Searching for Glory

by Hunter J. Keane

  There were 17 in all; half of them were from Franny and the other half were from Richard.

  Franny: “Despite that ridiculous message you left me, I KNOW that you did not leave town. Not when you have so many obligations. We have scripts to read, interviews lined up, endorsement deals to discuss, contracts to negotiate. Call me back, immediately.”

  I hit delete and moved on to the next one.

  “Gloria.” Richard. “What the hell, Glor? I wake up and you’re gone, just like that? And you left your ring on my dresser? What is going on? Call me back, babe. Please, just call me back.”

  I paused for a second and then hit delete again.

  “Gloria Star! I just got off the phone with Richard and he told me about your disappearing act. You broke up with him? With Richard Masterson? Call me back or I’m going to hunt you down.” I had no problem deleting Franny’s message.

  I went through all of them, grimacing at the ones from Richard and angrily deleting the ones from Franny. I felt emotionally exhausted by the time I finished listening to them. Franny’s primary concern seemed to be how my departure would affect her bottom line; I had no intention of calling her back anytime soon.

  Richard was a different matter. His messages were heart-breaking and he deserved an explanation at the very least. I owed him that. Now I just had to figure out what to tell him.

  It was almost two hours later when I finally walked into the shop to pick up my car. Johnny was nowhere to be found and neither were my keys.

  “Excuse me. Do you know where I can find Johnny?” I asked one of the men who was digging through a bin of oily car parts. He stopped what he was doing and looked at me curiously.

  “John’s in his office.” He pointed a dirty finger to a wall of windows at the back of the shop where I could see Johnny seated at a desk. He was leaned back in a battered desk chair with his feet propped on the desk, making notes on a clipboard.

  I knocked softly on the glass door and he looked up from his work. There was a moment’s hesitation when he saw me but he gestured for me to come in. I let the door swing shut behind me before I spoke.

  “So this is your office?” I raised a questioning eyebrow. “Which means this is your shop?”

  “Very astute of you,” he said, letting his feet fall to the floor with a thud. “Have a seat.”

  I stayed standing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t figure it mattered.” Johnny gave me a contrite look. “I’m sorry about earlier. You were right, I shouldn’t have asked the question if I didn’t want to hear the answer.”

  “After all these years, you’d think you’d finally be able to get it through your head that I’m always right.” I smiled sweetly.

  “It’s good to see that your ego hasn’t suffered at all in California.” Johnny pulled himself to his feet in one fluid motion. He moved around the desk until he was in front of me and then he perched on the edge of it.

  “I’m sorry, too, Johnny. I didn’t mean to upset you by bringing up ancient history.”

  “It’s okay. It’s just been a bit of a shock having you back in town. I’m still getting used to it.” He sighed heavily. “And then you had to go and say something like that- something I had wanted to hear for years.”

  “What?” I was just as surprised by his honesty as he had been by mine.

  “You know. That thing about me being the great love of your life and how Richard Masterson pales in comparison to how amazing I am.” Johnny smiled a breathtaking smile. “That part. Been dying to hear that from you.”

  “You should probably work on your listening skills, Carter. I’m pretty sure I never said anything like that.”

  I started to tease him more but something on his desk caught my eye. “Is that what I think it is?”

  At first it looked to be just a pile of stuff- a couple of receipts, a handful of change, and a pack of gum. But then my eyes fell on the ticket stub that rested beneath the junk. The word Undone stood out in block letters against the white background. Johnny’s eyes followed my gaze.

  “You saw my movie?” I was inexplicably touched.

  Johnny shrugged like it was nothing. “I’ve seen all of your movies and shows. I guess you could say I’m a fan.”

  We both smiled at that and Johnny pushed himself away from the desk until he was standing directly in front of me.

  “You really did it. I still can’t believe it sometimes. You went out and made something of yourself, just like you always said you would.” Johnny reached out and took my hand in his; his skin was rough but his touch was gentle. “I’m so proud of you, Glor.”

  “How can you say that?” I felt myself on the edge of losing it completely. “After everything that happened. I ruined your life, Johnny.”

  He let out a dry laugh. “This might not be a glamorous celebrity life but I’d hardly say it’s ruined.”

  “You know what I mean.” I looked at him through damp eyes.

  “I do. And I’ve never blamed you for what happened that night, not even for one second. I made a choice. I was protecting you and I don’t regret that.”

  “I do. I’ve regretted it every day since.”

  Johnny used his other hand to wipe away the tears that were tracing streams down my cheeks. He watched me for some time before he spoke. “I just wish-” he was cut off when the office door flew open. His hands slid from my face and hand until they rested uselessly at his sides. I hurried to wipe away any remaining traces of tears.

  “Kate. Hi.” Johnny looked flustered and I turned to find my old friend standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, a look of disgust in her eyes. “You remember Glory?”

  Kate gave me a terse smile. “Of course. You look good, Glory.”

  “You, too, Kate.” The tension that had entered the room was having a suffocating effect on me. “I really should be going. Thanks for fixing my car, Johnny.”

  “Anytime.” He handed me the keys and I gripped them tightly. “She’s as good as new.”

  “Shall I just pay out front?” I asked as Kate watched us like a hawk.

  “Your money’s no good here. It’s on the house.”

  “No, Johnny. You have to let me pay.”

  Johnny held up a hand to stop me from arguing further. “Glory, I fixed your car as your friend. Please don’t try to pay me for my friendship.” I couldn’t help but smile at his emphasis on the word friend. I had a feeling it was more for Kate’s benefit than my own.

  “Okay then. Thanks, friend.” I headed for the door and brushed past Kate. The hostility coming from her was palpable. “See ya around, Johnny. Kate.”

  “I’m sure,” she responded, her tone letting me know that Kate would be just fine if she never saw me again.

  Princeton, Missouri: 1998

  It was only my first day of high school, but already I didn’t fit in. Princeton was too small to have its own school so they forced us to matriculate with the big city kids in Barrington. It was a breed of teenager I was not familiar with; the girls all wore the right clothes with metal braces forcing their teeth into perfection and the boys were all well fed and their clothes were new and not passed down from older brothers.

  I kept my mouth shut in class, preferring to disappear in the back of the room. It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart, I was just smart enough to know that raising my hand was a sure way to draw the wrong kind of attention. My thrift store wardrobe and unruly hair already made me different- acting like I had ambitions to be better would expose me as a fraud. I was fourteen and my mother had just abandoned me to run off with her boyfriend. All I wanted was to make it through the day without anyone asking me too many questions.

  I had class with a few kids from Princeton, kids I would have called friends but now they wanted nothing to do with me. I wasn’t a complete disaster, but I was still going through an awkward phase- all limbs and hair. I looked like a clothed skeleton sporting an 80s hair band wig. In other words, I was cool-kid kryptonite. I skulked throug
h the hallways with my head down, the only bright spot of my day being lunch- and you.

  Being a year older, you had already found your niche at high school and I was fortunate to be accepted just by being your friend. I found you sitting at a corner table with a handful of people just like us. People who weren’t quite normal enough to fall in with the popular kids, but they also weren’t different enough to be called freaks. They were original and interesting, just like you.

  The tall kid with the spiky blond hair was Tyler and the girl sitting on his lap was Zoey. Brad sported a shaved head and pierced ears and Kate wore daring purple streaks in her hair. Two other guys, Nathan and Benny, were on the baseball team with you. All of them accepted me into the group without question. When the bell rang, I wished I could follow them around the rest of the day. Instead, I headed off to class with an armful of books.

  “So you’re Johnny’s girl?” Kate asked with a flip of her purple hair. Like me, she was a measly freshman. I wasn’t sure yet whether or not I was glad to discover we had the same afternoon classes.

  “Not exactly.” I shot her a sideways glance, wondering if she was prying or just being friendly. I liked being referred to as your girl, even if it wasn’t true yet. “We’re friends.”

  “Yeah, well. Give it time.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Brad and I were just friends, too.”

  “What changed?” I didn’t really care about the answer but I felt the need to at least appear interested.

  “Hormones.” Kate had a directness about her that was surprisingly refreshing.

  “Sorry to disappoint, but that won’t happen with me and Johnny.” I felt a twinge in my chest that I couldn’t quite understand. I chose to ignore it.

  “One year.” Kate dug through her backpack and retrieved a pack of gum.

  “One year, what?”

  “Within one year, I will be telling you I told you so, and you will be thanking me for being your best friend.” She popped a stick of Bubblicious into her mouth and then offered me a stick. I accepted it, thus consummating our friendship contract.

  Ten months later, I accepted her “I told you so,” and two years later I was with her when the stick turned blue, telling her that she was pregnant with Brad’s baby. Ah, the joy of friendship. She was wrong about one thing though; she was never my best friend. My good friend, yes. But you were always my best friend. Always.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Oh my god, Mom. This is so not fair. Why are you being so lame?”

  “Julia, I am not going to tell you again. You are not going, no matter how loud you scream at me. End of story.”

  I grabbed a pillow from underneath my head and smashed it over my face, trying to drown out the sounds of Julia and Vic working out their mother-daughter issues. They had been going at it for almost twenty minutes and showed no sign of stopping anytime soon.

  “You are the worst mother ever! I hate you!” Julia was pulling out all the stops now. I fought the urge to yell out, “I’m not a big fan of you right now either.”

  The screaming continued and got louder, Julia was approaching the room quickly. I thought about jumping out the window but the door flew open before I could get up. Julia stormed into the room and slammed the door behind her.

  “Ugh! Why does she have to be such a bitch?” Julia flopped down on her bed. “Aunt Gloria, you think I should be able to go, right?”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” I said, rolling onto my side to face her. “If your mom said no, I’m sure she has a solid reason and that’s good enough for me.”

  “It’s just a party. God! What’s the big deal?” Julia picked up a stuffed elephant from her bed and threw it at the wall. I vaguely remembered buying her that elephant ten years earlier for her birthday.

  “Well, why doesn’t she want you to go to the party?”

  “Because she sucks.” Julia actually stuck out her lower lip, looking very much like the six year old girl I still saw her as in my head. “One of my friends, Kara, is having a party at her house. It’s no big deal. Everyone is going. Mom thinks it’s something bad just because her parents are out of town.”

  There it was- the catch. “Sounds like that could lead to some trouble.”

  Julia shot me a look that made me cringe. “You sound just like her.”

  “Any other reason she doesn’t approve?” I tried to ignore the fact that she had just compared me to my sister, a woman that she currently hated.

  Julia ducked her head and her hair fell into her eyes. “Logan is going to be there.”

  “Logan? Is this the compromising situation boy?” Finally something I understood- teenage hormones.

  “One and the same. He’s kind of my boyfriend.”

  “Kind of?”

  “Well it’s not Facebook official or anything. But we’re not dating other people.” Julia smiled shyly and I tried not to laugh at the ridiculousness of her statement. Times have certainly changed since I was her age.

  “I take it your parents aren’t big fans of Logan?”

  “They think he’s too old for me because he’s a junior.”

  “Okay, so Logan, who is two years older than you, is going to be at a house party where no parents will be present? Yeah, I can’t see why your mom doesn’t want her fourteen year old daughter to go.” Immediately after the words left my mouth I regretted saying them. Even I knew that this approach was not going to work with Julia.

  “You’re supposed to be on my side, Aunt Gloria. I don’t ask you for anything, ever. The least you could do is have my back.” Julia had tears of anger in her eyes and I knew I was about to lose any connection I might have had with her.

  “I do have your back, Jules. Even if you don’t think so.” I sucked in a deep breath as I realized exactly what I needed to tell her. “I’m going to tell you something now I haven’t shared with very many people. I’ve never even talked to your mom about it. Can you keep a secret?”

  Julia’s eyes grew wide. “A secret? Totally.”

  “When I was your age, I didn’t have a mother that cared about me. I had to fend for myself, and I didn’t always do the best job. One night, I made a huge mistake, the kind of mistake you never really get over.”

  “What? What happened?” Julia was perched on the edge of her bed now.

  “I was supposed to go to this party with Johnny and some of our friends. It was at a friend’s house, and her parents were out of town. Johnny and I fought that night about something stupid, so I went to the party on my own. A bunch of older kids showed up to the party and things got out of hand pretty quick. Lots of drinking and even some drugs. I was out of my element but I didn’t have enough life experience to know I should leave.

  “Instead, I went upstairs and hid out in one of the bedrooms. I was only in there a couple of minutes when one of the older boys, Travis, came in. He asked if I wanted some company and I said yes. I knew him a little bit, but I wouldn’t say we were friends. He was a junior and I was a freshman so we didn’t cross paths often. He was popular, and his dad was the mayor of Barrington so I was flattered he wanted to hang out with me. But something inside me knew it was all wrong.”

  “Oh no.” Julia muttered under her breath.

  “That is what they call a gut feeling. Don’t ever question it, Julia. Don’t do what I did that night. When I decided I was ready to leave, he decided he didn’t want me to. He blocked the door, and then locked it. That was when I realized what was happening, and by then it was too late.” I felt a shudder run down my spine.

  “Did he… I mean, did he try to…” Julia struggled over the words.

  “Yes. He raped me. Right there in that bedroom with a house full of teenagers all around us. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. I tried to scream, but he covered my mouth. When it was over, he just left the room. Never even said anything to me.” As I told the story, it didn’t feel like my story anymore. It was the same cautionary tale every girl hears at that age, but I hoped Julia would take it more seriously than I
had at her age. I never wanted her to be destroyed like I had been.

  “What did you do?” Julia was actually crying now, big teardrops coarsing down her cheeks.

  “Nothing. I waited until I knew he wasn’t coming back and then I pulled myself together and left the room.”

  “And nobody said anything to you? Nobody knew what happened?

  “Almost. I ran into a friend on my way out of the house. He saw how upset I was, saw my ripped clothes and the bruises on my arms. He figured out what happened.”

  “Was the friend Johnny? It was wasn’t it?” Julia had gone from distraught to prying in record time.

  “It was, know-it-all. Anyway, I didn’t tell you about this just to hear myself talk. You understand why I told you, right?”

  “So that I won’t hate Mom for not letting me go to this party.” Julia rolled her eyes.

  “Close. How about, bad things happen to people all the time and your mom is just trying to keep you safe, and so am I. Doesn’t that sound better?”

  “Whatever. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m the only one of my friends not going.” Julia threw herself back on the bed with a suffering sigh.

  “Look at this way, you are the only one of your friends that gets to spend the night hanging out with me.”

  “Yippee.”

  “You know, you used to think your Aunt Gloria was really cool. You used to like me.”

  “Yeah, that was before my friends started making fun of me for having an aunt that falls down drunk in clubs and struts around half naked in some movie about prostitutes.”

  So that was it- the reason why my niece couldn’t stand to be around me. I embarrassed her, just like I embarrassed Christopher. Life was so much less complicated when you were only letting yourself down.

  “I’m sorry, Jules. I’m sorry that my mistakes have made your life harder. But that’s part of being in a family. You can go on being mad at me and make my visit as uncomfortable as possible or we can move on and try to enjoy my time here. It’s up to you.”

  I grabbed my cell phone and left the room. Telling Julia about my past had been therapeutic and I didn’t want to stop there. I headed outside and walked around until I found a spot with good cell reception. Before I had a chance to talk myself out of it, I dialed Richard’s number. He picked up after the first ring.