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tainted with a reputation as an underclassmen’s hangout).
    Now each group clustered around lunch court was actually a different contingent of Ridgemont fast-food employees. Lunch-court positions corresponded directly with the prestige and quality of the employer. Why, a man was only as good as his franchise.
    Working inward from the outskirts of Ridgemont High’s lunch court were the lowly all-night 7-Eleven workers, then the Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King crowd, the Denny’s and Swenson’s types, all leading to the top-of-Ridgemont-Drive-location Carl’s Jr. employees. And at the center of lunch court, eating cold chicken under the hallowed big oak tree, was Brad Hamilton.
    Brad was popular around Ridgemont. In the world of fast food, once you had achieved a position of power, the next sign of influence was to bring in your friends. Brad had paid his dues. He had loaded his Carl’s Jr. with buddies. And why not? He even helped train them.
    “No friend of mine,” Brad once said, “will ever have to work at a 7-Eleven or in a supermarket.”
    And for that Brad’s friends admired and respected him.
    Carl’s Jr. was at the top of the Ridgemont fast-food hierarchy for several important reasons. It had a fine location at the top of Ridgemont Drive. Anybody headed anywhere in Ridgemont passed that Carl’s Jr. It was clean, with a fountain in the middle of the dining area and never too many kids on their bicycles. Brad, like the other employees, even came there on his off-hours, and that was the ultimate test. By evening, Carl’s would be crawling with Ridgemont kids.
    But why Carl’s? Why not some other fast-food operation? Why not Burger King? Why not McDonald’s? Or Jack-in-the-Box?
    The answer was simple enough, as Brad himself would tell you. Their food wasn’t as good. And places like Burger King were always giving away glasses and catering to small kids who came whipping into the restaurant on their bicycles. McDonald’s was McDonald’s. Too familiar, too prefab, too many games. McDonald’s was good only if you had no other choice, or if you just wanted fries.
    Jack-in-the-Box was suspect because all the food was precooked and heated by sunlamps. It was also common knowledge that the whole Jack-in-the-Box franchise was owned by Ralston-Purina, the well-known dog-food manufacturer. Kentucky Fried Chicken was too boring, and Wendy’s was too close to Lincoln High School.
    The top-of-Ridgemont-Drive Carl’s Jr., on the other hand, had achieved that special balance between location and food quality. At Carl’s, the burgers were char-broiled. This crucial fact not only meant that the meal was better, but it returned a little bit of the fast-food power to the kid behind the counter. A guy like Brad Hamilton felt like a real chef.
    “Hey Brad,” people were always saying to him, “your fries are even better than McDonald’s.”
    “You know it,” Brad would say, as if they were, in fact, his fries.
    Brad had settled into a nice, comfortable pattern, in life and in work. In life, he had a petite and popular girlfriend named Lisa. Lisa was one of the intercom girls at Carl’s.
    Brad’s three best friends, his golf-cap buddies, also worked at Carl’s. They were David Lemon, Gary Myers, and Richard Masuta. When they weren’t hanging out at school together, they were either at Carl’s or driving around Ridgemont together in The Cruising Vessel.
    In work Brad had his own method, and at it he was the best. Working the fryer at Carl’s was a system governed by beeps. One high beep—the fries were done. One low—change the oil. But Brad didn’t even have to go by the beeps. He knew when the fries were perfect. He knew when to change the oil, and he knew his fryer.
    Normally quiet in class, once Brad got behind the fryer at Carl’s he was in command. He’d carry on a running dialogue with his coworkers. Or he would listen to the drive-up customers in their cars trying to decide what to order, not