Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) (98 page)

Damen fell to the ground, dismayed and
shocked by the abrupt, sad, disoriented, confusing, depressing,
mysterious news of Darell’s life. He could not believe it, but for
some reason, as he lay on the floor with shock, he didn’t think too
much about it. It was like Damen didn’t pay any attention to Jose’s
news, didn’t register in his own mind completely that Darell was
gone. The cold breeze that rushed around the room trapped there for
some reason, hit Damen’s face, lifting his light-brown hair a bit,
drying off the sweat that he created. Damen was out of the present,
out of the future, and even out of the past, his mind was rotating
on rusty wheels that were about to fall off and collapse into a
deep abyss of nothingness. Yet, the script, and his reason for
being present in this room, allowed his mind to still go on, making
him attempt to get up from the cold floor. His own father came to
help him by grabbing his hand, pulling him up, and asking, “Are you
alright, son?”

His father helped him back into his seat, and
Damen didn’t answer his words, it was like his father’s words
didn’t register in his mind, just the unbelievable news about
Darell. His mind still didn’t believe that Darell was in heaven,
because if he was, that would mean he had to have died to get
there, and if he died, how did he pass on and when, and why wasn’t
he informed. So his mind didn’t believe in Darell’s death, only
because it sounded too unbelievable, and Damen didn’t acknowledge
his father’s voice, only because he was in a state of confusion by
still contemplating the words about Darell’s life, that Jose spoke.
Nevertheless, his mission, and why he came here, overpowered every
thought that he absorbed, every human that was present, and allowed
him to want to complete Jose’s last wish.

Damen looked at Jose, and tried to cry, but
still couldn’t. He then heard Jose’s faintly voice whispering,
“Damen, let’s finish the script on our own. Please, I’m getting
weaker.”

This totally allowed Damen’s thoughts to go
back on track, travel in and to a certain destination, and craved
to complete it. The sadness of this main moment created Damen’s
voice to go lower, saying with a lot of a shake to his vocal cords,
“Alright, the show must go on.”

Darell’s parents cried for a bit in the
hallway, and then entered into the room again, right as Damen and
Jose began the last take to the last page of the unfinished script
that was about to be finished and completed, just as Jose’s life
was.

While they finished the script, the parents
acted as if they were the audience, tuning into their acting,
watching this entertainment as little Maria once did in the Valley
of dreams. For the first time, Jose and Damen’s parents saw their
true craving in life, and were pretty impressed on the gifts that
God gave them. At the end of the script, the parents gave a round
of applause; this was one dream that Jose had deep, deep in his
soul. It was a dream of seeing his father watch one of his live
performances and applaud at the end of it, this created complete
closure for Jose’s mind, and satisfaction to his heart.

Damen put the script into his tuxedo pocket,
saying “Jose that was a great performance, man.”

“Hey, you did pretty good yourself,”
whispered Jose with a smile.

“Thanks.”

“No, thank you, Damen. I don’t know anyone
who would have done this for me. I mean, my dream of winning an
Oscar came to be. But, the dream of reading my speech while holding
the Oscar didn’t, and it just pisses me off that it didn’t.” Jose’s
voice got a little louder toward the end of his sentence, and his
body started to get a little weaker. He turned to his father, who
was standing over him, and added, “But, this one dream did come
true for me, Damen, and you helped me achieve it.”

Damen held onto Jose’s hand tightly, still
feeling the warmth to his flesh, not wanting to lose that
temperature. “What dream is that, Jose?” Damen wanted to know, he
was serious about it, and he craved to know what his real dream
was. Damen just wanted to keep Jose talking and be there for him
all the way, hoping that by doing this, he’d have a chance to
survive, for some reason or another.

“The dream of seeing my father watch.” Jose’s
mouth stopped moving, and suddenly, abruptly Damen felt coldness in
Jose’s hand, instead of warmth. He looked at his eyes, and saw them
closed, he watched his chest, and saw that it wasn’t moving up and
down; death interrupted his answer.

Damen started to shake him, speaking, “Jose?”
Comprehending, even though this was hard, beyond enigmatic,
stifling to his own soul, but by the feeling in the air, the
stiffness through the window’s night, and the coldness on Jose’s
flesh, Damen saw that he was gone, forever. Bit by bit, piece by
piece of his body, Damen watched as his life slowly seeped out of
him, until it was comprehensively abandoned. He looked up, even
though he was afraid to, but he still looked up at the heart
monitor, and saw its flat, long, bright green light, witnessing no
heartbeat, and hearing only a long strip of a screaming sound that
came from it.

As he stared at the monitor, Damen saw a
vision of Sugar Valley, and all of them playing in its body at the
age of ten. Screaming out with joy to their young voices, and still
frolicking the game of pretend, they were happy, content, and most
of all, friends for life. He turned away from the monitor, shaking
his jaws, hitting his upper teeth with his lower ones, the reality
finally hitting him that Jose was gone. That’s when Damen yelled,
“No, please somebody, help me, Jose? Jose, please, you can still
pull through. Please, you asshole, don’t die on me!” Chuck came
over to him and hugged him tightly, trying to calm him down, seeing
that he was causing Jose’s parents to become highly emotional with
their tears of sorrow. “No., no, Chuck, Jose you can’t die on me,
you can’t ... Please, please, Jose, wake up.” Damen broke free from
Chuck’s hug and began to shake Jose again. “Please, Jose, he’ll
wake up, he will, I know he will. This wasn’t supposed to happen,
we were all supposed to be happy out here. Remember, Jose? Remember
our plan?” Damen yelled before Chuck grabbed him again and gave him
a tight hug. “You son of a bitch, please wake up. I don’t know what
to do, Chuck, I just don’t know what to do now. Why, why, this
wasn’t supposed to happen, he was young, this doesn’t happen to
people like us.” He pulled away from Chuck’s grasp of a hug, and
spoke with utter calmness, “I know, I’m gonna find Darell.”

Damen ran to the doorway, as if he was on
another mission again, a journey to find his last friend and tell
him of the news. But Chuck stopped his running by speaking, “Damen,
Darell’s ... dead. Jose already told you about his death,
remember?”

Damen collapsed again. This was too much for
one person to handle, let alone Damen Schultz. This old shock, that
felt new to his memory, transformed his voice to being shaky,
feeling like he was going to have a heart-attack, a stroke, a
seizure, something that would symbolize that he was under too much
stress. His voice was tuned, shaking out, “How?”

Damen’s mother got up and touched Damen’s
forehead, responding, “He died of a drug overdose, baby; it just
happened.” Damen ran out of the hospital room, and left the echoes
of Jose’s parents, how their voices and tears still lingered down
the hallway as he ran. He ran out of the hospital after he reached
the first floor of it, not knowing what else to do except run.
Damen past the media by fighting his way through, got into a taxi,
and traveled to the only place that, for some reason, he could
remember to run to; the big Hollywood sign. Once his tear-filled
body exited the cab, vans, filled with camera crews and media,
showed up to Damen’s sight, wanting to interview him, knowing that
one of his friends died, and the other was near death in the same
night. Damen ran, faster than a tear could fall, fighting the
bushes and foliage, striving to climb this hill to the very top. He
saw the lights of the sign, and entered into its radiant form.
Standing in front of the glowing sign, Damen screamed his head off
toward it, yelling at it, hating it, wanting to destroy it, wishing
that it never existed.

This moment of privacy, that he needed so
greatly, was interrupted very quickly. The media and other news
stations followed him up the hill, and that was when Damen stopped
screaming to himself, and started letting it out on others.

The media came up to him, shined their lights
into his eyes and face, placed their microphones to his
saliva-drenched mouth, and waited for him to speak his mind; which
he did. “What do you want from me?” Damen yelled out. “Jose’s dead.
Darell’s dead, are you happy now? Get the fuck out of my face,
before I beat the living shit out of all of you.” They listened to
his screams, and silence surrounded him. They watched him on the
edge of tears, but still not being able to let it out. This made
him become more frustrated, more alone. Don’t these people know I
need my time? I chose this job because I love it, I choose when I
want to be in front of the camera. They have times they can leave
me alone. They can be alone after their 40 hours per week, but what
about me? 24/7. I hope they care for me enough to back off, let me
breathe, let me live. I’m just a monkey in a cage to some of them.
Why did I lose my best friends? The anger took over him again.
Through this imperceptible silence, Damen began running down the
knoll, hill, the mountain and away from the big Hollywood sign, and
the media just stood there, watching him vanish into the foliage of
the mound’s hair.

Chapter Eighty-Five

Staring at the sunlight, trying not to hear
a sound, wanting this moment to not be authentic, real, and trying
to concentrate on something else that could make this instant feel
like a fantasy. “May God bless Jose and Darell, and may they enjoy
eternal life with their Heavenly Father,” the Priest said. The
people stood around the caskets, and unknown pallbearers descended
Jose and Darell’s coffins into the depths of the earth.

They buried them in Sugar Valley, a place
where their dream began, and a place where it ended, being filled
with the dirt from Sugar’s skin, and swallowed beneath its surface,
where they belong, where they wanted to be when eternal rest took
place. It was Damen’s wish that they buried them in the Valley, and
a wish that was granted, completed for his own reasons. All Damen
could do was stare at the tombstones, while the priest finished up
his mass, and left the Valley’s heart afterwards. When all the
people left, Damen still stayed, gazing at the two tombstones, and
holding onto Jose’s Oscar trophy very tightly, feeling the sun’s
body reflecting a golden image off of the trophy, and onto Damen’s
right side of his face. He was so fatigued, sad, filled with a
depressing rapture still, and folded in a silence that couldn’t
even be heard if it was at the bottom of an abyss. He stared at the
graves closely, feeling the wind blow against his face, and felt
eyes watching him, as if the Valley’s eyes were staring at his
soul.

“Well, I guess this is it, guys. I realize
that our, that our dreams did come true. I mean, they did. But, I
wish that you were still here to share it with me. I’ve decided not
to go back to Hollywood. I’ve decided to stay here and become a
farmer like my father wanted me to be,” Damen announced. His tears
of weakness showed, tears that finally fell from his eyes, and the
tears that he coveted so badly to display, but didn’t before. The
tears fell onto the Oscar trophy as Damen placed it on Jose’s
grave, acting as a shrine, but hesitated on doing so, feeling
frightened of approaching his tombstone, understanding that this
was too real to be true. “I know you might be mad at me for my
decision, but it’s my decision. I’m just not as strong as you
guys.” Damen then looked at the trees, swaying about in the wind,
and heard a faint voice, the same voice he heard before, chanting
out its hymn of, “Damen, Damen, Damen.” It sounded like the wind,
he thought it was, it had to be, but his mind was so full of stress
that he didn’t pay any attention to it, not yearning to investigate
its pitch.

“No, you’re stronger.”

Damen was frantic, scared, hearing a low
voice, sounding like a man in distress, and turned around to see
who it was. There, in a vivid distance, was his father, walking up
to him.

Damen hurried up and wiped his
melancholy-filled tears away, wanting his father not to see his
weaknesses. “Father, you scared me.”

“So, you’re gonna stay here and help me with
the farm?”

“Yeah.”

His father started to shake his head in
discontentment. Gawking at Damen’s eyes, he spoke silently, “No,
no, you’re not. You’re gonna go back to Hollywood and make me
proud.”

Without them knowing, Chuck came to the edge
of the Valley and began listening to their conversation, hearing
the echoes of their voices, smiling toward this sight of intimacy
that should have been dealt with a long time ago.

Damen and his dad started walking through the
Valley, without him speaking a word to his father. But, abruptly,
this anger that Damen felt inside for losing his friends, took hold
of his respect toward his dad, and shouted, “No, I’m not going
back, and I don’t want to go back either. You think this is easy
for me, Father, where the fuck were you in the past, when we all
wanted this? Huh? Where the fuck were you? I’ll tell you where you
were, you were fuckin’ busy trying to preach to me that I’m gonna
be a farmer, and now you’re trying to play the parent role in this,
and say for me to go back. Well, fuck you!”

His dad stopped walking, feeling grief from
Damen’s tone, his words of truth, his swearing of anger. He started
crying, showing tears in his eyes toward Damen’s back, and feeling
the hurt of his mistakes that he made in the past that he thought
expired itself in the present. Suddenly, his father wiped his own
tears away, and spoke with calmness, “You never told me what you
wanted to be. You never, ever said to me what your passions were.
Now how the hell am I supposed to know what you wanted to be,
Damen?”