❝ we all eat lies, when our hearts are hungry ❞
Halle Brewster made a promise she would never tell the secrets of the summer Alison DiLaurentis went missing. Only now, someone else was doing the telling - something Alison never got the chance to do...
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Halle sat on the ledge of her bedroom window. With one foot propped and her head leant against the frame, wrapped up in a towel from her morning shower, she smoked a joint. She knew she shouldn't — that she was taking a pretty big risk by lighting up at home — but she couldn't deal with Emily's judging stares, and Halle couldn't handle it any more.
For a while, Halle could pretend she had worked through the mass of anxieties on her chest. At least until the joint was smoked through and she came down from its healing properties. Then, when reality sank in again, Halle would bottle it up again. She'd keep it all inside her head and really keep inside of it — petrified somebody was going to pull the rug out from under her. The game was unfamiliar and scary, and Halle hated how helpless it made her. So, Halle went back to the one thing wasn't those things or made her feel that way, and that was the weed.
A heavy knock on her door startled Halle. She jumped and almost slipped, having to grip onto the frame with two hands, the blunt between her lips.
"Halle — breakfast in five minutes!" called out her mother, knocking again.
Halle plucked out the joint and squashed it out on the wall outside the window. She then threw it far, into the shrubbery surrounding the house.
"Halle!"
"I'm coming!" Halle yelled back. "Just getting dressed, down in a minute."
After getting dressed quickly, Halle shut the window and blew out the candle that she lit before her shower. She hoped the smell would mask all the funkiness of the weed, and as long as Halle played sober, it would work.
Morning in the Brewster Household had changed overnight. The usually tense and sparse kitchen now was full. It was only like that briefly or when one of them was in trouble and mandatory family breakfast was then enforced. Myles sat at the kitchen-island with Riley, eating breakfast with her like he used to; their parents flitted around each other, perfectly in sync — if one went one way, the other went the other.
Halle came in with a grin on her face, skirting around everybody else to pinch a triangular piece of toast from the rack and then making her way over to get coffee.
"So, Hal, are you excited?" Nick Brewster asked his daughter.
With the slice of toast in her mouth, mid-pour of her morning coffee, Halle's brows went up. She lifted her hand and tore the toast, leaving a small piece in her mouth. Chewing, she asked, "Excited for what?"
"The father-daughter dance," Nick said. "Don't tell me you forgot?"
"Oh, yeah." Halle was a little slow. Her brain ticked slowly over the information. She was feeling a little dazed and felt the cogs in her head whir into action. "Must've," she said, with a shrug. She smiled and raised the cup to her lips. "But, yeah, sure, excited is a word."
