My Teenage Dream Ended

by Farrah Abraham

  When we woke up a few hours later, my first thought was that I wasn’t a virgin anymore. It felt like I now had a huge secret to hide. I snuck Derek out through the front door (it was easier for him to go out that way because no one in my family ever used the front door) and then my parents woke up.

  I tried to act like nothing big had happened the night before. I told them all about prom—the dinner, the pictures, the dancing—and they were happy for me. All they asked was what time I got home. I told them I got home early because of the rain, which was actually the truth. I was relieved they weren’t more suspicious, but a little surprised, too. I was convinced anyone could read my face and know that I had had sex.

  It’s funny how something can happen that makes you feel completely different, but the change happens on the inside so no one else can see it.

  NOT LIKE A VIRGIN

  The Sunday after prom, we celebrated Derek’s birthday. I gave him presents and we hung out the whole day. We went out to dinner and a movie, and then I snuck him back to my house and we had sex again. It went much smoother this time.

  School started up again on Monday. Since, Derek and I went to different high schools, none of my friends had been at his prom. All my girlfriends were asking to see pictures and wanted to know what had happened at the end of the night. They all asked, “So, did you have sex with Derek?” I didn’t tell the truth. I couldn’t. I just said “no” to everyone because I was terrified someone would tell my parents. Immediately after school I called Derek to make sure he hadn’t told anyone that we had had sex. He said he hadn’t, but that all the guys had been asking him about it.

  My friends must have sensed I was lying, because they kept asking me if I had slept with Derek. They would not let it drop. Eventually, they wore me down and I gave up and told them the truth. Derek must have told his friends, too, because by the time we went out to a party the following weekend, everyone knew. They pretended that they didn’t, but I could tell by the way people were asking that they already knew the answer. Derek gave himself away, too, because around me he acted like the respectful boyfriend, but around his friends he was acting like “The Man,” all cocky and grinning from ear to ear.

  After our less than ideal introduction on prom night, the next time I met Derek’s parents was a couple of weeks later when he invited me to his sister’s graduation party at his house. I remember it being a little awkward and that I didn’t feel totally comfortable. I didn’t want Derek to feel bad so I brushed it off and we just did our own thing at the party. We mostly hung out with his uncle and grandma, who were very welcoming and friendly to me.

  We sat, eating and joking around, at our own table. I was talking to Derek’s grandmother about not having enough boobs to fill out my prom dress because earlier she had commented that we looked great in our prom picture. Suddenly Derek said, “Then we should have a baby. That would make your boobs bigger.” I laughed like it was a joke, but inside I was like, He’s thinking about us having children together? I started thinking that marriage and a family might be a possibility for our future.

  Meanwhile, though, Derek told me that his mom wasn’t happy with us dating. I don’t know if that was true, but I tried my best to act like everything was normal between his parents and me. Sometimes, when I called his home or even his cell phone, his mom would answer. I got the feeling that she didn’t like me very much. After a while, it got so awkward that I just gave up calling Derek. I decided that if he wanted to speak to me, he would have to call me.

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

  My birthday was coming up and I was finally going to celebrate my Sweet Sixteen. I couldn’t wait. Plus, school would be over soon and then Derek and I could spend all summer together. I was looking forward to us having more time to be together.

  The night before my birthday, Derek and I went out. Later, I snuck him into my house to spend the night. We had sex (by now it didn’t hurt anymore and we were getting pretty good at it) and then he left early in the morning, before my parents woke up. Then I had to hurry and get ready to go out with my family for my birthday. We were going out for brunch and then going to the zoo in the afternoon.

  When I came back home from brunch, before the zoo, I found a big vase filled with beautiful red roses in my room on top of the TV and a note that said, Happy Birthday! Love, Derek. At first I was freaked out because I didn’t know how the roses got there. Then I figured out that Derek must have left the front door unlocked when he left in the morning and then come back and put them in my room. I was impressed that he had come up with such a crafty plan and decided it was the most romantic gift I had ever received from a guy.

  Later, after the zoo, while I was getting ready to go out to dinner and a party with my girlfriends, I called Derek to invite him to join us. That’s when the fighting began. Derek flew off the handle because he wanted to take me to dinner alone. He threw a jealous fit and said he wasn’t coming to dinner. He told me to just call him afterward and hung up on me.

  I tried to shrug off the fight and went downtown with my girlfriends. I had a great time, but I wanted to spend my birthday with Derek, too. I tried to call him when we were done with dinner, but he wouldn’t pick up his phone. I figured he was still pissed off, so the girls and I went to a couple of places to hang out, and then I dropped some of them off.

  By that point it was getting kind of late and I wanted to hook up with Derek, so I texted one of his best friends, who was having a party at his house. I figured Derek was probably there and decided to head over there with my girlfriends. By the time we got there the party was winding down. There weren’t that many people left and beer was the main beverage (which we didn’t drink), so my girlfriends and I were ready to bail.

  Then I found Derek.

  He was with some random girl who was sitting on his lap.

  I had run into a bunch of his guy friends who were roaming around the party, but they hadn’t even tried to stop me from walking in on Derek. My instinct was to blame the girl and think she had pushed herself on Derek (I don’t know if that was the case here or not), but he didn’t even say “hi” to me or try to cover up what he had done.

  I was speechless. I wouldn’t have known what to do if my girls hadn’t been there with me. I was so angry I just froze. I could have stood there and stared in shock for the rest of the night.

  I was furious, but I figured we would talk about it and then he would apologize. I knew he was mad about my birthday and just trying to get back at me, but when I tried to talk to him he wouldn’t leave his friends so we could talk alone. I couldn’t believe how Derek was treating me—on my birthday! After everything I had done for him. I had been there for him on his birthday, and this was what I was getting in return?

  My friends and I left because I couldn’t take Derek being mean to me anymore. All I could think on the way home was, I can’t believe I had sex with someone like that.

  I tried to call him the next day, but he didn’t pick up. When I finally talked to him the day after, he told me that he had decided that he didn’t want to date during the summer.

  I’m not going to lie: I was devastated. But I didn’t want him to know how much he had hurt me. So I swallowed how crushed I was and responded, “Okay. That’s fine. Talk to you at the end of the summer.”

  I was heartbroken, but I was also furious. How could Derek treat me like that? I wanted to do something to get back at him. I wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt me.

  It was going to be a very interesting summer.

  FLIRTING FOR REVENGE

  Summer started and I was still boiling over with anger and jealousy. I wanted Derek to hear about me every weekend, every day, all the time. I wanted him to call me in the worst way. I wanted him to tell me that he had made a mistake. That he still needed me and wanted us to start dating again.

  Only he didn’t call.

  So I would call him—for sex. Strictly sex. I acted like I didn’t care about him in any other way. I was partying
every night now. If my parents wanted me to stay home, I snuck out. I snuck Derek into my house, too, when he showed up for my booty call.

  But the booty calls weren’t enough. I wanted to be on Derek’s mind even when he didn’t want me to be. I wasn’t letting anything get in the way of my goal. I would party all the time and flirt with all the guys I met, hoping Derek was hearing all about it.

  At the time it seemed almost like a game, but in reality I was a little out of control. Normally, I never went out of my way to flirt with guys, but now I was flirting with a vengeance. I wanted to make the gossip “headlines” to be sure that Derek heard about me. The partying was getting to the point of distraction. I was out late at night so much, I started sleeping during the day. I felt like an owl.

  Then, one night, I went a little too far. The flirting turned into making out, which almost turned into something else. This gossip “headline” did make it all the way to Derek, which I loved, but I also scared myself a little.

  It was at a bonfire party. During the summer, lots of our friends would have bonfire parties out in the country. They were the hype of our summers—the smoky, woodsy smell, the crush of people all thronged intimately around the fire, being out in the open air and the feeling of freedom it gave you. They were always fun, and this one was especially fun—though, in the end, maybe too much fun.

  I went with some girlfriends. We drove twenty minutes down a gravel road, the music up, singing like we were pop stars, texting fifty people at one time, hoping we didn’t hit a deer.

  We got there and parked the car in the huge line up of other cars, popped the caps of our UV blues and pinks, and downed them until we were tipsy. We ran through the high grass, smelled the smoke of the bonfire, saw the fiery light from the flames and the shadows of people leaning against the trees.

  Now that we were there, it was as if the party had finally gotten started. We took over—flirting with the foreign exchange boys there for the summer, watching the guys compete over who could hop over the flames and not get burned, smoking weed in beer-can bongs, peeing in the grass and hang-drying, making out with whomever in the woods or in cars.

  I drank way too much, so much that I had blurred double vision. I found myself in a truck, making out with some boy and calling him Derek. He was going below the belt and I started yelling, “Let’s have sex!”

  A friend came over and grabbed me out of the truck. “You idiot! That’s not Derek!” she yelled. “Come on, we’re leaving!”

  I was so drunk I couldn’t walk, so she had some boys carry me up the hill through the tall grass. I don’t even remember getting home that night.

  I ROLL THE DICE

  The next day my friend called and said, “So the boy you were making out with last night really likes you.”

  I laughed. “Oh my God! I can’t believe I thought he was Derek. I honestly don’t even remember what the guy looks like.”

  Then she asked, “Well, do you want to meet him? He wants to hang out with you.”

  I had nothing to lose. Derek wasn’t calling me. So I thought, Why not? After all, Derek was acting like he wasn’t interested and this guy definitely was into me. Plus, it was a chance to make Derek jealous.

  So I met up with Bonfire Guy. He was nice enough, and I could tell he was very into me, but the whole time I was with him I couldn’t stop thinking about how he wasn’t Derek. I just wanted Derek. So I decided to take a huge gamble to win him back.

  I hadn’t talked to Derek in over a week, but I took a deep breath and called to ask him to come over so we could talk. I was actually a little embarrassed and ashamed of what I was going to do. I was planning to tell him about this other guy to make him jealous. I rationalized that it would show him how much I liked him, but also that I didn’t care about him when I went out and had fun. Looking back, I can see how ridiculous my plan was, but at the time I was stuck. I wanted Derek back and I didn’t know what else to do.

  In the end, it went down like this: It was a perfect summer afternoon and I was waiting outside on my front porch. Derek drove up and parked right outside our gate. I was nervous but so happy to see him. As Derek opened the gate, I said, “Hi.”

  He looked me over, playing it very cool. “Hey. So…you wanted to tell me something?”

  At this point in our relationship (or non-relationship) I could tell he wore the pants high and proud, and I was tired of him acting like it. I wanted to shake him up a little. I took a deep breath and plunged right in, saying everything all in a rush.

  “So the other night, I went out with the girls. I drank too much and ended up making out with some boy. I barely even remember what he looks like, so it really doesn’t matter, but I wanted to tell you so I wouldn’t be hiding anything from you.”

  I paused to catch my breath and then added, “I understand if you don’t want to talk to me anymore, but at least I told you.”

  When I was done, Derek was quiet. He didn’t even look at me. The silence ate at me and I realized that maybe I had truly messed up. I looked down at the ground and stayed like that, not saying anything more. I had rolled the dice and come up a loser.

  I heard Derek say, “I gotta go.”

  I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. “Bye,” I said almost to myself.

  In my mind, it had been a straight shot from “we are so perfect and cute” to “he doesn’t care about me at all.” I felt like a month ago we had been so happy and in love and now here he was walking away. I couldn’t believe it was ending like this. I felt so stupid.

  I looked up in time to see him shut the gate. Then I turned and fixed my eyes on my house so I wouldn’t have to see him leave. I would just hear his car start up and then I would know that he was leaving.

  But I didn’t hear the car start. Instead, I heard Derek’s footsteps as he came back up on the porch with a big smile on his face. I looked up at him and he said, “I like you too much to stop seeing you. But don’t do it again!” I smiled back at him and we hugged each other close for a long time and then he had to leave to go to work. I was thrilled that Derek had finally admitted how much he liked me.

  Gradually, we fell back into being boyfriend and girlfriend again. We started doing everything as a couple again, like I had been wanting, and he shared everything with me—or so it seemed at the time. But something had definitely changed. The trust between us had been damaged and we could never quite get back to the way we had been.

  Partly, it was that I needed to let him know why I had kissed someone else. I wanted to talk about everything that had happened between us. But somehow the time never seemed right to talk about it, so it all went unsaid.

  I still thought about it, though. Inside, I knew it had happened because Derek had not really been my boyfriend and that had hurt. I had lost control at the bonfire party because I had wanted Derek to be there with me, as my boyfriend, the way it used to be. Instead, he had been at some other party, doing his own thing. Derek never told me if he had kissed anyone else or if he was flirting with someone else that night, or that summer for that matter, and I never asked.

  Still, even though important things went unsaid, I was happy that we were seeing each other again for more than just booty calls, so I concentrated on that. Despite what he had said earlier, Derek had discovered that he couldn’t live without me.

  Meanwhile, Bonfire Guy apparently hadn’t been as drunk that night as I had been. He kept pestering my girlfriends, asking to hang out with me. One day his crew of guys showed up where I was hanging out with my girlfriends and we met again. After that, they kept showing up until we finally agreed to start hanging out with them. He would invite me to his friends’ parties where I knew my girlfriends would be. I told him that Derek and I were dating again but it was cool if he and I were just friends.

  This caused some friction at parties and it was definitely a juggling act for me, but I didn’t mind because that crew of guys was nice and I loved the attention. But Derek definitely did not think the situation was so cute.
Now that we were back to going out instead of just having sex, he was getting jealous and possessive.

  I started thinking I had gambled and won after all. Somehow I had played the game right. I thought, I have the boy I want and now he’s all mine.

  THE LYING STARTS

  Derek and I continued our late night intimacy and our growing relationship through the beginning of July. Then, over the July 4th holiday weekend, Shelly had a party at her house and kids from every high school in our district were there.

  I went to the party without Derek. He said he would stop by early and bring me food, but he couldn’t stay because he had to go help his stepdad with some work. His stepfather was a truck driver and Derek would help him from time to time. Shelly found it weird that he was going to work on a holiday night, but I defended him and insisted that it wasn’t so strange.

  Derek showed up with my favorite Jimmy John’s sandwich. Some of my friends were inside the house and the rest were outside by the lake. We could hear a lot of people outside on the deck, but we were enjoying our time together inside, chatting and sharing my sandwich.

  Derek was a little unhappy because Bonfire Guy and his crew were at the party and he had to leave to go help his stepdad, but I just hugged him to show him that he was the only one I cared about. Then I told him, “Let’s go upstairs and you can help me finish getting ready.” Derek was always good about watching me get ready. He liked to watch me put my makeup on—it made me feel so sexy and beautiful.

  We went upstairs and hung out and talked while I got ready. Afterwards, on the way out of the room, I grabbed his manhood and dared him to stick it in right then and there. We were both laughing because we knew we could only go about a second without being seen. But he did it and, Oh my God!