Some seniors at Beverly Hills High School admit to seeing their life's great task as simply holding on. A troubling large segment wonders whether they have the ability to achieve the immense success necessary to remain in Beverly Hills, most openly fearing a life without great advantages or opulence. Professional ambitions, therefore, generally tend to be higher among the young here. A few seniors have already resigned themselves to futures of scaled-down existence, far outside Beverly Hills and the rest of upper-income West Los Angeles. A certain anomie has settled over them. "If it's going to happen when I get older - like not being able to live here and having to live like some geek in the Valley - then it's going to happen," says one girl. "Meantime, I'm going to party all I can. I'm going to go wild while I have something to do it with. Party, party, party. Then the world can collapse." I realized that, behind the school's gates, lurked a subculture I no longer knew anything about.