Fast Times at Ridgemont High (31 page)

I
t was an uphill battle all the way, but Evelyn and Frank Hamilton had finally given in on this one. For Brad. The kids wanted to have a prom party at the house, and the Hamiltons agreed to stay in their upstairs bedroom.

Brad had thought ahead to spike the pool with Wisk, and by the time kids started arriving at one o’clock, the whole pool was one big steaming bubble bath. It turned out to be one of the hottest after-prom parties. Everyone was there. Even Lisa was there, with her new boyfriend, David Leach.

There were some—the shy ones—who stayed in the kitchen.
I’m watching the pizza. I don’t want to go swimming.
But most went for it on prom night. They stripped out of their carefully chosen gowns and Regis Sevilles and Regencies. Even Shasta took off his exalted Mist-Blue Newport II. Everyone put on bathing suits and dove in.

Graduation time brought in nameless faces from all over. Jerome Barrett, Linda’s brain brother, arrived from USC, chain-smoking joints. Then there was Gloria, Linda’s best girlfriend from grade school. She’d come in from Chicago for a few days. And there were the usual types whom you only saw at parties.

Mike Damone and Mark Ratner were also at Brad’s afterprom party. They hadn’t been speaking since last April, but tonight . . . hell.

“Hey, Rat,” said Mike. “I’m really sorry about what happened. I know I shouldn’t have done that to a buddy. I’m really sorry.”

“I understand,” said The Rat. “You can’t help it. You’re just lewd, crude, rude, and obnoxious.”

They laughed, shook hands.

Eventually the twenty kids crammed into the Hamilton Jacuzzi. Then Brad, who had finally convinced his date to shed down to her bikini, reached into a bush and withdrew two bottles of rum from Mesa De Oro Liquor.

“ALLRIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!”

The first bottle was passed around the Jacuzzi, and before long the glow of teenage drunkenness—however faked or real—came over the cramped little Jacuzzi party.

Damone felt something. Someone had grabbed his dick! He scanned the faces in the Jacuzzi. It wasn’t Stacy! Not only wouldn’t she do that to Damone, not again, but she was in the kitchen watching the pizza.

Who was it?

“I’m going under,” said Damone. He feigned a drowning man. “I’m dying . . .
blub.”

He slipped underwater, a daring move in the overcrowded Jacuzzi, but he was looking for clues underneath the bubbly water. Who had grabbed his dick? No clues.

He popped back up again. “I’m alive!”

Someone grabbed his dick again.

Later everyone retired to the living room for coffee and making out to a soundless TV. Before long, Brad had passed out by the stairs, rum victim number one.

Damone had gone out by the pool to look at the night sky.

“Hi, Mike.”

He turned around. It was Brad’s date, Jody. She was still wet, hugging herself to keep from shivering.

“How are you?”

“Pretty good,” said Jody. “Brad passed out by the stairs.”

“I know.”

She stood next to him, breathing softly and saying nothing in the way girls do, Damone knew, when they wanted you to kiss them. It was Jody! It had to be Jody he felt underwater!

He thought. She was great looking. Should he go for it? He sure wanted to.

“I’m going to go inside,” said Damone. “And check on the pizza.”

Later, the few that were still awake went to nearby Mt. Palmer to watch the sun rise. It never rose on that foggy morning, and nobody seemed to mind.

“You wait till our prom,” Mike Damone told The Rat. “We’ll have an even
better
time.”

“Yeah. That was pretty nice of Brad to throw a party. He’s probably going to have to clean it up himself.”

“When he wakes up.”

“Hey,” said The Rat. “Let’s go to 7-Eleven and get some coffee.”

“Great idea,” said Damone. “Let’s take the Prickmobile.”

Damone and The Rat rolled down the hill in Damone’s scratch-marked car. It was that magical hour when the mist was still out and the sky was turning deep blue.

Lieutenant Flowers

I
t was a typical late May morning. The sun was shining. The sound of second-semester typists wafted across the lunch court. Jeff Spicoli was parked out in the Adult School parking lot smoking from his bong. He held a long hit in his mouth, then expelled it slowly, luxuriously, through the window of his blue Malibu.

The billow of smoke caught the eye of Lt. Larry Flowers, who was walking the halls nearby.
Pot.
He decided to investigate this matter, even if it was the Adult School lot. Even if Ridgemont High offered it up pretty much as a free zone. He was going to do something about it.

Lieutenant Flowers saw Spicoli lounging in the driver’s seat of his car. He cut straight across the dirt lot.

Someone yelled Spicoli’s name. There was something in the tone and urgency that made Jeff instinctively reach down to chuck the bong under his seat. Lieutenant Flowers saw the movement.

“FREEZE!” he shouted.

Flowers advanced rapidly on the car and arrived at the driver’s window just as Spicoli had completed the action of flicking the glowing bong well under his seat.

Flowers reacted in a single motion. He pulled his pistol right out of the shoulder holster and jammed it through the crack at the top of the window. With the other hand he grabbed a handful of Spicoli’s hair and pulled him up against the window.

“Whatthefuc . . .”

Flowers was cramming cold steel at his head.

“Just get out of the car,” said Flowers with a smile.
“Move.”

Flowers took him to the office and wrote him a referral. When Spicoli told his parents and friends the story, they decided to sue. And sue they did. A quarter-million dollars worth, against Ridgemont and against the Education Center.

Flowers came back from a motorcycle ride one morning two days later and found a gray school board envelope waiting on his doorstep.

“My life was in danger,” was the way he explained it to the board’s investigators. “That kid could have had a shotgun under that seat. I did what came naturally, what they taught me in Chicago.”

“How many students have you seen with a shotgun in your years of education?” they had asked him.

“You only have to see one,” said Lt. Flowers.

He was fired by the school board, banished from the California Educational System. He now works a late-shift security job at Knott’s Berry Farm.

Aloha, Mr. Hand

I
t was nearly the end of the line. The school awards were about to be announced, mimeographed caps-and-gowns information had gone out to the seniors, along with Grad Nite tickets. The annuals were almost ready. Jeff Spicoli was counting the hours.

Since Spicoli was a sophomore, an underclassman, there weren’t many graduation functions he could attend. Tonight was one of the few, and he wasn’t about to miss it. It was the Ditch Day party, the evening blow-out of the June day that underclassmen secretly selected toward the end of the year to ditch en masse. Spicoli hadn’t been at school all day, and now he was just about ready to leave the house for the party out in Laguna. He hadn’t eaten all day. He wanted the full effect of the special hallucinogenic mushrooms he’d procured just for the poor man’s Grad Nite—Ditch Night.

Spicoli had taken just a little bit of one mushroom, just to check the potency. He could feel it coming on now as he sat in his room, surrounded by his harem of naked women and surf posters. It was just a slight buzz, like a few hits off the bong. Spicoli knew they were good mushrooms. But if he didn’t leave soon, he might be too high to drive before he reached the party. One had to
craft
his buzz, Spicoli was fond of saying.

Downstairs, the doorbell rang. There was an unusual commotion in the living room.

“Who is it, Mom?”

“You’ve got company, Jeffrey! He’s coming up the stairs right now. I can’t stop him!”

There was a brief knock at the door.

“Come in.”

The door opened and Jeff Spicoli stood in stoned shock. There before him was The Man.

“Mr. . . . Mr. Hand.”

“That’s right, Jeff. Mind if I come in? Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Spicoli,” Hand called back down the stairs. He took off his suit jacket and laid it on the chair. “Were you going somewhere tonight, Jeff?”

“Ditch Night! I’ve gotta go to Ditch Night!”

“I’m afraid we’ve got some things to discuss, Jeff.”

There were some things you just didn’t see very often, Spicoli was thinking. You didn’t see black surfers, for example. And you didn’t see Baja Riders for under twenty dollars a pair. And you SURE didn’t see Mr. Fucking Hand sitting in your room.

“Did I do something, Mr. Hand?”

Hand opened his briefcase and began taking out lecture notes. He laid them out for himself on Spicoli’s desk. “Are you going to be sitting there?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“Fine. You sit right there on your bed. I’ll use the chair here.” Mr. Hand stopped to stare down last month’s Penthouse Pet. “Tonight is a special night, Jeff. As I explained to your parents just a moment ago, and to you many times since the very beginning of the year, I don’t like to spend my time waiting for students in detention. I’d rather be preparing the lesson.

“According to my calculations, Mr. Spicoli, you wasted a total of eight hours of my time this year. And rest assured that is a kind estimate.

“But now, Spicoli, comes a rare moment for me. Now I have the unique pleasure of squaring our accounts. Tonight, you and I are going to talk in great detail about the U.S. Foreign Policy in the 60’s . . . now if you can turn to Chapter Forty-Seven of
Land of Truth and Liberty
. . .”

“Would you like an iced tea, Mr. Hand?” Mrs. Spicoli called through the door.

Jeff was still orienting himself to what was happening. Was he too high? Was this real? He was not going to Ditch Night. That was it. He was going to stay in his room tonight with Mr. Hand . . . and talk about Foreign Policy.

“I’d love some iced tea,” said Mr. Hand. “Whenever you get the time . . .”

Now Mr. Hand had said they’d be there all night, but at 7:45 he wound up with the Vietnam War and started packing his briefcase.