For Phoebe ONLY

i

I'm finally at my new school, Johnson and Smith, and it's almost as phony as all those other schools. It's a little better, but not really. You probably want to know about all the stuff that has happened since I started coming here. If you're actually wondering about the stuff that happened before that, well, I'm not going to tell you. This isn't really an interesting story, but I just need to clear a few things up about Johnson and Smith and how I'm doing. D.B. and the doctors told me it would help if I wrote this stuff down. What they don't know is that I'm only really writing because Phoebe asked me to before I left.

She got all quiet while Mother was making sure my bags were packed correctly. That kind of thing kills me. I'm not a kid anymore, but she still insists on checking my bags. Anyway, Phoebe got real quiet and pulled me into the kitchen so Mother wouldn't hear. She had this notebook in her hands and she sort of held it out to me like an offering. I couldn't help but smile at her, although I knew by the look on her face that she was trying to be serious.

"Holden," she said, her voice was serious, too, "Holden, I want you to write down whatever you're thinking in here. Don't laugh. I heard Mom talking with the doctors about it, and I really think you should."

For chrissake, she was treating me like her child. I took the book to make her happy. I wasn't quite sure what to say to her, but I really wanted to make sure she was happy. "Sure, Phoeb, I'll write stuff here. You've gotta promise me one thing, though." She looked up at me; her eyes were really big. "You've gotta write me all the time." It wasn't a great request, but I couldn't help it. I wanted to hear from her.

Phoebe smiled up at me, just like she hadn't said anything before and we were just going out to breakfast. Boy, her eyes were getting really big. "I'm going to write my own journal, Holden, and when you come home, we can share them. So you've gotta write all the time."

So now I have this journal that I've gotta write for Phoebe.

ii

When I arrived at Johnson and Smith, everyone had already heard my story. Everyone was so goddam nervous around me. It was almost funny to watch the teachers try to engage me in their classes. They all said that they wanted to make sure I didn't fail, but it was pretty phony. My parents were paying a lot of money for me to go there; that's all those teachers really cared about.

I hate that, how people are always trying to get the most money out of a situation. It makes everyone into goddam selfish bastards. The world would be a lot less phony if we didn't need money; we could go back to trading goods. That's like this book we're reading for class. There's this guy who keeps on following bad things and trying to find out what they're about and he doesn't think that there is any good left in the world. But that's pretty annoying, too. I guess I don't know what to think about it.

Anyway, the teachers all wanted me to do well. They didn't really pay close attention to the other boys, just me. I had probably only been in the school for two hours and all of my teachers had spoken with me. There was this one man, Mr. Greene, and he was really like one of those doctors with his questions. He tried to be nice about it, like he was my friend and all, but I could tell he was just analyzing me. He even gave me a cup of tea. Tea. It killed me it was so phony. All of the teachers told me that if I would apply myself, they could help me get desirable grades in class.

To tell you the truth, I wasn't quite sure how to apply myself at school. Those goddam phony teachers are always talking and asking questions that have no real answer. And then, even if the questions do have answers, you are supposed to make up more phony stuff to make your answer your own answer and not everyone else's. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I just can't seem to make myself work at school.

I promised Phoebe that I would start to do better, I promised a lot of other people too, but those were just promises. I can't actually do it, now that I'm here. At first I thought maybe just trying to do well would be good enough, but I still couldn't get the grades. It's really depressing to spend hours doing a thousand math problems only to get them all wrong in the end. It makes you feel like a real crummy person. It really does. And no matter what I do, I can't seem to get it right.

iii

The principal had to call me to see him one day. I was just sitting in class, trying to understand the lecture, not that anyone can really understand something as phony as a lecture, and this kid I always see in the office came into the classroom. He stood there in the doorway until the whole class knew he was there because the teacher had to stop his lecture and all to stare at the kid. Anyway, the kid cleared his throat like someone who's about to say something really important. But he didn't say anything. Instead, he waited until the teacher walked right up to him and then gave him a slip of paper.

I'm not quite sure how, but that little piece of paper ended up on my desk, probably because it had my name on it. The instructions printed on it were almost as phony as that kid. The neat handwriting scrawled in perfect lines across the page, requesting that I visit Mr. Graber as soon as I could. But it wasn't a request. It killed me. It really did. How could the principal request something from me but send it down with a messenger? The whole class, not to mention the teacher, would be suspicious if I didn't go.

The hallways were very clean. I didn't like them much. It was a school for boys, for chrissake, you'd expect the halls to be dirty every now and then. But they were never dirty. They had janitors come out during the day and at night to clean; I'd seen them there when I had to visit Mr. Greene after class one day. I had a sudden urge to rip up the pass and throw it on the floor, at least, then, there would be something besides endless white tile.

I walked faster, not wanting to linger there, surrounded by white. It was too much like the hospital. I half-expected Nurse Krause to come out of one of the doors and say hello, like she always did. She didn't, of course. It was actually kind of depressing. I'd spent so much time there; I had kind of liked it. Most of the doctors had been phony, but not Nurse Krause. She was always real sweet to me, and when I asked her to play checkers with me, she would. Her game wasn't quite like Jane's, but it almost felt like I was little again.

Anyway, Mr. Graber's door always frightened me a little bit. It was large, and the handle had a little face carved into it. Phoebe would really get a kick out of it. She used to collect little statues of people that all had different faces. I think she still has them somewhere, probably in that box she keeps on the top shelf of her closet so Mother won't throw it away.

I like Mr. Graber's office, the walls were covered in pictures, and there is always a fire in his little fireplace. I remembered that Mr. Graber never sat in the big chair behind his desk when he was meeting with people; he preferred to sit on the couch next to them. I looked all around, but he wasn't anywhere. His coat wasn't even in the room. It's not like I really wanted to talk with Mr. Graber, but when he wasn't there, I got really depressed.

I left the room to go back to class, but walked slower this time. Boy, was I going to be in trouble if Mr. Graber showed up soon. I hadn't even left a note with him or anybody else. Not like it mattered very much. I would probably just get another slip of paper with the same phony handwriting on it asking me to come down and visit Mr. Graber again. Maybe he'd be here tomorrow.

iv

You wouldn't believe my roommate. His name is Richard West, but everyone calls him Tom. I asked him why on my first day, but he just smiled at me and walked away. He always does that, smiles and doesn't say anything. I've asked a few other people about it, but everyone shrugs it off and goes on with whatever they were doing. That's how they all are; they only talk to me if I talk first. It's pretty depressing to sit around alone all day.

Tom is pretty great, though, because he doesn't talk to anyone, really. So it doesn't feel so bad when he doesn't talk to me. I kind of wish that he would talk. Sitting around all day in that room when it's silent is depressing, too. All I can do is think about the crazy stuff from last year and sometimes it's like I haven't even moved on from it at all. I always think Ackley will come into the room to bother me or Stradlater will actually be the one to fall out of the top bunk to the floor in the morning. If Tom would just talk to me, maybe it would be easier, but he doesn't. At least we don't really have conversations.

There was this one day when we did talk. He wanted to know what happened to me for real, not just the phony stories that everyone had been told. I could tell he wasn't phony by the way he asked me. He said to me, "Hey, Holden, did you ever regret running away last year?" It wasn't fake at all. I was surprised by the question because I naturally expected him to be silent.

I didn't think too long on it. It kills me when you ask someone a question and then they take forever to come up with an answer when all you really wanted to know was yes or no. "Yes," I said simply. To tell you the truth, his question made me so uncomfortable that I wished he had stayed silent. I really did.

When I looked at him, he had this look on his face that I remember Allie had when he was worried about something. It made me achy all over. I cleared my throat a little bit, not like I wanted to say anything, but because it felt like I wouldn't be able to talk if I had to. Tom was looking at me real close now, it was like he was trying to pick something out of my brain through my face. It really was. I turned away from him. "It was a goddam stupid thing for me to do, flunking out of Pencey," I said, trying to break the silence.

Tom nodded his head a little, smiling again like he always did. "I bet your parents gave you a helluva time afterwards," was all he said.

He was being so friendly and I really wanted to tell him that, yes, I had gotten it bad from my parents; that I really didn't care what they thought; that it bothered me more when Phoebe scolded me for failing and when I thought about Allie, but I didn't say anything at all. I just nodded and went back to my work.

v

There was this girl, Sara Marie, who lived around Johnson and Smith. I saw her almost every Friday and sometimes on Saturday, too. I couldn't tell you how pretty she was, but she always wore those bows in her hair and they made her so cute that I could go crazy. I swear I could. We liked to go out and walk around town together, me and Sara with pretty bows in her hair.

We met one day while I was out running with Tom. She was just sitting on a bench in the park and when she saw us go by, she jumped up and called to Tom. I got real nervous at first, afraid that he would go off with her and I would have to go back to Johnson and Smith alone. Tom was smiling a lot more than normal when he saw her there. I should have noticed at first how much they looked alike, but the goddam sun was shining right in my eyes and I couldn't properly see Sara.

"Holden, this is my sister, Sara. She goes to the girls' prep school a few miles away." We shook hands and I got a good look at her for the first time. She was only a year or so younger than us and her hair was done up with little pink bows in it. I could barely believe how sweet she looked standing there in the sun.

We all went out to have lunch together. She seemed like a very nice girl, and Tom didn't seem to mind that I was flirting like an idiot around her, so I didn't stop. I offered to buy her a soda with her lunch, but she declined and only drank water. I like it when people only drink water, it makes the table seem like it's clearer. It's too hard to really talk over a cluttered table.

Anyway, after that day, Sara and I went out all the time. It was easier to talk to her than it had been with all the other girls. I kept on thinking of how I had been last year at the ice rink, and how D.B. had introduced me to some of the women that he knew in Hollywood whom I had been a complete idiot around. She smiled a lot, just like her brother, and I could not explain the way that I changed.