old camouflage tank top carefully over her breasts. "But if she isn't, I'm gonna find her, and I'm gonna kick her trashy ass all the way to San An-goddamn-tonio."
She did not look back at them as she left. She did not want to see the expressions on their faces.
Tyra waited for Tim by his locker that afternoon, her fingernails leaving marks where they dug into her upper arms. He greeted her with a lazy sort of smirk, and she saw red.
"Did you have sex with Dawn Pendley?" she hissed at him.
He blinked at her, not shocked or outraged or freaked or anything, really, and after a long pause, simply said, "Yeah," in a low voice and turned to open his locker.
Tyra wasn't sure what pissed her off more – that he had slept with a rally girl in the first place, or that he didn't even have the decency to lie about it.
"You're an asshole and a loser," she snapped, and when he turned to look at her, his expression annoyed and a little confused, she slapped him hard across the face and walked away.
She skipped the rest of her classes that day, which her mom said was fine, given the circumstances, and spent most of the afternoon sitting on the bathroom counter, sobbing her eyes raw.
Later, she laid her head in her mom's lap and listened as Angela told her all about what men are like.
By the following morning she had finished crying. She got up early, showering and shaving her legs with special care. She spent extra time doing her hair and make-up, and put on her favourite outfit – a black halter top and a jean mini-skirt, and her favourite boots, and as much jewellery as her body could carry.
She drove to school in her High Sierra, humming along to the radio as the sun rose over Dillon.
At school, she found her friends and the rally girls had been hard at work – everyone knew what had happened, and everyone knew that after school, Tyra Collette was going to rip Dawn Pendley's hair out.
Tyra hadn't actually planned on ripping anyone's hair out, but she went along with the rumours, stalking the halls with her head held high. She heard that by fourth period, Dawn had succumbed to the stress, and burst into tears in the middle of her American History class.
Tyra was okay with that, but really, she had a different goal in mind.
It took her all day, but eventually she found what she was looking for – revenge. It came in the form of Cody Teer, a junior who played power forward on the basketball team. She caught him at his locker and flirted as mercilessly as she knew how, and before she knew it, she was at his place and they were making out on his bed, two grape sodas abandoned on his bedside table, and he was reaching for a condom.
As she pulled her clothes back on after, she felt triumphant and defiant and terrible, and hollow inside, like there weren't even any tears in there to cry.
Cody lived near the school, so she walked back to her truck, her boots scuffing against the dry, cracked sidewalk. Her truck sat all alone in the middle of the student parking lot – everyone else had long since gone home.
She did not shed another tear over Tim Riggins. Not then. Not ever, actually.
Three days later, late at night when she was already half-asleep, there came an insistent tapping on her bedroom window.
When Tyra finally convinced herself that she was not about to be axe-murdered, she pulled the curtain aside and peered out. Tim stood on the other side of the glass, frowning up at her. They stared at each other for a long moment before Tyra sighed and opened the window. He climbed awkwardly in and stood there in her bedroom, tall and silent and looking at her like she was keeping him captive against his will or something.
Tyra looked away, crossing her arms over her chest and worrying her bottom lip. She kept her eyebrows raised; she refused to even pretend to be sorry. Even though every time she closed her eyes she tasted the grape soda on Cody's mouth, and felt sorrier than she'd ever felt in her life.
"You slept with Cody Teer," Tim said. It was a statement, not a question; everybody had known about it by noon the next day, anyway. This is what she wanted, exactly what she had wanted.
"Yup," she replied, the word popping sharply between them. She tipped her chin up, like she was inviting a hard punch, like she wanted him to retaliate right now.
"Okay," he scowled. "You made your point. I get it."
He leaned in and kissed her, and she kissed him back, and she was almost totally sure that he meant it.
But he did it again, and so did she. Over and over they did this to each other.
Until one September, during the very first game of what was supposed to be the best season ever, life changed irreparably in the heartbeat between one moment and the next, and they stopped. It all stopped.
Something new, something hopeful, began in its place. Eventually.