That night in our room, even though I was worn out from all the exercise, I tried to catch up to
what had been happening in trigonometry.
“You work too hard,” Finny said, sitting opposite me at the table where we read. The study lamp
cast a round yellow pool between us. “You know all about History and English and French 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 a
speech on Graduation Day—in Latin or something boring like that probably—and be the boy
wonder 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 Sport Award, and
there were two or three other athletic prizes he was sure to get this year or next. If I was head of
the class on Graduation Day and made a speech and won the Ne Plus Ultra Scholastic
Achievement Citation, then we would both have come out on top, we would be even, that was
all. We would be even....
Was that it! My eyes snapped from the textbook toward him. Did he notice this sudden glance
shot across the pool of light? He didn’t seem to; he went on writing down his strange curlicue
notes about Thomas Hardy in Phineas Shorthand. Was that it! With his head bent over in the
lamplight I could discern a slight mound in his brow above the eyebrows, the faint bulge which
is usually believed to indicate mental power. Phineas would be the first to disclaim any great
mental power in himself. But what did go on in his mind? If I was the head of the class and won
that prize, then we would be even....
His head started to come up, and mine snapped down. I glared at the textbook. “Relax,” he said.
“Your brain’ll explode if you keep this up.”
“You don’t need to worry about me, Finny.”
“I’m not worried.”