Fast Times at Ridgemont High (26 page)

“May I have a glass of water, please?” Shasta asked.

“Look, Ben, look at the boy’s
face.
It’s
flushed.”

Listening behind the door, Linda winced.

“Look at him, Ben,” her mother said. “Doesn’t he look just like . . . just like
John Kennedy?”

Linda heard them seating Shasta in the living room on the sofa.
Typical.
The sofa faced Mom’s and Dad’s chairs, the fireplace, and two mammoth department-store oil paintings that dominated the entire room. One of the paintings was of Linda and the other was of her brother, Jerome, The Brain.

“Do you know Jerome?” asked Mr. Barrett. “He used to go to Ridgemont. He goes to USC, now.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Well,” Mr. Barrett chuckled, “if you don’t know math, he doesn’t want to know
you!”

“I see,” said Shasta.

“Ben, where is Linda?” Her mother spoke in a real Taster’s Choice testimonial voice. “Come out, honey,
Steve’s
here.”

Linda opened the door and came bounding out. “Hi! Wanna go?”

“Sure,” said Steve.

“Have a good time, kids!” Her mother patted them both on the head, like good kids.

They walked the forty feet to the car in silence.

“Is it too late to play golf?” asked Linda.

“We gotta get some food first,” said Steve. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

Shasta slammed the door of his car shut and turned the ignition key. The radio came on at a deafening volume. He turned it off. They pulled out onto the highway and lurched into overdrive.

“I get behind the wheel of a Corvair,” said Shasta, “and I’m a
madman.”
He laughed. “You know what I hate? I hate people who give their cars names.”

Linda nodded. Her pickup was called Dino, after her first dog.

They went to a Swedish Smorgasbord, where Shasta knew a night cook named Walsh. The place was closing. Walsh kept it open.

Walsh, a freckled kid in a white smock, pointed to the limp remains of the day’s Swedish Smorgasbord. “Go for it.” Walsh even sat down with them at the table in his white smock and watched Shasta and Linda eat.

“How’s it going?” Walsh’s head bobbed constantly as he spoke.

“Pretty good. This is Linda Barrett.”

“Hi”

“Hi.”

“So,” Shasta said, “how’s it going with you?”

Walsh’s head kept bobbing. “Old people,” he said, “Lots of old people. Man, they
flock
here. And they eat their brains out. They don’t even talk to each other, they just
eat.
It’s amazing.”

“Really?” asked Shasta. “I heard there’s a movie where people eat themselves to death.”

“Yeah,”
said Walsh. “They probably filmed it at a Smorgasbord. It’s most crowded on weekends, you know, and that’s real funny ’cause on the weekends we get a lot of stuff from Denny’s. They get their new food on Saturday mornings. They clean this stuff out on Friday afternoon. It’s all
leftovers
.”

Linda picked at the rest of her meal. It was Friday night.

After dinner at the Swedish Smorgasbord, Steve Shasta played his car radio and drove Linda Barrett directly to the Point.

“I really made a decision, you know,” said Shasta. He brushed some hair out of his eyes and checked himself in the mirror. “I made a decision not to
pressure
myself.” He looked at her, giving Linda the full eye. “Some girls I could really fall for . . .”

“Why don’t you?” asked Linda innocently.

Shasta took a deep breath. “Well, because of
soccer
mostly. It takes the ultimate in concentration. It’s not a
collisional
sport, you know. A lot of people don’t realize the mental stress. Plus, I’ve always got guys out there on the field trying to mark me. Like last year. Just before the injury, I had . . .”

He hung his head.

“Been with a girl?”

“Yeah,” said Shasta, “and she broke my heart, too. She didn’t go to Ridgemont High, so you don’t know her. But she took my mind off the game. And I don’t want that to ever happen again. I’m really counting on getting that Yale scholarship.” He paused. “College is really important to me. It may not be to everybody else, but it is to me.”

Linda Barrett leaned over and kissed him.

“I really like you,” said Shasta. “I always have. I just want to remember you after I graduate. Always.”

“But Steve, it’s only March.”

Shasta reached out and crooked his hand around her neck. He pushed her head gently downward. And she went willingly. Like so many before her.

Test Answers

T
he next day was Tuesday, and that meant Stacy had first-period biology. She slept past the point her clock radio clicked on. Her mother had to wake her up at 7:20.

“You’re late, Stacy!”

“Okay
okay,”
Stacy yelled at the door.

“Don’t yell at me, young lady!”

These days Stacy was always late. Running slow, running behind.

She was late for biology. Late for P.E., where it was Rape Protection Week and Ms. Zix was taking attendance all of a sudden. She was even late for the Child Development test-answers session in the 200 Building girls’ bathroom.

Test-answers meetings had to move quickly, especially if you had the class before lunch. This meant you had exactly eight minutes to receive and memorize the answers.

Stacy arrived three minutes late.

“. . . And she asks a lot of cooking terms,” a girl was saying. “She asks about garnish and simmering . . . let’s see, and sifting. And blending and basting.”

“What’s the definition of basting?”

“To moisten food, while cooking, with melted butter or pan drippings.”

“What else?” asked Stacy. “What else?”

But the talk had already shifted to Tina Dellacorte.

“There’s this picture of her in Graphic Arts,” said one girl. “Just her in her bikini underwear. And she’s holding a hose with the water turned on. And she’s got this
raunchy
look on her face, with the water running out of her mouth . . .”

“Who took the picture?”

“Greg Gardner.”

“Greg Gardner!”

“Come on. Come on. Anything else for Child Development?”

“That’s it, Stacy.” Back to the story. “Now a girl like her, she knows when she goes
out
with a guy what she’s gonna do. She’s gonna get down. She just plans for it. That’s part of the evening, and she always schedules it in. She’s such a slut.”

“Why,” said Stacy, “because she gets
laid?”

“I just think she’s a slut for doing that.” Pause. “Maybe
you
don’t . . .”

“Why don’t you just shut up,” said Stacy. She walked out of the bathroom to Child Development.

She was sick of the school and the people in the school. She was sick of Mike Damone and his Mr. Stud routine. She was sick of work at Swenson’s and getting up in the mornings and . . .

And if that wasn’t enough, Stacy Hamilton began to let another thought take hold. It began as an itch in the back of her head. Sick in the mornings. Backaches. Why shouldn’t her birth control pills, those wonderful Norinyl 1 Plus 50s, be like everything else—leaving her on the two-percent side of everything ninety-eight-percent effective.

She found Linda Barrett after class.

“Hey,” she said, “I want to talk to you later.”

“What’s it about?”

“I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

She called Linda later that evening.

“Linda,” she said, “I think I want to go down to the free clinic and take one of those tests. I don’t feel right.”

“Did you remember to take your pills?”

“Sure.” Pause. “I think so. Sure.”

“It’s easy to forget.’

“I’m sure I took them.”

“Okay,” said Linda, “let’s go down there day after tomorrow, because tomorrow is swimming practice. Don’t you
want
to go down there and check it out?”

“I don’t think so, Linda.”

Fridays were the free clinic’s busiest day. There was an hour-and-a-half wait just to take a blood and urine test; to check pregnancy they had the girls sit through more lectures. More nurses parading more facts for you. More of those cutaway diagrams, like in Mrs. Melon’s class. More of those meaningless statistics where every one girl in some low number got pregnant or contracted venereal disease. Or how 2,000 girls got pregnant
while you came in.

Just give me the test, she thought.

They sat Stacy down with another nurse, who asked her more questions.

“How often do you have your periods? Regularly?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever used any form of birth control?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the name?”

“Norinyl 1 Plus 50s.”

“Have you ever been pregnant?”

“No.”

Finally, they gave her the pregnancy test.

“You can call us on Monday morning for the results,” said the nurse. “Have a nice weekend!”

A Late-Night Phone Conversation

“T
here’s one thing you didn’t tell me about guys,” said Stacy Hamilton. “You didn’t tell me that they can be so nice, so great . . . but then you sleep with them, and they start acting like they’re about
five years old.”

“You’re right,” said Linda. “I didn’t tell you about that.”

The Abortion

“G
ood morning, Miss Hamilton,” said the nurse’s voice over the telephone. “We received your test results from the lab, and they show that you are pregnant.”

“I
am
pregnant?”

“You
are
pregnant.”

“Oh.” Her head fell downward.

“Have you made plans for the baby?”

“Yes.”

“What plans have you made?”

“I mean no. I haven’t made plans for the baby.”

“Did you want to get pregnant?”

“No. It was a mistake.”

“Have you told your boyfriend?”

“No”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be very happy and excited about it.” It sounded to Stacy like the nurse said that a lot.

She walked over to Linda’s house in a daze.

“I can’t believe it,” Linda said. “Hadn’t you been taking the pill?”

“I guess I forgot.”

They sat in glum silence.

“I knew I was pregnant. They didn’t even have to tell me. I felt all different. The thing is—when they first told me, I was happy that I could get pregnant, and that Mike could do it. I really was. I didn’t think about it as an abortion until the nurse kept asking me about what
plans
I’d made.”

“What plans
have
you made?”

“Well, I made an appointment. It’s going to happen in a week.”

“Wow. Debbie has never taken a pill and has never gotten pregnant. She’s been with guys since she was twelve. She never had to have an abortion.”

“Great. Debbie sleeps with half of the Western world and nothing happens. I sleep with my second guy, A VIRGIN, and I get pregnant.”

“Do you crave things? Like pickles and things? Is that a stupid question?”

Stacy sighed. “Okay, you get cravings—and you really want to sleep in. You get cravings not for weird things, but things you like. I get cravings for fruit and potato chips and Tootsie Roll Pops.”