Falling Into Sunday

11- I Am Playing Hooky

“I’m feeling sick,” I inform Emmett on Tuesday. “So I’m not going to school today.”

“You’re sick?” He wonders. “You don’t look very sick, you know.”

“Trust me, I definitely am,” I assure him as I eat a bowl of cereal. “I don’t even know how I’m moving right now.”

“I think you’re lying, but okay then, Vi,” He sighs. “Call yourself out then.”

“I will,” I nod. “Have fun at school.”

“Why aren’t you going to school?” Eli wonders, coming down the stairs.

“Sick,” I say with a halfhearted fake cough. I don’t tell them that I don’t feel like going to school because I’m trying to keep up with being Venice Forrester and it’s exhausting. After what happened seven months ago, I coped with it by running away and ignoring it but now that I’m back, I can’t just ignore things that used to be so easy to ignore. Cole and Sam being the top two things that are not ignorable and then there’s Eli and my mother, who luckily hasn’t tried to have a conversation with me yet but I’m sure that’s coming. I just can’t handle it all when it’s right under my nose instead of three hours away. Luckily, I’m eighteen so I can call myself out of school without my dad having to know that I’m cutting school.

“You’re sick?” He repeats skeptically.

I nod. “Totally.”

“You don’t look very sick,” He tells me.

“Fuck off, Eli,” I snap at him, standing out of my chair and walking over to the sink to rinse off my cereal bowl so that I can go upstairs and sleep some more.

“You seem especially angry this morning,” Eli notes.

I don’t want to talk to him because if I do, I’ll blow up on him and when I do that (yes when, because it’s inevitable) I do not want to do it in front of Emmett. “I’m not angry, I’m specifically pissed at you.”

“You’ve been pissed at me since you got back,” He sighs. “And I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to apologize before you forgive me.”

“Now may be a good time for you guys to tell me what happened,” Emmett pipes from across the counter with an apple in his mouth, which makes it kind of hard to understand him.

“Go for it, Eli,” I chirp at my terrible brother. “Go ahead and tell him what happened. I’m going to sleep.”

I don’t pay attention to what Eli says after that, I just leave the room and walk upstairs where I proceed to text Lexi. I tell her that I’m not going to school today so she tells me that she has a big test third period so she’ll be over after lunch and we’ll have a mental health day together, which I’m grateful for. I haven’t spent that much time with her since I’ve been back (which is only a little over a week) because she has Brent and I have my own issues to deal with, so I think a day just to ourselves will be nice.

When I get back into my room, I call myself out of school and then lay down in bed. I’m immediately asleep because it’s really early so if I’m not going to school, then I’m going to sleep some more. Luckily, my hooking up with Benson kind of reset my mental health so I don’t have any nightmares, which means that I can sleep until I’m fully rested, which is something I’m rarely able to do.

When I really do wake up, it’s noon, so Lexi should be over soon. I decide to get dressed before she gets here, so I pull on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt before I turn on my old X-Box and open Emmett’s Netflix account because I think today’s mental health day will consist of a whole lot of Netflix and food.