Fast Times at Ridgemont High (8 page)

They met at Marine World, the famous marine amusement park outside of Orange County. Ratner had gone in, applied for a job, and they had given him Dining Area Duty, an auspicious-sounding responsibility that consisted of scraping the birdshit off the plastic outdoor tables. He didn’t think it was that bad, though. It was fun for Ratner at Marine World, and there was a real spirit among the young workers. All the employees got together for functions like beer-keg parties and softball games, and everything would be just fine until someone asked The Rat what
his
department was.

“Hi. I’m Leslie from the Killer Whale Pavilion. Who are you?”

“I’m Mark from Dining Area Duty.”

“Oh.” And the same look would inevitably come over the other Marine World employee’s face, a look that said, so
you’re the guy they got.
“Well, Mark, uh, I’ll see you over there sometime. Bye!”

The Rat always had trouble recovering after that. Making new friends, it seemed, was not his particular forté. Girls had been out of the question most of his life.

It seemed to The Rat a matter of fate when Marine World personnel dropped Mike Damone into Dining Area Duty as his new partner. On the first day, The Rat didn’t speak to Damone and Damone didn’t speak to him. On the second day, The Rat broke the ice.

“Hot day today.”

Damone looked up from the table he was scrubbing and smiled. “Sure is.”

Then his eyes glazed over. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out. Damone turned pale and fell over backward, landing on a lawn area. He appeared to go into shock, beating his head on the grass and making tongueless noises with his mouth. Several customers gathered around.

“Someone do something!”

“He’s having a fit!”

“Can anyone help that boy?”

Ten more Marine World visitors arrived to gawk at the young worker flailing on the ground. The Rat rushed over to Damone’s side and bend down to ask how he could help. And then, just when Damone had a huge audience, he popped back up again. He was the picture of complacency.

“I’m just not myself today,” he said. It was Damone’s special stunt.

Damone was fired after only three weeks at Marine World, but not before he had made fast friends with Mark Ratner. To The Rat, Damone was a one-of-a-kind character. But it was beyond the Twitching Man acts that Damone used on occasion to rip up whole restaurants and shopping malls. To The Rat, Damone was someone to study. He was a guy with a flair for living life
his
way, and that particularly fascinated Mark Ratner.

What was his secret?

“I’ll tell you what it is,” Damone said. “It’s The Attitude. The Attitude dictates that you don’t care if she comes, stays, lays, or
prays.
Whatever happens, your toes’ll still be tappin’. When you are the coolest and the crudest,
then
you have The Attitude.”

To Mike Damone of Philadelphia, everything was a matter of attitude. Fitting into a California school was no problem for him. Once you had The Attitude, Damone said, success was never again a matter of luck. It was simply a question of whether or not you behaved as if it were yours already.

The Attitude. The Rat and Damone had been sitting in fourth-period biology a couple of days into the new school year. Damone leaned over. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Starved,” said The Rat.

“Wouldn’t you love a pizza right now?”

“Don’t torture me.”

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the front door of the classroom. Mr. Vargas had been giving a lecture. He paused to answer the door.

“Who ordered the pizza?” asked an impatient delivery man for Mr. Pizza.

Damone waved his hand. “We did back here.”

The class watched in amazement as the delivery man took his steaming pizza to the back of the class and set in on Damone’s desk. Damone paid for it, even pressed fifty cents into the delivery man’s hand. “This is for you,” he said.

Mr. Vargas looked on, bewildered, while Damone and The Rat began eating pizza.

“Am I the only one who thinks this is strange?” Mr. Vargas asked.

The Attitude.

Damone had put on a classic display of Attitude the day after hearing of The Rat’s dream girl at the A.S.B. counter. Ratner chose to watch from behind the bushes on Luna Street while Damone cruised by for an official check-out.

He had meant only to look, but Damone went right up and said hello to the girl. The Rat’s girl. She and Damone had a three-minute conversation that The Rat couldn’t hear. Then Damone had tapped his hand on the A.S.B. counter once and turned to leave. He walked back over to The Rat.

“She’s cute,” said Damone, “but she doesn’t look like Cheryl Ladd.”

“Fuck you, Damone.”

“Her name is Stacy Hamilton,” he said. “She’s a sophomore, and she’s in Beginning Journalism. What more do you need to know?”

“She just told you that?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll tell you something,” said The Rat. “I really think something could
happen
between this girl and me.”

“You ought to meet her first, you wuss.”

(“Wussy” was a particularly expressive word that had sprung up in Paul Revere Junior High and taken a foothold in the Ridgemont lexicon. It was the handy combination of
wimp
and
pussy.)

The next day The Rat had it all planned. He waited until the period he knew she would be working at the A.S.B. office. He walked slowly over to the 200 Building, down the hall to the corner office. It was a green counter, with a glass window in front.

And there she was! Stacy Hamilton. Both she and Mike Brock, the football jock, were finishing up with two students. There was only one other kid in front of The Rat. It was a fifty-fifty chance. A crap shoot!

Mike Brock finished first, and the other student went to his window.
Fantastic,
The Rat thought. Then Stacy Hamilton finished and looked at him.

“Next.”

But just as The Rat stepped up, Stacy Hamilton’s A.S.B. phone rang. She picked up the receiver and held a single finger up to Ratner. It was a call from the front office, and the conversation stretched on. The third attendance bell rang, but The Rat stayed.

Mike Brock finished with the other student. “Over here,” he said.

And what could The Rat say? No, you thick asshole. No, you stupid jock. I’m already being helped, you
penis breath.
No. The Rat didn’t say any of those things. He chose the
wussy
way out.

The Rat shrugged and went over to Mike Brock. He asked Brock something ludicrous, some lame thing off the top of his head.

“I was wondering where the Spirit Club meets,” he mumbled.

“I don’t know,” said Brock. “You oughta look on the big bulletin board.”

“Thanks,” said The Rat.

He turned to go.

“Oh,
sir?”
She had gotten off the phone and called out to him. “I think the Spirit Club meets on Tuesday after school in room 400.”

“Thanks,” said The Rat. He turned around again. “See
you
later.”

She called me sir!
He was overjoyed. The way The Rat figured it, she would never have done that if she wasn’t interested in him.

Mike Damone shook his head sadly as he heard the whole story, incident by incident, over Cheetos on lunch court. “Is that it?”

“It’s better than yesterday.”

“Yeah, Rat, but you just opened the door a little bit. And then you let it slam back shut again. You gotta
talk
to the girl.”

“Tomorrow!”

“You can’t do it tomorrow,” said Damone. “Tomorrow makes you look too eager.”

“I know,” said The Rat. “I know. I’ve got to have The
Attitude.”

But for a guy like The Rat, the idea of waiting another two days was criminal. He felt there was nothing he could possibly do to fill up the dead time. What was good enough on TV? What was interesting enough down at Town Center Mall? What record or book could ever be interesting enough to take his mind off
her?

In Spanish class the next day, someone offered The Rat a vocabulary lab listening headset. He was a zombie.

“You know what?” said The Rat. “I don’t give a
shit
what happens to Carlos y Maria.”

I Don’t Know

M
r. Hand began dropping test papers on desks as if they were pieces of manure. “C . . . D . . . F . . . F . . . D . . .” He looked up. “What are you people? On Dope?”

He continued, sadly, as he passed out more papers. “What is so difficult about this material? All week we’ve dealt with the Grenville Program. We have not even reached the American Revolution yet, and you people can’t tell me what the
Stamp Act
is. How hard is . . .”

Then Mr. Hand looked up suddenly, interrupting even himself. “Where is Jeff Spicoli?”

Silence.

“I saw him on campus earlier today. Where is he now?”

Silence.

“Anyone?”

There was always one, of course. Always one kid willing to sell his soul for a shot at Mr. Hand’s good graces. Or better yet, a shot out the classroom door.

“I saw him,” said William Desmond, the wrestler-columnist. “I saw him out by the fruit machines.”

“Me too,” said Mike Brock, the football jock.

“How long ago?”

“Ten minutes. Just before class, sir.”

Hand snapped his fingers, McGarrett-style. “Okay. Bring him in.”

Desmond and Brock hustled out the door, and Mr. Hand continued his tirade over the Stamp Act. Five minutes later, a red-eyed Spicoli walked into the class with the Desmond-Brock posse.

“Hey,”
said Spicoli. “This is a frame! There’s no
birthday party
for me here!”

“Thank you Mr. Desmond, Mr. Brock . . .” said Hand. “You can sit down now.”

Mr. Hand left Spicoli in front of the class, for show. “What’s the reason for your tardiness?”

“I couldn’t make it in time.” Spicoli’s bloodshot eyes told the story.

“You mean you couldn’t,” said Hand, “or you
wouldn’t?”
It was a vintage “Five-O” line.

“I don’t know.”

“Why are you continually late for this class, Mr. Spicoli? Why do you shamelessly waste my time like this?”

“I don’t know,” said Spicoli.

Hand appeared mesmerized by the words. Then he turned and walked to the board. He wrote in long large letters as he slammed the helpless chalk into the green board: I DON’T KNOW.

“I like that,” said Hand. “I don’t know. That’s nice. ‘Mr. Hand, will I pass this class?’ Gee, Jeff, I DON’T KNOW. ‘Mr. Hand, when is the test?’ Gee, I . . . DON’T . . . KNOW. I like that, Mr. Spicoli. I’ll have to use that one myself.”

Mr. Hand left special instructions that the words
I Don’t Know
remain in front of the class all week. People began stopping Spicoli in the hallway.

“Hey,” they’d say, “aren’t you the I Don’t Know guy?”

A Bad Day at the Fryer

T
here was a mirror in the boys’ locker room that was perhaps the finest Brad Hamilton had ever used. Well lit, the perfect height, it was just
superb.
The kind of mirror that showed a guy for what he
was.

On first-period P.E. days Brad spent his mirror time luxuriously. Pass the mirror test, he figured, and you were good for the entire day.

He caught himself—hi!—from several angles, and then ran through all the basic facial movements. Brad whistling. Brad happy. Brad sad. Brad macho. Then—Jesus!—he noticed a small blackhead at the base of his left nostril. Brad remembered someone had once told him that any time you popped a zit below your eyes and above your mouth it would leave a big crater in your face after the age of twenty-five. Brad weighed the dilemma in his mind. The same guy had once told him Colgate toothpaste was an aphrodisiac, so what did he know. Brad decided to eliminate the one tiny flaw.

Now. Brad stepped back and looked at the entire portrait. People were always saying he looked like a young Ronald Reagan, and Brad didn’t mind that a bit. Why, he could even see some moustache action coming in over his lip! And he was more trim now than at his best football weight. This was it, Brad thought. The Lean and Hungry Look.