My Teenage Dream Ended (21 page)

When I looked around at other students in my classes, sometimes I felt like I wanted to rip all of them (even the ones I was okay with) apart. Looking back, I realize I was reacting to the stress of being a pregnant teen, of not having a supportive boyfriend, of having to be so dependent on my parents, but at the time I was so twisted up with emotion that it was difficult for me to hold back.

The stress just kept building and building until one day I finally snapped and lost it on a couple of girls in my baking class. It was the end of the course and we had to bake a cake during class for our final exam. I got to work and concentrated on making a great cake. When I was done, I glanced over at these two girls sitting near me. They had been sitting there, chatting and eating during the entire class instead of working on their cakes.

It pissed me off. I had worked my butt off and not wasted any time chatting so I could finish my cake. It made me angry that they thought it was okay to just do whatever and not get their final done. I knew it was none of my business, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying something.

I walked over to them and snapped, “Do you think it’s okay to just blow off the final? You should be taking this seriously, instead of sitting around talking and wasting your lives?” They just looked at me and didn’t say anything, which annoyed me even more.

I stormed off and went right up to our teacher. I said that I thought it wasn’t fair for them to just sit there and chat during the exam and I told her I thought she should talk to them. She nodded her head like she understood, but she didn’t say anything to them. I was completely aggravated, but decided to drop it.

The next day in class, the two students I had been rude to surprised me with a huge cake that said, “Congratulations Farrah!” on it. They told me that they were proud of me for graduating early and explained that they had made this cake in secret for their final. That’s why they hadn’t been working on a cake the day before.

I was so surprised and touched by what they had done. It helped me realize that I had been trying to control everyone around me because my life was so out of control. I had no car, no independence. My life was moving in a direction I hadn’t chosen for myself. I couldn’t make Derek change, so I was angry with anyone who didn’t behave the way I thought they should.

Take all that stress, add to it a teenage body raging with pregnancy hormones, and sprinkle the whole thing with a healthy dose of denial. Let these ingredients simmer for a few months and you will end up with a lovely little meltdown that will surely alienate friends and offend people.

I was grateful to these girls, not only for their sweet gesture and their support, but also for helping me see that I had been letting the stress and hormones get to me. I felt awful about yelling at them, but they understood where I was coming from and were supportive of what I was going through
.

That was also my last day of high school and I blasted out of class that afternoon. I was so happy to be putting school behind me forever. One day I would be able to tell my daughter about how hard I had worked to graduate before she was born, earlier than everyone else in my class.

THE WRECK

By December, I was really starting to show and had pretty much stopped going out altogether. The only talking I did with people was through Facebook or Myspace. Sometimes I would get messages from an old friend from junior high who was now good friends with Derek.

This kind of Internet socializing always led to issues and drama. I was pretty sure that he was either asking questions that were none of his business or that he was passing along messages from Derek. I wanted to hear from Derek—not his stupid friends—so I deleted all the messages without reading them. If Derek had wanted to reach out to me, he should have messaged me himself instead of having his friends bothering me and getting in our business. I hoped that since I kept ignoring his friends, he might get the point and reach out to me soon.

Christmas arrived and my family and I did the usual: got the Christmas tree out, decorated it, had a big family get-together, watched movies, and stayed out of the cold. It was a typical Christmas, except that this year I was pregnant and the presents I got were all for my baby. My mom and grandma got me a crib, my sister got me some children’s books, and my dad got me baby clothes.

Although I knew that these presents were what I needed, emotionally I wasn’t ready for baby things yet. Even though I was about to be a mother, I was still so young and it made me feel like I wasn’t important anymore. I tried to be happy about all the baby stuff, but then I would think about how Derek wasn’t sharing this experience with me and I would start to feel sad and lonely.

I hadn’t heard from or seen Derek since he had ignored me in the school parking lot that day and I was starting to calculate how long it had been since we last hung out—about three months. If we went on not speaking for the rest of the pregnancy, by the time our baby was born it would be six months. That was the by far the longest we would have gone without speaking since that day I first met him at the basketball game.

By now my parents were convinced we were done for good. I acted like that was what I wanted, and I got so good at playing that part I was almost starting to believe it myself. Secretly, though, I hoped (and prayed) that once the baby came, Derek would change and we could be a family. Despite the drama, the lies, and the fighting, I still believed in him. I may have been about to become a mom, but really I was still just a teenage girl, trying desperately to hold onto her dream.

Two days after Christmas that dream died.

I woke up one morning and he was just gone. Forever.

My hopes for our family, gone. My happy ending, gone.

I still don’t know exactly what happened that night. If Derek and his friend Zach, who also died that night, had been drinking before Derek got behind the wheel of the car or if it was just a fluke accident. After the initial shock wore off I just wanted to know how; how could this have happened?

For weeks after the accident I scanned the local papers and read every report, every interview his family gave about him.

“Underwood’s family said police told them Derek, who was the driver, may have tried to pass someone illegally on the road before hitting a patch of black ice.���

“The family also said that they believe the three teenagers were drinking Saturday night.”

Mostly his sisters spoke to the reporters. Although I wasn’t surprised by the things I read, I felt like everything they were saying about Derek was wrong, that they didn’t really know him at all.

I read one article that said,
“Derek Underwood’s sisters said that he was a good athlete and was about to be a father.”
As heartbroken as I was, this almost made me laugh. As far as I knew, Derek wasn’t involved in any athletics, unless you counted partying as a team sport. He wasn’t even going to college like he should have been. The father comment made me furious because Derek had never stepped up to take on the role of father. I had been the one who had sacrificed and changed my life so I would be prepared to take on the responsibilities of parenthood, not Derek. Now I was going to have to be the mother
and
the father.

His sister was quoted saying,
“He would always cook for us, and all his friends, whenever they came to the house, he loved to cook, he was going to go to culinary school.”
Yes, he would cook breakfast and he loved food, but I was the one going to school and getting my degree. He had told me he wanted to join the Air Force or work in real estate with his dad.

His other sister told reporters that Derek
, “Definitely lived on the edge, but he was responsible, he went to work, came home.”
Sure he lived life on the edge, if you call weaving in and out of traffic, spinning a couple of times, and slamming into a pole living on the edge. The only edgy thing he did before that was that gas-and-go. In my opinion, Derek drank and took drugs not because he lived life on the edge, but because he was miserable and he used those things to avoid feeling the stress and emptiness of his life.

“Police have not confirmed if the teenagers were drinking, wearing their seat belts, or how fast they were going when they crashed.”

I read later that the police found a bottle of vodka at the site of the crash, but, in the end, the autopsy showed that Derek’s blood-alcohol level was within the legal limit.

In the end, what I’m left with is that Derek was the driver, the one in control. He lost control of the car, just like he lost control of his own life. He made poor choices that led him on the path that ended with the accident. But I also believe that everyone close to him had a part to play—including me.

I will never get over the fact that Derek died, but I also won’t forget how things really were. I’m not here to sugar coat things, because what I believe is that if Derek had been more stable, he would have had the strength to make better choices.

Source for this chapter: Two Teens Declared Dead At Crash Scene 29 Dec. 2008

http://www.kcci.com/Two-Teens-Declared-Dead-At-Crash-Scene/-/9357770/7335346/-/bgiq52/-/index.html

SEARCHING FOR CLOSURE

On December 30
^th
, I went to Derek’s funeral visitation. I contemplated not going, but I knew that if I had been the one who died I would have wanted Derek to be there for me.

After I had cried and cried and could think straight again, I couldn’t stop thinking about going to see Derek at his visitation ceremony. But then I thought about all the issues this would cause. My parents wouldn’t go with me, or anyone in my family for that matter, so that was out. They didn’t want me to go. They felt it would just cause problems with his family and, of course, they were right,

The producers of
16 and Pregnant
wanted to film what was going on with me, but I didn’t want cameras showing up with me to Derek’s visitation. I had never had cameras around with Derek before and now it felt even more wrong. I didn’t want to bring that kind of attention to his visitation.

As always with Derek, there were so many issues and it was all so complicated. I almost didn’t go, but as the day wore on and the sun was going down, I felt like I was missing an opportunity. A couple of my girlfriends had offered to go with me, so I finally texted them back and asked them to take me.