Fast Times at Ridgemont High (13 page)

B
rad Hamilton reported for work as usual on Monday night at Carl’s Jr. He knew instantly that something was wrong.

“Hamilton,” said Dennis Taylor, “I need to speak with you about something.”

“Yo.” Brad had been setting up his fryer.

Dennis Taylor’s voice was neither friendly nor accusing. “Brad,” he said, “there was some money taken during your shift last night. A hundred-and-twenty-five dollars. We don’t know where it’s gone, but we do know this. We know who took it . . . and there was a witness. Do you know anything about this?”

“I don’t know anything about it, Dennis.”

There was a long pause.

“Jesus,” said Brad, “don’t look at
me.”

But they were looking at him. There was a small cluster of the other employees, his golf-cap buddies, watching silently.

“Let me ask you this,” said Dennis Taylor.

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“Hamilton,” said Dennis Taylor, “Carl’s has the voluntary program of a polygraph test. Would you be willing to submit to one of those tests and have this same conversation with me at that office?”

“You mean a
lie detector
test?”

“Yes.”

“You
bet,”
said Hamilton. “We
all
would take a test.”

“Okay,” said Taylor. “We’ll make an appointment for you tomorrow at the Harris Detective Agency, the agency that Carl’s uses in these cases; it’s located down at Third and Central. I’ll give you the card, and I’ll see you there tomorrow at, say,
four.”

Hamilton looked at his friends. To his horror, they, too, were neither friendly nor accusing. They were more like a crowd of people across the street from a car wreck. They said nothing. Not David Lemon. Not Gary Myers. Not Richard Masuta. Not even Lisa. Brad felt it first as nausea. He was so angry, so confused, that only later would he try to remember who looked the guiltiest of the bunch. Who could have been a
witness
to his robbing Carl’s?
Carl’s
—his own turf?

“Aren’t you guys gonna say anything?”

They said nothing. None of them.

“You think I took that money, Dennis? You think I took that money?” Brad yanked off his Carl’s hat and apron and the country-style string tie. “Then you can SUCK SHIT because I QUIT!”

Dennis Taylor swung open the door built into the metal counter at Carl’s. “You can leave right now, Hamilton.”

Brad walked out of the top-of-Ridgemont-Drive Carl’s Jr., straight to The Cruising Vessel. He roared out of the parking lot.

Two days later, Brad heard that Dennis Taylor had discovered the money hidden in a paper sack in a dumpster behind the kitchen. When nobody called Brad to offer his old job back, he knew what had happened. Dennis Taylor had set him up. The I.C. had probably written a letter to the franchise, demanding Brad be fired. When the franchise called Dennis Taylor, well, that was where Taylor’s loyalty would end. He had promised to fire Brad, but was too spineless to do it outright. So he had set up a frame.

It was all beside the point, as far as Brad was concerned. He wouldn’t take their job back if they begged him. Pleaded with him. He didn’t care about Carl’s. He didn’t care about getting even with Dennis Taylor. He didn’t care about his
friends
who kept their mouths shut when crunch came. He didn’t even want to eat lunch with them anymore. Screw them. He’d find another job.

A Night at the Mall

I
t was a boring school night. Jeff Spicoli decided to head up to Town Center Mall and check out the action. He passed through the living room unnoticed by his father, who was engrossed in television. He even made it past the kitchen, where his stepmother didn’t nab him for any chores. Spicoli made it out to the street with no interference.

He reached Rock City, the mall’s pinball arcade, just after 8:30. He recognized only one face, an eighth grader, a little black kid he knew named L.C. L.C. was playing Space Invaders.

“What’s going on?” asked Jeff.

L.C. stole a look and returned to the game. “What’s going on.”

After Space Invaders, they went out to the alley behind Rock City and smoked a couple bongfuls of Colombian.

“Well,” said L.C., “I’ve got a car tonight. Let’s go cruise. See if there’s any ladies happening.”

“You can’t drive.”

“Then you drive.”

“Whose car is it?”

“My brother’s.” L.C.’s real name was Richard. They called him L.C., short for Little Charles, because his brother was Charles Jefferson.

“Where is your brother?”

“At a running clinic in Yuma, Arizona. He ain’t comin’ back until tomorrow morning.”

The desire flickered in Spicoli’s eyes. “Let’s go check the car out.”

They went out to the parking lot to inspect the car—a nice Mustang with a tape deck.

“Look at the tires,” said L.C.
“Smooooooooooth.”

“I think the word is
bald.
”

“Well,” said L.C., “you want to cruise or not?”

Spicoli’s California driver’s license had been revoked two months after his fifteenth birthday. Spicoli had decided one night to shake loose a cop who’d thrown a light on him. The chase had ended in a cul-de-sac, where Spicoli had tried to get away by driving up onto the pavement around what were by then three police cars. He had ruined a row of lawns and two station wagons.

“Let’s cruise,” said Spicoli.

They pulled out of the TCM lot, to Mesa De Oro Liquor, where L.C. hopped out and returned a few minutes later with an eight-pack of Budweiser. L.C. handed Spicoli one.

“Guy in there told me about a party out in Laguna. Two kegs. I got the directions and everything.”

“We’re out of here,” said Spicoli.

They took Interstate 5 up the coast.

“See the new
Playboy?”
asked L.C.

“Naw. Any good?”

“Suzanne Somer’s tits.”

“All right.”

“I like sex,” said L.C. He said it like he had just figured it all out the day before.

They were headed for the Laguna kegger, down a lengthy stretch of road, listening to the tape deck, when a pair of headlights appeared half a mile behind them.

“Hold your beer down. I think it’s a cop.”

Spicoli slowed down; the car behind slowed down. They continued like this for another two miles. Then the car behind them pulled closer, within “busting distance.”

“This is definitely a cop,” said Spicoli.

Then the high beams of the car behind them switched on.

“What the fuck is this guy doing?”

The car behind them advanced to the point where it was almost touching the back of Charles Jefferson’s scholarship Mustang.

“What the FUCK is this guy doing?”

The car behind bumped the back of the car.

“He’s gonna scratch my brother’s car!”

The phantom car pulled back a moment, then passed Spicoli and L.C. on the left. It was a carload of laughing jocks in a Granada.

“A bunch of jocks!”

“They’re just fuckin’ with us!”

The drivers of the two cars eyed each other, both with heads tilted to the right. The classic competition pose. With an imperceptible nod of the head, Spicoli accepted the challenge. Both cars roared down Plymouth Road, toward the party.

“DIE, GRANADA JOCKS!”

“L.C.,” Spicoli yelled in the heat of the race, “you wanna roll up your window?”

“Why?”

“It messes your hair up,” said Spicoli, “to have one window down.”

“I like the air. Why don’t you roll yours down. Then you’ll get a crosswind . . .”

Spicoli shrugged and rolled down his window.

The Mustang tipped eighty and passed the Granada, even passed the exit for the party.

“EAT MY DUST!” Spicoli was grinning. He turned to L.C. “You know the thing I love about Mustangs? The steering wheel.” He fingered the bubbles in the wheel. “You can negotiate a hairpin turn with
ease,
my man.”

On the word
ease,
Spicoli had intended to show his further driving prowess behind the wheel of Charles Jefferson’s car. He curled a finger into one of the Mustang wheel bubbles and whipped it clockwise. The car screeched off Plymouth Road, onto a side street. The idea had been turn around and go back to the party.

But at the moment of the hairpin turn, L.C. had been attempting to switch the tape in the tape deck. He was thrown against Spicoli, who crooked his finger farther into the bubble than he expected. The car swung in a complete circle. Their path also included a fire hydrant, which ripped the side of the car open like a can of tuna.

“Are you okay?”

“. . . . .”

The Granada jocks flew past them, laughing.

“Are you okay?”

“My brother,” said L.C., “is going to KILL you.”

“It’s your fault, too.”

“MY BROTHER IS GOING TO KILL YOU.”

“Just be glad you’re all right, you little wimp.”

“MY BROTHER IS GONNA SHIT.”

“Make up your mind,” said Spicoli. “Is he gonna
shit,
or is he gonna kill us?”

“First he’s gonna shit,
then
he’s gonna kill us.”

It was another one of Spicoli’s dark moments, the kind that were getting all too familiar to him in his high school days. Sitting there in the battered car of the noted mauler Charles Jefferson, he waited for the screams of the police sirens.

But there was no screaming siren. The bashed Mustang started again with a death rattle. Then Spicoli and L.C. puttered back into the Ridgemont hills, where Spicoli put his mind to work.

He came up with a beauty. All he needed was a little help from L.C., and some of the soldering tools in his dad’s television repair kit. Once they had the car back up at Ridgemont High School, it took exactly twenty minutes to perform the entire deed.

The next morning, students were met with yet another curious sight. The steel letters were still gone from the green brick vanguard, but this was something else. Charles Jefferson’s Mustang had been wrecked and welded to the front flagpole. Spray-painted on the side: LINCOLN SURF NAZIS.

Homecoming

T
he next morning Charles Jefferson was insane. Beyond insane. By afternoon he was still wandering around lunch court speaking in half-sentences. “Someone will die . . . I had to fill out forms . . . I will find out who . . . someone will
die.”

It was Homecoming Week. Ridgemont tradition held that the school spent this week getting psyched for the game against their rival, Lincoln High. In past years the students had viewed Homecoming Week as just another high school custom established by adults. This year was different. No one had counted on the kind of incentive that came when Charles Jefferson saw his smashed Mustang. By late afternoon he had joined the Ridgemont football squad. For Ridgemont, this was more activity during football season than they’d seen in twenty years.

It took exactly two days for Kenneth Quan, the A.S.B. president, who had campaigned on the slogan Bring Back Crazy Ridgemont Spirit, to figure out a way to take advantage of it. Quan proposed a closed student council meeting in which he would discuss the details of his special plan for Homecoming Week—a little thing called TOLO.

Leave it to Quan. TOLO began as a tease campaign in the school newspaper. “TOLO is coming.” Then signs went up around school. “Watch out for TOLO.” “TOLO is almost here.”

Rumors flew as to what TOLO actually was. TOLO was a big local band that would play at lunch. Or maybe TOLO was a secret bomb to unleash on the Lincoln Surf Nazis. Bootleg TOLO signs went up: “TOLO has been kidnapped.” “TOLO changed his mind.”

Then, finally, a mandatory assembly was called. There were some brief preliminary announcements about the mural being painted on the auditorium walls (From Chaplin to Travolta), then Quan took the podium for the big announcement.

Kenneth Quan was frenzied. Kenneth Quan was always frenzied. Campaigning for A.S.B. president at the end of last year, he had given about a million speeches about the importance of spirit and enthusiasm. Quan, the former boyfriend of Cindy Carr, gave you the impression that air raids were not out of the question when it came to school spirit.