On a flight, a stewardess watches a man who turns out to be Ben Hanscom. He is drunk but polite. He tells her that one summer he built a dam with his friends. They were making a mess of it and he was able to show them how to do it efficiently. He falls asleep and dreams of school bells, beginning a memory.

Ben is in a fifth-grade class, watching Bev Marsh. Bev is poor and lives in a bad part of town, but Ben thinks she is the prettiest girl in school. He can’t tell her because “he thought that fat boys were probably only allowed to love pretty girls inside” (170). On the final day of school, Mrs. Douglas calls the children one by one to come up and take their report cards. When Ben walks up, Henry Bowers mocks him. Henry is probably getting held back this year, and Ben is worried because he refused to let Henry copy from his schoolwork. Henry had promised that he would get him if he got held back.

Outside, Belch Huggins and Victor Criss—Henry’s henchmen—bump into Ben and laugh but do no more for the moment.