By homecoming game time, the only seats left in the Ridgemont bleachers were at the far left end. Linda Barrett and Stacy Hamilton climbed up and took the last two seats, next to Mr. Vargas, Vice-Principal Connors, and Mr. Hand.
“Grade my test yet, Mr. Hand?” Stacy asked.
“Yes,” said Hand, without taking his eyes from the field. He was dressed, she thought, rather disappointingly in a bright red Pendleton jacket.
The Homecoming Game.
Jumping and leaping in front of the stands were the Ridgemont cheerleaders. Up front watching the spectacle were the sophomores and ninth graders from Paul Revere. Their mouths hung open as they watched the high school cheerleaders.
Behind them, gathered in the same general area like good cheerleader husbands, were the boyfriends of the “Spirit Bunnies.” Most had already graduated—it was a classic syndrome. They had risen to the top of their heap, they had shimmied to the top of the rope, and they weren’t about to let go now.
The Ridgemont cheerleaders were big on spelling. Everything had to get the full spell-out treatment. Players’ names. Positions. You name it, they spelled it. And while all this was going on, you had Richie Raider, a male cheerleader in a warrior headdress, jumping around. Every year the cheerleaders voted in a new Richie Raider. This year it was a senior friend of A.S.B. President Kenneth Quan’s. His name was David Santos. Santos was said to have six toes.
Across the field, Lincoln was warming up for the game. Lincoln liked to intimidate, and one of their finer points of psychological warfare was their school band. The Lincoln High band had their own special stands, uniforms, and pulsating repertoire of sporty music ripped right from the heart of “Wide Wide World of Sports.” On any given moment, when their opponent’s ragtag combo might be playing the traditional “Charge,” Lincoln, for example, would be blasting out a bombastic version of “Get Down Tonight.”
The Ridgemont High Raiders had won their last two games. All the games, in fact, since Charles Jefferson discovered his car welded to the flagpole. He had heard that Steven Miko had done it. Miko was a Lincoln student, a slender kid with wild eyes and no hesitation for pulling a brutal prank. A couple of years back, Miko had personally hoisted and painted a Ridgemont Raider on one side of the gym to look like Frank Zappa. Later he was fired from Jack-in-the-Box—a lowly fate—and told friends he was going to rip the place off. And he did just that—he ripped off the big plastic Jack. The sawed-off clown figure sat in his backyard for over a year.
This year, Miko had taken the Ridgemont steel letters. It was a proven fact. People had been to Miko’s house and had actually seen the letters. There, in steel, on his bedroom wall, the letters spelled CLITS.
So everyone assumed it had to be Miko who had wrecked Charles Jefferson’s car.
The Ridgemont Death Squad—Mike Brock and a few others from the football team—had taken care of the immediate retaliation. They had drenched the Miko house in large farm-stale eggs, and they had phoned in two bomb threats on Mr. Miko’s Chinese Cuisine. But the best move came the night the death squad visited Miko’s yellow Datsun pickup truck, parked outside the house. Poor Steven Miko should have known better than to leave his car door open. They had filled the cab with fertilizer . . . and live mice.
The Twentieth Annual Ridgemont-Lincoln Homecoming Game began. Within a few minutes of the game’s first quarter, Charles Jefferson had already started to pick apart the Lincoln defense. At peak form, Jefferson could remind an entire team that they were still high school amateurs and he was headed pro. You could hear Coach Ramirez on the sidelines, performing for his movie camera.
“THERE YOU GO. THERE YOU GO. H.Q.A. HELLFIRE! QUICKNESS! ABILITY!”
That was his new one: H.Q.A. Before the cameras were ordered it was always just “Take a Lap.” Now he thought he was Vince Lombardi.
Lincoln, a tough football team with a tough band, refused to give in easily. At the sound of the half-time gun, Ridgemont held the edge, 13-12.
All cheerleaders not nominated for the homecoming court scurried into the bleachers to sit with their boyfriends and watch the homecoming coronation. But first A.S.B. President Kenneth Quan announced an R.O.T.C. demonstration. The two teams of R.O.T.C. trainees charged onto the field and demonstrated their strictly choreographed maneuvers.
“I don’t believe they’re dragging this out so long,” said Stacy.
“It’s like this every year,” said Linda.
At last, the time arrived. They were all there seated on a stage at the center of the field, waiting while A.S.B. Advisor Joseph Burke handed the envelope to last year’s Homecoming Queen, Beth Schumacher.
“And the winners are . . . Cindy Carr and Kenneth Quan.”
His mouth dropped open. She screamed. “I can’t believe this is really happening.” They took their places on the back of a long black limousine, and the car began its slow parade around the running track of the stadium.
As soon as the procession moved in front of Lincoln’s bleachers, the attack began. Eggs and paper cups filled with soda and ice came flying from every direction. Onto the field. Toward the car. Toward the Ridgemont bleachers. When a rock hit the windshield of the limo, the driver instinctively sped off. Kenneth Quan and Cindy Carr—the newly crowned king and queen of Ridgemont’s Twentieth Annual Homecoming—slid off the back of the limo and into the dirt where they were pelted with more eggs.
Lieutenant Lawrence “Larry” Flowers was on the field in an instant. He had gotten information that the instigator of Lincoln’s shenanigans was Steven Miko—the troublemaker who was also, as it turned out, school photographer for the Lincoln annual that year. As soon as the mayhem broke out, Lt. Flowers spotted a photographer, wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed him, and hauled him to juvenile detention.
“We’ve got Miko,” he reported into his walkie-talkie. The word spread—they had Miko.
They did not, however, have Miko. They had just beaten and apprehended Arthur Chubb, the photographer for the Ridgemont Reader.
It was a hard-fought second half. Still 13-12 midway in the fourth, Lincoln drove to Ridgemont’s ten yard line. But instead of going for the obvious field goal, Lincoln elected to try for the first down. They were stopped inches short, and Richie Raider started whooping it up on the sidelines. He began hugging the other cheerleaders.
In the stands, the cheerleaders’ boyfriends watched his every move. Did that guy just grab Dina’s tit?
The Ridgemont Raiders, in retaliation, began grinding out the yardage. Their chief opponent was now the clock. Finally, with less than two minutes on the clock, the Raiders brought the ball to the Lincoln five yard line.
Steve Shasta, soccer star and Ridgemont’s ace place kicker, began preparing himself to kick the winning field goal. He began walking out onto the field. But Coach Ramirez called him back. He waved for Charles Jefferson to come in from the sidelines.
“Jefferson,” he said, the new movie camera whirring, “I’m gonna give you a big shot. We win or lose on the next play.”
Jefferson nodded. “I’ll take it in.”
The next play was a pitch out to Jefferson, and Lincoln anticipated it. Jefferson grabbed the ball and ran into two defensive players waiting for him. From the stands it appeared he was a goner, stopped just feet short of the touchdown.
But however Charles Jefferson summoned to do what he did, it probably had something to do with his battered Mustang. Jefferson plowed right through his tacklers, up and over them, into the end zone. The two Lincoln tacklers lay motionless on the field.