Later on Bernice would say that she hadn't been able to sleep a wink after her date with Barry, so had gotten up early, packed and carried her stuff out to the car. She'd gotten into the back seat to wait, wrapped herself in a blanket against the early morning chill, pulled her hat low over her eyes and promptly fell asleep in the isolation of the car. Luann suspected that she was just faking being asleep so she wouldn't have to answer any of the thousands of questions her friends were sure to ask. Whatever the case, they loaded the car quietly and slowly drove off for the Interstate, heading west for the coastal highway.
Tiffany had parked herself in the back seat on the opposite side from Bernice. She was in a mood and Gunther, sitting between her and Bernice, felt like he could feel the cold rolling off her shoulders. He opened up his sketchbook and started sketching. He had a couple ideas for swimsuits but just seemed to end up sketching nude Luanns: sitting on a deck chair, standing on the bow of a ship doing that Titanic thing. And every time he realized that his generic woman's body was actually Luann's he'd hurriedly turn the page, hoping that Tiffany hadn't seen it. Forcing himself to draw Tiffany he found that his creative juices had dried up. He closed his sketchbook, closed his eyes and thought about how he felt about Luann DeGroot. Was he being foolish pursuing her? Was there another girl, anywhere, as interesting? Should he join the priesthood since it didn't look like he would get anywhere female-wise.
Tiffany wasn't even aware that Gunther was sitting next to her. Well, vaguely she know someone had to be there. And since Crystal was all but joined at the hips with that Knute person and Luann was driving, it sort of had to Gunther but frankly she was too bored to care.
At first the idea of this trip had sounded like a lot of fun. Driving across the country with her best friend, Crystal; being there when Quill ultimately dumped Luann ... that was priceless. But a week into the trip it had lost all its luster. It was just day after day sitting in the car, never quite getting close to their goal. Still it was better than being at home with her father.
She stared out the window watching the scenery going by. In later years she would think back on this trip with a surprising amount of nostalgia and be amazed at how little she actually remembered of the trip. She knew that they had crossed the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Nevada desert but she could barely recall any of that. Even now, with the Pacific Ocean on her left, something she had never seen before but yada-yada. It was big and blue and the sun glared off it into her eyes in an annoying fashion. Mountains threw up on the right, blocking her view of anything else. Not that there was anything she wanted to see. When you're bored nothing ever fixes in your memory.
The road verged away from the ocean, through a cleft in the rocks, and for a time passed along a valley of tall trees. Tiffany was falling asleep when she heard Knute say, "We ought to pull over so Tiffany can get out. Maybe she'll meet her boyfriend - Bigfoot," he added as if the others didn't know what he had meant.
"Nah, she'll need some hot sauce to get the right aroma," Luann gruffed.
"Or give her diarrhea," Knute continued in a crude vein. She waited for Crystal to come to her defense, but there was only deafening silence from the remaining front seat.
Tiffany hated being teased. She hated to admit it but teasing brought out all her feelings of inadequacy. Her father was always going on about how her grades ought to be better, or why wasn't she more popular, why wasn't she dressing better, why she wasn't entering more beauty contests. And he was always telling her there was dirt on her face, or her hair needed combing - ("There's a thing called a bush," he would say, "Use it.") - Snipe, snipe, snipe. And his friends were worse. When they came over to watch a game she was expected to get them their beers. And they'd just stare at her, seemingly trying to mentally undress her. It all left her feeling like a fraud, an imposter. She wasn't a cheerleader because she really wanted to be, but because if she wasn't she'd be a nobody. Above all else she wanted to be a Somebody not a nobody. Maybe then her father would quit bugging her. Meanwhile Luann DeGroot, a slob's slob went merrily through life, never trying hard to do anything. No wonder she constantly annoyed Tiffany.
"We're over a thousand miles away from where she met Bigfoot," Gunther said. "There's no way the creature Tiffany met could be around here - now."
"Maybe she'd find a big, hairy cousin, then," Knute gawfed. Luann said something, undoubtedly cutting but Tiffany had stopped listening. She tried to focus on the trees whipping past at 60 miles and hour only to find herself reliving the events of a couple days before. The creature, big and hairy, not quite gorilla and not quite bear, had been scary the first time she saw it but once she realized that it wasn't going to hurt her she began to notice other things. It's face was flat, like a humans, not at all bear like and not really like the gorilla she'd seen in the zoo once. It's eyes were kindly, inquisitive. When it had been imitating her actions she had thought, at the time, it was mocking her, the way DeGroot would imitating her walk or a stance in some totally bogus exaggeration. But thinking back the creature wasn't mocking her, it was trying to communicate with her, or at least understand her. And when she ran into that stupid tree and knocked herself out the creature hadn't run away in fright, or walked away in disinterest. It had picked up and carried her out to the road, as if it had known all along that she had come from the car parked further down the road. It had laid her down - gently, obviously, because aside from the bruise on her head she had been unhurt. And it had done it while avoiding being seen by her companions who had started looking for her because she had been away too long. Tiffany smiled grimly. At the moment it seemed like that Sasquatch, or Bigfoot or whatever was the best friend she had ever had.
After a time the conversation turned away from her humiliation in the forest to how they would find the girl who had signed the Guest Book along with Quill: Elizabeth Porter. Tiffany quite happy to let that conversation drift along over her head.
][
"How are we going to find this chick of Quill's?" Knute asked. Luann shrugged her shoulders. She hadn't thought about that yet. One thing at a time she figured. "Are we going to, like, stand around on corners holding up copies of her picture and ask people if they've seen here?" he continued.
Luann grimaced. That had been one plan she had considered. Coming out his mouth the idea seemed pretty ridiculous.
"I have an idea," Gunther said from the backseat. "I have a facial recognition program on my laptop. When we get to Seattle we can go to the library, take out all the school yearbooks from three or four years ago, scan in the photos using our cellphone cameras then use my program to compare them to the picture Luann has of Elizabeth Porter. Then we'd know what school she went to and go to them and ask for contact information."
"Cool!" said Knute. Crystal gave kind of a shudder. "I'm not sure I want to live in a world where a computer can pick you out of a crowd," she said.
"I'm sure Tiffany would love an app that could pick her out of any crowd," Luann sniggered.
"It's not like that," Gunther began but trailed off as he realized that it was exactly like that. "Still, think of all the time it would save us," he finished.
"You know they have the student's names listed under all the pictures. We'd just have to look for her name, and then we'd know the school she went to," Crystal said. "But won't the schools all be closed now. It is summer, after all."
"So pictures on the street corner?" Knute wondered.
"How many Porters can there be in Seattle," Luann asked. "If she's 21 now, she's probably moved into her own apartment, with her own phone. So all we have to do is look up her name in the phone book and call until we find the right one.
"Come on, Seattle a large city, there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of Porters in their phone book.
"But we'd only have to look up 'Elizabeth Porter', or maybe 'E. Porter' or 'Liz Porter' or even maybe 'Beth Porter.' It's not an infinitely large number," Luann said. "And there are six of us, all with cell phones. We could divide up the list and just call all of them. It's kind of a brute force solution but it's probably easier than trying to check out all the school yearbooks in Seattle."
Gunther was disappointed that they weren't more supportive of his idea but thought about this new idea and saw how he could help. "The next time we pull over to eat, lets find a place with free wi-fi. I can hook up my computer and download the phone numbers for Seattle and search for all the E.,B. L.,Beth, Liz and Elizabeth Porters in there, which would give us an idea of how many calls we'd have to make."
"Great!" was Luann's response. Knute said, "Lunch. I could do with a little nosh about now."
"Two hours," Luann told him. "It's only ten. We'll stop at noon."
They had to stop before then to fill up the car but found a truck plaza with all the amenities, including free wi-fi. While the others nibbled on french fries, Gunther set up his laptop and attached a tiny printer to it. From time to time he would report on the progress he was making and then suddenly started feeding sheets of paper into his printer. As the sheets came out he handed then around to the group. When he slip a sheet in front of Bernice she looked at it disinterestedly and went back to pushing her French fries around and pretending to eat. The giddy exhilaration of the night before had faded into a series of recriminations and doubts in her mind. Yet another reason to avoid talking to her companions.
Her phone chimed unexpectedly, causing her to jump in her seat. She dragged the phone out of her pocket before it rang again and looked at the screen wondering who could be texting her, since, really, the only ones who ever would were seating next to her. There was a second when the displayed name failed to register, then she almost dropped the phone from nerveless fingers. "Oh my god," she said. "It's from Barry!"
"Last night's Barry?" Luann asked. "What's he say?"
"Oh, he sent a picture. What is it?" She held out her phone so everyone could get a look at the picture. It looked like a couple of furballs piled on top each other.
"Oh, he writes, "I'm out in the field today, starting a wildlife population count. Came across these two groundhogs..." She looked at the picture again. "These are groundhogs?" she wondered. "Came across these two groundhogs," she resumed reading, then stopped and blushed a really vivid red.
"What? What?" Luann demanded, reaching across to grab the phone out of Bernice's hands. "...groundhogs copulating and thought of you!" Luann looked at her friend with arched eyebrows. She could feel a blush rising on her cheeks.
"So is he like, going to see your picture of every animal he sees doing it, because it reminds him of you?" Knute asked. Crystal elbowed him so hard Knute fell out of the booth. Which distraction gave Bernice time to recover and snatch the phone back from Luann. "He says he misses me and wonders how we're doing on our expedition." she concluded and shut down her phone.
"He didn't really say that," Tiffany sneered. "Let me see."
"No! It's personal."
"Are you going to text him back," Luann asked.
"I don't know, maybe."
Crystal leaned over, "When a guy calls the next day ... he's a keeper."
"But we'll never see each other again."
"Never say never."
Bernice nodded but didn't say anything. After a moment, she got up with a "Gotta go," and fled to the bathroom.
Knute chuckled. "Girls, huh? No understanding them." He looked around for support only to see all three girls glaring at him while Gunther was still working with his computer. After a pause, "I'll shut up now."
][
Bernice was several minutes returning and looked pale and sweaty when she did. There was a large wet spot on her shirt. "I'm going to the car," she mumbled and hurried out.
Luann got up to followed Bernice. Behind her was a plaintiff cry from Tiffany, "Who's going to pay for this meal?" Normally Luann put it on the magic credit card. Ignoring Tiffany's repeated cries., she went out the door.
She found Bernice huddled in the corner of the back seat of the pink Cadillac. She wasn't crying but her face was crumpled up in the most ghastly ricus Luann had ever seem. "Are you alright?" she began lamely. Bernice shook her head, too wrought up to speak. Then a moment later she said, "I threw up." Only coming through gritted teeth it sounded more like 'ee-ou pp!"
"Was it the food?" Luann wasn't used to comforting. She was most likely the one being comforted by Bernice. She started to lean over and pat Bernice on the shoulder, saying "there, there," only to realize how lame that was.
Bernice shook her head.
"So this is about Barry?"
Bernice nodded.
"Are you upset that he compared you to ah - ah - warthog?"
"It was a groundhog," Bernice managed to get out.
"Well, warthog, groundhog... it wasn't a particularly appealing comparison. Or was it the crack that their humping reminded him of you?"
Bernice started crying with little hiccups.
"Are you having regrets about doing it last night?" Bernice shook her head. "'Cause I thought the whole idea was to go out, eat a little, dance a little, and nothing more," Luann continued. "You're not pregnant are you? Throwing up and all - oh, that's silly. You only did it last night. You wouldn't get morning sickness few weeks..."
"He used protection!" Bernice snapped. "He was the nicest, sweetest, gentlest man I've ever know!"
"Even nicer than Zane," mentioning Bernice one and only other boyfriend.
"Zane... He left town and I never heard from him again. He never called! Not like Barry. I think he was more in love with his disability than in me." Zane had been confined to a wheelchair and advocated for wheelchair rights. He'd left to pursue a higher education. Luann was surprised that he had never called Bernice again.
"You're upset because you won't see your park ranger again? A park ranger you haven't talked to for more than a couple minutes before. I thought you knew that going into the date.
Bernice nodded.
"So what changed - oh, yeah, the sex. You think just because you did it, he's going to carry a torch for you?"
"He texted me, didn't he?"
Luann had to admit that was a pretty strong argument. She wondered how she'd react if some boyfriend had suddenly run off. Oh, wait. That was exactly what Quill had done and here she was on a warpath to hunt him down and sock him one on the jaw. What if he had really gone home to Australia? Would she have pined over him. Waited - hoped - he might return?
The likelihood of Quill coming back from Australia was pretty remote (except he had never left for the land down under...) What were the odds of she seeing Barry the ranger again? While it was possible that after taken care of Quill they could swing by Yosemite again so she could see Barry again. But was that fair to Bernice, taking her back to the man she would never see again.
Bernice had continued talking while Luann had been lost in thought. "He is so interested in the environment and protecting the wildness for its own sake. We had such a long, wonderful conversation about it. He went to college to study wildlife conservation before taking this job at the park..."
"Bernice," Luann interrupted, "How serious are you about your Ranger fellow?"
"Huh? I'm inconsolable."
"Only you could use a word like inconsolable in a sentence. Listen,, this may not be as hopeless as you think. We're high school seniors. A year from now we'll graduate and head off to college..."
"I'm thinking of MIT or Stanford."
"But there are lots of good universities out here, right? If you applied out here you would be close to Barry. You could see him in weekends and between semesters. It would work. True you'd not see him for a year but there's texting and Skype. But if he's really serious about you, wouldn't he wait?"
"Do you think he would? Wait, that is?"
"Do I look like a girl who knows from boyfriends?"
Well..."
"At least answer his text. Talk. Maybe this will work out of maybe not, but you'll have a year to find out." Luann was feeling pretty good at the moment, having thought of a way to help her friend. "But no sexting! I don't want to see your ladyparts spread all over REDDIT."
"Lu-Ann!" Bernice giggled.
"Here come the others, wipe your face and we'll say it was car sickness."
Tiffany got in behind the driver's seat, arguing all the time. "We're going to Seattle, and that's all there is to it. Now gimme the damn map so I can see where we're going. If you gotta pee, it's too late." She started the car and rocketed out to the interstate.
][
They rolled into a motel on the outskirts of Seattle as dawn was breaking the next day. Tiffany would have driven all the way if she hadn't fallen asleep behind the wheel around 3 A. M.
The car drifted on to the rumble strip and everyone woke up with screams of fear and alarm. Tiffany, opening her eyes to a looming tree, gave the car a jerk while slamming on the brakes. The car's wheels locked in place as it slide into a sharp, steep turn that threatened to roll it over. It came to a rocking stop on the wrong side of the road, facing back to California.
Tiffany was gasping for air, her face, faintly visible in the lights from the dashboard was pale and covered with sweat.
"You stupid _!" Luann was screaming, "Are you trying to kill us!" She stood up in the back seat while she was swinging wildly at Tiffany's head and shoulders, only to find she was getting all tangled up in Crystal's arms.
Tiffany suddenly jerked open her door and bolted from the car. Luann waded over Gunther and slammed out of the back seat. Crystal scrambled out thinking she was going to have to separate the overwrought Luann.
But Tiffany have stumbled a dozen steps from the car before collapsing to her knees and vomiting. Luann remained on the other side of the car, cursing and swearing with a vocabulary unexpectedly broad and deep.
Crystal went to help Tiffany, leaving Knute in a tough spot. He wanted to stay as close to the elegant punk girl but equally he wanted nothing to do with anyone throwing up. Gunther untangled himself from his seatbelt. He had been knocked halfway out of the car when Luann bulldozed through him. He found his flashlight and circled the car. "Doesn't appear to be any damage," he announced to no one in particular. No one was listening.
"Ok, Ok, OK," Crystal was saying as she lead a shaking Tiffany back to the car. Luann stopped her pacing and came close but stopped a short distance off after Crystal gave her a stare. "No body got hurt. It was nobody's fault. It was all of our fault. Why did we let Tiffany keep driving all day?"
"Because she was always getting behind the wheel!" Luann offered.
"Just because she wanted to drive doesn't mean we shouldn't have forced she to switch off with someone rested," Crystal went on.
"I didn't see you offering to drive," Luam sniped.
Crystal was about to leap at the blonde when Knute interrupted with a well timed question, "Like, where are we? How much farther is it to Seattle?"
That required Gunther getting out his smartphone, checking its GPS app and plotting its location on a map of the region.
"Hey, we've only an inch to go," Knute exclaimed. "We're almost there."
"That's a hundred and fifty miles," Gunther corrected.
"That's only three hours," Bernice said as she got out of the back seat. "Luann, Gunther: find us a decent hotel. Tiffany, back seat - sleep! I'll drive. All I've done today is sleep, I think I can stay away till we get there!" She got behind the wheel while the others stared at this suddenly decisive, mousy little girl. She started honking the horn. "Come on people, move!"
She edged the car back on the freeway, ascertained that they were heading the right way and accelerated to a sedate 60 miles and hours. And while various other members in the car seethed and stewed, Bernice worked on composing an account of their near-accident to tell his boyfriend. Just the thought of "my boyfriend," filled long minutes as they rolled down the road.
][
The sun can creeping in at daybreak but finding it unable to rouse the sleeping kids, stalked away, wrapped himself in grey clouds and sulked. Around two in the afternoon Gunther called, fearful that he might be disturbing someone's rest. Tiffany was up already, sorting through a handful of tourist flyers from the motel's lobby. She had a full day's campaign mapped out by the time the others stirred. Luann had no interest in running around Seattle looking at landmarks. Bernice was already texting Ranger Barry with updates on her life. Knute expected to tagalong with Crystal and was caught flatfooted when Tiffany adamantly refused to let him come along. This was to be a girl's day out, even if the only girls going out where Tiffany and Crystal. In fact Tiffany was happy about that since she was beginning to feel that she was losing her BFF to the lower classes on the trip.
Gunther had shown up with his lists of Elizabeth's for everyone to call, eager to put his plan into motion. As soon as the door closed behind Tiff and Crystal he turned to hand out sets of call pages to Luann only to find her gone. "Luann?" he called.
"In here," she answered from the bathroom. Bernice had also disappeared.
"What's going on?" he asked a downcast Knute.
Knute shrugged disinterestedly.
A moment later the door opened and Luann came out in a bikini, a fluorescent green visible for miles away. Bernice came out a moment later in a one-piece number that had the unfortunate quality of matching her skin-tone too closely.
"Wha - wha...?" Gunther stuttered.
"There's a hot tub downstairs next to the pool with my name written all over it!"
"But the calls, the list... We need to get started on them as soon as we can!"
"OK, I'll take my phone down and make some calls while soaking."
"You can't take your phone, what if it gets wet?"
"Don't worry, it's water-proof."
"Water-resistant, maybe," Gunther replied but hardly water-proof! And it has open charging slots and ear-phone jacks. If it got wet..."
"I'll be careful."
"And the papers," Gunther persisted. "They can't get wet. That inkjet ink is water soluble. It'll wash right off!"
"Whatever. Gunther, I'm going downstairs to that hot tub."
"I'm not going to make all these calls by myself!"
"I'm not asking you to. Look. Tiffany and Crystal are out for the day. Maybe they think we'll make their calls for them. I don't think so! What you ought to do is put on your trunks and join us downstairs. The calls can wait. Let's just enjoy ourselves this afternoon."
"Well... Maybe for an hour. But we've really got to started on these calls." Gunther was talking to a closing door. He sighed and looked at Knute. "Dude, you , like got an extra pair of trunks with you? I packed kinda light."
][
Luann had no intention of letting Gunther dictate how long she could stay in the hot tub but as it happened after about an hour she had had about as much as heat as she could take. Reluctantly she climbed the stairs up to their floor. The boys split off to their room while the girls took quick showers to wash off the chlorine and whatever else might be in what she thought of as "people stew."
She lay on the bed for a minute, working up the energy to get started. Then piled up the pillows into a comfortable back support, placed her envelope of clues on the nightstand beside and dialed the first number.
They had worked on a story to give each caller. It went something like this: "Hi, I'm a friend of Quill Masterson. He left town recently and left behind a number of valuable items I'd like to return to him. I don't have his current address but I know he was friends with an Elizabeth Porter. Are you that Elizabeth Porter?" Sometimes the person on the other end of the line would hang up in the middle of the speech and they'd make a notation on the list to that effect. They had worked out a set of marks to make beside each name they called depending on how the call went. If no one answered they write a little "c" next to the number, for 'called.' If they got a hang-up they marked down an "H." If the person answering the call thought someone else at the number might know they write an "R" to return the call." "V" was for voice mail, and only if they talked to someone and confirmed that they knew nothing of Quill or Elizabeth Porter did they draw a line through the number. The task quickly grew boring and more than a little wearying from the large number of people who were irate at the idea of someone even calling them.
They were still working down through the list when Tiffany and Crystal blew back into the room late that afternoon, loaded down with shopping bags. Luann was about to crankily ask how they thought all those boxes and bags were going to fix inside the already crowded car but held her tongue as she realized she was just in a bad mood from all the unsuccessful calls. They tried to tell the others about all the wonderful things they had seen only to be hushed by Gunther as he was making a call. Tiffany and Crystal tried to ignore the calling the others were making for an hour but after Gunther repeated shook their copies of the call list in their direction they took the hint and pulled out their phones.
The sky was dimming out their windows when Bernice suddenly said, "Hey, listen to this!" She held her phone between her and Luann so they both could hear. A woman was saying "...I remember Quill, kind of an Australian cutie. Yeah, Liz met him while she was still in High School. There was something fishy about that. Liz seemed to like him a lot but always acted like she had something on him. I don't know what."
"Is there a chance we could talk with - ah - Liz?" Bernice asked,
"Sorry, she moved out over a year ago. When to Hollywood to become a star. Said Quill was going to give her some contacts and help her get started. She called once or twice after she first got there and then... you know..." the girl voice trailed off.
"Is there a phone number we could contact her at?" Bernice asked.
"Sorry. She gave me a number when she first moved down but the last time I used it the people who answered had no idea who I was talking about. I gather she was crashing with someone at the time and moved now."
"Ask for an address," Luann whispered. The girl, Elizabeth's former roommate didn't have an address, didn't know if Elizabeth was seeking work under her own name or a stage name. She liked Liz and hoped she was OK. The only reason Liz's name was still in the phone book was because it was too much of a hassle and expense to change it to her name.
By the time Bernice ended the call Luann was beating her head with her fists in frustration. "We were so close!" she groaned. "Now we'll have to go to L.A and start all over again."
Tiffany, who was having an extended conversation with a nice young man, put down her phone and frowned. "Do you have any idea how many people there are in L.A.?" Luann shook her head. "At lot, Tiffany continued. "I'm not going to sit around for days on end calling people in hopes of finding her. Face it, DeGroot, we've come to a dead end. The party's over. It's time to lick our wounds and go home. I'm all funned out."
Luann sighed. She hated to admit it but Tiffany was right. They had run up against a brick wall. She idly dump the contents of her envelope of clues and stirred through them: the postcard from Yolande's Jackalope Inn, the photograph of Quill's other girlfriend, the one who had something on him. The telephone bill...
Knute had gotten up and was walking around the hotel room, stretching. He saw the phone bill. "What this?" he asked.
"It's a phone bill I picked up when I broke into Quill house."
"You broke into a house? Man, you're hard core! So why'd you take it?"
"I thought there might be a clue where Quill is."
"Uh huh."
"He got a lot of calls from Hollywood so I always suspected he might be there."
"You ever call one of these number to see who'd answer it?"
"No," Luann replied, mystified. "I didn't want him to know I was trying to track him down."
"All you have to do is dial the number, listen to who answers the phone then hang up. Everybody gets hang-up calls. They think nothing off it."
"I could have called from Pittsville?" Luann said.
"You could have called from Pittsville!" Tiffany echoed a but angrily.
"Wait till Barry here's about this!" Bernice thought, already composing a message. She was amused at the irony of it. If Luann had not jumped to conclusions, as she usually did, but had thought things out, they never would have gone to Yosemite National Park and she would never have met Ranger Barry. For once Luann's habit of acting without thinking had actually benefited someone!
"Here, I'll make the call," Knute was saying. "So even if Quill answers he'd never know who it was."
He started punching in the number from the phone bill. Luann jumped off the bed and stood next to him so she could hear who ever answered the phone.
It rang once and a husky voiced woman answered. "Chunder production. How may I help you?"
"Ah, I'm - ah - calling for Quill Masterson." Knute stammered.
"Mr. Masterson is not in the offices today but if you want, I can leave a message for him," the receptionist continued.
'I - uh -"
"Hang up!" Luann whispered.
"Do you know when he will be in the office," Knute got out.
"Later, this week, but his schedule is very busy. Perhaps I could make an appointment?"
"No. No," Knute replied. Luann continued to whisper directions in one ear which was making it hard for him to think. "I'll call back later. It's not something I want to discuss over the phone." Luann snatched the phone out of his hand and pressed "end."
"I thought you were going to hang right up?" Luann hissed.
"I found out Quill works there."
Luann was trying to organize her thoughts; to figure out what her next step should be. "Why would Quill be working for a TV studio?" she wondered.
"He liked acting," Bernice said. "Was good at it."
Luann was shaking her head. "No. it's couldn't be that. Gunther! Use your nerd-fu and find out what you can about Chunder Productions!"
"They have a web site," he replied dryly.
"Really? What does it say?"
"Not much, unfortunately. The front page just says Chunder production is a firm specializing in 'exclusive, original content for a variety of Australian cable and satellite systems serving the Outback.' There's a Contact page but all it lists are a Sales Agent, a lawyer for legal affairs and an office number. There's no mention of corporate officers. Oh, this is interesting. The link to the Sales agent links to a drop-down box listing products. There's 'Sports Today,' 'Internet Oddities' and 'G'day, Yank."
"'G'Day, Yank?" Luann echoed, "but that's what Quill always said when he saw me! Why would Chunder Production do a show about Quill's catch phrase?"
"Oh, My God," Tiffany screamed and started laughing hysterically. Everyone looked at her, waiting for Tiffany to explain.
"You're Truman," she choked out. "You're goddamn, fricking Truman!"
"Tiffany, what do you mean?" Crystal asked
"You know, The Truman Show." Tiffany was slowing down to mere giggles. "The Truman Show," she repeated went no one else seemed to get the joke. "You know the movie..."
"Oh. My. God!" Luann groaned, covering her face with her hands and slumped down on her bed. "That can't be right," she groaned. "There never were any cameras near us. No. No. That can't be right."
"Have you seen how small camera are these days," Gunther reminded her. "You cellphone has a video camera built right into it. Anymore the biggest part of a camera is the battery to run it."
"But why would he do this to me? I thought he liked me?" Luann was near tears. She felt like the floor was going to open up at anymore and swallow her. or maybe she just hoped that it would.
"Only one way to find out," Bernice said quietly. "Run down to LA and confront him. We know where he works and as long as he doesn't know you're coming he's sure to be there."
"Leave? But we just got here," Tiffany complained. "There's still so much I want to see here."
"Seattle can wait," Crystal said with a smile. "I'm dying to see what Quill has to say. 'Sleepness in Seattle' has nothing on this."
"OK. Right! Let's go!" Luann leaped off the bed.
"In the morning! After a good night's sleep!" Bernice had the last word.
The good news is the next chapter should bring this tale to an end. I'm tempted to start a Luann goes to college story but like this one it wouldn't hold close to current comic strip continuity. It's based on a sequence from a year ago when Luann and Tiffany were talking about college and Tiff was like "I'm going to college because my dad wants me to," and she had such a blank face, like she was majorly depressed about her life and future. It would a short step from there to seeing her on drugs. And what would Luann do, because hate her or not, Tiff is someone she knows. I also thought of a better boyfriend for Luann. But if I start it it'll be a couple years of putters to finish and run way out of control...