A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

325None of us was allowed near the infirmary during the next days, but I heard all the rumors thatcame out of it. Eventually a fact emerged; it was one of his legs, which had been "shattered." Icouldn't figure out exactly what this word meant, whether it meant broken in one or severalplaces, cleanly or badly, and I didn't ask. I learned no more, although the subject was discussedendlessly. Out of my hearing people must have talked of other things, but everyone talkedabout Phineas to me. I suppose this was only natural. I had been right beside bin when ithappened, I was his roommate.The effect of his injury on the masters seemed deeper than after other disasters Iremembered there. It was as though they felt it was especially unfair that it should strike one ofthe sixteen-year-olds, one of the few young men who could be free and happy in the summer of1942.I couldn't go on hearing about it much longer. If anyone had been suspicious of me, I mighthave developed some strength to defend myself. But there was nothing. No one suspected.Phineas must still be too sick, or too noble, to tell them.I spent as much time as I could alone in our room, trying to empty my mind of everythought, to forget where I was, even who I was. One evening when I was dressing for dinner inthis numbed frame of mind, an idea occurred to me, the first with any energy behind it sinceFinny fell from the tree. I decided to put on his clothes. We wore the same size, and althoughhe always criticized mine he used to wear them frequently, quickly forgetting what belonged tohim and what to me. I never forgot, and that evening I put on his cordovan shoes, his pants, andI looked for and finally found his pink shirt, neatly laundered in a drawer. Its high, somewhatstiff collar against my neck, the wide cuffs touching my wrists, the rich material against myskin excited a sense of strangeness and distinction; I felt like some nobleman, some Spanishgrandee.But when I looked in the mirror it was no remote aristocrat I had become, no character outof daydreams. I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I even had his humorous expression in myface, his sharp, optimistic awareness. I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief, but itseemed, standing there in Finny's triumphant shirt, that I would never stumble through theconfusions of my own character again.I didn't go down to dinner. The sense of transformation stayed with me throughout theevening, and even when I undressed and went to bed. That night I slept easily, and it was onlyon waking up that this illusion was gone, and I was confronted with myself, and what I haddone to Finny.Sooner or later it had to happen, and that morning it did. "Finny's better!" Dr. Stanpole