Falling Into Sunday

15- I Am Going Crazy

“Venice, we need to talk,” My dad decides the next day, on Sunday during the afternoon as I’m walking into the living room.

I frown in confusion because usually, those ‘we need to talk’ words mean that something bad is about to happen. “I thought you were at work.”

“I called off for a few hours,” He explains. “Will you sit with us?”

I look on the couch and see that my mom is sitting there with him and they both look like they’re about to tell me that my puppy “ran away” but I know that’s impossible because I don’t have a puppy, so I’m still incredibly confused and a little bit worried. “I guess so. What’s up, Dad?”

“We need to talk about yesterday,” He informs me as I sit down on the love seat that’s perpendicular with the couch that both of my parents are sitting on.

I suddenly start to panic because the first thing I think about is that he knows about me and Mr. Erickson. He noticed something off at the dinner last night and now he suspects that I have a past with this business executive guy. I still try to play dumb because I don’t want to admit to anything unless I’m positive that’s what he’s talking about. Maybe he just suspects that we’ve spoken before. He can’t possibly know about my unethical past with his new business friend. “What happened yesterday?” I squeak, trying not to give away how incredibly nervous I am right now.

“Yesterday morning, Venice,” He reminds me and I let out a long breath of relief when I realize that this is not about Mr. Erickson because we didn’t meet him until last night. “The conspiracy theory against the milk.”

“Oh, that was nothing,” I shrug, trying to sound nonchalant about the whole thing because I don’t know how I’ll be able to explain that to my father without telling him the whole story about what happened at that party. I can understand how that seems kind of strange to him though.

“That was definitely something,” My dad insists. He’s pretty stubborn when he wants to be so I know that there’s nothing I can really say to assure him otherwise.

“Sweetie, we think that you should get some professional help,” My mom suggests completely out of the blue.

“Professional help?” I echo incredulously with raised eyebrows. “You mean like, a therapist or something?”

They both nod at me in confirmation and then my dad continues to explain their completely ridiculous idea. “We don’t know what happened but we’re not expecting you to tell us either. You’ve been very secretive since you’ve returned. However, whatever it is that’s happened to you in the past seven months, it’s obviously hurt you.”

I open my mouth to tell him that he’s wrong when he says the ‘we don’t know’ thing because only he doesn’t know. My mom actually knows exactly what happened, she just didn’t tell him about it, but I think she knows that I’m about to call her out, so she interrupts me before I even get a word out.

“It’s for the best, Venice,” She says quickly, shooting me a ‘keep your mouth shut’ look that my dad doesn’t see because he’s looking at me and not at his manipulative wife. “Not just for the family, but for you. You need help.”

“You don’t get to decide what I need,” I snap at her irritably.

“Just try it, please?” My dad pleads, ignoring my rather rude-sounding comment towards my mom sitting beside him. “I just want you to be okay, Venice.”

“Oh, I’m just peachy,” I chirp, shooting my stupid mother an angry glare, but I feel bad for making my dad worry and in all honesty, he has enough to worry about considering he’s running a freaking state. I hate admitting defeat to my mother but I know that it’s really what my dad wants and I shouldn’t fight him on this. “I will feel incredibly stupid and I don’t want to do this at all but if you really want me to, Dad, then I will, I guess. Once a week though, not like, every day or anything. Once a week is my limit.”