“Linda,” said Stacy, “you and Doug were meant for each other. He saved you from a fate worse than death.”
“What’s that?”
Stacy smiled. “High school boys!”
The two girls walked through the Annual Signing Party, and soon spotted Mike Damone collapsed against the back of the gym. He was letting people approach him. Once the story of the erased bare ass came out, it was Ratner’s and Damone’s turn at celebritydom. Damone was signing annuals at a furious pace.
“I remember erasing this one,” Damone was telling some timid underclassman. “Don’t you hate it when people start something in your annual and then cross it out?”
“Yes,” said the girl.
“Have a bitchin’ summer,” said Damone.
He had crossed out “I don’t really know you, but . . .” and just left “Take care, Mike Damone.”
A friend from Damone’s P.E. class slammed down on the hardwood gym floor next to him. He flipped his annual into Damone’s lap, nearly cracking him in the nuts.
“Go for it,” said the kid.
Damone signed.
“Sheesh,” said the kid. “My only fuckin’ picture is on fuckin’ page 98. I have a partial on 106, but that’s bullshit. I look like I weigh about a thousand pounds.”
Damone handed the book back. “To the future of America—it’s in your hands. Don’t splash, Mike Damone.”
Mark Ratner showed up and sat down next to Damone. The two held court all Annual Signing Party.
Mr. Vargas passed by, carefully documenting the event with the school’s camera equipment.
Linda Barrett was next to come by. She fell down next to Mike in a black low-cut dress. She’d gone home to change. She wrote “I LUST YOU” on the knee of Damone’s jeans.
“I’m back with Doug,” said Linda. “We’re going to get married as soon as I get out of college.”
“When is that?”
“In four years, stupid.”
“Yeah,” said Damone. “Sure. Doug’ll be in the old-folks home, and one day you’ll come cruising up and say, ‘Let’s get married.’ But he’ll be deaf by then so he won’t even hear you.”
“. . . I’ll never forget your bod,” said Linda. She looked up to see Brad Hamilton standing nearby. “Hi, Bradley!”
“Hi. You see Laurie Beckman and Steve Shasta? Look at that! They’re about to go for it right there on the floor.”
Several teachers on both sides had already discovered the slow-dancing couple. Plotting their chaperonal strategy, they decided on a double-flashlight attack that pinned two separate beams on the couple. But it did not break Laurie and Steve up. Mr. Burke had to go out there and do it himself.
Jeff Spicoli wandered up, annual in hand. He stopped to look at the band on stage. He stayed there, staring off into space, for several minutes. His hand was frozen in his hair, as if he’d forgotten to let go.
“Hey, Spicoli,” said Damone.
Spicoli turned to see The Rat and Damone, Linda Barrett, Brad and Stacy. His head started bobbing. He was on some distant plane, no doubt ripping through the cosmos of his surf-ravaged mind.
“Want us to sign your annual?”
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.” Spicoli laughed menacingly. “It’s so radical.” He offered his annual to Damone.
Spicoli’s annual was filled with comments like, “Dear Jeff—I’m not real good friends with you, but you will never have any problems in life. There will always be someone to tell you where to get off.” Or, “We got high in P.E., didn’t we? Fuck class!”
It made Damone feel sorry for the guy. He’d take his annual home to his mom and dad. His dad would ask what he spent the fifteen bucks on, and then he’d flip through the annual by the living-room light.
“Jefffff? Why do all these boys keep thanking you for the drugs?”
Damone signed Spicoli’s book. “Good thing you’re going to Hawaii,” said Damone. “ ’Cause you’re gonna get kicked out of the house when your parents read your annual.”
Spicoli smiled and nodded. “Good luck to all you rats coming back to this crackerjack joint,” he said. “I laugh in your face.” He had written the same line in any annual he could get his hands on.
Damone and The Rat watched Spicoli drift off to other parts of the Annual Signing Party.
“You just know he’s gonna grow up to be a shoe salesman,” said The Rat.
The All-Night 7-Eleven Man
Brad could see it. He could hear it in the way people said goodbye and good luck to him. He could read the expression in their eyes. They looked at him and thought, Here’s a guy I’ll have to visit—when I come back.
Everyone was leaving, all his friends. Even the ones who said they’d never go near college. Well, they were all talking about applications and acceptances these days. Even Linda Barrett, and that had been one of the big surprises for Brad. The way he heard it, Linda had come home from school after the Annual Signing Party when her mother broke the news. She had been dealing with Paula Crawford, Linda’s RHS counselor, since last semester. No wonder they’d all talked her into taking the advanced classes.
Linda had been accepted into Students International, the program that allows a select few to study in any college throughout Europe. Linda had thought about it for three seconds, Stacy told Brad, and decided it was exactly what she wanted to do. She started crying right there in her living room.
Doug Stallworth had come over from work at Barker Brothers right in the middle of her crying fit. The Barrett family told Doug the news, expecting him to get all excited for Linda, too. And Doug, unbelievably enough, did get excited. Even though he knew he’d been left behind. They probably would become friends now, Brad thought. Ridgemont guys for life.
“Life,” Brad had become fond of saying, “I just don’t know . . .”
It was a joke and it wasn’t a joke. These were the worst of times for Brad. He had now been reduced to the lowest position in teen life. He was right where, if he recalled correctly, he once said he wouldn’t let . . . well, a dog work.
He was the all-night man at the Ridgemont 7-Eleven.
It was a slow night and Brad was wide awake. He figured that was the best way to be, especially if you had the kind of job where they showed you where the shotgun was. He had too much time to think on this job. That was the problem. But, it was bucks. It was bucks.
Brad had taken to napping in the afternoons after school, and then powering down the coffee once he hit the 7-Eleven. He once said he hated the stuff, would never drink it. Now he couldn’t get enough. He reached for the pot without even thinking about it. Drank a cup without even realizing he had.
By 4:15, when Brad got home, he was ready to sleep. When friends asked him how he functioned on three hours’ sleep, he told them all the same joke: “I sleep my ass off.”
On this particular night he had been leafing through the magazines, listening to the Muzak.
It all happened very quickly. Two men pulled up in a black Camaro. One man in a nylon mask came running into the store and immediately spray-painted the automatic scanning camera above the door. Brad was too stunned to be scared. It had to be a joke.
It was no joke. In another instant, the nylon-masked man stood in front of Brad with a .45—just like in the movie Dirty Harry. “Give it to me,” he said. “Let’s GO.”
“They empty and close the big safe at midnight here. I’m just the all-ni . . .”
“BULLSHIT!” the gunman bellowed. “I know this store. I know where the safe is. Why don’t you just move over there, real slow, behind the donut case, and GET IT.” He waved the gun at the donut case.