“Mr. GRAY just called me in to show me the new Calumet, which features my ass hanging out. You fuckin’ lied to me, Damone. You told me to play that joke on Chubb, and you told me it would be airbrushed. But it wasn’t, you asshole. . . SO COME ON.”
“I don’t want to fight you,” said Damone. “No way.”
“COME ON.” Ratner was as pissed as Damone had ever seen him. “I’ve got to spend the weekend erasing all the new annuals, thanks to you . . .”
“Is that all,” said Damone. “That’ll be a blast. We’ll do it this weekend.”
Ratner slowly let his hands down. “You’ll help?”
“No sweat,” said Damone. “It’ll be great.”
It was kind of funny, really. A good story for the grandchildren, The Rat figured. At the end of the Erasing Ass Weekend, as it would come to be called, Principal Gray had been so proud of the job The Rat and Damone did, that he rewarded them both with the right to go to Grad Nite. Everything, it seemed, was going their way.
The Exer-Gro Plus
The Rat had developed the habit of coming home and checking the mail before anyone else. It was just a little routine he’d gotten into six weeks, to the day, after he’d ordered the Exer-Gro Plus back in March. The Rat knew all the bills by heart, all the junk mail. By now he was sure they’d mailed it to someone else.
On this day toward the end of the year, The Rat walked back to his house after school. He said hello to the kids next door who were always building something in the garage, and casually flipped open the mailbox.
It was a small square package. He knew the instant he saw it what it was. This was it, just in time for Grad Nite, too. The Exer-Gro Plus.
The Rat set down his books, went to the bathroom, did everything he possibly could do to delay the pleasure of opening his package. He wasn’t sure what it would be. Perhaps some kind of stretching device, an exercise machine. Whatever, he just hoped it didn’t take too long.
Now, to use a penknife or just rip it open? Of course. Rip that thing open. The Rat tore into it, separated the newspaper wrapping that had been used to pack it, and there it sat. The Exer-Gro Plus.
It was a rubber dickhead.
No special formula, no exercise machine, no nothing. Just a rubber dickhead. Phony as hell.
There was a letter with it:
CONGRATULATIONS ON RECEIVING YOUR NEW EXER-GRO PLUS, THE EVER NEWEST IN OUR LINE OF SEXUAL-ENHANCEMENT ITEMS. NOW YOU CAN THRILL AND IMPRESS WOMEN EVERYWHERE BY WEARING THE EXER-GRO PLUS EVERYWHERE YOU GO, IN ANYTHING YOU DO. LIFELIKE, MADE OF QUALITY NONTOXIC MATERIALS, THE EXER-GRO PLUS IS GUARANTEED TO LENGTHEN THE DESIRABILITY OF ANY MAN BY AT LEAST THREE INCHES. GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEW LIFE WITH THE EXER-GRO PLUS.
It was a three-inch-high nine-dollar rubber dickhead. The Rat couldn’t believe it. He went back and reread the ad. There was nothing that promised it would be anything else. But it was still a rip-off! And it wasn’t like he could write the Action Line about this one. Shit. Besides, it didn’t even work. The Rat wore it into Safeway once, and it fell down his pantleg.
Grad Nite
At the time he should have been leaving the house for Grad Nite, Mike Damone was still shirtless. He was in the bathroom checking himself out in the mirror.
By the time he finally arrived at Ridgemont, the five yellow buses parked along Luna Street were already filled with students.
“Aaaaaaaayyyyyy, Damone!” someone yelled. The Rat. “Glad you could make it. Where’s your date?”
“Your mama couldn’t make it.”
The Rat laughed and continued talking to a girl sitting in the seat next to him.
“You didn’t save me a seat!”
“The bus filled up.” The Rat shrugged. “There should be a seat somewhere. Ask Mrs. Franks.”
Damone straightened his tie, smoothed his three-piece suit, and approached Mrs. Franks, PTA liaison for Grad Nite. She was walking in tight little circles on the sidewalk next to bus 1.
“Mrs. Franks,” Damone asked politely. “Where’s my seat?”
“There’s an extra seat on bus 5,” she said briskly. She was lost in thought.
Leslie Franks was once president of the PTA. Her kids had long since grown up and moved (as far away as possible, no doubt), but Mrs. Franks still came back once a year to take the helm at Grad Nite. It was like Jerry Lewis and Muscular Dystrophy, Leslie Franks and Grad Nite. She took it seriously, and something was seriously wrong right now.
“Go try bus 5.” She shooed Damone away.
But there was no seat on bus 5. So Mike checked all the other buses. They, too, were filled.
“Mrs. Franks, I hate to bother you again. But I can’t find a seat.”
“Did you check the other buses, young man?”
“Yes.”
“Joseph?” She called out. “Where is Joseph Burke? Please help this boy find a seat! Count students if you have to.”
Joseph Burke, ever the subservient A.S.B. advisor when it came to Mrs. Frank’s imperious presence on Grad Nite, did so. He counted all the students until they had once again come back to bus 5. Burke counted, and sure enough . . .
“Go ahead,” said Burke. “There’s an extra seat in there somewhere.”
And while The Rat sat in bus 3—The Cool Bus—talking to some girl, Mike was walking down the aisle of bus 5. They looked like ex-convicts on bus 5. He was looking for a seat, anything resembling a seat.
The last available seat on bus 5 was next to a familiar face—Charles Jefferson. He was back for Grad Nite.
“Is this seat taken?”
Jefferson ignored Damone.
“Hey, Charles, is this seat taken?”
After a time, Charles Jefferson looked down at his own muscular legs, which were bowed out to take up the entire spare seat. He moved one of his legs slightly, an indication that Damone could have the corner. He took it.
Meanwhile, Vice-Principal Ray Connors was visiting each bus before it took off. He reached bus 5 and stood in the stairwell.
“Can I have your attention,” he said. “Can I have your attention way in the back?” He waited for quiet. “All right, people. We’re going to be leaving in another minute. I just want to remind you that we are from Ridgemont High School. We’ve been going to Disneyland for ten years, and the next class would like to go, too. We’ve never had any real trouble with Ridgemont students . . . and we’ve always been real proud of that. So let’s continue with the program, and we hope you all have a real good time. We’ll see you here next week.”
And there was thunderous applause, but none of the buses began their journey just yet.
Outside, still pacing the sidewalk, Mrs. Leslie Franks was muttering to herself. The crisis was now obvious—the driver of bus 5 had not arrived.
And then . . . a figure appeared on the horizon.
“Look. Look.” Mrs. Franks sighed heavily. “Oh, thank Jesus.”
The driver held a sleeping bag across her chest and walked toward the Ridgemont buses. From the distance she looked like a sumo wrestler.
She was a professional bus driver, and her name was Miss Navarro. She greeted Mrs. Franks, PTA liaison to Grad Nite, like this: “Ever year I say no more Grad Nite. And ever yet I end up doin’ it again. All I ask is that you don’t wake me ’fore five. ’Cause I sleep right there on the aisle. Alrighty?” And with that, Miss Navarro instinctively hopped behind the wheel of Big Number Five and gunned her up.
It was just past eight. Time to get this caravan on the road. The five yellow buses lumbered onto the freeway for the two-and-a-half-hour trip down the coast to Anaheim, California, home of Disneyland. It was another Ridgemont ritual, like salmon swimming upstream. Grad Nite. Bad sex, troubled relationships, grades, hassles at work—they all went out the window for Grad Nite. Time out for adolescence!