Fast Times at Ridgemont High by Cameron Crowe Read Free Book Online

stomping around campus made any student feel a little closer to the law.
    But this year Vince was gone. Word had it that he had made friends with too many students, had pinched the wrong butt. Vince had had a weakness for eating lunch with the “older girls,” the ones who wore the most expensive clothes, ran for student offices like director of social activities, and always looked as if they’d just winged in from Acapulco with the son of Ricardo Montalban.
    In Vince’s place this year was a different kind of disciplinarian altogether. His name was Lieutenant Lawrence “Larry” Flowers, and he let you know it by wearing a gold name plate directly over his left breast. He was a lean-and-quick-looking black man, and he wore dark blue police suits. He was also distinguished by a pencil-thin moustache, carefully clipped to a wisp. His overall appearance was that of Nat King Cole with a license to kill. The administration had brought in Flowers from some hellhole junior high in Pittsburgh. As he walked, his eyes darted in all directions, as if he half-expected some PCP-crazed teenager to leap at him with a machete.
    Lieutenant Flowers passed through lunch court virtually unnoticed on the first day of school. That would soon change.
    On the outskirts of lunch court sat Linda Barrett and Stacy Hamilton. Not too close to the inner sanctum, not too far away. Linda, cheese sandwich in hand, casually pointed out some of the Ridgemont personalities to Stacy.
    “See over there,” she said. She nodded to a frizzy brown-haired boy accepting cash from a small crowd of students around him. “That’s Randy Eddo. He’s the Ridgemont ticket scalper. He probably makes more money than both of our dads put together.”
    “Really? A ticket scalper?”
    “He says he’s not a scalper. He says he provides a service for concert goers. And that the service costs extra money.”
    “I see.”
    Linda went on to explain. Although Led Zeppelin was still king of the Ridgemont parking lot after ten years, each new season brought another band discovery. A new group then influenced the set lists of the Ridgemont school dance bands, and usually one main-focus rock star dictated the dress code. This year that star was the lead singer of Cheap Trick, Robin Zander, a young man with longish blond hair cut in bangs just above his eyes. This year on Ridgemont lunch court there were three Robin Zander lookalikes.
    “None of them talk to each other,” noted Linda Barrett.
    A couple, arms around each other’s waists and oblivious to everyone, walked past her and Stacy.
    “Now that,” said Linda, “is Gregg Adams and Cindy Carr.”
    The school couple.
    Gregg Adams was equal part sensitive drama student and school funny guy. He looked like a contestant on “The Dating Game.” Gregg’s jokes never got too dirty, his conversation never too deep. He just strode down the hallways, said hi to people he didn’t know, and methodically wrapped up all the leads in the school drama presentations. Everyone, including Gregg Adams, was sure he would be famous one day.
    Cindy Carr was a clear-complexioned, untroubled Midwestern beauty. She was a cheerleader, coming from a part of the country where cheerleaders still meant something. She did not leave her room in the mornings until she believed she compared favorably with the framed photo of Olivia Newton-John on her wall. She was a part-time hostess in a Chinese restaurant where a singer named Johnny Chung King sang nightly.
    Both Adams and Carr were masters of the teeth-baring smile. This, more than anything else, was the true sign of a high school social climber known as the “sosh.” The teeth-baring sosh (long o ) began as a glimmer in the eye. Then the sosh chin quivered, and then the entire sosh face detonated into a synthetic grin. Usually accompanied by a sharp “hi,” it was an art form that Adams and Carr had taken to its extreme.
    The Gregg Adams–Cindy Carr story was thick with tales of