Wasted by Suzy Spencer Read Free Book Online

back. He grew up playing football in Clear Lake, Texas, with Mark Hartwell attending most all of the games, cheering his stepson.
    Regina was left in Pasadena to live by herself. This so concerned the Seymoures that they phoned Child Protective Services about Regina. CPS didn’t do a thing. Regina had food in the house, a warm place to sleep, and a Porsche to say, “I love you” at night.
    At sixteen, still a high-school student, playing saxophone and marching in the Pasadena High band, Regina Hartwell was on her own.
    “Anytime you need us, we’ll be here for you,” the Seymoures told Regina.
     
     
    The Seymoure family was tight-knit, supportive, and always there. Amy could not fathom the sorrow and hurt Regina went through.
    Regina loved her dad, but she hated him. Mark Hartwell was a man who liked to brag about his stocks and bonds, who dabbled with race cars, who was red-faced, staggering, and slurring as his stepson’s father arrived.
    Mark and Regina both seemed to know that they couldn’t live together. They both seemed to know that not living together made life more peaceful in the short run. But that living apart was also why Regina hated her father—he wasn’t there for her, and she needed him.
    On the outside, though, Regina’s response to her father’s move was, “All right! Freedom! No rules to follow!” After all, she was independent, strong-willed, stubborn, even hardheaded. Nothing was going to get to her or hurt her, not even the abandonment by her father on the heels of the abandonment by her mother, even if those abandonments were by marriage and by death.
    Regina’s devastation, although rarely spoken, came out in other ways.
     
     
    She didn’t know how to take care of her Porsche. She didn’t even know how to drive it. In an attempt to gain friendship and adoration, Regina let other, older teenagers drive it. But they abused her car, and they abused her generosity. So, Mark Hartwell took the Porsche away, then he gave it back, then he took it away, then ....
    Regina became close to her band director—she was a good saxophone player—and a band director is better than no parent at all. And Regina desperately needed someone to look out for her.
    After Mark Hartwell moved out and moved on, his relationship with his daughter didn’t improve. When he came back to Pasadena for his occasional visits with his daughter, he and Regina stood in the driveway and screamed at each other. The yells rushed across the yards and filtered into the next-door windows, harshly nipping at the Seymoures’ ears.
     
     
    Few of Regina Hartwell’s friends came from homes broken by death or divorce. Indeed, in Regina’s childhood crowd, her family situation was considered the most tragic, and not simply because of her mother’s death. Her whole upbringing was tragic from beginning to end.
    But Regina was a survivor. She was charming. She was vulnerable, and yet she would stand up to anybody. Amy admired that. Regina was fun to be around, too. She had a great laugh and could make anybody smile, giggle, and feel good.
    By Regina’s senior year in high school, weekends were party time at her house. Music ricocheted off the walls of the modest house and shot out onto the sidewalks. Thirty, forty, fifty teenagers ran in and out of the front door. Regina provided the house, the food, the liquor, and the bedrooms. Lots of liquor. There were drinking games, which eased into sex. Lots of sex.
    Regina was being used financially and physically. She never had any one boyfriend, but she did have intercourse with boys, despite the fact that males weren’t particularly attracted to Regina. To Texas boys who like their belles soft and quiet, Regina came off as abrupt. She had a loud mouth. She could be rough at times. Still, several of them slept with her in high school. Her sex life started young. She simply didn’t know the difference between sex and love, tenderness and affection.
     
     
    After each party, after