As the section on "Themes and Characters" suggests, everything about Way Past Cool is socially sensitive. A particularly sharp social issue is the relationship between the Friends and the police. For example, police officers suggest that the Crew, a gang that shares a border with the Friends, are out to kill the Friends. Curtis asks whether this is true: Gordon shuffled his wrinkled papers.

"Naw, that just dogshit, man. Cops always sayin stuff like that. They like seein us fight. Hope we kill each other."

"Why?"

"Save them the trouble," said Lyon. "One time I read this book. Tell where back in the olden days some of them .. . liked to get us fightin so's they could watch us and laugh over it."

412 Way Past Cool The comparison of the police to the Ku Klux Klan expresses the attitude of the gang members toward the police, whom...