Chapter 7

After I took a shower, Brinker Hadley came in to visit. He said, "I can see you have a real influence around here. This big room all to yourself. I wish I knew how to manage things like you" (79), as he sat down. It did seem right for him to be congratulating me, but I like Brinker, almost everyone did. Then he said, "I bet you knew all the time Finny wouldn't be back this fall. That's why you picked him for a roommate, right" (79)? I quickly turned around and faced him. I said, "No, of course not. How could I do a thing like that in advance" (79)? He then said that I had fixed it. I turned around and started moving books pointlessly and my voice sounded too strained every time I spoke. He was accusing me, and then I told him the truth will out. I got up and suggested we went down to the Butt Room, which wasn't the best of ideas. Brinker made a joke to all the other boys that I "did away with my roommate". He was making me mad, but I decided to go along to make it look like all it was was a joke. After leaving, I head a boy say, "Funny, he came all the way down here and didn't even have a smoke" (83). After that no one seemed to track me, or do anything at all. Brinker started to write a few short poems about the war going on outside Devon. The snow had fallen early this winter, and the trains needed to be shoveled out. We would get paid just like on the farms, so everyone volunteered, but Leper. On my shortcut over to the train I saw Leper skiing, and he talked about how skiing is supposed to be admiring the forest and land around you. Shoveling has hard work, and war became a little more real to us when a train of soldiers came by. They were not much older than us and gave the impressing of being more elite. This inspired Brinker to enlist. When I opened my dorm door, there was Finny, and everything that happened that day had faded away.