The races end when Leslie keeps winning. At the end of the week, the fifth graders have their first music class with Miss Edmunds, who kindly asks to see some of Jess’s drawings. As the class sings, Jess feels convicted for rejecting Leslie. He turns and smiles at Leslie, realizing that this is the “beginning of a new season in his life” (41). After that moment, they become friends. On the bus home, Leslie tells Jess about her old school, which had a music room and gym, and where she had friends. Her parents are writers who moved to pursue a simpler life.

At school, Mrs. Myers reads Leslie’s essay about scuba diving to the class. The idea of being underwater terrifies Jess. When Mrs. Myers assigns watching a television program, Leslie asks what to do if you do not have a television. The class is shocked. Some of the girls tease and humiliate Leslie at recess. Later, when Leslie evades Jess and tries to sit in the back of the bus, he coaxes her to sit with him, teasing that there isn’t room in the back of the bus for both Leslie and Janice Avery, the school bully.