Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) (99 page)

Damen turned around, and bellowed with
immense emptiness and pain to his voice, “Oh, come on, you fuckin’
knew, I know you did, you saw those scripts in my room, what the
fuck do you think I was doing with them, collecting?”

“Okay, fine, I might have known a bit, but
since you never came out and told me, I thought I could guide you
into a direction that wouldn’t hurt you like being an actor. I
mean, son, I don’t know, I mean, um, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m so sorry,
boy, I never meant to make you run away from us, I never meant to
hurt you, and I never meant to make you angry. I just wanted to be
a father to you, that’s all. No one’s perfect, Damen, I just wanted
to help you out with your life, and make you what I was, because I
was happy with it, and I thought since I’m happy with my trade, you
would be happy too.” His father ended his crying words, and waited
for Damen to start up his. The wind still blew in the Valley’s
stomach, and Sugar’s eyes still watched and waited for Damen to
speak from his soul, instead of his mind.

Damen grinned, and spoke with calm, “I
forgive you, but I’m still not going back. I’m not strong enough, I
don’t belong there.” His tears flushed out, tears of sadness,
adding, “This was just a moronic and stupid thing that we all
wanted, that we coveted, and now look what happened? I’m not tough
enough for it, father.”

“Listen to me, son, ever since you’ve left,
you’ve become stronger. Why do you think your brother Greg
left?”

Damen was confused, staring at him with
confusion, and questioning, “He left? Where did he go?”

In the midst of it, Chuck walked away from
the Valley’s edge, seeing that it was a private conversation, and
exited through the forest’s body.

“He went to New York to become a painter. As
soon as you left, Damen, he realized he had to do the same. And
now, he’s opening up his own gallery in New York. Damen, he
wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for you. He made his own dream
come true,” his father explained, walking away from him.

“I didn’t know he wanted to become a
painter.”

His father stopped in his tracks and turned
around to face Damen. He grinned toward him once, saying, “Well, I
didn’t know that you wanted to be a movie star.”

As his father exited the Valley, Damen stood
there and watched the graves of his friends become darker as the
day became night. He sat down and started talking to the graves, as
if Jose and Darell were still alive. This was the place where their
dream was born at, and this was the place where it ended, that’s
what he kept on thinking about. Damen cried as the moonlight shined
on his tears and created a lustrous reflection off his face.

He looked at the Valley’s trees, and started
to walk up to them. Stopping, right by the lake, smack-dab in the
center of Sugar, he gazed at all the trees in the distance,
enjoying their beauty. He then started to slow his rhythm,
meandering up to a single tree, near the lake, and looking at its
bark, noticing scratches in its brown skin, reading “Jose, Darell,
Damen, blood brothers for life.” He rubbed the letters, over and
over, and then put his back to the tree, leaned against it, and
started crying again. He wanted those words to be true, verity to
reality, by them being alive. As he moaned, cried out with grief
and sorrow, two branches that stood on either side of him
mysteriously, without him knowing it, moved down toward him,
wrapped themselves delicately around his body, and acted as if they
were hugging him. It was like Sugar was alive, and hugged him
unnoticeably, showing its love for his soul. Damen opened his eyes,
and saw the branches in front of him, like arms, trying to hug him
more closely, and abruptly he freaked out and ran from the tree’s
body. He turned around, three feet away from the thick plant, and
looked at it in confusion and fear; exhausted and delirious, he
wondered if it was alive, real, contemplating and analyzing any
other option that would allow those branches to act as hugging
arms. He thought about the wind, maybe it blew them toward him? Or
maybe, just maybe, they were old, and hung down on the moment he
stood next to it? Damen looked at it even more closely, and
whispered, “Who are you? Am I going crazy? Who are you?” No answer
was had, no reply was given, and Damen turned to face all of the
Valley, shouting, “Who are you?”

He then started to scrutinize it, trying to
figure out what was there, what was lurking in the darkness of the
spiritual world. He thought it was a ghost, and the thought of that
allowed shivers to travel through his body. He heard silence, a few
crickets chirping away, but the rest silence, and the calm was what
scared him the most. He was listening for any sound, any word that
came from the darkness, but heard nothing, not even a falling stick
from a tree. He could hear his own heart beating away, his own
blood rushing through his veins as his nerves grew by his sight
seeing nothing, but his imagination was running wild, seeing
everything that is true to nightmares. The wind blew again, through
this darkened Valley, and wrapped itself around his body, allowing
him to feel a pressure against his shoulders and chest, as if the
wind was hugging him. Damen slowly began to smile toward the
Valley’s body; he knew the truth of what was lurking in the
darkness. “You are alive, aren’t you?” Tears on top of tears
constructed, drenching his flesh with its warm texture. “Why didn’t
you stop us from leaving? Huh? Sugar, why did you allow us to go?”
He sat down on the green, cold grass, and felt the cool breeze
rushing against his tears, drying them with its cool motion. “I
know why. Sugar, you wanted us to see our dreams. That’s why you
let us go. But now, look what happened. I lost two of the only
people I knew, the only two people I trusted in this Godforsaken
life.”

Through the wind, Damen heard another faint,
faint, distant, blowing voice, saying, “I love you.” He cried more,
feeling this web of confusion, draping his soul, filling it with
monstrous sadness that he wasn’t ready for.

“I love you too, Sugar.”

Suddenly, through the night’s vision, Chuck
came down into the Valley. He saw Damen sitting on the ground,
crunched over, like he was crying, and heard what he said to Sugar
Valley, but didn’t bother mentioning it to him. Chuck spoke, “Your
family’s still waiting for you to come up to the house. Everyone’s
still their talking about the funeral.”

Damen got up, walked over to the tombstones,
sat back down on the ground again, and just gawked at their
stone-like homes in a trancelike glare. “Tell them I’ll be there in
a few minutes, Chuck.”

“Alright.”

He started to walk away from Damen, when
suddenly Damen smiled and said, “You know, Chuck, this is where it
all began.”

He stopped in his tracks, turned around to
face Damen, and smiled toward his figure, his saddened silhouette.
“Yeah I know, and this is where it ends. But, um, you don’t have to
make it end for you, you still have a chance.” Chuck began walking
toward Damen again, hoping that he could grasp some sense to his
mind, and make him want to be an actor again.

“I know, but I have no other choice.” Damen
got up from the ground and began brushing the dirt off his pants,
adding, “Chuck, this whole time, my dream was to become a movie
star. But now I realize that my dream was already reality... My
dream was to have true friends, and now they’re gone. So, that’s
why I don’t have a choice, I have to stay here.”

“If it makes you feel better, I think you do
have a choice.” Chuck reached his dilapidated, elderly hand into
his trench-coat pocket, grabbed a wrinkled envelope, and handed it
to him.

Dismally, and full of sorrow as Damen may be,
he grabbed the envelope, muttering, “What’s this?”

“Before we left California to come here for
the funeral, I found it. It was in your tuxedo pants. I think you
should read it, Damen, it makes a lot of sense.”

He frantically opened the envelope, pulled
out a wrinkled letter, and recognized Darell’s handwriting. “My
God, I forgot about this.”

“Before you read it, I just wanted to tell
you that I’m going back to California tomorrow morning. If you
decide to stay here, then call me and tell me at the motel I’m
staying at, that way I could cancel your contract with the movie
that you’re doing now. I know I’m probably gonna get a big lawsuit
for it, but who cares. I just want to tell you that you’re a real
good friend. And, I, um, well I thank you for making my true
calling in life come true. You know, if it wasn’t for you, I would
probably be back in the café right now, only serving coffee to old
people.” Chuck grinned, held his body over Damen’s and gave him a
huge hug. “Well, I’ll tell your parents that you’re gonna be back
in a few minutes.” Chuck walked away from him, vanishing in the
darkness, disappearing in the forest above.

Damen stood in the Valley and stared at the
Oscar that was on top of Jose’s tombstone. He then began to read
Darell’s letter, the last and final words that Darell wrote. At
first he hesitated, but he knew he had to do it, there was no
choice in this matter. Before he read it, he was hoping that it
would give him closure, when in fact, it didn’t, but it helped him
a lot: in more ways than one.

Dear Damen, I’m going back to Ridge Crest
tomorrow. I realized that fame wasn’t everything I’ve imagined for
all these years. I know about the lie that Jose and Julienne told
about you, if you don’t know it yet, then just ask Jose about it. I
was a terrible friend to you, Damen, I should have stuck up for you
and told somebody about the lie, but I didn’t.

Damen began crying again, pausing from
reading it in his mind, and imagined what Darell looked like when
he was writing it. He imagined Darell high on cocaine, ready to
take his last sniff of the devil-made substance, before he
died.

I know that I’m a drug addict, and that’s one
of the reasons why I’m going back home. But, I don’t want you to
come to Ridge Crest for me. I want you to stay in Hollywood and
climb the steep hill to fame. I know you want it. Damen, you’re one
of the greatest friends that I’ve ever had, and I thank God every
day for giving me the gift of having you as my blood-brother. I
always looked up to you. But I realize now that friends move on. I
miss Sugar Valley, and that’s where I belong. But, you Damen, you
don’t belong there, you belong in Hollywood, you always did.

He stopped again from reading, squeezed his
eyes together from sorrow, and opened them up, to only reveal
fogginess to the words. So, he wiped his tears away, and focused in
on the last letters of Darell O’Conner’s thoughts.

Well, I have to go now, I have one more sniff
to go, and then that’s it for me, I’m leaving, and when I do, I’m
gonna go straight to Sugar Valley, and sit in it for a day, just
smiling at it. Man, I feel goose bumps just thinking of Sugar. Do
you get like that, Damen?

Damen paused again, smiled though his tears,
and spoke, “Yes, all the time.”

Anyway, I just want to let you know that
you’re like a brother to me, and I love you for that.

After Damen finished reading it, he put it in
his pocket and began walking to the cave where the time capsule
was. He pulled the capsule out once again and carried it out of the
cave with him. Suddenly, the picture of him, Jose, and Darell flew
out of the box and began bouncing against the ground as it flew. He
dropped the capsule and began running after the photo in the
darkness, trying to step on it or catch it so it wouldn’t disappear
into the apparition-filled-shade of the night. As soon as he caught
it, he fell to the ground and scraped his knee, but didn’t bother
feeling it, worrying about it; all he cared for was retrieving this
photo of memories. He looked at the photo, and at that moment, all
the memories came back. He got up from the ground and began running
around the Valley, for some spiritually driven reason, feeling the
cool breeze rushing against his face and drying his tears in the
process.

“This is where it all began,” he cried out
loud, his voice echoed throughout the Valley’s walls. He didn’t
know why he was running like a madman, or why he was yelling out
such words over and over again, but it felt good to him. He ran to
the lake and sat down by the shoreline, noticing the moon
reflecting off the basin and iridescence, dazzled and glistened
onto his face with such massive beauty to its rays. Suddenly, a
smile broke through all the pain and agony he had within him, and
that’s when he began laughing. He felt like a little kid again; he
felt safe in the arms of the Valley. But then the memory of his
friends’ deaths returned to his mind, and his laughing seized,
completing its last humorous noise with a big gasp of air. Damen
turned around and saw the tombstones of Darell and Jose, striking
his eyes with its painful sight like a bullet striking the water of
calmness. He got up and ran away; he couldn’t take it anymore. He
exited the Valley with the one photo from the capsule, and began
running to Ridge Crest, it was like death was chasing him, and he
couldn’t get away. He couldn’t outrun the guilt that Jose and
Darell’s death brought to him. He knew he couldn’t go back to
Hollywood, he knew it would be unfair to Jose and Darell. “They
wouldn’t leave my grave for a second,” he said out loud as his
running became walking.

Damen was lost in the cold darkness of his
town, like some of the memories from it were hidden away from his
consciousness, and made him feel like a stranger to its presence.
He felt alone and terrified. Damen realized that he knew Hollywood
better than Ridge Crest, but the thing is, he hated Hollywood, and
loves his hometown; that’s what frightened him the most. He
contemplated, analyzed, and then finally understood, as he walked,
that Hollywood was his home, but didn’t like the realization at
all. He stopped and looked at the photo again, staring at it for
ten minutes straight as his tears began to fall more, trying to
capture that moment in the photo again, to make him feel not like a
stranger to this town’s scenery. But no luck, so he put the photo
in his pocket and began walking again, and that’s when one of his
memories returned. He looked to the left of him and noticed a house
with an old porch to it, behind a large oak tree that stood in its
front yard. “My God, I remember that porch,” he whispered, opening
the white, wooden, and chipped painted fence that led to the porch.
He walked up slowly to it as the wind blew harder. Damen started
knocking on the screen door, chanting, “Hello, is anyone home?”