I returned to Phoebe’s room and eventually got her to listen. I tried to explain why i failed my classes and told her all the things I hated about school. She accused me of hating everything. She challenged me to name one thing I liked. All of a sudden I I got preoccupied, thinking about the nuns I had met at breakfast and about James Castle, a boy I knew at Elkton ,who jumped out of a window to his death while being tormented by the others.
I finally told her that I liked Allie, and she ‘reminded’ me angrily, may I add that Allie is dead. She asked what I wanted to do with my life, and my only answer is to mention the lyric, “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” I imagine a gigantic field of rye on a cliff full of children playing. I want to stand at the edge of the cliff and catch the children when they come too close to falling off—to be “the catcher in the rye.” Phoebe points out that I misheard the words—the actual lyric, from the Robert Burns poem, “Coming Thro’ the Rye,” is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.”