CHAPTER ONE
1976
The morning was bright and clear with a whisper of fog floating around the edges of town, blurring the periphery. It made Hen Town look otherworldly. An hour was one minute longer here, according to the courthouse clock tower. The only eggs sold at the grocery store were bright blue. And old Alice Wester knew all your secrets.
Willamena Wester—Wills to her friends—left for school earlier than she needed to. If her grandmother Alice knew it took less time to get to school by bike than it did when her friend Jani picked her up, her grandmother probably wouldn’t allow her to catch a ride, claiming it wasn’t practical. Practical was one of many excuses Gram kept on file in that diabolical head of hers as to why Wills wasn’t allowed to do things. Safety was another. But her favorite was that they had a reputation to protect.
Wills took her hands off the handlebars of her ten-speed and sat back as she pedaled slowly. She’d had to choose what to wear carefully. Gauchos, because they were short enough not to get caught in the bike chain, and her knee-high chestnut boots. It was what Jani called her rich-bitch outfit, because the leather boots were of a quality none of her friends could afford. They were Italian, and her grandmother had bought them in Chapel Hill for her eighteenth birthday.
Wills listlessly circled around some neighborhoods, not wanting to arrive at school early and seem too eager, though she’d been excited about this for days. She turned down Jani’s street, just to lay eyes on Jani’s old Datsun. The car was tiny, and the three in their group usually had to cram themselves inside with barely room for their big hair, their schoolbooks, and Jani’s trombone. On the days they all had unwieldy science projects due, it was like a clown car. It was dead in the Keller driveway, just as Jani said on the phone last night. It was the reason the Feathers were either biking or, most embarrassingly, being dropped off in front of the high school by their parents that morning.
Wills had gotten her license two years ago like everyone else her age, but gifting her a car was a bridge too far for her grandmother. She had once reluctantly let Wills drive her Buick Riviera to a double feature in Chapel Hill with the Feathers, which had been a big step up from Jani’s car. A better radio, too. She came home with a scratch on the bumper that Gram had pointed out the next morning, one Wills knew hadn’t been there the day before. She had parked at the far end of the movie theater parking lot, where there’d been no other cars, just so something like that wouldn’t happen. She suspected Gram had done it herself as an excuse not to let her drive it again.
Gram put on a good show of being fearless, but Wills knew she was afraid of at least one thing: Wills leaving. She only let it show when she’d had too much to drink, when she would say things like, I would be totally alone without you. Or, You’re safest here with me to protect you. And, curiously, There are so many of them out there in the world. You at least know who they are here. Who they were, she would never say. But she made it clear that Wills wouldn’t see a cent of the Wester fortune if she left, so Wills had made peace with never leaving this place.
There were worse fates, she supposed.
She finally jumped the curb in front of the high school, a low building painted in primary colors just like the elementary school, seemingly for the sole purpose of making the teenagers who attended feel as immature as possible. Plans for the new high school building across town had just been approved. With a generous donation from Gram, in a few years there would be a tall, serious-looking Hen Town High on enough land to maybe even have a football team someday, if anyone could figure out how to get more people to move here instead of away.
Wills steered past the skateboarders and rode up to the bike rack. She parked, took her books and her record album from the basket, then walked over to the student smoking area, where Dorothy was sitting at a concrete table. She was holding a compact mirror while trying to pat her windblown hair back in place. That was the worst part of biking to school, it was hell on hair.
Last summer, Wills and her two best friends had spent hours in her bathroom, perfecting feathering their hair, which they collectively decided would be their signature style as seniors. They were going out on a high note, this last year as an inseparable group. When they’d walked into school on the first day, students had actually parted in the hallway as they’d passed. Buck Pringle had whistled and said, “Nice hair, Wills!”
Hearing that, Jani’s jealousy began to simmer so hot Wills could see the haze around her. It didn’t bother Wills. She was used to it. Part of her even admired that Jani wanted more than the life she’d been born into. So Wills had called back, “We’re all the Feathers, and don’t you forget it!”
They were the most popular girls in school, but that’s what they’d been missing, a pack name. So the moniker stuck.
“Today, of all days,” Dorothy said. “Why did Jani’s car have to break down?”
“It could be worse.” Wills motioned to where Jani was getting out of Mr. Keller’s station wagon with her trombone case. Her twin brothers were in the back seat. “You could be stuck in a car with your two little brothers.”
“One,” Dorothy said.
“What?”
“One brother.”
“Shit,” Wills said at her mistake. One of the twins had died last winter, hit when their father was backing the station wagon out of the driveway. Gram had brought flowers to the family herself and had a private word with them, but she wouldn’t let Wills go to Jani’s house after that, or inside the station wagon if Jani borrowed it. It was as if grief had tainted them, and she didn’t want Wills to catch it. Something changed the day of Gram’s visit, and afterward Jani developed a peculiar prickliness around Wills. It hurt Wills, her pulling away, and she wished she knew how to fix it.
The station wagon drove away and Wills squeezed her eyes to clear her vision. This had happened more than once. There were times she could swear she could see both Jani’s brothers in that car. Maybe grief really was contagious.
Most of the girls gathered outside waiting for the morning bell were dressed in a way usually only seen on yearbook-picture day, but as Jani walked toward them, Wills could tell she knew she looked better than most. Maybe not as good as Wills, but she was wearing a long dress her mother had made. Of the Feathers, she was the only one wearing a dress, and they all would have, if they’d had a ride. Wills suddenly wondered if her car really was dead. Jani wasn’t bad, but lately she wasn’t always good, either. Gram had told her not to trust her with real secrets. But if she couldn’t rely on her friends, who else did she have? Her friends were the one thing Gram let her choose on her own, a sisterhood of found family as close to normal as she could ever hope to have.
“Dorothy, your hair,” Jani said when she reached them.
Dorothy clicked her compact closed. “Don’t worry about me. I brought hair spray. I have time before the bell to fix it.”
“Save me a seat,” Jani said, then headed to the band room to drop off her trombone.
As soon as she disappeared, Dorothy turned to Wills and whispered, “Please help me.”
By the time the bell rang, Wills had managed to get Dorothy’s feathers back in place, though she’d used so much hair spray that Dorothy was now combustible.
Expectation was pinging off the walls as everyone put their books in their lockers and filed into the small auditorium. First-period classes were canceled because the one and only famous person Hen Town had ever produced, Andy Smooth, was giving a performance for the high school that morning.
Back when he’d been the band teacher here, he’d been Andrew Leeper. Eight years ago on summer break, instead of getting a summer job at the commercial greenhouse on the highway or stocking shelves at the local grocery store the way most teachers had to do, he’d decided to use his vacation to embrace his inner Jack Kerouac. He drove across the country with his guitar, busking for food and gas. He ended up in LA at the right place and time with a catchy folk song he’d written on the road called “Everywhere Girl,” which was a thinly veiled allusion to having sex with a wild hitchhiker he met. He landed a record deal, and the song got a lot of airplay. But his career fizzled after one album, and for years now he’d toured with a ragtag group of revolving band members under the name Andy Smooth and the Silks, booking mostly college gigs. They were playing in Chapel Hill that evening, but he’d received an offer he couldn’t refuse: to come back to Hen Town, a place he’d never wanted to return to, for a short morning set and a catered lunch backstage.
Everyone cheered when the group finally came onstage, but less for the band themselves and more for the novelty of the experience they were providing. Wills was sitting in between Dorothy and Jani in the front row, their arms linked like they were anchoring themselves to keep from floating. There was no real introduction. Andy Smooth, with a scraggly beard and fringed leather vest, simply adjusted his microphone and started singing the first few lines of “Everywhere Girl” a cappella:
From the windshield of my van
Night grew blackberry blue
And the stars in the sky made their evening debut
The other members soon joined in harmony, then started playing their instruments in the chorus.
Most of them were disheveled, older men who smelled strongly of beer, like it was seeping through their pores—something that became more obvious the longer they played. The hoppish scent soon filled the auditorium. Only the rhythm guitarist appeared around the age of the audience, but even he had a look about him that said he’d lived a harder life than any in their rural community could imagine. He was also the only one who seemed awake. Not just awake, but aware. He was constantly scanning the audience, his eyes stopping on the girls. He smiled and winked a lot. When Andy Smooth caught on to this, he turned while he was singing and gave the younger man a pointed look.
The band harmonies were excellent, even if the music was past its sell-by date, but they only played six songs. Wills thought “Everywhere Girl” was the real gem, with its beautiful imagery. Afterward, while the rest of the band packed up their instruments, the students who’d brought records for Andy to sign formed a giddy line to walk up to the stage. When it was Wills’s turn, she told the seated Andy her name, and he looked up at her with a jerk of his head. She knew immediately what that look was. It had Alice Wester written all over it, proof that even if you left Hen Town, you could never forget how unsettling Gram was.
He paused, then said, “Stay Smooth,” and scribbled on her record jacket before signaling her to move on so he could sign the next.
Wills crossed the stage and walked down the other side to wait for Jani, who was the last person to get hers signed. After Jani walked away, Andy stood and stretched. Someone then said to Andy from the stage, “Nice females here, for the sticks.”
Copyright © 2026 by Sarah Addison Allen
