Chapter 4

When we woke up, I saw dawn for the first time. At first it was dead looking, and then the colors began to pierce the sky. It looks to be around 6:30, and I had an important trigonometry test at ten. Finny woke and up and took a short swim, even after I said there wasn't enough time. He had lost the money, so we didn't have any time for breakfast either. When I got to Devon and looked at the test, I knew it would be the first one I had ever flunked. After the test Finny gave me little time to catch up on what was happening in trig because we had a Blitzball game and a Super Suicide Society meeting. That night Finny told me I work too hard. "You know all about History and English and French and everything else. What good will trigonometry do you"(43)? I told him you have to pass it to graduate, and then he went on about how I wanted to be head of the class. Maybe I did want to be head of the class; it’s a pretty good goal to have anyway. Plus, he was good at sports and won all those trophies and awards. If he had those and I won the Ne Plus Ultra Scholastic Achievement Citation, then we would be even. I then asked him, "You wouldn't mind if I wound up head of the class, would you" (44)? He brought up Chet Douglas being around too, and then answered with a half-smile, "I'd kill myself out of jealous envy" (44). I believed him. Everything I knew began to jumble. I wasn't sure if I could trust anyone anymore. Then I thought how Phineas and I were already even. I hated him for breaking the swimming record first try, and he hated me for getting an A in every course but one last term. Then I realized that Finny deliberately had been trying to disrupt my studies. After this, I became quite a student. Chet Douglas was my only rival, but he easily got distracted in learning. Finny was the best athlete in the school, and a poor student. I was a pretty good athlete though, so the scales tilted slightly towards me. Surprisingly in these few weeks we got along well. Exams were coming up, and I starting studying in our room after supper and then Finny came in and said, "Elwin 'Leper' Lepellier has announced his intention to make the leap this very night" (49). Of course he wouldn’t jump, and Finny just put him up to it to stop my last chance of studying.  Finny then said he didn’t know I actually needed to study to get good grades. He told me I couldn’t go and that I had to study. I didn’t like him telling me what to do, so I went. Finny suggested a double jump and we started up the tree. Once we got onto the limb, I took a step towards him and jounced it. Finny lost his balance and looked at me for an instant with interest and then fell sideways.  He hit little branches as he fell and then finally he hit the bank with an unnatural thud. Without any fear, I jumped off the limb and into the river.