Fast Times at Ridgemont High (14 page)

“I have detected this year,” said Quan, speaking from the school podium in a high pitch, “a lot of students who want to see some spirit here at Ridgemont High. A lot of people are really anxious to get in there and do something for the school. But maybe they feel restrained, or that they aren’t cool enough. Maybe they are afraid they might draw attention to themselves.”

“Well, the A.S.B. has responded this year by decreeing next week TOLO.”

Boos. Hisses.

“Many people have asked, ‘Just what is TOLO?’ ” Quan gestured wildly with both hands. “TOLO . . . stands for Totally Outrageous. We’re all going to act Totally Outrageous. And starting this Monday, it’s TOLO Week!”

Quan had a whole schedule printed up in the next morning’s bulletin. The idea was that you geared up all week for the big homecoming game, the game where Charles Jefferson would attempt to avenge his Mustang. Quan had even made a program of dress, so that everyone could show total spirit during TOLO Week:

Monday—Tourist Day
Tuesday—Li’l Abner Day
Wednesday—Hollywood Day
Thursday—Red and Yellow Day
Friday—Punk or Disco Day

There were other activities during TOLO Week. Pie fights (in which twenty-five cents bought you a smock and small tin filled with whipped cream). Water balloon fights. A band at lunch. Quan had gotten it all approved by Principal Gray, to promote spirit on the week leading up to homecoming.

The hardcore surfers stood around the parking lot and grumbled all week. An amazing thing was happening to their school. The students were actually going along with TOLO. By Friday things had worked up to such a pitch, that most students, even the same people who swore they would never go along with pep and spirit and all that garbage, were dressed up like punks and gold-chained disco lizards.

Friday was also election day for Homecoming King and Queen.

Outside the gym, where voting took place at lunch time, the pie fight spilled out of its special ring. Jeff Spicoli told everyone he was going to nail Mr. Hand with a pie. He went out of the preordained pie-fight circle and went to stand by Hand, who was talking to another student. Everyone began to gather, waiting for the moment Spicoli would smash Hand with a pie.

Spicoli moved in slowly for the kill, holding the pie behind his back. He prepared for the perfect angle of attack. But something went wrong. Too many people knew. Another student got impatient and nailed someone else on the edge of the pie-fight circle. A small melee broke out. Pies everywhere. It was a TOLO free-for-all, and Hand strode out of lunch court in disgust before a drop of whipped cream could touch him.

The trash would sit for days afterward. “The A.S.B. thinks they run this school,” said the head janitor, Art Hertz. “Let
them
clean it up.”

In the gymnasium, voting was going on for Homecoming King and Queen. The winners would be announced during half time at the Lincoln game. The king and queen were to be crowned in the middle of the field, in front of the wildly cheering spectators, and then driven around the running track in a limousine.

On the ballot that Friday were eight nominees, four specimens each sex of quintessential maturity and adulthood:

—There was Cindy Carr, who would probably win Homecoming Queen because she had worked so hard for it in her two years at Ridgemont. She smiled at any- and everyone, and knew all their names.

—Then there was Betsy Rollins, who had come back from vacation this year with a nose job. And a new hairdo. Everything about her was now voluptuous and perfect. A late but strong challenger.

—Kip Davis was not to be discounted. She was the ultimate sun-kissed blonde, straight out of a Beach Boys song. That in itself carried a block vote, but Kip had also personally gone with half the senior class. Kip was the spoiler candidate of this race.

—But who could forget Sue Bailey, the black girl who dated only white boys. She had made a lot of friends this year, attracted a lot of attention, and had come on strong in the final moments.

The field for Homecoming King was even wider:

—Best bet was A.S.B. President Kenneth Quan. He was so full of spirit you almost couldn’t give it to anybody else. Every day, every lunch period, he was out there pressing the flesh, listening to students and appearing presidential.

—If sosh-dom was a small body of water, Chris Brody was the Pacific Ocean. He was a curly headed kid, always drying his squeaky-clean, lemon-tinted hair. He would walk down a hallway, chest puffed out, waiting for any girl he could bear hug until she screamed. Then he would ask her to loan him a dollar.

—Vincent Mathias . . . who knew how he had ended up on the list? He was a low-level football player, pompous as hell by reputation. He was always talking about how secret the Raiders’ plays were, then explaining exactly what they were and how they worked for
him.
He was always talking about getting out of school, but was the type who would never graduate.

—Gregg Adams had a shot. As Ridgemont’s biggest drama star and, of course, current boyfriend of Cindy Carr, he was a high-profile character. He emceed all the school events. He was at every football game. The guy really believed in living high school to the max.

After considering all the options, Jeff Spicoli voted for himself.

By homecoming game time, the only seats left in the Ridgemont bleachers were at the far left end. Linda Barrett and Stacy Hamilton climbed up and took the last two seats, next to Mr. Vargas, Vice-Principal Connors, and Mr. Hand.

“Grade my test yet, Mr. Hand?” Stacy asked.

“Yes,” said Hand, without taking his eyes from the field. He was dressed, she thought, rather disappointingly in a bright red Pendleton jacket.

The Homecoming Game.

Jumping and leaping in front of the stands were the Ridgemont cheerleaders. Up front watching the spectacle were the sophomores and ninth graders from Paul Revere. Their mouths hung open as they watched the high school cheerleaders.

Behind them, gathered in the same general area like good cheerleader husbands, were the boyfriends of the “Spirit Bunnies.” Most had already graduated—it was a classic syndrome. They had risen to the top of their heap, they had shimmied to the top of the rope, and they weren’t about to let go now.

The Ridgemont cheerleaders were big on spelling. Everything had to get the full spell-out treatment. Players’ names. Positions. You name it, they spelled it. And while all this was going on, you had Richie Raider, a male cheerleader in a warrior headdress, jumping around. Every year the cheerleaders voted in a new Richie Raider. This year it was a senior friend of A.S.B. President Kenneth Quan’s. His name was David Santos. Santos was said to have six toes.

Across the field, Lincoln was warming up for the game. Lincoln liked to intimidate, and one of their finer points of psychological warfare was their school band. The Lincoln High band had their own special stands, uniforms, and pulsating repertoire of sporty music ripped right from the heart of “Wide Wide World of Sports.” On any given moment, when their opponent’s ragtag combo might be playing the traditional “Charge,” Lincoln, for example, would be blasting out a bombastic version of “Get Down Tonight.”

The Ridgemont High Raiders had won their last two games. All the games, in fact, since Charles Jefferson discovered his car welded to the flagpole. He had heard that Steven Miko had done it. Miko was a Lincoln student, a slender kid with wild eyes and no hesitation for pulling a brutal prank. A couple of years back, Miko had personally hoisted and painted a Ridgemont Raider on one side of the gym to look like Frank Zappa. Later he was fired from Jack-in-the-Box—a lowly fate—and told friends he was going to rip the place off. And he did just that—he ripped off the big plastic
Jack.
The sawed-off clown figure sat in his backyard for over a year.

This year, Miko had taken the Ridgemont steel letters. It was a proven fact. People had been to Miko’s house and had actually seen the letters. There, in steel, on his bedroom wall, the letters spelled CLITS.

So everyone assumed it had to be Miko who had wrecked Charles Jefferson’s car.

The Ridgemont Death Squad—Mike Brock and a few others from the football team—had taken care of the immediate retaliation. They had drenched the Miko house in large farm-stale eggs, and they had phoned in two bomb threats on Mr. Miko’s Chinese Cuisine. But the best move came the night the death squad visited Miko’s yellow Datsun pickup truck, parked outside the house. Poor Steven Miko should have known better than to leave his car door open. They had filled the cab with fertilizer . . . and live mice.

The Twentieth Annual Ridgemont-Lincoln Homecoming Game began. Within a few minutes of the game’s first quarter, Charles Jefferson had already started to pick apart the Lincoln defense. At peak form, Jefferson could remind an entire team that they were still high school amateurs and he was
headed pro.
You could hear Coach Ramirez on the sidelines, performing for his movie camera.

“THERE YOU GO. THERE YOU GO. H.Q.A. HELLFIRE! QUICKNESS! ABILITY!”

That was his new one: H.Q.A. Before the cameras were ordered it was always just “Take a Lap.” Now he thought he was Vince Lombardi.

Lincoln, a tough football team with a tough band, refused to give in easily. At the sound of the half-time gun, Ridgemont held the edge, 13-12.

All cheerleaders not nominated for the homecoming court scurried into the bleachers to sit with their boyfriends and watch the homecoming coronation. But first A.S.B. President Kenneth Quan announced an R.O.T.C. demonstration. The two teams of R.O.T.C. trainees charged onto the field and demonstrated their strictly choreographed maneuvers.

“I don’t
believe
they’re dragging this out so long,” said Stacy.

“It’s like this every year,” said Linda.

At last, the time arrived. They were all there seated on a stage at the center of the field, waiting while A.S.B. Advisor Joseph Burke handed the envelope to last year’s Homecoming Queen, Beth Schumacher.

“And the winners are . . .
Cindy Carr
and
Kenneth Quan.”

His mouth dropped open. She screamed.
“I can’t believe this is really happening.”
They took their places on the back of a long black limousine, and the car began its slow parade around the running track of the stadium.

As soon as the procession moved in front of Lincoln’s bleachers, the attack began. Eggs and paper cups filled with soda and ice came flying from every direction. Onto the field. Toward the car. Toward the Ridgemont bleachers. When a rock hit the windshield of the limo, the driver instinctively sped off. Kenneth Quan and Cindy Carr—the newly crowned king and queen of Ridgemont’s Twentieth Annual Homecoming—slid off the back of the limo and into the dirt where they were pelted with more eggs.

Lieutenant Lawrence “Larry” Flowers was on the field in an instant. He had gotten information that the instigator of Lincoln’s shenanigans was Steven Miko—the troublemaker who was also, as it turned out, school photographer for the Lincoln annual that year. As soon as the mayhem broke out, Lt. Flowers spotted a photographer, wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed him, and hauled him to juvenile detention.

“We’ve got Miko,” he reported into his walkie-talkie. The word spread—they had Miko.

They did not, however, have Miko. They had just beaten and apprehended Arthur Chubb, the photographer for the
Ridgemont Reader.

It was a hard-fought second half. Still 13-12 midway in the fourth, Lincoln drove to Ridgemont’s ten yard line. But instead of going for the obvious field goal, Lincoln elected to try for the first down. They were stopped inches short, and Richie Raider started whooping it up on the sidelines. He began hugging the other cheerleaders.

In the stands, the cheerleaders’ boyfriends watched his every move.
Did that guy just grab Dina’s tit?

The Ridgemont Raiders, in retaliation, began grinding out the yardage. Their chief opponent was now the clock. Finally, with less than two minutes on the clock, the Raiders brought the ball to the Lincoln five yard line.

Steve Shasta, soccer star and Ridgemont’s ace place kicker, began preparing himself to kick the winning field goal. He began walking out onto the field. But Coach Ramirez called him back. He waved for Charles Jefferson to come in from the sidelines.

“Jefferson,” he said, the new movie camera whirring, “I’m gonna give you a big shot. We win or lose on the next play.”

Jefferson nodded. “I’ll take it in.”

The next play was a pitch out to Jefferson, and Lincoln anticipated it. Jefferson grabbed the ball and ran into two defensive players waiting for him. From the stands it appeared he was a goner, stopped just feet short of the touchdown.

But however Charles Jefferson summoned to do what he did, it probably had something to do with his battered Mustang. Jefferson plowed right through his tacklers, up and over them, into the end zone. The two Lincoln tacklers lay motionless on the field.

In the stands, Jeff Spicoli turned to L.C. “I think we may have gotten away clean,” he said.

It was a much-celebrated Ridgemont victory. Ridgemont residents could hear the hum of the car horns from two miles away.

The homecoming dance, an informal affair being held at Jack Benny Hall, was about to begin. But it was much, much too early to go there yet. For the victorious football players, there was another ritual to attend to. All the squad members picked up six-packs of beer at Mesa De Oro Liquor and drove out to the Alpine Information Tower at the foot of Ridgemont Drive to discuss the game.

Later, only later, when the time was right and the dance was almost over, did the team make their calculated entrance en masse. They were applauded, and a crush of girls who’d been sitting on the hardwood floor watching the band now gravitated to the celestial Ridgemont Raiders.

“Well,” Steve Shasta whispered to a friend, “here’s the dilemma—seek it or stroke it.”

An adoring girl rushed up to him. “Here,” she said, “I saved this for you.” She surrendered a warm beer to Shasta.

Shasta took a sip and handed it back. “Thanks,” he said. “I hear they drink it like this in Germany.”