Never Too Late by Amber Portwood, Beth Roeser Read Free Book Online Page A

the table. That was the kind of ridiculous shit that started popping up. As time went on, we came into contact with more people and more drugs, and it all started to warp our idea of what was okay and what wasn’t, assuming we ever had a clear idea to begin with. After that period, I can’t even tell you how many drug deals, fights, and guns I’ve seen. I’ve seen people get guns pulled on them, people threatening each other and beating each other up over all this awful shit. There was one night when I was out at one of these places with my friends, and they wanted to give us tattoos. I’m glad somebody talked them out of it, but it probably wasn’t me. All I remember is lying in a Walmart parking lot that night with my head turned to the side, puking my guts out.
    I think of a teenage girl in that kind of situation now and see how shocking it is, that a fifteen or sixteen year old girl would be running around with these twenty-year-old drug-gies and gang dudes, getting wasted and throwing up in parking lots. Those were dangerous situations. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain. But we were so reckless at the time, we didn’t even think about it. Maybe it’s just how adaptable we were because of our age, but this insane stuff started feeling normal to us really fast.
    Mind you, nobody knew about any of this. My mom was always working or hanging out with her boyfriend. My brother was off doing his thing. And I definitely wasn’t on good terms with my dad.
    Even after the divorce, I still hated him for the way he was in that house. I wouldn’t have even been able to call it mad. I really felt like I despised him, and talking to him or having a relationship with him was pretty much the last thing I expected to do at any point in my life. I was putting a lot of blame on him for my unhappiness as a kid, feeling like it could have been different if he hadn’t been drunk and screaming all the time, being mean, calling me names. There was no way to get over the hurt I felt over losing him to his addiction. I had all these memories of being a daddy’s girl, and no matter how much pain my family had been through, there was no way to understand how he went from that to being the monster he was when he was drinking and fighting with my mom every night for the rest of my childhood.
    So there was no mom and no dad telling me what to do. I was all on my own. And I went all out on the partying. That was all I really wanted to do. It wasn’t to the level I’d go to a few years later, not even close. I was just a crazy teenager, basically—nothing too abnormal from what I could tell at the time.
    But I was about to get a new influence in my life, somebody who’d wind up having a bigger impact on me than I could possibly imagine at the time. I was about to meet my future fiancé.

    He was my brother’s friend to start with, but the first time I laid eyes on him was in the school library. My math teacher had sent me there during lunch. I was so behind in my homework, and he strongly suggested I go there and try to get something done. There was a class in there at the time, a senior class, and all of a sudden I saw this guy sitting with his back facing me. He had a football team jersey on, and he was freaking huge. I didn’t even see his face, but I remember clearly thinking to myself, “Oh my god, this guy is huge. He’s gotta be the biggest guy in the school.” He looked like the damn gym teacher.
    About a week later, I was sick at home—had a reason to skip, for once—and my brother walked into the house with the guy from the library. He introduced us, and I was thinking, “I just saw that guy a week ago.” He was really nice. Really proper and polite. They had just gone and bought this CD, some screamo kind of hardcore metal or something. My brother and me were into that kind of music, but when my brother’s friend put it in and listened to it, it was obvious that he wasn’t into it at all. He looked at both of