Free Going Off Script by Giuliana Rancic

body’s disgusting! No one else would ever want you!” I didn’t fight back. I knew it was true. I wish I knew what makes a young girl or grown woman allow some loser who will never be half the person she is to take his own insecurities out on her. I stayed with Lance for nearly a year, letting him voice all the worst things I already thought about myself. I was a dog. Worse, I was dog vomit. I was stupid, and I was fucking ugly. I never told my friends about the abuse. Something that painful, you just block out and don’t share. Not even—especially not even—with your overprotective Italian father. Babbo was arriving home for lunch once just as a friend was dropping me off after school. One of my platonic male friends in the backseat had shouted out to him, “Mr. DePandi! I love your daughter!”
    Babbo stopped on the porch.
    “Whatta you say?”
    “I said I LOVE YOUR DAUGHTER! She’s the best!”
    “Just-
a
minute!” Babbo turned to go inside. I had a hunch what was coming.
    “DRIVE! GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!!” I yelled at the boys.
    Babbo reappeared with a baseball bat and began running at their car. They took off, and Babbo kept chasing them.
    I should have told Babbo about Lance.
    Instead, I found the motivation to leave only after Lance cheated on me with a private school girl and I found out. Her name was Jill, and I sent word through the girl grapevine that she needed to meet me at the 7-Eleven. I fully intended to kick her slut ass. We both showed up with our girlfriends, like it was
West Side Story
or something. Jill turned out to be this sweet little five-foot-tall thing who I probably could take down with a single Slurpee to the face. She immediately started apologizing. “I didn’t know,” she said. “He duped us both.” We decided to conquer instead of divide. “We should do something fun,” I suggested.
    I pretended everything was fine, and went to Lance’s house. Of course, he wanted to make out in his bedroom. When I dangled a pair of handcuffs I had bought, just for this occasion, at an adult toy shop in Georgetown, his eyes lit up. He must have thought I was really coming out of my shell. I cuffed him to the bed and quickly stripped him, promising him I had a big surprise. Saying he was excited is an understatement. I yelled for Jill, who was waiting outside.
    “Surprise, Lance, it’s your other girlfriend,” I said when she walked in. It was pretty obvious we didn’t have a threesome in mind. I leaned over him, and it was as if all the hurt and shame that had been building inside me for the past year suddenly crystallized into disgust—not with myself, for once, but for this worm splayed out now in front of me.
    “You total piece of shit,” I said. “Don’t ever fuck with me again.”
    Then I spit on him. Again and again. And not just “Oh, my mouth is dry” kind of spit. I’m talking deep-rooted, nasty loogies right to the face. “Jill, spit in his face,” I said.
    “No, I can’t,” she protested.
    “This piece of shit lied to us, used us, and treated us like garbage. The least you can do is spit in his face.” Jill, at my urging, finally mustered up the courage to spit a big fat one right between the eyes. It was brilliant.
    “You cannot leave me here!” he shouted. “My parents are going to find me!”
    Actually, it was his older sister.
    Years later, married with a houseful of kids, he sent me a message on Facebook.
    “Congratulations, Julie. I knew you could do it!” he wrote.
    I did what I should have done with Lance the minute I met him: I dragged him straight to the trash.
    High school ended, for me, not with the proverbial bang or whimper, but with a frantic Hail Mary pass to end all Hail Mary passes. It was the last week of school when the principal summoned me to his office.
    “You have forty-five absences this year,” Dr. Marco said.
    “But it’s senior year. You’re not supposed to go to class senior year!” I objected. Seriously, what handbook