"Why are you surprised? I mean my gaydar indicated that I should hit on her back when we were in traffic school, I wasn’t surprised at all when I turned her," I said.

"Because when were teens, she, Mary, and John used to pick on gay people," Ryan said, "and Peter would play pranks on them, but because they were the easy target not because they were gay."

"Really?" I said surprised Tina never told me that.

"Yeah, she was horrible. I guess maybe she wanted Mary to like her or something, she looked up to her. She did what Mary wanted her to do."

"What made her change?"

"I don’t know," Ryan said shrugging, "I just remember one night she went out to get some medicine because Chris and Laney had gotten this horrible cold, and she came back a new person. All I know is that she took too long and we were getting worried then she came back in tears."

"I wonder what happened," I said more to myself than to Ryan.

"It was really dark and I really shouldn’t have gone by myself," came Tina’s voice from the ladder.

We both swerved our heads toward her as she climbed onto the hay and sat down cross-legged in front of us. "I went into the pharmacy and I saw this boy I always picked on, Danny."

"He was my boyfriend," Ryan said.

"He was?" Tina said, "God, I’m so sorry."

"It’s okay, please continue," Ryan said with an encouraging smile.

"Well, Danny was scared of me, he thought I was gonna say awful things to him, but Mary and John weren’t around so I didn’t say anythin’," Tina continued, "he was surprised. And I told ‘im don’t worry, my brother and sister aren’t here so I won’t do anything. I don’t mean any of those things."

Tina’s eyes started to water and I hugged her to my chest, "baby."

"Sorry, I’ve never told anyone what happened that night," Tina said crying.

Ryan put his hand on her knee and said, "you don’t have to sis."

"I want to," Tina said, "because Danny was so nice. I treated him horribly and called him terrible names but he was so sweet and understanding. So I took the medicine feelin’ like shit because of the way I treated him and I went out to the street. I was walking home when this guy attacked me. He was a very big man and I was helpless against him. H-he started ripping my clothes and he slammed me against the wall and got behind me."