(i managed to recover part of this after safari crashed on me >.< )

On Monday at school James discovers that Hollis Campbell does indeed wish to be better friends with him. The boys have all been sitting at the same desks for the entire year, lined up in alphabetical order so that Alexei Fokine, who says his father is an exiled Russian prince, and Hugo Gerlach, who is chubby and quiet but quite smart when he opens his mouth, are sitting between Hollis and James, and the boys are not really supposed to carry on conversations with each other during lessons anyway. So Hollis is restricted to recess and lunch for his attempts to start a friendship.

( Some of the boys live close enough to the school to go home for lunch )

words: 1740
total words: 20,216
quickie research: russian and dutch last names, ww1 training camps (mr o'donnell was at fort meade during the war)