When I took it, I’m sure I blushed, fully and bright red, a color you can only get to when boys are brand-new.

“I know it’s a weed,” he said. “But who gets to decide what’s pretty and what isn’t?”

He stared right into my eyes, and I knew he wasn’t talking about flowers.

“Thanks.” The yellow head of the dandelion drooped in my hand.

“I’m buying a Chevy Silverado. I’ll take you for a ride in it sometime. But until then, maybe we could go for a walk some evening.”

“Okay,” I said.

He tipped his hat at me, and I watched him walk all the way out to the back field. Every few minutes, he checked if I was still watching him. And I was.

After that, I started spending a lot more time with him. He’d come by the house and ask, Would you like to take a stroll around a field, Miss Alexandra? Would you care to take a turn about the road? Dad approved, and I enjoyed the attention. Ruth rolled her eyes and called him a choirboy Bible basher behind his back. But, as with all things, she was wrong about Tommy.

A couple of weeks before my fifteenth birthday, we were walking out at the far end of the property where the fence line bordered the trees. It was a pretty night, bugs skimming the wide-open flowers, and Tommy pulled at long strands of grass as we strolled.

“Your dad’s land goes on forever,” he said, looking out to the farthest reach of the field. I followed his gaze, too, and squinted. Because there at the edge of the field, rammed hard against a wooden fence, my sister and Hal Nightingale were standing with their pants reefed down. Ruth had her back to us; her hands were on Hal’s shoulders. Mostly I remember the shocking white of the tops of Hal’s thighs, the strange bucking of his hips, the way he kept licking his lips with effort.

“Holy Moses,” Tommy said. “Is that your sister?”

I stared, motionless. From forty feet away, Hal saw me, but he didn’t stop what he was doing. He didn’t even slow down. He smiled at me, opened his mouth so I could see his tongue. The noises he was making grew louder.

“Come on, come away.” Tommy pulled at my arm. “We shouldn’t be here.”

We stumbled back to the farmhouse, both of us awkward and quiet. As we neared the porch, I said to Tommy, “Don’t tell anyone what we saw, okay?”

“I won’t,” he said. And he didn’t, although I know the whole scene had him as rattled as I was. And for my part, I never said anything either, not to Ruth, not to my parents, not to anyone. But it was an image that was hard to unsee.