26But Finny gave me little time to worry about that. Eight after lunch there was a game ofblitzball which took most of the afternoon, and right after dinner there was the meeting of theSuper Suicide Society of the Summer Session.That night in our room, even though I was worn out from all the exercise, I tried to catch upto what had been happening in trigonometry."You work too hard," Finny said, sitting opposite me at the table where we read. The studylamp cast a round yellow pool between us. "You know all about History and English andFrench and everything else. What good will Trigonometry do you?""I'll have to pass it to graduate, for one thing.""Don't give me that line. Nobody at Devon has ever been surer of graduating than you are.You aren't working for that. You want to be head of the class, valedictorian, so you can make aspeech on Graduation Day—in Latin or something boring like that probably—and be the boywonder of the school. I know you.""Don't be stupid. I wouldn't waste my time on anything like that.""You never waste your time. That's why I have to do it for you.""Anyway," I grudgingly added, "somebody's got to be the head of the class.""You see, I knew that's what you were aiming at," he concluded quietly."Fooey."What if I was. It was a pretty good goal to have, it seemed to me. After all, he should talk.He had won and been proud to win the Galbraith Football Trophy and the Contact SportAward, and there were two or three other athletic prizes he was sure to get this year or next. If Iwas head of the class on Graduation Day and made a speech and won the Ne Plus UltraScholastic Achievement Citation, then we would both have come out on top, we would beeven, that was all. We would be even. . . .Was that it! My eyes snapped from the textbook toward him. Did he notice this suddenglance shot across the pool of light? He didn't seem to; he went on writing down his strangecurlicue notes about Thomas Hardy in Phineas Shorthand. Was that it! With his head bent overin the lamplight I could discern a slight mound in his brow above the eyebrows, the faint bulgewhich is usually believed to indicate mental power. Phineas would be the first to disclaim anygreat mental power in himself. But what did go on in his mind? If I was the head of the classand won that prize, then we would be even. . . .His head started to come up, and mine snapped down. I glared at the textbook. "Relax," hesaid. "Your brain'll explode if you keep this up.""You don't need to worry about me, Finny.""I'm not worried."
27"You wouldn't—" I wasn't sure I had the control to put this question—"mind if I wound uphead of the class, would you?""Mind?" Two clear green-blue eyes looked at me. "Fat chance you've got, anyway, withChet Douglass around.""But you wouldn't mind, would you?" I repeated in a lower and more distinct voice.He gave me that half-smile of his, which had won him a thousand conflicts. "I'd kill myselfout of jealous envy."I believed him. The joking manner was a screen; I believed him. In front of my eyes thetrigonometry textbook blurred into a jumble. I couldn't see. My brain exploded. He minded,despised the possibility that I might be the head of the school. There was a swift chain ofexplosions in my brain, one certainty after another blasted—up like a detonation went the ideaof any best friend, up went affection and partnership and sticking by someone and relying onsomeone absolutely in the jungle of a boys' school, up went the hope that there was anyone inthis school—in this world—whom I could trust. "Chet Douglass," I said uncertainly, "is a surething for it."My misery was too deep to speak any more. I scanned the page; I was having troublebreathing, as though the oxygen were leaving the room. Amid its devastation my mind flashedfrom thought to thought, despairingly in search of something left which it could rely on. Notrely on absolutely, that was obliterated as a possibility, just rely on a little, some solace,something surviving in the ruins.I found it. I found a single sustaining thought. The thought was, You and Phineas are evenalready. You are even in enmity. You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone. Youdid hate him for breaking that school swimming record, but so what? He hated you for gettingan A in every course but one last term. You would have had an A in that one except for him.Except for him.Then a second realization broke as clearly and bleakly as dawn at the beach. Finny haddeliberately set out to wreck my studies. That explained blitzball, that explained the nightlymeetings of the Super Suicide Society, that explained his insistence that I share all hisdiversions. The way I believed that you're-my-best-friend blabber! The shadow falling acrosshis face if I didn't want to do something with him! His instinct for sharing everything with me?Sure, he wanted to share everything with me, especially his procession of D's in every subject.That way he, the great athlete, would be way ahead of me. It was all cold trickery, it was allcalculated, it was all enmity.I felt better. Yes, I sensed it like the sweat of relief when nausea passes away; I felt better.We were even after all, even in enmity. The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all.I became quite a student after that. I had always been a good one, although I wasn't reallyinterested and excited by learning itself, the way Chet Douglass was. Now I became not justgood but exceptional, with Chet Douglass my only rival in sight. But I began to see that Chet
- Page 1 and 2: 1John KnowlesA Separate Peace
- Page 4 and 5: 4Devon was both scholarly and very
- Page 6 and 7: 6sprang out, fell through the tops
- Page 8 and 9: 8a kitchen rattle from the wing of
- Page 10 and 11: 10true and sincere; Finny always sa
- Page 12 and 13: 12Withers, perched nervously behind
- Page 14 and 15: 14of the great northern forests. I
- Page 16 and 17: 163Yes, he had practically saved my
- Page 18 and 19: 18Up the field the others at badmin
- Page 20 and 21: 20that Finny could shine at it. He
- Page 22 and 23: 22"You can try it again and break i
- Page 24 and 25: 24tonks and shooting galleries and
- Page 28 and 29: 28was weakened by the very genuinen
- Page 30 and 31: 30"Don't go." He said it very simpl
- Page 32 and 33: 325None of us was allowed near the
- Page 34 and 35: 34The door was slightly ajar, and I
- Page 36 and 37: 36We found it fairly easily, on a s
- Page 38 and 39: 38"Sure, I'll be there by Thanksgiv
- Page 40 and 41: 40Still it had come to an end, in t
- Page 42 and 43: 42"How many?""Who knows? Get some.
- Page 44 and 45: 44The houses on either side were in
- Page 46 and 47: 46"No, I wouldn't.""And I spent my
- Page 48 and 49: 48"What?" I pulled quickly around i
- Page 50 and 51: 50They laughed at him a little, and
- Page 52 and 53: 52"I'm not sure, Leper, but I think
- Page 54 and 55: 54After they had gone we laborers l
- Page 56 and 57: 56To enlist. To slam the door impul
- Page 58 and 59: 588"I can see I never should have l
- Page 60 and 61: 60"So," Brinker curled his lip at m
- Page 62 and 63: 62So the war swept over like a wave
- Page 64 and 65: 64We went into the gym, along a mar
- Page 66 and 67: 66you at the Funny Farm.""In a way,
- Page 68 and 69: 68large rambling, doubtfully Coloni
- Page 70 and 71: 709This was my first but not my las
- Page 72 and 73: 72Giraud but Lepellier; we knew, be
- Page 74 and 75: 74"Who wants a Winter Carnival?" he
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76Still the sleek brown head bent m
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78ELWIN LEPER LEPELLIER.
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80escapes from is danger, death, th
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82"That's what you say. But that's
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84a good boy underneath," she must
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86the Mess Hall, I had to eat every
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88"How's Leper?" he asked in an off
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90I didn't say anything."He must be
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92never will.""You're so wrong I ca
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94I believed you," he added hurried
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96acoustics in the school. I couldn
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98the tree did it by itself. It's a
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100"Here! Go get him," said Brinker
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102"I can't think of the name of th
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104Dr. Stanpole stopped near the do
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106hurt my stomach and I could feel
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108and "psycho" and "sulfa," strang
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110His face had been struggling to
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11213The quadrangle surrounding the
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114Brinker slid his fingers into th
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116At the gym a platoon was undress