A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

163Yes, he had practically saved my life. He had also practically lost it for me. I wouldn't havebeen on that damn limb except for him. I wouldn't have turned around, and so lost my balance,if he hadn't been there. I didn't need to feel any tremendous rush of gratitude toward Phineas.The Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session was a success from the start. That nightFinny began to talk abstractedly about it, as though it were a venerable, entrenched institutionof the Devon School. The half-dozen friends who were there in our room listening began tobring up small questions on details without ever quite saying that they had never heard of sucha club. Schools are supposed to be catacombed with secret societies and undergroundbrotherhoods, and as far as they knew here was one which had just come to the surface. Theysigned up as "trainees" on the spot.We began to meet every night to initiate them. The Charter Members, he and I, had to openevery meeting by jumping ourselves. This was the first of the many rules which Finny createdwithout notice during the summer. I hated it. I never got inured to the jumping. At everymeeting the limb seemed higher, thinner, the deeper water harder to reach. Every time, when Igot myself into position to jump, I felt a flash of disbelief that I was doing anything so perilous.But I always jumped. Otherwise I would have lost face with Phineas, and that would have beenunthinkable.We met every night, because Finny's life was ruled by inspiration and anarchy, and so heprized a set of rules. His own, not those imposed on him by other people, such as the faculty ofthe Devon School. The Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session was a club; clubs bydefinition met regularly; we met every night. Nothing could be more regular than that. To meetonce a week seemed to him much less regular, entirely too haphazard, bordering oncarelessness.I went along; I never missed a meeting. At that time it would never have occurred to me tosay, "I don't feel like it tonight," which was the plain truth every night. I was subject to thedictates of my mind, which gave me the maneuverability of a strait jacket. "We're off, pal,"Finny would call out, and acting against every instinct of my nature, I went without a thoughtof protest.As we drifted on through the summer, with this one inflexible appointment every day—classes could be cut, meals missed, Chapel skipped—I noticed something about Finny's ownmind, which was such an opposite from mine. It wasn't completely unleashed after all. Inoticed that he did abide by certain rules, which he seemed to cast in the form ofCommandments. "Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half" wasthe first one I encountered. Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it mightturn out that there is a God."