Amy Grinderbinder met Tulip O’Hare at school. At the time, Tulip was considered the smartest girl in school, and Amy was the richest. Neither really wanted anything to do with the other at first, but they discovered that they got along quite well. Tulip had lost a father that she loved dearly, and Amy had a father that didn’t really love her. And a mother who had left to become a lesbian. They were both lonely girls who complimented each other nicely.
Amy invited Tulip over to her house for the Christmas vacation, and the two of them went to a party together. The party was full of the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful. Amy’s father had friends at the highest levels of business and politics, and Amy took advantage of that.
Until it took advantage of her.
During the party, a group of young men tried to gang-rape Amy. Tulip walked in on them getting ready to assault her, ran out the door, and returned by ramming Amy’s truck through the wall. She jumped out with a shotgun – a gift to Amy from her father – and began firing. She nearly killed a man, but luckily the gun was empty.
Amy felt she owed her life to Tulip:
“Their dads can buy judges. I should know. They do whatever they want, and anyone who stands up to them’s a slut or a tease, or was probably just asking for it. It all gets fixed. It all gets fixed and they grow up to be President or something.But you had a gun.”
The two were inseparable after that. After Amy’s father died (he suffocated while performing cunnilingus on a ten-dollar crack whore), she took the money and she and Tulip spent a couple of years exploring America. Their friendship even withstood the inclusion of a boyfriend, Jesse Custer. Together, the three of them tore a wild swath across Texas, becoming experts at grand theft auto.
Eventually Amy went back to New York, where she started teaching in an inner-city elementary school. She still kept in touch with Tulip, though, and when Tulip came to New York again, they spent a lot of time catching up. Tulip was furious at Jesse for leaving her behind while he went to rescue his friend Cassidy, and sought Amy’s advice. Amy, ever the good friend, told Tulip that a love like theirs only came once in a lifetime, and that she should never let it go. And if anything should ever go really wrong, to call her.
Things went wrong.
After a disastrous trip to Monument Valley, after which Tulip thought Jesse had died, she would up in Cassidy’s thrall. She was hooked on alcohol and Valium, and almost completely under his control. When she came to herself again, she made straight for Amy. By good fortune, so had Jesse, who was on his way to find Tulip again after a time in Texas.
Amy surrendered her apartment to the two reunited lovers. When they went on their way again, she repeated her advice – if anything were to go wrong, to call her. As they drove away, she found herself wishing that she were one of them. Either one.