Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) (100 page)

A young woman, who was obstructed to Damen’s
sight, because of the darkness, opened the door, and shouted, “Who
the hell is it?”

Damen whispered, “Maria?”

A tear began to fall down her face, showing
her presence more, by walking out into the moon’s light, and
arraying her beauty to him once again. Every letter that Maria
wrote, and every memory that she had of Damen, Jose, and Darell
returned at that crucial second. She opened the screen door slowly,
reached her lingering hands up to Damen’s face, and started feeling
his textures. “Damen, is that you under those new clothes?” She
wrapped her arms around him and held him like a teddy bear,
spinning around, crying out with joy that Damen was here with
her.

They both sat down on the first step of her
porch, and just gazed at each other’s eyes and faces, holding
hands, living in this moment of happiness. “My God, Maria, you grew
up so much.”

They talked for hours with Damen crying on
her shoulders. She was the last and final true friend that he had
left, and Damen didn’t want to lose that. At the end of the
conversation, he wiped his tears away, and said, “So, out of all
that’s happened, I’m not going back to California.”

“You know, Damen, you should go back. I mean,
I always knew that you were gonna come out on top, and you
did.”

Damen looked at her with serious eyes, and
then took out the photo and studied it some more. He then looked
back at her and explained, “Thank you, but I’m still not going
back. After all that’s happened, I’m afraid to go back. And their
funeral helped me make up my mind. I just can’t leave them behind,
Maria, I can’t.”

“I know the way you’re feeling, I know it’s
hard. That’s why I didn’t show up to the funeral at all, I was
afraid. A lot has happened since you guys left. Too much has
happened.” Maria lay back on the porch, and gawked at the moon’s
silhouette of beauty, staring at it through the clouds, watching
the billowing clouds dance within its light.

Damen lay back as well, asking, “Why were you
afraid?”

“Because, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I
wrote over a hundred letters to you guys, but never sent them out.
I still have them upstairs in my room. I didn’t know where you guys
were, I didn’t even know if you were alive. Damen, I cried a lot
since you, Darell, and especially Jose left.” Maria began crying
again, showing her tears to Damen as she turned her head, and felt
them plummeting off her face and onto the porch’s wood.

“I cried a lot too. I must have cried every
single day since I left Ridge Crest. I lost my friends, Maria, I’ve
lost Jose and Darell.” Damen began crying himself again,
whispering, “I’m so sick of crying night and day. I wish that the
pain would just go away, and never show its face to me again. Yet,
it does. I don’t understand why, why is the pain still here?” Damen
then lit up a cigarette, and blew the smoke toward the moon’s
light. “Once, just once, I would like to cry of happiness, I mean,
I stopped crying for some days now, and I don’t know why. It was
like I ran out of tears because I used them so much. But then I
started crying again, and I don’t want to anymore. It’s like, when
I want to cry, for those moments when you should, I don’t, and when
I don’t want to cry, at those moments where you should be strong, I
do. I just want to cry of happiness once, but now, I don’t think
I’ll ever reach that point. I know Chuck’s mad at me, I got a movie
that I’m still acting in, and I have to do it tomorrow. But I
can’t, I can’t leave Darell and Jose behind,” he cried.

Maria gave him a hug while still lying on the
porch, saying to his eyes, “Damen, why would you give up fame for
them? You’re a star, and the weird thing about it is, you’re just
beginning. You don’t realize how much you have going for you. So,
like I asked before, why would you give up what you’ve worked for,
for them?”

Damen pulled fiercely away from her hug, got
up with anger to his motion, and walked down the steps. He started
walking away from her porch, shouting toward her, “Because they’re
my friends. And they’re my brothers.”

“But they’re dead,” Marie yelled. Damen
stopped his walking and turned around to look at her with shock.
“Yeah, that’s right, they’re dead, Damen. You said it yourself,
remember? Remember what you said to me about a half an hour ago?
You said that they achieved fame way too fast. You told me that
they changed when they achieved it. They changed so much that they
forgot about you,” she shrilled at the top of her lungs.

Damen walked toward her, shouting, “Yeah, I
did say that, but Darell didn’t change like that. Darell was
confused and homesick, he just wanted to belong!”

“Yeah, so that’s why he didn’t tell you about
the lie then? You know, a true friend would give anything for a
friend, even his freedom, or fame,” Maria stated with loudness
still.

Damen began walking away from her again,
screaming, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Maria ran after him and grabbed onto his arm,
turning Damen around to face her. That’s when she yelled, “That’s
why I stayed behind, Damen. I stayed because I didn’t want to ruin
Jose’s dream. I didn’t want my problem getting in the way. I knew
if I told Jose, then neither of you would go to Hollywood.”

“What are you talking about?” Damen was
confused about her words, watching her looking up at the moon’s
light, studying her face as if she had a secret in her eyes.

“Come inside, I’ll show you what I mean.”
Maria grabbed Damen’s hand, and they walked into her house. Her
house was filled with junk piled on top of junk, Damen’s sight
caught on that something was wrong with this picture.

“Why is your house a mess?”

She pushed him into a chair, responding with,
“Hold on, I’ll explain in a second.” Maria ran upstairs in a
heartbeat. When she returned to the junk-filled room where Damen
was sitting, she didn’t return alone.

In his view, was a baby, beautiful as an
angel’s wing, held in her arms. “Who’s this?”

She handed the baby to Damen’s arms,
answering, “This is Jessica. She’s my daughter. Jose is her
father.”

“You mean Jose’s father is the father?” he
asked in a confused manner.

“No, I mean our friend Jose is. You see,
before you left for California, I found out I was pregnant with
her. I assumed Jose would make it famous, but then I saw that he
was dating Julienne Wells. I saw it on television. Damen, everyone
in this town calls me a whore and a slut. The name-calling and
embarrassment got so bad, that my parents left three months ago and
went to Kansas to stay with my other relatives. Jose’s parents help
out a lot with Jessica, but it still isn’t enough. That’s what I
meant by what I said. The reason why I didn’t tell Jose was because
I knew it would be stressful on him, plus I knew he had to hold a
reputation. I didn’t want him getting a reputation as a
baby-maker,” Maria explained in a crying voice as Damen stared at
Jessica in amazement.

“She has Jose’s eyes. She even has his big,
ugly nose.” Damen then smiled toward Jessica and felt a single tear
coming down from his left eye.

“Damen ... this town isn’t everything you
said it was. It isn’t a kind and happy town. Ridge Crest wears a
mask every day. They put my family through hell, and me also.
Leaving this place was the best decision that you guys have ever
made. That’s why I’m telling you, go back to Hollywood,” she spoke,
grabbing Jessica and taking her away gently from Damen’s grasp.

Damen got up from the ripped chair, stating
in defense, “Sugar Valley doesn’t have a mask on.”

“Yeah, that’s the only place that doesn’t,
probably in this entire world. Damen, go back to Hollywood.”

Damen wiped his tears away with his arm and
opened the front door. He stopped for a moment, like a light bulb
went off in his thoughts, turned around to face her, and spoke,
“Listen, you said before to me that you wanted to go, right?”

“Go where?”

“Hollywood, that’s what you said to me.”
Damen opened the screen door and felt the cool breeze flush against
his face, but he still kept his eyes on Maria’s.

He walked completely out of the house, stood
on the front porch, and smiled, hearing Maria saying “Yeah ... so
...”

Chapter Eighty-Six

Damen walked back down to the Valley the
next morning, absorbing the new fallen dew into his shoes and
socks, as his feet brushed against the Valley’s natural skin of
green. He sat next to the graves of his friends and began talking
to them out loud. At the same time, he listened as the crickets
chirped and the fish jumped in the lake, knowing that the sun was
rising slowly, craving hunger for their fishy stomachs. Before he
conversed and began his moment of closure that wouldn’t come yet,
Damen absorbed his vision in the Valley’s body, watching this
massive beauty become brighter to his eyes as the sun rouse to a
higher climate every second and every time his heart beat once. He
was in a state of awe, closing his eyes and staring toward the
clouds, feeling the sun’s rays beating down on his image, and
creating a sense of warmth to his flesh; it was like God’s eyes saw
the Valley first before anything. “This is paradise,” he said out
loud, watching the wind blowing against the grass of the Valley’s
hills. “Please, guys, give me a sign. Give me sign that it’s
alright for me to go back to Hollywood. Chuck’s leaving in an hour
and once he leaves, I’m staying here. Just please, give me a sign
and I’ll go.” Damen stared at the Oscar trophy, which was placed on
Jose’s grave, and waited for it to move. He was praying that it
would fall or shake a certain way, so his mind would think it was a
sign from them. “I know that we’ve changed a lot since we went
there. But, we regained our friendships at the end. So please, give
me a sign,” he yelled out in anger. “Could you please give me a
sign?” He got up and listened for a certain noise, or a certain way
that the wind blew, hoping that the Valley’s powers, its soul,
would allow Jose and Darell’s spirit to hear his pleads and fulfill
what he wanted: the OK to go back.

He sat down again and talked for a half an
hour, discussing Jessica, Maria, and just about anything with them.
After that, he listened again for a sign, a sign that would set him
free from the guilt that he had inside of him; the guilt and
depression that their deaths brought him. “Give me a frickin’
sign,” Damen demanded, getting up from the dew-filled ground.
“Sugar, please, let them hear me.” His eyes started to form tears,
his hands began to shake, and his heart started to beat faster than
usual. Suddenly, he noticed an effulgent and shiny object coming
from Darell’s grave. Damen didn’t know it was, at first he felt it
was a raindrop, reflecting the sun’s light, or a bug that has a
shiny back to it. Yet, he wanted to know what it was, so he reached
down in the grass and grabbed the object. He dropped it moments
later, saying, “I don’t believe it, it couldn’t be.” Damen picked
up the object again and saw that it was Darell’s golden pen, the
pen that he and Jose gave him before his first movie began filming.
A smile grew on Damen’s face, a sweet innocence grin that meant he
knew why this pen surfaced to his sight. “Thank you, thank you so
much.” But the signs weren’t over yet.

As Damen walked away from the graves with a
smile on his face, the second sign came into hand. A gust of wind
came and blew the time capsule that Damen left behind, and lifted
it up in the air. At that same moment, the gust of wind caused
Jose’s Oscar trophy to tip over and glide against the ground, like
it was on ice, surfing the ground in a calm motion. Damen turned
around, and saw the capsule land right by him with the Oscar trophy
blowing directly into it. Damen couldn’t believe his eyes; the
shock came over his face as he looked around to see if any ghosts
were in the Valley. He then put the golden pen into his pocket and
picked up the time capsule, comprehending that this wasn’t the type
of sign he was looking for.

He sat down on the ground again and looked to
see what else was left in the capsule. Damen thought that maybe
there was something else that the Valley, or else Jose and Darell
wanted him to look at. He took out the Oscar, the fishing pole, and
a journal that he put in it. He opened up the journal, and another
gust of wind caused the pages to turn, flipping them around like
wild flowers blooming, tossing them about like a box fan on high.
That’s when the wind ceased, and Damen saw the page that it turned
to; it was his, Jose and Darell’s speeches. The speeches that they
promised one day to read at the Oscar awards when they won. Damen
began to smile and at the same time said out loud, “A promise is a
promise.”

He put the fishing pole back into the capsule
and returned it to the cave. He placed the Oscar on Jose’s grave
again and began to run away from the tombstones. Mr. Schultz ran up
the Valley hill, with a journal in one hand, and found himself at
the top of the Valley in an instant, like some force helped him run
up the Valley’s side. He inhaled the fresh air and the scent of
nature that blew in the wind and then started running again.

Damen ran on a dirt road, which led right
into his town, when out of nowhere, he stopped, gawking at a sign
that allowed him to grin a bit. He could feel his heart hurting by
the sudden seize in massive action, but he didn’t care, he still
paused and grinned at a certain thing in a short silence; the Ridge
Crest Welcome sign. Walking up to it slowly, he took a marker, that
he planned to bring, out of his pocket, erased the population 497
again, and wrote at the bottom of it, ‘498’ for reasons that will
be shown in a bit. Turning back, and gazing at the sign’s
brightness from the sun, Damen went on, running past it, and
galloped with speed that he’d never used before.