Page 63 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Someone nearby snickered.
"Whatever gave you that idea, Wiggin?" "You have a bunk in the front."
"I bunk in the front because I'm the best sharpshooter in Salamander Army, and because Bonzo is afraid I'll start a revolution if the toon leaders don't keep an eye on me. As if I could start anything with boys like these." She indicated the sullen-faced boys on the nearby bunks.
What was she trying to do, make it worse than it already was?
"Everybody's better than I am," Ender said, trying to dissociate himself from her contempt for the boys who would, after all, be his near bunkmates.
"I'm a girl," she said, "and you're a pissant of a six-year-old. We have so much in common, why don't we be friends?"
"I won't do your deskwork for you," he said.
In a moment she realized it was a joke. "Ha," she said. "It's all so military, when you're in the game. School isn't like it is for Launchies. Histories and strategy and tactics and buggers and math and stars, things you'll need as a pilot or a commander. You'll see."
"So you're my friend. Do I get a prize?" Ender asked. He was imitating her swaggering way of speaking, as if she cared about nothing.
"Bonzo isn't going to let you practice. He's going to make you take your desk to the battleroom and study. He's right, in a way-- he doesn't want a totally untrained little kid start screwing up his precision maneuvers." She lapsed into giria, the slangy talk that imitated the pidgin English of uneducated people. "Bonzo, he pre-cise. He so careful, he piss on a plate and never splash."
Ender grinned.
"The battleroom is open all the time. If you want, I'll take you in the off hours and show you some of the things I know, I'm not a great soldier, but I'm pretty good, and I sure know more than you."
"If you want," Ender said.
"Starting tomorrow morning after breakfast."