Fast Times at Ridgemont High

by Cameron Crowe

“I see,” said Shasta.

  “Ben, where is Linda?” Her mother spoke in a real Taster’s Choice testimonial voice. “Come out, honey, Steve’s here.”

  Linda opened the door and came bounding out. “Hi! Wanna go?”

  “Sure,” said Steve.

  “Have a good time, kids!” Her mother patted them both on the head, like good kids.

  They walked the forty feet to the car in silence.

  “Is it too late to play golf?” asked Linda.

  “We gotta get some food first,” said Steve. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  Shasta slammed the door of his car shut and turned the ignition key. The radio came on at a deafening volume. He turned it off. They pulled out onto the highway and lurched into overdrive.

  “I get behind the wheel of a Corvair,” said Shasta, “and I’m a madman.” He laughed. “You know what I hate? I hate people who give their cars names.”

  Linda nodded. Her pickup was called Dino, after her first dog.

  They went to a Swedish Smorgasbord, where Shasta knew a night cook named Walsh. The place was closing. Walsh kept it open.

  Walsh, a freckled kid in a white smock, pointed to the limp remains of the day’s Swedish Smorgasbord. “Go for it.” Walsh even sat down with them at the table in his white smock and watched Shasta and Linda eat.

  “How’s it going?” Walsh’s head bobbed constantly as he spoke.

  “Pretty good. This is Linda Barrett.”

  “Hi”

  “Hi.”

  “So,” Shasta said, “how’s it going with you?”

  Walsh’s head kept bobbing. “Old people,” he said, “Lots of old people. Man, they flock here. And they eat their brains out. They don’t even talk to each other, they just eat. It’s amazing.”

  “Really?” asked Shasta. “I heard there’s a movie where people eat themselves to death.”

  “Yeah,” said Walsh. “They probably filmed it at a Smorgasbord. It’s most crowded on weekends, you know, and that’s real funny ’cause on the weekends we get a lot of stuff from Denny’s. They get their new food on Saturday mornings. They clean this stuff out on Friday afternoon. It’s all leftovers.”

  Linda picked at the rest of her meal. It was Friday night.

  After dinner at the Swedish Smorgasbord, Steve Shasta played his car radio and drove Linda Barrett directly to the Point.

  “I really made a decision, you know,” said Shasta. He brushed some hair out of his eyes and checked himself in the mirror. “I made a decision not to pressure myself.” He looked at her, giving Linda the full eye. “Some girls I could really fall for . . .”

  “Why don’t you?” asked Linda innocently.

  Shasta took a deep breath. “Well, because of soccer mostly. It takes the ultimate in concentration. It’s not a collisional sport, you know. A lot of people don’t realize the mental stress. Plus, I’ve always got guys out there on the field trying to mark me. Like last year. Just before the injury, I had . . .”

  He hung his head.

  “Been with a girl?”

  “Yeah,” said Shasta, “and she broke my heart, too. She didn’t go to Ridgemont High, so you don’t know her. But she took my mind off the game. And I don’t want that to ever happen again. I’m really counting on getting that Yale scholarship.” He paused. “College is really important to me. It may not be to everybody else, but it is to me.”

  Linda Barrett leaned over and kissed him.

  “I really like you,” said Shasta. “I always have. I just want to remember you after I graduate. Always.”

  “But Steve, it’s only March.”

  Shasta reached out and crooked his hand around her neck. He pushed her head gently downward. And she went willingly. Like so many before her.

  Test Answers

  The next day was Tuesday, and that meant Stacy had first-period biology. She slept past the point her clock radio clicked on. Her mother had to wake her up at 7:20.

  “You’re late, Stacy!”

  “Okay okay,” Stacy yelled at the door.

  “Don’t yell at me, young lady!”

  These days Stacy was always late. Running slow, running behind.

  She was late for biology. Late for P.E., where it was Rape Protection Week and Ms. Zix was taking attendance all of a sudden. She was even late for the Child Development test-answers session in the 200 Building girls’ bathroom.

  Test-answers meetings had to move quickly, especially if you had the class before lunch. This meant you had exactly eight minutes to receive and memorize the answers.

  Stacy arrived three minutes late.

  “. . . And she asks a lot of cooking terms,” a girl was saying. “She asks about garnish and simmering . . . let’s see, and sifting. And blending and basting.”

  “What’s the definition of basting?”

  “To moisten food, while cooking, with melted butter or pan drippings.”

  “What else?” asked Stacy. “What else?”

  But the talk had already shifted to Tina Dellacorte.

  “There’s this picture of her in Graphic Arts,” said one girl. “Just her in her bikini underwear. And she’s holding a hose with the water turned on. And she’s got this raunchy look on her face, with the water running out of her mouth . . .”

  “Who took the picture?”

  “Greg Gardner.”

  “Greg Gardner!”

  “Come on. Come on. Anything else for Child Development?”

  “That’s it, Stacy.” Back to the story. “Now a girl like her, she knows when she goes out with a guy what she’s gonna do. She’s gonna get down. She just plans for it. That’s part of the evening, and she always schedules it in. She’s such a slut.”

  “Why,” said Stacy, “because she gets laid?”

  “I just think she’s a slut for doing that.” Pause. “Maybe you don’t . . .”

  “Why don’t you just shut up,” said Stacy. She walked out of the bathroom to Child Development.

  She was sick of the school and the people in the school. She was sick of Mike Damone and his Mr. Stud routine. She was sick of work at Swenson’s and getting up in the mornings and . . .

  And if that wasn’t enough, Stacy Hamilton began to let another thought take hold. It began as an itch in the back of her head. Sick in the mornings. Backaches. Why shouldn’t her birth control pills, those wonderful Norinyl 1 Plus 50s, be like everything else—leaving her on the two-percent side of everything ninety-eight-percent effective.

  She found Linda Barrett after class.

  “Hey,” she said, “I want to talk to you later.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

  She called Linda later that evening.

  “Linda,” she said, “I think I want to go down to the free clinic and take one of those tests. I don’t feel right.”

  “Did you remember to take your pills?”

  “Sure.” Pause. “I think so. Sure.”

  “It’s easy to forget.’

  “I’m sure I took them.”

  “Okay,” said Linda, “let’s go down there day after tomorrow, because tomorrow is swimming practice. Don’t you want to go down there and check it out?”

  “I don’t think so, Linda.”

  Fridays were the free clinic’s busiest day. There was an hour-and-a-half wait just to take a blood and urine test; to check pregnancy they had the girls sit through more lectures. More nurses parading more facts for you. More of those cutaway diagrams, like in Mrs. Melon’s class. More of those meaningless statistics where every one girl in some low number got pregnant or contracted venereal disease. Or how 2,000 girls got pregnant while you came in.

  Just give me the test, she thought.

  They sat Stacy down with another nurse, who asked her more questions.

  “How often do you have your periods? Regularly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever used any form of birth control?”

  “Yes
.”

  “Do you remember the name?”

  “Norinyl 1 Plus 50s.”

  “Have you ever been pregnant?”

  “No.”

  Finally, they gave her the pregnancy test.

  “You can call us on Monday morning for the results,” said the nurse. “Have a nice weekend!”

  A Late-Night Phone Conversation

  “There’s one thing you didn’t tell me about guys,” said Stacy Hamilton. “You didn’t tell me that they can be so nice, so great . . . but then you sleep with them, and they start acting like they’re about five years old.”

  “You’re right,” said Linda. “I didn’t tell you about that.”

  The Abortion

  “Good morning, Miss Hamilton,” said the nurse’s voice over the telephone. “We received your test results from the lab, and they show that you are pregnant.”

  “I am pregnant?”

  “You are pregnant.”

  “Oh.” Her head fell downward.

  “Have you made plans for the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “What plans have you made?”

  “I mean no. I haven’t made plans for the baby.”

  “Did you want to get pregnant?”

  “No. It was a mistake.”

  “Have you told your boyfriend?”

  “No”

  “Well, I’m sure he’ll be very happy and excited about it.” It sounded to Stacy like the nurse said that a lot.

  She walked over to Linda’s house in a daze.

  “I can’t believe it,” Linda said. “Hadn’t you been taking the pill?”

  “I guess I forgot.”

  They sat in glum silence.

  “I knew I was pregnant. They didn’t even have to tell me. I felt all different. The thing is—when they first told me, I was happy that I could get pregnant, and that Mike could do it. I really was. I didn’t think about it as an abortion until the nurse kept asking me about what plans I’d made.”

  “What plans have you made?”

  “Well, I made an appointment. It’s going to happen in a week.”

  “Wow. Debbie has never taken a pill and has never gotten pregnant. She’s been with guys since she was twelve. She never had to have an abortion.”

  “Great. Debbie sleeps with half of the Western world and nothing happens. I sleep with my second guy, A VIRGIN, and I get pregnant.”

  “Do you crave things? Like pickles and things? Is that a stupid question?”

  Stacy sighed. “Okay, you get cravings—and you really want to sleep in. You get cravings not for weird things, but things you like. I get cravings for fruit and potato chips and Tootsie Roll Pops.”

  “Yuk.”

  “I know.”

  “What are you going to tell Mike?”

  “I’m not going to tell him. Are you crazy? And don’t you tell anybody either. I don’t want anybody finding out.”

  But the problem with high school, as Stacy Hamilton would soon find out, was that one still saw the same people every day. It wasn’t hard for Stacy to miss Mike Damone whistling down the hallways, acting like Joe Stud. He should know! He should know he was a prick! He should know how it felt!

  Within two days she knew she had to tell Mike Damone. She thought about it and came up with the best location to have The Big Conversation. It was away from everybody, and yet still at school. Stacy Hamilton walked out onto the field during Damone’s P.E. period with Assistant Coach Les Sexton. Damone was timing runners on the football field.

  “Hi, Mike,” said Stacy.

  “Stace. What’s going on?”

  “Mike, there’s something that’s been on my mind, and I have to tell you about it.”

  “What? Now?” He clicked off a time on a runner and then turned to her. “Why don’t you call me?”

  Stacy looked at him, and the feeling that came over her was, as she later told Linda, zero compassion. She took Mike Damone’s hand and placed it on her stomach.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  Damone made a spitting sound with his mouth. “Give me a break. You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying. Why would I lie about it?”

  Damone put his hand up to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. “How do you know that it’s mine?” he asked. “We only did it once.”

  “I know it’s yours.”

  Damone switched tones entirely. Now he sounded whiny, like a child trying to talk his way out of a spanking. “You made me do it,” he said. “You locked the door to your changing room.” He paused, then said the words that hurt the most: “You wanted it more than me!”

  She didn’t flinch. She stood there and stared at Damone, waiting for him to take the words back.

  “There’s only one thing we can do,” said Damone. He folded his hands across his yellow P.E. shirt. “We gotta ace it.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Stacy.

  “We’ve got to get an abortion. My brother, Art, got his girlfriend one. It’s no big thing.”

  She looked down at the ground. “It’s already planned.”

  “Do you want me to pay for it?” asked Damone.

  “No,” said Stacy. Suddenly she felt like a character from one of Mrs. Melon’s sex-ed lectures. “Just give me a ride downtown day after tomorrow.”

  “No problem,” said Damone. “No problem.”

  It was strange how society set these things up, Stacy thought. She was upset. She was scared. And she was hurt. Hurt just to think that someone who cared about her so much could be so cruel. To think that anybody could be that cruel. But what could she say about it? They both went to the same school. She needed a ride.

  Stacy waited out the week. She had P.E. first thing in the morning and had to get out there and run even though she felt sick most of the time. The day came for Damone to show and take her down to the free clinic in his Toyota.

  Her abortion was set for three in the afternoon. Stacy followed her plan that night, contracting a phony twenty-four-hour flu that would keep her home the next day. She waited until the time Damone was supposed to show up at the mailbox—2:00 P.M. He didn’t show.

  She waited twenty minutes and walked back to her house. She dialed Damone’s house.

  “Hello?” Damone answered.

  “I can’t believe you’re still home!”

  “Oh, hi Stacy . . . oh shit, I forgot about today.”

  “Forgot?”

  “Yeah, my mom wanted me to stay with the house. Some people are coming over to look at it. Can you reschedule it for another day?”

  “I guess I could reschedule it. I’ll call. I just don’t want to be alone when I go. Will you please take me?”

  “Just call me back and tell me when. I’ll be right here.”

  She was a little relieved, happy to put it off for any length of time. She was told by the free clinic that it would be unwise to delay more than another week. They reset the date for the following Tuesday. Stacy called Damone back. He was almost nice, and for a few days it was almost easy to forget she was still pregnant.

  Guys. She’d already had just about her fill. Why, in retrospect, Linda had pretty much been right down the line. High school boys. One part of them wanted to be in high school, and the other part wanted to be back at Paul Revere Junior High. The more the year wore on, the better The Vet, his slight dorkiness aside, looked.

  One night Stacy decided to call him up. It had been seven months. He couldn’t still be mad that she’d lied about her age.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, is Ron there?”

  “This is Ron. Who’s this?”

  “This . . . is Stacy! Remember me!”

  “Oh, hi. What can I do for you?”

  “Well . . . I just thought I’d call and say hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Is something wrong?” asked Stacy.

  “No. But if you’d like any further attention you can give me a ring at the office. Okie-dokie? Thanks.” He hung up.


  Stacy sat staring at the phone for many minutes afterward. She decided to forget about that, and remember him as he was. Under the fifty-watt lightbulb up at the Point.

  Time always went quicker when you dreaded something, and Tuesday rolled right around again. It brought—I can’t believe it, Mom—another twenty-four-hour flu. She waited around the house for the appointed time, then went to wait by the mailbox.

  Five minutes away, Damone sat in his living room and waited for the phone to ring. He had finished a large tumbler of Tia Maria and cream. Lou Reed was blasting in the background.

  Damone was paralyzed. All he wanted to do was go away, forget about this problem. Why wouldn’t it just go away? Why did it fall on him? She’d had just as much fun as he; it was her responsibility, too. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen when you had The Attitude.

  Stacy waited. Finally, she went home and called Damone, forty-five minutes before the operation.

  “I’m sorry,” said Damone. “I gotta help my dad in the garage.”

  “You could have called!”

  “I forgot.”

  “PRICK!” She hung up on him.

  Stacy immediately called Linda. No answer. There was only one way to get downtown, now—waiting for the bus would take too long. Only one person would do it on such short notice.

  “Hello?”

  “Mark?”

  “Stacy!”

  “Hi. How are you?”

  “I’m all right. How are you, Stacy?”

  “Just great. Mark, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but could you do me a big favor?”

  “What’s that? Are you okay?”

  “Well . . . I’m really stuck for a ride downtown right now. You know, the flea market. I have some girl’s shopping to do . . .”

  “Sure. I’ll give you a ride.”

  The Rat pulled up in his sister’s car and tooted the horn.

  “Thanks for picking me up.”

  “Any time.” She looked at him. If he only knew.

  “God, Mark, you’re the nicest guy I know.”

  “Just once,” said The Rat, “I want to be dark and mysterious.”

  “Okay. You’re dark and mysterious.”

  “Thanks,” said The Rat. “Are you going to be needing a ride home?”