Never Too Late (5 page)

Even if I wasn’t going crazy yet, the scene was getting crazier around me. The stuff we were doing at age thirteen is insane. We were partying like we were in our twenties! Actually, you know what? I know for a fact we were partying a lot harder than a lot of people do at any point in their lives. And I’m not bragging when I say that, either. We were just going way too hard, and we were too immature to see the dangers or the consequences of the things we started getting into. We’d be over at these houses where the parents didn’t care at all, no matter who started coming over or how many people. And of course, drugs and alcohol never come without drama. There was a lot of fighting all the time, both girls and guys, people getting wasted and beating up on each other over whatever the hell pissed them off that night. And I hated that in the beginning, just like I hated the drugs and drinking. I was determined to stay out of any violence. But I fell into that stuff, too, and I ended up fighting, too. I even ended up liking it. As much as I tried to resist it, it just got to me.

It’s pretty depressing to think about how set I was on acting right, and how I failed at it anyway. But at least I was still a good girl as far as sex was concerned. None of that stuff was happening at all. Of course I thought about it as much as any normal teenager, but I didn’t really want to do anything with it. I was scared! The girls around me were way ahead of me on that front, for better or worse. These girls were always dating older guys, and there were always more dudes hanging around. I’d get crushes on them, and sometimes you could tell one of them kind of liked me. But they’d always end up going for one of my friends in the end, because my friends were crazy beautiful girls with amazing, womanly bodies, and I was just kind of timid and chubby. That was a pattern I was used to. I definitely wasn’t projecting confidence. I’d been feeling unhappy with my body forever, and I had such low self-esteem I didn’t even try to make anything happen. I didn’t think anyone would wanna be with me anyways.

In retrospect it’s pretty obvious what kind of path I was on. And the transition from middle to high school caused everything to get a lot crazier.

Big things happened when I was around thirteen and fourteen. The biggest thing was that right when I was starting to mess around with trouble, my parents finally got divorced. It was a long time coming, something I’d been hoping for since I was in kindergarten. It’s not like I celebrated when it happened or anything, but after all those years of being driven crazy by their screaming and fighting, there was definitely a huge relief that came with the change.

My mom moved out of the house with my brother and me, and we moved into an apartment right across the street from the high school. The change was huge. With my parents no longer living in the same house, it was like the volume finally got turned down and I finally had the peace I wanted. No more having to listen to all that screaming and fighting every night, no more having to deal with my dad being drunk and fighting with everyone. Oh, not to mention the fact that for the first time in my life, I had a home phone. I thought that was pretty much the most exciting thing ever.

But there were a whole lot of negative things that crept in with the change, too. Some of them I could see right away, and some of them I wouldn’t understand until later. The first and most obvious thing was that my brother was already going off on his own.

By the time my mom finally packed up and left my dad, Bubby had already gotten so sick and tired of the screaming and fighting we grew up with that he was prepared to leave the first chance he got. One day when he was sixteen, he just packed up his stuff and left to move in with a friend. None of us was really shocked by it. Who could have been? It was probably a peaceful and happy moment for him, getting out of there. I don’t remember him saying much of anything or making it a big deal. It was a big deal to me, though. When he moved out after everything we’d been through, I felt like a part of me was gone. It was one of the few good things I’d been able to count on so far. All my life I’d had him there in the house to talk to about whatever was going on. Every time something happened, he and I would hang out and hash it out. Now I’d be in the house alone, and I wouldn’t have him there to listen to music and talk with. Almost instantly, I felt even more alone than I already did. I was so pissed at him for leaving me! I was so mad I didn’t even go and see him at his place. I don’t even think he realized it. He was off being a teenage boy, and I don’t blame him one bit for it now. I would have done the same thing if I’d been sixteen at the time. I knew exactly why he went off on his own, and so did my mom and dad. Why would anyone stay in a situation like that if he didn’t have to? And for all I know, leaving that house was just something he had to do to keep his head on straight and stay on the right track. When a situation isn’t good for you anymore, sometimes you have to go against the grain and do something drastic to escape it. I definitely know what that feels like, and I can easily accept that being the case for him.

Aside from Shawn moving out, there was another drastic change in my life that came along with the divorce and the move. Suddenly, I found myself with a ton of freedom.

My mom has worked constantly for my whole life, which meant I never really saw her as often as some kids see their parents. But after she got divorced from my dad, she got herself a new boyfriend. From that point on, when she wasn’t working, she was hanging out with him. So with my brother moved out, my dad out of the picture, and my mom barely around, I suddenly had a house (and a phone!) all to myself. That was freedom on a level I had never even imagined. There was nobody around to see what I might be getting into. And the final part of that perfect storm was that our new house was right across the street from the high school, which made it a convenient headquarters for all my friends and I when we started skipping school and getting into more trouble.

The divorce and the new house made for a fresh start, definitely, but the direction I took off in wasn’t really ideal. It was just a lot of freedom all at once. When you go from feeling buried in all this chaos and stupid shit, never having room to breathe, and then all of a sudden there’s nobody there and you can do whatever you want . . . well, I guess I ran with it. All that quiet time alone didn’t get spent on homework, I’ll tell you that much. Instead of focusing on doing good in high school, I ended up going the other way and skipping class to hang out with friends.

I still had the same tight circle of friends who moved from middle to high school with me, and we started getting into trouble right off the bat freshman year. I started skipping on literally the second day of high school. A group of friends and I just walked out of there without a care in the world. It was completely ridiculous, and it was the first of many, many days bailing on class just to hang out and do whatever. That day we ended up wandering down to the nearest gas station, just killing time. There was an older girl in the parking lot, standing by her car, and we all went up and started talking to her. I think she thought we were jumping her at first, this gang of high school freshmen skipping class, coming up and being like, “Nice car!” But we just asked her to take us for a ride.

She wound up taking us to the mall, which is where I found out I was amazing at lying. This cop came up and asked why we weren’t in school, and off the top of my head I managed to spin some crazy, elaborate story explaining why we were at the mall. I can’t even remember all of what I said—something about me being in alternative school and somebody being in college, maybe—but I remember he bought it. Hook, line, and sinker.

It’s crazy to think about how in such a short time I went from being the good girl to suddenly walking out of school and lying to a cop in the same day. Talk about a turning point, huh?

The problem that showed up pretty fast was I was never afraid of getting caught. That’s what usually keeps normal kids somewhat in check, right? They’re afraid they’ll get caught and they’ll get grounded or whatever. But I was never afraid of that at all. As a matter of fact, it always felt like I got away with everything. That day was just the first of many examples to come. From that point on, I skipped school all the time. I’d literally go to school just to pick up some friends and walk with them back over to my house. Seriously, I barely even remember being in class half as much as I remember skipping it, although I must have shown up sometimes. The thing is, I don’t really remember ever getting in major trouble for that stuff, either. The school would call my mom with some automated message telling her I hadn’t been in school that day, but it wasn’t like she was home to hear it. I’d get the message while I was hanging out there with my friends and just delete it before she got home. They might want to rethink that system. Just a thought.

I kept breezing by the authorities, too. I can remember being fifteen and running into a plainclothes cop who tried to ask my friends and me what we were up to. I looked him in the eye and asked, “Who the fuck are you?” He showed me his badge. I was like, “Oh.” So I had to go back to school that day, but it didn’t really stop anything. We were ridiculous. We’d take three lunch periods in a row, walk out of the building in plain sight with teachers yelling at us to come back. It was stupid, the stuff we got away with it. But we kept getting away with it. And like we were going to sit there being bored in class when we knew we could just peace out for the day anytime we wanted! That definitely went to our heads quick.

Obviously, my grades sucked. It was all Ds and Fs. I even failed PE, which is easier to do than it sounds, at least if you put your mind to it like I did. Honestly, the secret is just to sit there and not do anything. The teacher would try and get me to participate in the class, and I’d just be like, “Nah.” It wasn’t even PEs fault. PE is fine. I just didn’t feel like dealing with it.

I was better in history. I loved history. I took the AP class and got way into all the crazy stories and conspiracies, learning about all the wars and the Holocaust, and getting a big crush on John F. Kennedy. I still love JFK! I gave the creative stuff some attention, too. I was a model student in choir, and in art class. I’ve always drifted toward creative stuff, especially drawing. All through school, my art teachers loved the enthusiasm I put into everything in their classes. They saw a different side of me than my math and science teachers did, I can tell you for sure.

But even considering those exceptions, let’s be real. I was doing what I wanted, and what I mostly wanted was to hang out. I definitely started to embrace the social stuff in high school. Since my brother was a senior, I knew pretty much everybody from every grade and they all knew me. Before long I was part of the scene with the skateboarders and the hardcore kids; I had my lip pierced and my nose pierced, and I was all about those skater guys. I finally wound up getting a boyfriend, a cute skateboarder who was really good at guitar. How do you say no? I stayed with that dude for eight months, and come to think of it, we actually had a really good time. It was probably one of my best relationships, if we’re allowed to count ninth grade. I think I should be allowed. He ended up breaking up with me, though, because he was wanting to hang out with friends and get high and stuff, and at the time I still wasn’t really into it all that much. I was tagging along and dipping in, taking pills here and there, but I couldn’t keep up with the people who had thrown themselves into partying. I still wasn’t totally sold on the lifestyle.

It was lurking on the edges, though. My brother had already given me trouble about the things I was doing at that point. That’s the thing about having a cool older brother in school with you. Everything gets back to them eventually. When Shawn heard I’d been messing around with the pills, he was literally in tears about it. In my mind I was still the good kid in my group, so I didn’t automatically see what the big deal was. I wasn’t an addict then or doing anything really excessive, I was just fitting in and being a crazy kid. But Bubby was so against it. He wasn’t into that stuff at all. Even when he did start partying a little bit, he would never tell me, because he knew I’d hate him for doing it too. It was this weird thing we had where we hated the idea of each other doing drugs. We just had that kind of silent pact not to go down that road. It’s not the most typical thing for teenage siblings, I know, but that’s how much we cared about each other. When you care about somebody that much, you don’t want them doing anything bad, whether or not it’s something you’re doing yourself. I’m sure that was part of what kept that stuff from blowing up for so long, just having him there to remind me it wasn’t what I wanted. I feel bad now that he had that burden of trying to keep me on the straight path. It must have torn him up inside when he realized I was really going down the road we both swore we’d never take.

But that wasn’t coming for a while. I hadn’t crossed the bridge yet. The fact was, whether or not I was wild at the time, I was still holding back enough to get broken up with for not wanting my boyfriend to party so hard. So I had the skipping going on, and the pills once in awhile, and the crazy friends hanging around my house all the time, but there was some moderation going on.