Fast Times at Ridgemont High - A True Story

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!

For twenty bucks, a junior or senior and date had the complete run of Disneyland from 10 P.M. to 5 A.M.

All the Magic Kingdom asked in return was that the Grad Nite students follow two simple rules: First, boys were to wear a suit and tie; girls, a formal gown. Ties were to be worn at all times. (They probably figured the last thing any kid in a three-piece suit wanted to do was raise hell and ruin the suit.) Plus, as Disneyland officials stated in the rule sheet that came with a Grad Nite ticket, any display of school colors or clothing would “suggest rivalries . . . and would be entirely unacceptable.”

The second rule, for which Disneyland heaped on the special security every Grad Nite, was no alcoholic beverages or drugs.

There were horror stories, told by friends of friends, about that second rule. Rex Huffman’s older brother, Mark, who was busted at Grad Nite several years back, had a tale to tell. Mark had smuggled five joints of marijuana into Disneyland in his sock and felt good enough about it to head straight for It’s a Small, Small World and light one up.

Halfway through the ride, just as the boat compartment was entering the French sector, an attendant literally swung out of the Disneyland shadows on some kind of security rope and into the compartment. The attendant handcuffed Mark Huffman to the boat and later led him into a Disneyland holding tank for questioning.

And here was the best part—the holding tank, according to Mark, was beneath Disneyland. It looked just like the end of “Get Smart.”

Once in the holding tank Mark was given the sternest of lectures. What it boiled down to, according to Huffman, was, “You-Can-Fuck-Around-with-Anything-in-This-World-but-You-Can’t-Fuck-Around-with-Disneyland.” He was kept there until his parents made the three-hour drive from Temple City to take their pothead son away. On Grad Nite, there was nothing more humiliating.

Mike Damone was not about to be that stupid. The Disneyland holding tank was a fate for small-timers. Damone had studied up; he was playing smart odds. Tonight he would operate like a fine piece of machinery.

It so happened that the Girls’ Chorus, which featured the angelic-looking Laurie Beckman as one of its lead vocalists, had sung at the Disneyland Pavilion for Grandparents’ Day two afternoons before. Damone had written everything out very carefully—the directions to the perfect hiding spot that Damone’s brother, the Toyota salesman, had given him. And Mike had given Laurie the special knapsack containing a fifth of Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

She had hidden it under an oath of secrecy, in exchange for Damone’s telling her Steve Shasta secrets. (Damone shared the same P.E. class with Shasta.)

Sitting there on bus 5, bouncing up and down with the rumbling bus, Damone knew everything would be fine. Just fine.

“Can I SMOKE?” Charles Jefferson yelled suddenly, with a force unequaled since Malcom X’s Lincoln Park speech in ’62.

No one answered.

“I said, can I SMOKE?”

The bus 5 chaperone, someone’s mother, stood up and shakily turned to face Charles Jefferson. “Uhhhh . . . I’m afraid smoking is not allowed on the school bus. I’m very sorry.”

This suited Charles just fine, and he sat back with rare satisfaction as he knocked out a Kool and had a nice long smoke.

“Hey, turn on the radio,” someone yelled.

Miss Navarro turned on the radio and found a rock station. She pushed the volume way beyond the point of distortion, to the level where the two small speakers rattled ominously from either side of the bus. Everyone sang along with a vengeance.

At the back of the bus Damone could hear everything that made a 150-foot school bus move down the highway. Every gear shift. Every grind and shudder. The noise lulled Charles Jefferson to sleep, and after a few minutes his leg snapped back open to push Damone even further into the aisle.

After a while Damone made his way to the front of the bus in search of a familiar face. He found a cluster of students gathered around a kid from Bio 3-4.

“. . . and so Walt Disney had this friend in Japan,” the guy was saying. “This scientist was experimenting with the freezing of cats. He would freeze them, seal the animals in a vacuum-insulated capsule of liquid nitrogen for a few weeks, and then thaw them out. And the cats would be alive!

“So later Walt Disney contracts cancer and knows he’s going to die, right? What does he do? He calls up his friend in Japan and says, ‘Freeze me!’ ”

“Total bullshit,” said Damone.

Two girls glared at Mike, and that hurt.

“This is all in the medical journals, Damone. You’re just showing your ignorance.”

Damone went back to sit with Charles Jefferson. Lit-up drive-ins and neon restaurants whizzed by. By the end of hour one, most of the male students had dozed off. Somebody’s girlfriend had switched the station to The Mellow Sound. The girls were all singing along to a Billy Joel ballad.

Something jarred Charles Jefferson awake.

“TURN THAT SHIT OFF!” he demanded.

Miss Navarro turned the station back to rock.

“The Skating Ramp!”

Heads began to pop up all around. This was an important landmark in the journey to Disneyland. Indeed, there were five times the normal amount of power lines strung along the freeway. All that juice could only be headed for one place.

There, in the distance was the snow-peaked cap of the Matterhorn Mountain and . . .

“The Orange Drive-In!”

The cheering drowned out the rock music. The buses rattled onto a freeway knot that shot vehicles out onto Disneyland Drive. The first glimpse of Disneyland was a truly amazing sight.

Hundreds upon hundreds of yellow buses, all with black lettering on the side, filled the Disneyland parking lot. The parking lot was almost bigger than Disneyland itself. There were buses for miles, for days, all converging into a mass of yellow.

“DISNEYLAND!”

Bus 5 pulled up to a red parking-lot light alongside a bus from Las Vegas. The kids all peered at each other. Some pried their windows open and yelled.

“Meet me at Monsanto, midnight!” Damone blew some brunette a kiss as the buses pulled away.

The five Ridgemont High buses pulled into their predetermined parking spaces. All the students were instructed to stay put while Mrs. Franks visited each group for another lecture.

“You are to be back here at your bus in your seat at 5 A.M. exactly.”

“HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FIND THESE BUSES AGAIN?”

“You’ll find these buses,” said Mrs. Franks with weary resignation, “right here in lanes 121-126. We’re not leaving this spot all night. If you get lost, go to the chaperones’ lounge on Main Street. But try to remember Lanes 121-126. Any other questions?”

No more questions.

“Okay, please remember the rules, people,” said the Grand Dame of Grad Nite. “And have a great time. We’ll see you tomorrow morning at 5 A.M.”

You had to respect a place like Disneyland.

At first not even his business-manager brother would loan Walt Disney the money to build the park. It was too far-reaching, too self-indulgent, they told him. Too much “the world’s biggest toy for the world’s biggest boy.” But in the afterglow of Disney’s successful Snow White, he went ahead and built it anyway.

At five-eighths the size, Disneyland is a re-creation of all facets of life on earth—Disney-style. Every continent, every body of water, even the highest and lowest points in the world are all represented just as Walt wanted them.

Employees of the park all attend a special school to learn the Disney policy (“We get tired, never bored”). Even the anxiety of waiting in long lines is eased through the deception of a mazelike series of right-and-left turns that gave a guest (never the word customer) a sense of accomplishment. Disneyland today is a study in absolute, almost eerie perfection. Today, many years after Disney’s death, the place is still run as if Walt Was Watching.

There was one last lecture, from Vice-Principal Ray Connors, as his students prepared to enter the Magic Kingdom.

“I don’t want you getting into any trouble out there tonight. If there’s any problem, you tell them to come find me, but I don’t anticipate something like that happening. Have a good time, and we’ll see you at five. And thanks for leaving your contraband behind.”

William Desmond had a pint of tequila stuffed down his pants. Tim Copeland had two grams of cocaine in his wallet. Many others were armed with joints to smoke on the People Mover. Some had fruit injected with vodka.

There were five separate inspection points at which to enter Disneyland on Grad Nite. Three security guards were installed to pat kids down at every station. To the far right of them was the chaperones’ entrance. There were no security guards posted there.

William Desmond began to panic. No way he’d get by with a pint stashed down his pants. No human penis was that big. He stood there at the entrance looking for a bathroom. A trash can. Anything. His only hope, he figured, was that his peach-fuzz beard made him appear older, above such shenanigans as booze smuggling. Desmond was right.

A teacher from another school tapped him on the shoulder. “You dropped your chaperone pass.”

Desmond turned and saw he was being handed that most golden of Grad Nite items—an all-areas-access chaperone pass. It was fate!

“Thanks a lot,” said Desmond. He grabbed the pass in a hurry and breezed through the special chaperone entrance with a mature nod to the agent.

Damone and The Rat passed through the other guard station and into the crush of kids who’d come from all over the western United States in their gowns and three-piece suits.

“It looks like a C&R Clothiers convention,” said The Rat.

“Where do you want to go first?”

“Let’s get our pictures taken.”

“We can’t get our pictures taken yet.”

Disneyland provided a free old-fashioned sepia portrait taken by a booth photographer on Main Street as a Grad Nite service. “Every jock in the world is waiting in line to get a picture. We’ll go later.”

“Well,” said The Rat. “Where do you want to go?”

“The bathroom. I think my tie’s screwed up.”

They pushed their way through the hordes of kids and larger-than-life Disneyland figures, toward the first bathroom they could find.

“I can’t believe it,” said Damone. “Grown up men dressed like Mickey Mouse. What a hell of a way to earn a buck.”

In this, the first of 500 Disneyland bathrooms, there were twenty more guys just like The Rat and Damone, shamelessly and meticulously adjusting their hair and ties until just . . . right. Some even had hair spray and cologne.

“What’s that?” asked Damone.

It was a strange grunting sound, getting closer. A moment later, the bathroom was filled with even more guys. This group did not speak with each other, but instead communicated through fingersnaps and signals. They, too, waited for the mirror, shaping their hair and making furious tongueless sounds.

“Hey guys,” came the voice of William Desmond. “I got a chaperone pass, you guys!” Desmond entered the bathroom and was showing around the pint he’d smuggled in, and his pass.

The deaf-and-dumb contingent paused in admiration.

Then they communicated furiously among themselves again.

Desmond, the wrestler-columnist, ducked into a stall. Rat and Mike looked at each other and tore ass into the ocean of teenagers. They were the picture of sophistication in their three-piece suits. They were ready to experience the gamut of human emotions in the next seven hours. Grad Nite.

Inside Disneyland two things were instantly noticeable: Every male in sight wore a gray cardboard gangster hat. It was the only souvenir. Everyone had them. Second item was The Voice.

That mellifluous, folksy Voice. Most people probably thought it was Disney’s own voice, that good old Wonderful-World-of-Disney chuckly voice. Well, ’ol Sparky, you better git, boy! It was as omnipresent as Mickey Mouse, as familiar as the voice of Time. You couldn’t get away from The Voice of Disneyland.

Damone revealed the basic strategy for the evening. Disneyland, he said, was a matter of hitting the most popular attractions first, while everyone else was still wandering around. In the meantime, of course, there was the unspoken quest for girls.

Damone and The Rat chose Pirates of the Caribbean as their first ride. On the way, Damone told The Rat the story of the hidden Jack Daniel’s on Tom Sawyer Island. It would be their secret of the night, for use only after they’d found . . . babes.

The Rat felt good. He hadn’t even seen Stacy tonight. She’d gotten on another bus, and that was more than okay with The Rat. One thing he had to say, when he was through with a girl, he was through with a girl. He still hoped he wouldn’t run into her, at least not until after he’d found another girl.

The Rat and Damone, armed with the secret of the Jack Daniel’s, took a place in line for Pirates of the Caribbean. Directly in front of them in line were Stacy and Linda Barrett.

They turned around. “Oh, hi! Hello, Mike! Hello, Mark!”

“Hi, you guys!” It was all very gracious.

And then the voice from behind. “Hey hey hey. I was looking for you!”

William Desmond had found them again.

“Hi, William.”

“What happened to you guys? I finished whizzing, and you guys were gone.”

“Nice shirt,” said Damone.

“Thanks,” said Desmond.

“Was it hard getting the come stains off it?”

William ignored the joke. “Anybody have any cocaine?”

“Why don’t you shut up, William.”

Some other kids joined them in line. They were bright and rosy looking.

“Hi,” one of them said. “Where are you from?”

“Ridgemont. It’s outside Oceanside.”

“Wow. We’ve heard of you! We’re from Notre Dame in Riverside!”

“Isn’t that a Catholic school?” asked Damone.

“Yes!”

“Tell me something,” said Desmond, addressing one of the girls in the Notre Dame group. “Why did they call the Virgin Mary a virgin if she slept with Joseph?”

The girl cast a vicious look at Desmond. “Because it was the Immaculate Conception.”

“Sorry,” said Desmond. “It’s not easy being the coolest guy in Disneyland.”

“Some people get all the luck,” said The Rat. “We get Desmond.”

“Jesus,” said Damone. “Did you see that girl look at Desmond, Mark?”

“No.”

William whipped around. “Where? Who?”

“Just this girl who looked at you.”

“Where?”

“Right over there. SEE? Now she turned away ’cause we’re looking at her. But William, if I were you, I’d go right over there and stand by the popcorn vendor so she’ll walk right past you. I guarantee she’ll say something to you.”

William Desmond walked casually over to the popcorn vendor.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Damone, and he and The Rat ran in the opposite direction.

“Where do you want to go? On the bumper cars?”

“The bumper cars are pussy.”

They decided on the Haunted House. On the way there, they spotted two girls in the gift shop. Damone wandered in nonchalantly, browsed a moment, then held up a leather fringed jacket to the two girls.

“Is this me?” he asked.

The girls laughed and ran out of the gift shop.

“It’s a start,” said The Rat. “It’s a start.”

The Haunted House was a fifteen-minute wait and—as Damone put it—for what? A bunch of kids—or was that sardines—were ushered into a tall-ceilinged room where the doors clanged shut, and, as soon as the room started to shrink and get really scary, here came The Voice again. How could The Voice scare you? You’d been hearing it since you were a baby.

“You’re about to experience a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this Haunted Room actually shrinking. Or is it just your imagination?” The room filled with exaggerated sounds of horror from jaded teenagers.

“Or consider this dismaying observation. This chamber has no windows! And no doors! And your challenge is to find a way OUT.”

The Voice let loose with another demented laugh that couldn’t scare a child over two. The Rat turned to the attendant. “Who is that guy with The Voice?”

She smiled and shrugged.

The Rat and Mike exited the Haunted House and decided to scout Tom Sawyer Island, home of the hidden Jack Daniel’s bottle.

“Let’s get the booze,” said Damone.

They arrived at the island to find a terrible surprise. Not only was Tom Sawyer Island closed for the evening, it had been partially converted into a stage for a disco dance band.

“FUCK.” Damone collapsed on a bench. “I have to think about this.”

“Looks like no booze for us tonight.”

“Are you crazy? I had to pay for that and everything! Let’s go ride the Monorail and figure this out.”

The Disneyland Monorail System was built as an ultra-modern transport system in 1965. Meant to “rocket” guests around the perimeter of the Magic Kingdom, it stopped at every quarter of the park and even at Disneyland Hotel across the street.

The Rat and Damone fell into a couple of window seats.

“During our journey,” The Voice began, air-transport style, “please see to it that you keep your head and arms inside the cabin at all times. You are riding aboard a Mark III system . . .”

At the next stop two dark-haired girls entered the compartment. One was wearing a red dress, the other a clingy blue gown. They cruised slowly by Damone and The Rat.

The boys offered them nothing less than The Attitude. Supreme indifference.

The girls sat behind them and started talking loudly.

“I couldn’t believe our bus, could you? First the clutch went out . . . then the gear shift. We’re luuuuuuu-cky to make it here alive.”

“At least the radio was good,” said the girl in red.

Then they sang a line from a song in unison, probably the last song they’d heard on the bus ride up: “Wa-tching the De-tect-tives. Don’ they look cute?” Then the girls broke up laughing.

The Voice began again: “Welcome aboard the Disneyland Monorail. America’s first daily operating monorail system. We ask only that you keep your head and arms inside the cabin at all times . . .”

The laughing died down, and the two girls realized there was a war of nerves going on. Neither of the couples wanted to let the moment pass, but neither wanted to make the first move.

Finally Red Dress spoke first. “You guys staying for the weekend?”

“Who, us?” asked Damone.

“Yeah.”

“No, we’re going back tonight.”

“Where are you guys from?”

“Ridgemont. How about you?”

They answered in unison. “We’re from Flag.”

“What’s Flag.”

“Flagstaff, Arizona!” The boys nodded. “We’re gonna be here till Monday ’cause our bus broke down. We’re staying at the Wagon Train Motel on the other side of Disneyland.”

“Yeah. We’re all doubled up, and every third room is a chaperone.”

The two girls looked at each other. “Wa-tching the De-tect-tives . . .” Then they broke up again.

The Rat and Mike nodded distractedly. More Attitude for these girls. Why, there was plenty of other things to do than try and get these girls to go back to their motel rooms with them.

The Voice: “We’re now in a reentry pattern back into the Magic Kingdom. Destination? Tomorrowland. World of the Future . . .”

“Aren’t we supposed to get out here?”

“We’ll just tell ’em we got tired and fell asleep on the Monorail.” The girl in the blue gown looked at The Rat. “Do you know anyone from Flag?”

“Just you,” said The Rat. Damone looked at him approvingly.

They introduced themselves: Becky (blue dress) and Stephanie (red dress).

“Hey, you know what?” said Damone.

“What?”

“We have booze.”

“You have booze?”

“Yes. I can’t even tell you where it’s hidden. But why don’t we go there?”

“Wow!” said Becky.

“Let’s go get the booze,” said Stephanie. “And then we’ll take it back to our motel!”

The Rat and Joe looked out the window. That would be acceptable.

The fifth of Jack Daniel’s was hidden in a small crevice in the southwestern caves on Tom Sawyer Island. The compartment had been made five years earlier by Damone’s brother, Art, on vacation no less. It had been a tradition for all of Art’s friends to use the hiding place. Now it was Mike’s turn.

“You can’t go on Tom Sawyer Island tonight,” said Becky. “They’ve got a band out there tonight.”

“I have an idea,” said Damone. “There is a way.”

The only way out to the man-made island at the center of Disneyland was by wooden raft. The raft was ferried back and forth all day by a Disneyland employee in riverboat get-up. And they had chosen this Grad Nite to quit running the raft.

But the raft was still there, sitting calmly by the deserted and darkened dock. It was held only by a rope.

Damone gave the instructions. He would untie the rope, and they would float across to the island, lying low on the raft.

“No way,” said The Rat. “They’ll catch us.”

“Come on,” said Becky. “Don’t be a wussy.”

“You have that word, too?”

They floated across the moat to the other side, undetected. Once on shore, Damone led them to the back caves, to the site he had meticulously outlined for Laurie Beckman.

Damone reached up, found the compartment, and the knapsack containing a sealed bottle of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7.

They took a few slugs, then quickly returned to the greater Magic Kingdom. Paddling back across the moat, the four hit the dock and scattered in different directions, according to plan. They were to meet at Jungle Cruise.

Damone was just about to round the corner and head out of Frontierland when he felt an arm grab him from behind. Then another arm.

“Come along with us.”

He turned to see two Disneyland security officers dressed as old-time coppers. They had already confiscated his Jack Daniel’s knapsack.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To the holding office.”

The holding tank! Shades of Mark Huffman!

“I heard about that place,” said Damone. “It’s underground, isn’t it?”

“You’re thinking of Disney World. That’s in Florida. They have an underground security office.”

Damone was led to a very-much above-ground office behind Main Street marked JUVENILE SECURITY.

“Hello, young man.”

He had been brought before a middle-aged man, kind of like his father. This man spoke in that same folksy tone—but there was no mistaking his authority. This was some kind of behind-the-scenes Disneyland masher. And he was going to try to make Mike break. “All we’d like to know is what you were doing out on Tom Sawyer Island tonight. Did you fool around with any equipment out there?”

“No.”

“What were doing out there on Tom Sawyer Island?”

“Having some fun.”

“You know we don’t run Tom Sawyer Island on Grad Nite anymore.”

“Didn’t know.”

The two attendants who’d brought Mike Damone to Juvenile Security remarked that they had confiscated a bottle of whiskey, and that “the boy’s breath smelled alcoholic.”

“Are you intoxicated at this moment?”

“No, sir. No way.”

“May I see some identification, please?”

Damone took out his wallet and showed them his driver’s permit.

“Where are your friends, Mike? Are they friends from your high school? Or did you meet them here?”

“I don’t know.”

“We just want to find your friends and keep them out of trouble, Mike.” He was trying another tack. “We know they goaded you into doing what you did out there on Tom Sawyer Island.”

Mike said nothing.

“What did you do out there on Tom Sawyer Island tonight?”

Mike said nothing.

“Mike, I’m going to have to call your parents right now unless you can help us a little.”

Mike said nothing.

“All we have to do is check your file. We have all the forms you filled out with the ticket application. We have them all right here.”

Mike looked panicked. Inside, he felt relieved. He had listed the request line of a popular AM station in Los Angeles. Just in case. It was always busy.

The juvenile security chief picked up the phone on his desk. “This is Richards. And I’d like to place a parental call, W.D. code 1456 to 213-279-1771.” He waited a moment. “Could you try it again? Okay.”

He replaced the receiver. “It’s busy.”

“Sorry,” said Damone, “my mom talks a lot.”

“Mike,” said the security chief. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to get in touch with your head chaperone right now . . .” But the words trailed off in the man’s mouth. He was looking at Damone, who appeared to be going into some kind of serious spasm. “Are you all right? Are you a diabetic.”

Mike didn’t respond. He was going into convulsions. He fell off his chair onto the floor and started banging his head against Mr. Richards’s desk.

“Quick! Can I get some help in here! This boy is having a seizure! Can I get some help in here?”

But the Disneyland henchmen who brought Damone in had already gone off to nab some other kid, no doubt. So the security chief made the fatal mistake of leaving the room to get some help. He was gone less than thirty seconds, but it was time enough for Damone to pop up and head for the other door, the one he came in through. He disappeared out onto Main Street.

Tired and wasted, Damone wandered into Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. He couldn’t find anyone he knew. He fell into a seat and watched the show. When it ended, he walked back out onto Main Street.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“It’s getting near five.”

Damone headed for the bus.

“Hey Mike!”

It was The Rat, who was running for him from the Monorail exit.

“Where have you been?” asked The Rat.

“A long story,” said Damone. “They got my bottle. Where have you been?”

The Rat held up a Wagon Train Motel key, his souvenir.

“Wa-tching the De-tect-tives.”

“You’re kidding! What happened?”

“I ain’t saying!”

“Did you make out?”

“I ain’t saying!”

The last thing The Rat and Damone did on their Grad Nite was get an old-fashioned picture taken on Main Street. It was a frozen moment in time. Definitely scrapbook material all the way.

It was The Rat who took the seat next to Charles Jefferson on the way home. He didn’t mind. Charles took a long time to notice him, however, pleading for the seat.

“But my teddy bear’s sitting there,” complained Charles. “Aw . . . go ’head.” He, too, was offered a corner, but only after the bus was in motion.

The sun rose while the five buses were still cruising on the freeway, fifty minutes outside Ridgemont. The whole inside of the bus smelled of stale socks. Most of the kids were asleep, though some were still awake and clutching their stuffed animals. Most of the guys were snoring loudly, their gangster hats knocked askew and their mouths pressed against the window.

Back at the Ridgemont parking lot, Damone rolled home and The Rat stood trying to wake up enough to drive his father’s car back up the hill.

He saw Stacy Hamilton.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Oh,” said The Rat, “just had a wild night. Where’s Linda?”

“She got a ride. Can I get a ride home with you?”

“Sure,” said The Rat.

She crawled in the back of his car, and he drove her home. When they reached Valley View condominiums, he woke her up.

“You’d better let me get out here,” said Stacy. “My mother doesn’t want anybody to see me in an evening gown being walked home by a guy at seven in the morning.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” She rubbed her eyes. “Can I see you over the summer, Mark?”

“If I’m around,” said The Rat.

She handed him her Disneyland photo. “Here. So you won’t forget what I look like.”

The last thing The Rat did before going to sleep was stick the photo in the corner of his mirror.