Read Online Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva by Deborah Voigt - Free Book Online Page A

shitless.”
    Mom flinched at my language. I didn’t curse much, so she was surprised. And she knew I was right. She was scared shitless then, and she was scared shitless now—this time, for me.
    My father wasn’t as subtle as my mother.
    One night a few weeks later, I was late for my ten p.m. curfew. I was at John’s, of course; we were fooling around in his car in the driveway. My father knew where he lived, and at midnight we heard a loud knock on John’s car—on the steamed-up passenger side, where I was sitting—and there stood my dad. I rolled down the fogged window.
    “Get in,” he said to me, motioning for me to get into the family car and come home with him.
    The next morning, he had a serious meeting with John at a nearby restaurant.
    “Are you aware that you are committing statutory rape?” he said to John. “Are you aware you are committing a crime with my daughter? Do you have real feelings for her? Does she mean more to you than just sex? You are not going to steal my daughter’s future away from her, do you understand?”
    My poor father; he was just as afraid as my mother. They took away my driver’s license for a few months and grounded me and threatened me and pleaded with me, but there was no use. I was a crazy teenager who thought she was in love, and the more they tried to pull me away from him, the more I was desperate to see him. Until finally one morning, they gave in . . . or gave up.
    Mom was driving me to school and, with a sigh, she said something to me I never thought I’d hear.
    “Debbie, I think maybe it’s time for you to go on birth control—if you are not already.”
    Clearly, my parents, at their wits’ end, must have decided that if they couldn’t stop me from sinning and save me from the fires of eternal, damning hell . . . they could stop me from making the same mistake they did.
    I WAS SO consumed with the drama of John that my schoolwork was suffering. I was even failing phys ed. How do you fail phys ed? You don’t show up. It was my last class of the day, and I hated it; I was uncomfortable moving around and showering in front of all the skinny girls. And John got off work right about that time. He’d gotten a new job driving tour groups around, and at some point he’d moved out of his parents’ house and gotten an apartment. He’d come pick me up with the bus before my last period and we’d take off.
    I went to speak to the gym teacher and beg for leniency. We made a deal that in exchange for a passing grade, I would come in early every day for a semester and clean the locker rooms. Which is how I got my (thankfully temporary) nickname from her and the other kids in school—“Cinderella.”
    But the problem was bigger than that, of course. One morning I was pulled out of class and told to report to the counselor’s office.
    “You’re skipping classes, your grades are dropping, and . . . you’re gaining weight,” she said, looking at me from across her desk, truly worried. “What’s going on with you? Are you okay?”
    I hadn’t expected her to be so compassionate and I choked on my answer. What was I supposed to tell her, the truth? That I felt myself getting obsessed and out of control, that my parents were having problems and I was worried about my mother, that I felt guilty about everything I did and I was destined for hell for all of eternity?
    “Nothing’s going on,” I told her. “Nothing . . . nothing.”
    She was right; I was packing on pounds like a snowball speeding downhill, gaining momentum and size as it barreled down.
    In the year since John and I started dating, my weight had jumped from 155 to 175. Part of it was because I had turned sixteen and could now drive and had the freedom to get junk food on a whim, and eat as much as I wanted without anyone wagging a finger. It was easy to stop off at Burger King on the way home, scarf down a Whopper, fries, and shake as I zigzagged through the streets, then dispose of the