A_Separate_Peace_-_Full_Text

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None of us was allowed near the infirmary during the next days, but I heard all the rumors that
came out of it. Eventually a fact emerged; it was one of his legs, which had been "shattered." I
couldn't figure out exactly what this word meant, whether it meant broken in one or several
places, cleanly or badly, and I didn't ask. I learned no more, although the subject was discussed
endlessly. Out of my hearing people must have talked of other things, but everyone talked
about Phineas to me. I suppose this was only natural. I had been right beside bin when it
happened, I was his roommate.
The effect of his injury on the masters seemed deeper than after other disasters I
remembered there. It was as though they felt it was especially unfair that it should strike one of
the sixteen-year-olds, one of the few young men who could be free and happy in the summer of
1942.
I couldn't go on hearing about it much longer. If anyone had been suspicious of me, I might
have 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 every
thought, to forget where I was, even who I was. One evening when I was dressing for dinner in
this numbed frame of mind, an idea occurred to me, the first with any energy behind it since
Finny fell from the tree. I decided to put on his clothes. We wore the same size, and although
he always criticized mine he used to wear them frequently, quickly forgetting what belonged to
him and what to me. I never forgot, and that evening I put on his cordovan shoes, his pants, and
I looked for and finally found his pink shirt, neatly laundered in a drawer. Its high, somewhat
stiff collar against my neck, the wide cuffs touching my wrists, the rich material against my
skin excited a sense of strangeness and distinction; I felt like some nobleman, some Spanish
grandee.
But when I looked in the mirror it was no remote aristocrat I had become, no character out
of daydreams. I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I even had his humorous expression in my
face, his sharp, optimistic awareness. I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief, but it
seemed, standing there in Finny's triumphant shirt, that I would never stumble through the
confusions of my own character again.
I didn't go down to dinner. The sense of transformation stayed with me throughout the
evening, and even when I undressed and went to bed. That night I slept easily, and it was only
on waking up that this illusion was gone, and I was confronted with myself, and what I had
done to Finny.
Sooner or later it had to happen, and that morning it did. "Finny's better!" Dr. Stanpole