Secret Diary, Entry Number 5

Waking up in the infirmary with a shattered left leg was not what I had planned. I was shocked to be honest. I was so young, I was invincible, I hadn’t even hit the age where I was ready to be drafted in to the war yet so I thought I was untouchable and then this happened to me. I took it all alright though, I accepted it and took it like the man I almost was.
I told my doctor that I wanted to see Gene. Then, one morning, Gene walked in, he looked horrible. He looked destroyed by all this emotionally and to be honest he probably looked worst than I did. He was a good friend.

Secret Diary, Entry Number 4

Today I found out that Gene’s goal is to be the valid Victorian of our class. I really don’t want Gene to be smarter than me, if he is much smarter than me then he might not want to hang out with me anymore or do stuff like go to the beach. So I really, really don’t want Gene to be smarter than me. I told him that while we were at the beach. I am not really sure how he responded to this whether he understood or not but I know that he is competitive in school as I am on the playing field. When we got back to campus however Gene stopped hanging out with me as much and spent much more time studying for his exams then being out having fun. One night I came to him while he was studying and asked if he wanted to go to our meeting for the Super Suicide Society. It took some pushing but I got him to go. When we got there I wanted to jump side by side with Gene. I told him when we got there " Let's go, you and me," "We'll go together, a double jump! Neat, eh?" I think it’s a symbol of our friendship; friends jump into things together so Gene and I should jump off the limb together. When we got up there I walked out on the branch a little. We were high up and Gene was right behind me. Suddenly I lost my balance and I turned around and saw Gene who looked shocked. Then I plummeted down and hit the bank.

Secret Diary, Entry Number 3

Last night I had to grab Gene to save him from falling off the branch. He blamed me for it because it was my fault that he was up in the tree and needed to be saved in the first place. It’s whatever though; I understand that he was afraid of almost falling out of the tree.  He could have died if he fell the wrong way. Gene is still my best friend, or at least he is to me. We always play sports together and he is a pretty good athlete who can almost compete with me, not to brag or anything. I think I should always win in sports; there is no bad aspect to sports. The only thing that makes some sports inferior to others is that there isn’t enough action in them like in badminton. We were supposed to be playing badminton one afternoon with everybody else but I didn’t want to play it because that game bores me. I brought Gene and a few of my other friends aside and I started a new sport. We were choosing between some names for our new game when I said “Or just blitzball,” “Yes, blitzball.” And the name stuck. It was a very physical game and I made up rules as we played to make it better. I was really good at it and if there was a winner I think I would have been it.
The next morning Gene and I went over to the pool. It was empty and there was nobody around and I noticed a swim record posted that hadn’t been beaten for years that I thought I could beat even though I wasn’t a swimmer. So, I had Gene time me and I beat it, he seemed excited about it but I wanted to keep quiet about it because I wasn’t even a swimmer and I beat a record that hadn’t been beat in years. That would have been insulting to the swimmers no doubt in my mind. I decided it was time Gene and I left campus and went to the beach. When we got to the beach I told Gene he was my best friend and we talked for awhile about school and our future; it was a solid night. We fell asleep on the beach that night knowing we had to wake up early for the bike ride back to campus the next day.

Secret Diary, Entry Number 2

Last night was great, I had a new friend named Gene who would go with me and have my back with everything I did, he was chill. It's the following morning now and Mr. Prud'homme stopped by our door to question about our absence from dinner the previous evening. To avoid him getting angry at us, I started talking by saying "We had been swimming in the river," as convincingly as I could about how we had missed dinner because we had to jump from that tree and then there was my wrestling match with Gene and so on. Later on in the day I decided I’d mix things up a bit. I wore a pink shirt as an emblem and told people how it was an emblem. I got away with it; I guess I’m very good at talking my way out of trouble. Shortly afterwards at dinner, I got caught wearing my school tie as a belt which would probably be found very disrespectful. Mr. Patch-Withers’s mouth dropped when he saw it, however once again, I was able to talk my way out of any trouble. Gene looked shocked too. I’m not sure if it is because of my belt or because I once again avoided trouble.
All this time the war has been going on and just the other day we found out that the first allied bombs have been dropped. My opinion on the matter is that we should keep bombing them but not innocent people.

Secret Diary, Entry Number 1

Back to Devon School for the summer session, it's 1942 and everybody here is getting ready for the war, right now I'm trying not to believe that the war is happening. I don't want to worry about it. I'm looking forward to playing sports and making some new friends, just want to have a good time. I spent the day hanging out with my friend Gene, he is pretty chill. We went over to a tree by the river that we believe the upper classmen jump for to get ready for the war and what they will have to do. I climbed up and jumped into the river safely, then Gene climbed up and jumped in, everybody else thought his jump was better but it wasn't a competition and none of them had jumped in yet anyways so they couldn't talk. I told Leper, "don't start awarding prizes until you've passed the course. The tree is waiting." and that seemed to shut him up. Anyways, I’m glad Gene jumped because I gained a lot more respect for him, I am glad to have him as my roommate. Since me and Gene were the only ones who were brave enough to jump in from the tree I knew he was a good friend too. We got called to dinner soon after that and Leper, Chet, and Bobby ran for the dining hall but Gene and me stayed behind and wrestled. It was a good day. We decided to go back to our room for the night. It had been a great summer day.