“I just want to say,” said Dina, “that we are not Spirit Bunnies. Last year, all your articles in the school newspaper referred to us as Spirit Bunnies, and everybody started calling us that, and we just want to say that we’ve gotten the name changed this year to Commissioners of Spirit. We always hated the name Spirit Bunnies. It bugged the heck out of Cindy and myself.”
“It’s just such a put-down,” said Cindy Carr.
“They don’t call the Chess Club Checker Champs or something goofy like that,” continued Dina Phillips. “We just want to be known as Varsity Commissioners of Spirit. We’re going to go to everything this year, you guys. We’re going to go to soccer, wrestling, and basketball. Not just football.”
“We’re going to do a lot of new and different things this year for spirit,” said Cindy Carr. “Like, for instance, we’re bringing back the Pep Club.” She started to say something else, but Dina broke in.
“It takes a lot of guts to get up and do something that a lot of people will make fun of,” she said. “Cheerleaders aren’t some elite special little group in the clouds. We’re not out to be better than the crowd. We just want the crowd to participate, and we want spirit from every little person in this entire school. We need your support.”
There was no reaction, and the moment hung heavy in the air.
“Well, thank you, girls,” said Mrs. Sheehan.
The former Spirit Bunnies were just about to leave journalism class when someone else appeared at the door. It was Vice-Principal Ray Connors, with a slip in his hand. He was grave and to the point. He didn’t even ask Mrs. Sheehan if he could interrupt her class.
“May I speak with Louis Crowley, please?”
Crowley rose to his feet, unsure of what was about to transpire. It was an eerie sight. “Madman” Connors wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulder and walked him out of the class. By the next period, word had rocketed around campus. There had been an accident out on El Dorado Bridge. Two cars had been morning-racing across the structure, and one edged a third car out of the way. The third car had slammed up against the railing, caught its wheel on a turret, and had flown over the side and into the water below. The car had contained the father and sister of Louis Crowley.
Highway To Hell
The mood was somber around journalism class. Death—the idea of mortality—had struck close to home. Suddenly everyone was a close friend of Louis Crowley, had been talking to him just that morning. The word was he would be out of school for two to three weeks.
But two days later, there was Louis, back in journalism. Back at school. Blue down vest and all. It was amazing, and it was mystifying. A couple of students said something to Louis about how sorry they were, and Louis just kind of put his head down and nodded thanks. It was the quietest journalism class had been all year.
Then Jeff Spicoli showed up.
Spicoli bolted into journalism class holding the front page of the local newspaper. An amateur photographer had been loading his film, shooting pictures of the bridge, when he heard the crash, snapped his shutter a few more times, and caught a color photo of the Crowley car sailing off the El Dorado Bridge and into the ocean. The local paper had paid the photographer $500 for the shots and published the series on the front page in fire-blazing color.
“Look at these bitchin’ photos of the crash,” boomed Jeff Spicoli. “You can see the people inside and everything.”
Everyone froze. No one spoke. Louis Crowley hung his head and began to sob. It would be another month before anyone spoke to Jeff Spicoli again.
To Spicoli, that rejection was just typical of high school kids. They were so serious, so hung up on their social status. The whole routine reminded Jeff Spicoli of a long climbing rope. All these soshes had been shimmying up that rope since grade school, and by the time they got to high school they were holding on for dear life. They wanted to be popular, at all costs, and maybe they would get voted Most Likely to Never Have to Shit in the annual. They were just dying to get to the top of that rope. Most of Spicoli’s friends were still the junior high schoolers from Paul Revere. They knew how to have a good time.
Spicoli didn’t consider himself a troublemaker. All he wanted in life, he said, was to wake up in the mornings to a decent buzz and six- to eight-foot breakers with good shape. He didn’t care that most of the students around him were part of a fast-food world, talking about their hours and their assistant managers whenever they got half a chance. Spicoli was a surfer, proud to be the last of a dying breed around Ridgemont.
When Spicoli wasn’t on the waves or playing pinball down at the mall or even going to school, he was usually in his room. Spicoli’s room was his castle; he could spend hours in there. Located at the top of the stairs in his family’s split-level Ridgemont condo, Spicoli’s room was another world from the rest of the wicker-decorated house. The walls were covered with posters, almost all of them naked centerspreads from Playboy and Penthouse. There were a few token surf action photos, and several headshop posters with calligraphy sayings like “Be with Me,” “Come with Me, Now and Forever,” and “Love and Ecstasy,” but the room was mostly just a collage of fully nude women who confronted any visitor with a thousand melonous breasts. It was obvious that Jeff Spicoli’s parents did not enter this room.
Spicoli’s stepmother was a counselor at Clark Junior College, and his father owned a successful television repair business. Spicoli’s real mother, a teacher, left her family several days after seeing the film An Unmarried Woman. Jeff didn’t hold it against her, not as much as he held a grudge against his father for remarrying a woman with seven kids of her own. Jeff Spicoli carried on his self-imposed exile from inside his room. He didn’t even know all the names of his stepbrothers and stepsisters. He didn’t want to.
The only member of his family allowed into Jeff’s room, in fact, was his only real brother, seven-year-old Curtis. Jeff liked Curtis. Any kid who could spend entire afternoons doing gymnastic flips into plastic garbage bags was okay by him.
Curtis burst into Spicoli’s room early one morning, eight weeks into the school year. “Jeff, are you going to be taking a shower?” Curtis demanded of his brother’s sleeping form. He threw the door open. There was a stale biological smell about Spicoli’s inner sanctum.
“Ugh,” said Spicoli. He’d been out late partying at the mall the night before.
“Jeffareyougoingtobetakingashower?”
Spicoli was half in, half out of the covers, his behind facing the door. He groaned and scratched his back ferociously.
“Why?”
“ ’Cause I’m moving into the bathroom. I’m sleeping in the tub from now on.”
“No you aren’t.”
“Dad said.”
“What if I turn the water on?”
“BETTER NOT!” Curtis shrieked, and left without shutting the door. “BETTER NOT, YOU BUTTHOLE!”
Spicoli got out of bed and kicked the door shut. He had been having a dream. A totally bitchin’ dream.
He had been standing in a deep dark void. Then he detected a sliver of light in the distance. A cold hand pushed him toward the light. He was being led somewhere important. That much he knew.
As Jeff Spicoli drew closer, the curtains suddenly opened and a floodlit vision was revealed to him. It was a wildly cheering studio audience—for him!—and there, applauding from his “Tonight Show” desk, was Johnny Carson.