In Chap­ter Twen­ty of “If These Wings Could Fly,” the excite­ment of a crowd­ed foot­ball sta­di­um envelops the char­ac­ters, specif­i­cal­ly focus­ing on Leighton, Juniper, and their par­ents. Arriv­ing late, the fam­i­ly parks along the road due to the packed lot and makes their way to the game. Juniper eager­ly begs for fun­nel cakes, and after Mom grants her wish for just one treat, they find a spot to watch the game from the side­lines.

Sofia, a cheer­leader, notices Leighton and rush­es over, excit­ed to see her. They exchange pleas­antries, and Sofia asks Leighton for help track­ing play­er num­ber thir­ty-six, Liam McNa­ma­ra, whom she is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in. Leighton agrees but is inward­ly annoyed at being roped into cov­er­ing the game. As the game pro­gress­es, Leighton encoun­ters Campell, who joins her to help track Liam.

Fol­low­ing a few moments togeth­er, they part as Leighton makes her way up into the stands. From there, she spots Amelia, who warm­ly wel­comes her to join. The two share the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing the game, with Amelia cheer­ful­ly root­ing for Liam. Leighton finds her­self caught up in the thrill, feel­ing a rush when Liam scores a touch­down. Around them, the McNa­ma­ra fam­i­ly cheers for Liam, high­light­ing the impor­tance of famil­ial sup­port.

Sud­den­ly, the atmos­phere changes when Leighton notices her par­ents engaged in a tense con­ver­sa­tion with Mr. Dil­lard, which hints at under­ly­ing fam­i­ly issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing her father’s strug­gles with his con­struc­tion busi­ness and past regrets about foot­ball. The dynam­ic proves uncom­fort­able, espe­cial­ly as com­ments about her father’s knee injury sur­face.

Just as the ten­sion becomes pal­pa­ble, Bill DiMar­co, an acquain­tance of the fam­i­ly, arrives to break the ice. His pres­ence tem­porar­i­ly alle­vi­ates the strain, but the dis­com­fort remains large­ly unad­dressed. Mom’s efforts to steer the fam­i­ly away from the con­ver­sa­tion only trig­ger fur­ther anx­i­ety in Leighton. The chap­ter ulti­mate­ly cap­tures the con­trast between pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion and pri­vate tur­moil, as the fam­i­ly nav­i­gates the com­plex­i­ties of their rela­tion­ships against the back­drop of a live­ly foot­ball game.

In Chap­ter Twen­ty of “The Choco­late War,” the chaos in Broth­er Jacques’ U.S. His­to­ry class serves as a demon­stra­tion of the pow­er dynam­ics at Trin­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­trolled by The Vig­ils, a group of stu­dents led by Archie. The chap­ter opens with the abrupt onset of pan­de­mo­ni­um as Obie and his class­mates respond to a sig­nal orches­trat­ed by Archie: when­ev­er Broth­er Jacques men­tions the word “envi­ron­ment,” the stu­dents erupt into a ridicu­lous dis­play of ener­gy, jump­ing up and down in silence.

Broth­er Jacques, a young and inex­pe­ri­enced teacher, is clear­ly unset­tled by this absurd behav­ior, which has been occur­ring for more than a week. He does not inter­vene, per­haps believ­ing it to be mere­ly a prank that will run its course. Mean­while, Obie reflects on the absur­di­ty of the situation—everyone knows the stunts are the result of Archie’s manip­u­la­tions, yet they choose to pre­tend igno­rance. Obie feels drained and frus­trat­ed, caught between his role with­in The Vig­ils and his dis­dain for Archie’s antics.

Archie, see­ing the broad­er con­text of envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, engages his class­mates in this far­ci­cal cam­paign against Broth­er Jacques. Dur­ing an assign­ment dis­closed by Archie, the objec­tive is to reduce the teacher’s vocab­u­lary by mak­ing the class mock him every time he uses “envi­ron­ment.” Despite his reluc­tance, Obie plays along, know­ing he will be tasked with prod­ding Broth­er Jacques into men­tion­ing the word. The entire stunt becomes a source of frus­tra­tion for Obie, as he grows increas­ing­ly tired of han­dling Archie’s whims and ensur­ing the pranks unfold as planned.

How­ev­er, as the chap­ter pro­gress­es, Broth­er Jacques unex­pect­ed­ly gains the upper hand by turn­ing the stu­dents’ mock­ery back on them after he’s tipped off about the sit­u­a­tion. As he now encour­ages the class to jump to the word, Obie real­izes he is no longer part of the intend­ed joke. Anger and embar­rass­ment surge through him as he leaves the class­room, vow­ing revenge against Archie, who stands smirk­ing out­side, com­plete­ly unfazed by the chaos he has orches­trat­ed. This chap­ter high­lights the instal­la­tion of author­i­ty and resis­tance, show­cas­ing the strug­gle between the stu­dents’ rebel­lion and the teach­ers’ respons­es in the micro­cosm of Trin­i­ty’s edu­ca­tion­al envi­ron­ment.