The Truth by Chinua Achebe

In my opinion there were two parts to the truth that held Gene back from telling Finny that he thought he was his best friend, the first one was that he envied Finny, and because of that he didn't want to admit that Finny was his best friend. The second one was that Gene may have felt that Finny had so much control over him, and if he admit that he thought Finny was his best friend he could take further advantage of that. An example of how Finny had control over Gene was that he made Gene jump trees that he actually didn't want to twice, and this next example is one which Gene would probably feel angered by if he looked back on it, it's the text about how Finny proposes to go to the beach:
"Let's go to the beach."
Then Gene thought to himself: The beach was hours away by bicycle, forbidden, completely out of all bounds. Going there risked expulsion, destroyed all the studying I was going to do for an important test the next morning, blasted the reasonable amount of order I wanted to maintain in my life, and it also involved the kind of long, labored bicycle I hated.
Then suddenly after thinking all that Gene just says, "All right."