A Separate Peace by John Knowles

I . . .” I only had to add, “pushed him out of the tree” and the chain of implausibility would be complete, “then I . . .” just those few words and perhaps this dungeon nightmare would end.
    But I could feel my throat closing on them; I could never say them, never.
    I swung on the younger boy. “What did I do then?” I demanded. “I’ll bet you’ve got a lot of theories. Come on, reconstruct the crime. There we were at the tree. Then what happened, Sherlock Holmes?”
    His eyes swung guiltily back and forth. “Then you just pushed him off, I’ll bet.”
    â€œLousy bet,” I said offhandedly, falling into a chair as though losing interest in the game. “You lose. I guess you’re Dr. Watson, after all.”
    They laughed at him a little, and he squirmed and looked guiltier than ever. He had a very weak foothold among the Butt Room crowd, and I had pretty well pushed him off it. His glance flickered out at me from his defeat, and I saw to my surprise that I had, by making a little fun of him, brought upon myself his unmixed hatred. For my escape this was a price I was willing to pay.
    â€œFrench, French,” I exclaimed. “Enough of this contretemps. I’ve got to study my French.” And I went out.
    Going up the stairs I heard a voice from the Butt Room say, “Funny, he came all the way down here and didn’t even have a smoke.”
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    But this was a clue they soon seemed to forget. I detected no Sherlock Holmes among them, nor even a Dr. Watson. No one showed any interest in tracking me, no one pried, no one insinuated. The daily lists of appointments lengthened with the rays of the receding autumn sun until the summer, the opening day, even yesterday became by the middle of October something gotten out of the way and forgotten, because tomorrow bristled with so much to do.
    In addition to classes and sports and clubs, there wasthe war. Brinker Hadley could compose his Shortest War Poem Ever Written
    The War
    Is a bore
    if he wanted to, but all of us had to take stronger action than that. First there was the local apple crop, threatening to rot because the harvesters had all gone into the army or war factories. We spent several shining days picking them and were paid in cash for it. Brinker was inspired to write his Apple Ode
    Our chore
    Is the core
    of the war
    and the novelty and money of these days excited us. Life at Devon was revealed as still very close to the ways of peace; the war was at worst only a bore, as Brinker said, no more taxing to us than a day spent at harvesting in an apple orchard.
    Not long afterward, early even for New Hampshire, snow came. It came theatrically, late one afternoon; I looked up from my desk and saw that suddenly there were big flakes twirling down into the quadrangle, settling on the carefully pruned shrubbery bordering the crosswalks, the three elms still holding many of their leaves, the still-green lawns. They gathered there thicker by the minute, like noiseless invaders conquering because they took possession so gently. I watched them whirl past my window—don’t take this seriously, the playful way they fell seemed to imply, this little show, this harmless trick.
    It seemed to be true. The school was thinly blanketedthat night, but the next morning, a bright, almost balmy day, every flake disappeared. The following weekend, however, it snowed again, then two days later much harder, and by the end of that week the ground had been clamped under snow for the winter.
    In the same way the war, beginning almost humorously with announcements about maids and days spent at apple-picking, commenced its invasion of the school. The early snow was commandeered as its advance guard.
    Leper Lepellier didn’t suspect this. It was not in fact evident to anyone at first. But Leper stands out for me as the person who was most often and most