Free I'll Scream Later (No Series) by Marlee Matlin Page B

was a junior in high school. Low-key and had a great smile, handsome. He was the only Deaf boyfriend I would ever have. Randy asked me to homecoming that year, which for a freshman was just heaven.
    We dated for about seven months, but around this time I was having growing feelings for my neighbor Bob Michels, so I broke up with Randy. Bob, who was also a couple of years older than me, was so nice, always looking out for me, and he was really great at sports, which made him even more attractive than he already was. We both had feelings for each other but more on my part than his, though he says now we had crushes on each other.
    Either way, nothing was to come of it. That summer I went away to camp, and when I got back, the day I got back, one of the neighborhood girls asked me, “So how are you and Bob doing? I saw you guys in the car last week.” Last week? I was in camp.
    My heart was broken as only a fourteen-year-old girl’s heart can be, which means madly, terribly, desperately.
    I recovered by seeing Rick—he was not good for me. Older, a drug addict, rode a motorcycle. He was twenty-three, I was fifteen and would sneak out of the house at two in the morning to be with him. I did so much partying with Rick. My friends and Iwould meet up with him and get wasted on combos of drugs and alcohol.
    My parent despised him, though they never tried to stop me from dating him. It was a crazy, exciting time that I’m glad I survived. Rick didn’t last long because I would, for the first time in my young life, truly fall in love.
     
    I MIGHT NOT believe in love at first sight if I hadn’t known Mike. But we just looked at each other and knew, absolutely, that we would be together.
    Technically, I guess it was love at second sight. The first time I saw Mike I was in fifth grade when he and a buddy chased me, and Liz, home from the playground.
    We bumped into each other again the first day of a driver’s ed class. After a few classes we went over to his house with his girlfriend and a dear friend of mine named Dave. I remember we were smoking a lot of pot that day, which was starting to be a habit with me.

    Mike—my first love

    Mike told his girlfriend to wait at the house, that he would be right back. Then he told me and Dave we were going for a drive. In the car, Mike looked at me and said, “When I come back to the house, I’m going to drop her and you’re going to be mine.” Dave sat in the backseat and rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.
    Mike remembers, “God, she was gorgeous, every guy’s dream…boobs and a butt, and I liked that she was a smart-ass. We were both kind of troublemakers. We were happy doing anything, we’d walk out the door and do anything, go anyplace and have a good time.”
    Mike and I would date for four years. I think everyone expected us to get married, and for a while I definitely did. I know it broke his heart when it was over, as it did mine. He will always have a special place in my heart, and I was so glad that he fell in love again, and now Mike and Cindy have a beautiful son, named Sam, just a few months older than my daughter, Sarah.
     
    M IKE AND I started having sex pretty quickly. I remember being downstairs in my house with Mike one night and he said, “You know we’re too young to be pregnant, so we need to do something about it.”
    “Okay, wait a second.”
    I headed upstairs.
    It was about ten thirty at night. My mom was in bed, reading the newspaper and smoking a cigarette. I walked in and said, “Mom, I’m having sex with Mike.”
    “Okay, I’ll take you to the doctor tomorrow for birth control pills.”
    Then she went back to her newspaper.
    The next day, she took me to the doctor’s office. I didn’t know what was happening, had no idea that there would be an examination and what that would be like. My mom didn’t explain anything to me.
    I do remember the doctor being extremely caring, and my parents paid for my birth control pills for years, and