Author's note: This is going to be used for an English project if I get a bunch of good reviews. Phoebe has always been my favorite character in The Catcher in the Rye. She's always so perceptive and just plain awesome. So here's chapter 22 (page 216-225 paper-back) after Holden came to visit her and she finds out that he's been expelled…again from her point of view:
Disclaimer: I do not own The Catcher in the Rye
Daddy is going to kill him.
That's all I could think about when Holden left. I absolutely could not believe that he'd gone and gotten himself kicked out of another school. It scared me, it did. I knew that Daddy would kill him. No matter what I said to him, though, I couldn't seem to make him understand how big a deal it was.
I laid there for a while, with the pillow over my head. Then it started to get kind of hard to breath. Not like I was suffocating, just having trouble breathing, so I took the pillow off. That's when Holden finally came back into my room. I didn't see him, though. I just heard him coming into the room. I didn't want to look at him. When you're mad at people, you don't always want to look at them.
"How's old Hazel Weatherfield?" he said. "You write any new stories about her? I got that one you sent me right in my suitcase. It's down at the station. It's very good." He was just trying to change the subject, but he didn't fool me.
"Daddy'll kill you," I said.
"No, he won't. The worse he'll do, he'll give me hell again, and then send me to that goddam military school. That's all he'll do to me. And in the first place, I won't even be around. I'll be away. I'll be- I'll probably be in Colorado on this ranch." There he goes again; talking all weird. Holden did a lot of stuff I didn't understand, but sometimes he did stuff that was just plain ridiculous.
"Don't make me laugh," I said. "You can't even ride a horse."
"Who can't? Sure I can. Certainly I can. They teach you in about two minutes." I still didn't want to look at him, so I began to pick at the tape on my arm where I'd gotten cut being pushed down the stairs in the park by that boy, Curtis Weintraub. Holden told me to stop picking at it, and then asked me who gave me my hair cut. He sounded like he didn't like it. Well, then, I just won't tell him. Instead, I said that it was none of his business.
"I suppose you failed every single subject again," I said, trying to get him back on topic a little.
"No, I didn't. I passed English." He said it like he was proud of it or something. Then for no reason at all, he pinch me on the rear. I tried to smack his hand away, but I missed. I was so mad at him for failing again. I was so mad he was going to get himself killed by Daddy. I was so mad that he just didn't seem to care.
"Oh, why did you do it?" I wailed.
"Oh, God, Phoebe, don't ask me. I'm so sick of everybody asking me that." He sounded kind of sad. "A million reasons why. It was one of the worst schools I ever went to. It was full of phonies. And mean guys. You never saw so many mean guys in your life. For instance, if you were having a bull session in somebody's room, and somebody wanted to come in, nobody'd let them in if they were some dopey, pimply guy. Everybody was always locking their door when somebody wanted to come in. and they had this goddam secret fraternity that I was too yellow not to join. There was this one pimply, boring guy, Robert Ackley, that wanted to get in. he kept trying to join, and they wouldn't let him. Just because he was boring and pimply. I don't even feel like talking about it. It was a stinking school. Take my word.
"Even the couple of nice teachers on the faculty, they were phonies, too. There was this one old guy, and all that stuff, and they were really pretty nice. But you should've seen him when the headmaster, old Thurmer, came in the history class and sat down in the back of the room. He was always coming in and sitting down in the back of the room for about a half an hour. He was supposed to be incognito or something. After a while, he'd be sitting back there and then he'd start interrupting what old Spencer was saying to crack a lot of corny jokes. Old Spencer'd practically kill himself chuckling and smiling and all, like as if Thurmer was a goddam prince or something."
"Don't swear so much," I interrupted. I hated it when he swore. It was just so depressing.
He went on like that for a while. He started talking about some guy who came to visit Pencey after he'd graduated a long time ago. When he came back, he went to the bathroom to see if the initials he'd carved from when he'd gone to Pencey were still there. Holden kept getting more and more depressed the further he got into his story. He said it was depressing that the guy kept giving him and his roommate phony advice about Pencey. He sounded so depressed and all, I couldn't stand it. I wish he'd be happier, then maybe he wouldn't hate all these schools, then maybe he wouldn't flunk out of them, then Daddy wouldn't kill him.
"God, Pheobe! I can't explain," he said, sounding all depressed and all. "I just didn't like anything that was happening at Pencey. I can't explain."
"You don't like anything that's happening," I murmured into the pillow.
"What?" he said. "Take your mouth away. I can't hear you with your mouth that way."
I repeated myself.
"Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do," he argued. "Don't say that. Why the hell do you say that?"
"Because you don't. You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things. You don't."
"I do! That's where you're wrong- that's exactly where you're wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that?" he said.
"Because you don't. Name one thing," I challenged.
"One thing? One thing I like?" he said. "Okay." He paused, like he was trying to concentrate. "One thing I like a lot you mean?"
I didn't answer right away. I did want to know what he liked a lot, but I would be shocked if he could find one thing he liked at all.
"C'mon, answer me," he said after I'd paused for too long. "One thing I like a lot, or one thing I just like?"
"You like a lot."
"Alright," he said. Then he got this far-off look, like he was remembering something. He didn't talk for a long time. He just sat there thinking, like it was so hard to come up with one thing you like a lot. I could come up with a million things. I like writing a lot. I like being in the play, but not a lot. I like Holden a lot. Holden just didn't like anything.
"You can't even think of one thing," I finally said.
"What?" he said, like he didn't hear me or something.
"You can't even think of one thing," I accused.
"Yes, I can. Yes, I can."
"Well, do it, then."
"I like Allie," he said. "And I like what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and-"
"Allie's dead- You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really-"
"I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake- especially if they were a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all."
I couldn't think of anything to say to that. Holden was strange, but sometimes he had a good point.
"Anyway, I like it now," he continued. "I mean right now. Sitting here with you and just chewing the fat and horsing-"
"That isn't anything really!" I said, getting frustrated.
"It is so something really! Certainly it is! Why the hell isn't it? People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it."
"Stop swearing." I said, and then I decided to take another route. "All right, name something else. Name something you'd like to be. Like a scientist. Or a lawyer or something."
"I couldn't be a scientist. I'm no good in science."
"Well, a lawyer- like Daddy and all."
"Lawyers are all right, I guess- but it doesn't appeal to me," he said. "I mean they're all right if they go around saving innocent gives' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was to be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporter and everybody, the way it is in dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't."
I didn't really get what he was talking about, but I was listening. I guess I really was just waiting for him to say something that I could understand. I really did want to know why he kept doing this to himself.
"Daddy's going to kill you. He's going to kill you," I said. It was the only think I could think to say.
He wasn't listening, though. "You know what I'd like to be? I mean if I had a goddam choice?"
"What? Stop swearing."
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like-"
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" I corrected. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns. I thought it was 'If a body catch a body'," he said. Then he continued. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids and nobody's around- nobody big, I mean- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
It took me awhile to understand what he was saying. After a while, though, I think I did. He was talking about saving kids from falling. I thought about him failing his classes, and about him sneaking into the house so late at night. He didn't want to see kids fall like he was falling. "But, Holden," I wanted to say. "Who's going to catch you?"
I didn't say that, though. I just said "Daddy's going to kill you," again.
"I don't give a damn if he does," he said. Then he got up, and I got a little scared then, thinking he was going to leave- going to go fall, but he said he was just going to make a phone call and he'd be back.
"Holden!" I called, right before he got to the door. "I'm taking belching lessons from this girl, Phyllis Margulies. Listen."
He did listen. Then he said, "Good." Then he left to go make that phone call.
It's going to be okay, Holden, I thought. I'll catch you.
So what'd you think? Good? Bad? Ugly? Send me a review and make me very, very happy . I'll take any sort of constructive criticism- just no flames please. Check my grammar and spelling too, please- remember it's an English assignment…