Falling Into Sunday

22- I Am Coping

“How was school today, Venice?” Dr. Rosen asks me on Monday at about four o’clock in her therapist office.

“I didn’t go to school,” I inform her.

“Why didn’t you go to school?”

I shrug. “Because my deepest secret was aired for the whole entire country yesterday? Maybe that’s it.”

“You’re going to have to face the world eventually, you know,” She reminds me as if I don’t already know that, which I obviously do.

“But I can procrastinate that for at least one more day,” I defend. “And I’m slowly easing into it all. Today, I hung out with Lexi and Emmett and although Emmett is ready to murder his very own brother, I’d say they’re both taking it pretty well. Granted, Lexi knew almost the whole story before it was on every news station in the state but yeah. I’m doing fine.”

“So would you like to talk about it? Not the news broadcasting but the events that occurred that night? Now that everything is out in the open, would you like to explain your feelings toward that night?” She probes, which is her job but it’s invasive and annoying.

“I would not,” I deny with a shake of my head. “I’ve been talking about Sam and Cole and how their man parts ended up in places that I didn’t want them to be for the past 36 hours with various people including family members. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

“Okay, well what would you like to talk about then?” She wonders. “Anything that’s on your mind at all?”

“Benson’s on my mind a lot,” I admit even though I don’t really mean to admit it, it just seems to come out. I haven’t really talked to him today much because he went to school and I obviously didn’t so all we’ve done is texting a bit and that’s it but that’s good enough for me because that means that he isn’t totally zoning me out again which is wildly appreciated.

“Benson,” Dr. Rosen repeats. “What about Nate?”

“Um, kind of, I guess,” I shrug. “He’s nice and all but… I don’t know, I think that I’m over him. I think that I’ve been over him for a while, I just wanted him back because I wanted to remember how he made me feel. Like, the innocence that I used to have with him, I miss that but it’s not him. Like, I do miss him, but I don’t love him like I used to. I haven’t for a while.”

“Good job. It’s wonderful that you’re admitting that to yourself, Venice,” She tells me with a warm smile. “Being honest with yourself is a big step. Even if you were unintentionally not realizing the truth. This is really good.”

“I think that I should get a cupcake,” I decide with a long sigh. “Aside from that, I’ve decided that Eli has run away. He’s kind of late on the bandwagon but he hasn’t shown up at home since yesterday morning and Benson told me that he wasn’t at school today either.”

“Why would Eli be affected by the leaked story?” She asks me curiously as she writes down some notes in her notepad.

“I assume you saw the broadcast?” I wonder and when she nods, I continue, “He was the anonymous douche bag. Emmett knows that he drugged me and so he’s probably afraid of Emmett. I would be too considering how pissed Emmett is. I don’t know, this is all just one big shit storm and I honestly don’t see it ending anytime soon.”

“What about your mother? You seem pretty hostile towards her so does she have a part to play in this traumatic event for you?”

“When I told her what happened, she told me that it was my fault. She made me feel like shit. She’s the real reason that I ran away. I mean, I ran away because I was attacked but after that happened, I didn’t plan on leaving, I just didn’t know what to do so I told my mom and she scared me to death so that’s when I decided to run.”