Comatose

Act Two: Rebels

Ten Years Before...

Nighttime comes quickly once I'm excited to get to it. Jessie stays silent all through dinner, leaving me to talk nonstop with Momma and Daddy about whatever I can possibly think of, then goes immediately up to her room across the hall from mine. My chattering drops off after she's gone, and the three of us sit picking at our food for a little while longer.

"Hallie." I look up at Daddy's stiff tone. "You've hardly eaten a thing. You're not sick, are you?"

I hurry and scoop a large forkful of the blandly creamy mashed potatoes into my mouth. It scrunches over my teeth like grainy ooze, sticking to the sides of my throat and the roof of my mouth in uncomfortably tasteless patches. "I'm okay," I mumble through the mess, barely understandable, even to myself.

Momma gives me a disappointed look from her end of the table. "Mind your manners, darling. And chew with your mouth closed, for heaven's sake," she admonishes.

Swallowing feels like an impossible feat, given the amount of potatoes, but I manage it quick enough to gasp "Sorry" so she knows I'm trying. I get a weary half-smile for my efforts and glance back down to my plate.

"May I be excused?" I ask my parents politely. Daddy's eyebrows look slightly scrunched and suspicious.

"Got somewhere to be?"

"No," I defend too fast. Now his eyebrows appear like one hairy mat across his wide forehead.

"Hallie," he says in a warning tone. "What do you think you're doing?"

I poke my fork into a peppery lump of mashed potatoes, more black dots than usual peeking out from the folds of white. Is that why it burned a little going down?

Daddy says my name again; I don't want to answer.

"Hallie Talbot, are you lying to your father?"

Momma's voice always sounds sadder than her husband's, something that I think makes it more compelling; I've never been able to avoid her interrogations. "You know we don't condone liars in this household, young lady," she reminds me in that same sad, strict way she can't seem to get rid of.

Lying to my parents is wrong. I know that, of course, and Jessie certainly knows it after sixteen years with them and their rules. But I made a promise, and breaking a promise is worse than lying.

"I don't feel good," I tell them, the words slipping out of me before I can catch them back. "There's pepper in my potatoes. A lot. It makes my tummy feel weird." I'll burn for it later, but at least it's not entirely false. Excitement is churning my insides rather than spices, but it's just close enough to the truth to turn their attention away from the wrong parts.

"You, too?" Momma sighs, mostly at Daddy. "Jessie came down this morning complaining of a severe headache, and I've been feeling a bit under the weather myself for some time. Do you think it's the flu going around again?"

"Can't be. Hallie hasn't been around sick people, and Jessie's headaches are nothing more than excuses to get out of responsibilities and see those degenerate friends of hers."

I duck under the weight of my mother's stare across the table to Daddy. He seems to feel it, too, but focuses very intently on buttering his vegetables. When he finally reemerges from the distraction, she's still staring at him. "What?" he grumbles.

"You know, I remember a time, not too long ago--"

"Now, that's unfair--"

"Hank, you were just as bad, if not worse!" Momma starts laughing, her head and hair thrown back, bright blue eyes closed with the intensity of her amusement, pale pink lipstick stretching wide with her mouth so every part of her expression can share in the pleasure. "It hasn't been so long that I don't remember your leather jackets and tricked out car. It's why I agreed to go out with you in the first place."