The Hill is the park where everyone stands and talks after they get bored driving their cars in circles on the drag. The cowboys are always out on the Hill, and there’s a fight every night; on a good night, there are five or six. On a good night, someone gets slid across the asphalt on his back, T-shirt riding up over his bare skin. It doesn’t matter what the fights are about—no one ever knows—it just matters that Andy Tyler always wins. He’s the one who slides the other guy into the road. Afterward, he gets casual, walks over with his cowboy-boot gait, takes a button from the school blood drive off his shirt and reads it aloud: “‘I Gave Blood Today,’” he says. “Looks like you did, too.” Then he pins the button to the other guy’s shirt. He puts his jean jacket back on and hides a beer inside it, his hand tucked in like Napoleon’s, and smiles his invincible smile.

“Hey,” he says. “Do that rainbow thing again.”

You wave your gloved hands in fast arcs, fingers together so the stripes line up.

Andy laughs, and grabs your hands, and says, “Come home and fuck me.”

But you don’t. You walk away. And Andy leaves the Hill without saying good-bye, and rolls his truck in a ditch for the hundredth time, but a buddy of his dad’s always tows him, and no one ever calls the cops.

Virginity is as important to rodeo boys as to Catholics, and you don’t go home and fuck Andy Tyler because when you finally get him, you want to keep him. But you like his asking. Some nights, he doesn’t ask. Some nights, Lacey Estrada climbs into Andy’s truck, dark hair bouncing in soft curls on her shoulders, and moves close to Andy on the front seat as they drive away. Lacey’s dad is a doctor, and she lives in a big white house where she can sneak Andy into her bedroom without waking anyone up. But cowboys are romantics; when they settle down they want the girl they haven’t fucked.

When Haskell marries an ex-hippie, everyone on the ranch expects trouble. Suzy was a beauty once; now she’s on her third husband and doesn’t take any shit. Suzy reads tarot cards, and when she lays them out to answer the question of Andy Tyler, the cards say to hold out for him.