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we’re making out. When the moment comes to say, “I just don’t care about you anymore,” or whatever I could come up with, I just cannot do it. Does that mean I have to marry her?
    And how about old Long John? Somehow he gets me thinking that because our parents don’t have timefor him anymore—or at least Dad doesn’t—that responsibility has fallen to me. I admit I get some interesting information from him, and sometimes he’s fun to be around because he’s smart and funny, but he’s also a drug freak who won’t take care of his own life and has caused me maximum grief. And I think he could take from me forever, and he will if I don’t stop him.
    My mind drifted along the lines of Elaine’s and my conversation and came up with zero conclusions, which has been standard lately for this aquatic Aristotle.
    With not one clear resolution, I finally turned the car around and headed for home.

CHAPTER 5
    November 29
    It’s too bad this school wasn’t named after Jim Thorpe or Jackie Robinson or some other great athlete, rather than a poet or a snowman. I mean, Frost is a jock school. You don’t have a lot of pull if you’re a swimmer, because swimming is on the way out and it’s not the world’s most exciting spectator sport anyway. It’s hardly engrossing to watch six mostly naked guys motor from one end of the pool to the other as fast as they can, only to turn around and go back. But the coaches and jocks in the major sports are hot stuff around here and they have a lot of influence. That’s because Frost has good teams in the major sports. We win a lot of athletic contests every year and get a lot ofplay in the local papers. The Athletic Council, made up of the captains of each team and the coaches of the major sports, is probably more influential than the Student Council, mostly because the Student Body President is also the captain of the basketball team and is the consummate jock. In this school, jocks rule.
    This is my third year as captain of the swim team, so I’ve been on the Council since I was a sophomore. In those three years, up until last week, I don’t remember a time when the Athletic Council wasn’t unanimous on any decision or opinion we made. I think that’s because Mr. Edwards, the football coach, and Mr. Severs, the baseball coach, are big, strong, imposing men who state their opinions, fold their arms and silently dare you to go against them. They don’t do that to be bad guys, it’s just the way they are. Even if you didn’t agree with them, which most of us usually do, you’d have to be a strong believer in the other side to take them on. And you’d lose.
    I bring that up only because the meeting this last week was the first time I ever remember any of us at odds on an issue that didn’t get worked out, Edwards and Severs or no Edwards and Severs. And it was about that stupid Aryan Press. That’s like arguing over an article in the National Enquirer .
    A girl named Molly Ramstead, who’s on the girls’ basketball team, moved that the Council issue a public statement against the stuff in the Aryan Press in case there was the slightest doubt in anybody’s mind that anyone in this school agrees with that crap. There are two black kids on the Council, Roy Biggs from the track team and LaFesha Stills from girls’ softball. They just smiled and looked at the table, shaking their heads. I couldn’t tell what they were thinking, probably that we were ridiculous for even wasting time with it, but I seconded Molly’s motion and added that we should approach the administration about taking disciplinary action against anyone distributing it.
    And that’s what started it. Marty O’Brian, who’s the rep from the baseball team, a catcher whose marvelous athletic talents are surpassed only by his monumental insensitivity, said, “That’s against