Catcher, Caught Read online

  Catcher, Caught

  Previous Works By Sarah Collins Honenberger

  Waltzing Cowboys

  White Lies: A Tale of Babies, Vaccines, and Deception

  Catcher, Caught

  SARAH COLLINS HONENBERGER

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2010 Sarah Collins Honenberger

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  PUBLISHED BY AMAZON ENCORE

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  PRODUCED BY MELCHER MEDIA, INC.

  124 West 13th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  www.melcher.com

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:

  2010907475

  ISBN: 978-1-935597-10-0

  Cover design by Chris Sergio

  Author photo by SCH

  To my brothers, who were forever daring me

  to join them in their adventures

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  When I first met Holden Caulfield, I didn’t know I was dying. He’s way more cool than me, but I like how he tells what it’s like to be him. Straight out. Real. And even though his story is lots more exciting, I’m going to tell you mine anyway. It may be the last thing I do.

  So how’d I hook up with Holden? The Catcher in the Rye is required reading for tenth grade, along with a long list of other books, mostly ones I’ve never heard of. The Essex County library has four copies of Catcher. Worn edges, faded covers. Obviously lots more people than me have read it. The front’s what grabbed me. Plain maroon with little yellow letters, like it was no great shakes. And the way Holden writes, you can almost hear him thinking. It’s wild how clearly the dude’s voice sounds in my head.

  You have to excuse my skipping around. I don’t have a lot of practice at this kind of thing and I’m short on time. According to the doctors.

  Daniel Solstice Landon, that’s me, soon to be dust. My name’s from the Bible, though my parents would never credit that. They’re into the great cosmos, not God. That’s where the Solstice comes from, straight out of my parents’ hippie phase, a phase they’re still stuck in. Another thing they don’t admit. My opinion is they picked Daniel because they liked the idea of the little guy, the underdog. To tell the truth I found out what my name really means from a girl I wanted to date last year but was too chicken to ask. Cassie Jones. She said Daniel translates as “judged by God.” Tough standard.

  Being sick puts you right out there. Kind of like being the lead in the middle-school play when every little sixth-grade teenybopper stares at you in the caf and fights over the stool you used at lunch or insists on chewing the same kind of gum you do. Where we live in Virginia they still teach sixth through ninth in one school. According to Mom, educational theory says teenagers don’t settle down until tenth grade, so it’s better to keep the raging hormones all together. My take, they’re trying to wear you down. Four years with sixth graders hanging around you would wear anyone down. It’s definitely killed the teachers.

  Last winter, before we knew about the leukemia, I played Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. At the time I didn’t mind the attention so much. It was kind of flattering, even if the sixth-grade groupies tracked my every move. At least someone liked me. And I was lucky. I had only one song all by myself, I was the good guy, and I got to kiss Marissa Bennett. Counting practice and performances, twenty-two times. My big brother said to enjoy it, most ninth graders don’t kiss anyone no matter what they tell you.

  Aside from the kisses, being in the limelight is more complicated than you might think. The whole time I was kissing Marissa I didn’t realize that someday I would wish people didn’t know everything in the world about me. When you’re sick, everyone talks about you behind your back. They pass around all the gory details like they’d share M&M’s, but don’t kid yourself, it’s not the same as wanting to know you. They won’t even talk to you.

  That’s partly why I admire Holden. Everyone knows he’s been kicked out of that high-end prep school. The teachers, the headmaster, even his roommate, Stradlater, and the guys in the dorm, they all have an opinion on why he shouldn’t have let it happen. And they’re all hot to tell him what they think. Good old Holden just acts like he doesn’t care. Okay, sure, he blows them off partly because it’s not any of their goddamn business. They’re not people he respects. But mostly, I guess, because he’s already figured out where you go to high school doesn’t matter in the long run.

  No matter how much I try to convince myself to suck it up that everyone knows about me and The Disease, having leukemia is different. Dying is the long run. So it matters. There’s just nothing I can do about it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Daniel, front and center.” That’s my dad calling.

  It’s long past end-of-the-year report cards and I haven’t broken any rules this week, so I don’t have a clue why he’s in his regimental father mode.

  You gotta like my dad. He’s bearded, sandaled, right out of The Love Bug. Even when he’s seriously off base, he’s okay and you feel a little sorry for him. He lost six or seven of his “best buddies” in Vietnam. His entire life since then has been a shrine to the loss. He goes to every antiwar rally within a two-hundred-mile radius. On New Year’s Eve he calls their families to show he hasn’t forgotten them. And G.I. Joe toys and vehicles and paraphernalia were seriously off limits for us. We weren’t even allowed to play with our friends’ army toys. Although he avoided the draft because of a childhood injury to his eardrum, he announces regularly that he would have gone to Canada but for the 4-F. He tells it to anyone who’ll listen. “Hard of hearing before my time,” he always says, as if it were hysterically clever.

  Fathers, at least the fathers of my friends, are big into jokes. It’s like they’re cartoon versions of what a father should be. Even though they tell the same horrible shaggy dogs over and over, no one ever calls them on it because it’s what fathers do. It’s supposed to be endearing. The joke thing must occur like Immaculate Conception as soon as a man has his first kid. It doesn’t bother the fathers that no one else thinks the jokes are funny. It doesn’t bother them that the wives all say, “Oh, sweetie, not that one again.”

  Me and Mack Petriano and Leonard Yowell, whose father is a state senator and probably wears a three-piece suit to bed, all cringe in unison at the jokes our fathers tell. Even though their dads are straight and mine’s a held-over hippie, the jokes are all lame.

  The military lingo has gotta be a father thing too. Leonard’s dad is forever saying things like “battle stations” or “at ease.” It so fits Senator Yowell, he’s a star-studded ’Nam hero. But when
my dad talks like that, it always surprises me because he lobbies so hard against war. Any kind of war. Local school boards, gestapo-like anti-immigration tactics, Palestine, even sibling rivalry. He’s a certifiable pacifist. But as far as being an all-right, sincere kind of person, he is.

  He’s also a vegetarian. And recycling is his favorite pastime. We never use paper plates, even though it’s a big pain to wash things now that we’re living on a houseboat. Hot water’s sketchy and not enough water is typical. There’s more good about my dad than bad, though. He’ll watch any movie I want, and he refuses to wear a tie. Not at all like Antolini, that touchy-feely English teacher of Holden’s, with the silk bathrobe and the itchy hands. Holden could have stayed on Dad’s sleep sofa without a second thought.

  If you want to know the truth, until I got sick my life was boring. Truly and completely boring. You wouldn’t have kept on reading. School and summer, summer and school, mostly hot and more hot in our part of Virginia. Holden’s cab rides around New York sound exciting compared with my life. Even my little brother’s soccer schedule is more exciting. Seriously, I’m not into contact sports myself, but Nick’s definitely the star of the team, a brilliant sweeper at thirteen, just too nice to admit it. A zillion times a game he stops the other team cold. Anyone can see how much his team relies on him and how he lives to be that indispensable guy.

  My older brother is a first-year at UVA, with more girlfriends than anyone I know. As Holden would say, he’s Joe College to the umpteenth degree, too cool to hang with me much anymore.

  The thing is he’s a real Joe, short for Joseph Ides Landon. My parents stuck him, too, only Ides isn’t half as bad as Solstice. Plus, it’s way easier for people to believe Ides could be a real name, so he’s never embarrassed like I am. He’s not forced to make up some song and dance about Solstice being a family holdover from the old country, another freebie from Cassie Jones, who probably doesn’t even remember me or my stumbling discussion of the Harvest Dance that never quite made it to the level of an invitation.

  Just to round it out, in case you’re into names like Mom obviously was, Nick, a.k.a. Nicholas, means “victory of the people.” Mom’s basic life philosophy. I’m not sure why the third time around she chickened out on the middle name and opted for the only Virginia ancestor in the family, Marshall. But it fits Nick. Nicholas Marshall Landon sounds like a politician, huh? He’s definitely the one who’ll change the world. He’s got the name for it. And the energy.

  When Dad calls me, I’m in my bunk—right above Nick’s—in the front cabin of our houseboat. The houseboat is too cool. It’s like everyday and retro at the same time. My parents bought it two months ago, at a government auction. A knee-jerk reaction. They did it a week, maybe less, after the doctors told them I had The Disease. Joe dubbed the boat Nirvana. Because my parents pretended they got the joke, they didn’t object to it. They probably took it as a reference to Buddha. Whatever, it stuck. It’s the first big thing they’ve ever owned. According to them, cars—evil polluters, but necessary due to the unfortunate state of the world—don’t count.

  Way back, BK (before kids), when they were madly in love, they quit college to make hammocks. They lived on their own personal commune, as Mom calls it. When they get seriously maudlin about their youth, they tell stories about the great parties they had there and how they were all one with the earth before Joe came along. Before they had to leave to finish school and get real jobs. Somehow, despite those jobs, there was never enough money to buy a house.

  They don’t talk much about that part of it. Their version: ownership is kowtowing to capitalism. Supposedly being a tenant is more like being connected to the universe.

  Doesn’t it just drive you wild when people make up stuff like that to justify their own situation? I don’t mind it so much with my parents, because they don’t force their views on everyone like some parents who take soda away from their kids’ friends because the sugar will rot their teeth. That’s embarrassing. Plus, what makes them think one less can of soda is going to save the kid or teach him to change what he drinks?

  Anyway, since the commune, my parents have rented a series of houses. Some I can’t even remember. The one before the houseboat had faulty wiring, a good excuse for no television. And we were forever having to read by candlelight. My parents loved that. Back to nature. I warned you.

  The Disease changed their attitude about ownership. It changed their attitude about a lot of things. They’re convinced the houseboat keeps germs at bay. No biggie. It’s different.

  I’ve read Catcher a bunch of times—I even skimmed the Cliffs-Notes—trying to figure out whether I have it right. I like how Holden goes wherever he damn well pleases—the city, the hotel. He makes up his mind and just goes. That’s too awesome.

  Next week I’ll be in tenth grade—big move to Essex County High and all—and I’ve never been near a city bigger than Richmond. Because my parents embrace the back-to-nature thing in a huge way, cities are not places they take us if they can help it.

  When Holden considers running away, he’s already in New York, the city to top all cities. But something stops him from actually running. What is that? It can’t be fear. The guy has no fear. He talks with strange women and walks right up to the frigging hotel front desk. Amazing. Like I could ever just pick a city, plunk down my money, and go there all by myself? Order the taxi driver around and invite some stranger to dance in a bar?

  I keep asking myself, why does he do that stuff? Maybe because he wants to be the kind of person who can. Or maybe he’s fumbling around, trying to work through being forced to leave Pencey before he goes home. His sister Phoebe is waiting for him and he doesn’t want to let her down or have her think he lied to her. Especially since part of why he’s so hung up on home is his dead brother. No matter what it is, he’s definitely fed up with the phonies, and that’s why he works so hard to get straight who he is, really. With his parents and with himself.

  Although he doesn’t say it right out, he has to know he screwed up. It’s gotta be pretty obvious even to him. If he’d done his work, written the stupid papers, he wouldn’t have been expelled. The grown-up thing to do is to accept responsibility. Do it right the next time. Jeez, I sound like my father.

  But you know Holden understands all that because he doesn’t argue with the powers that be at school. In a way, his leaving so quietly is an admission. Not an admission that it’s his fault, but more that he didn’t fit in right from the start. Which brings me back to why didn’t he do the work? It’s not like he didn’t know what would happen. It happened to him at the schools before Pencey. So there has to be something else, something more. The business of trying to figure out where you belong.

  Down deep I think old HC knows something I need to know. I haven’t mentioned this to anyone. It’s a little weird when Catcher is required reading for next year and I finished it before it was even assigned. Joe says that’s okay, the book is one of a kind and better than anything they’ve given him to read in college so far. He even said we could talk about it when he comes home for Christmas vacation, like he really seriously cares about my take on it.

  The greatest thing about Holden is he says what he thinks, no BS. Like I wish I could talk. But I can’t think fast enough. I’m too busy worrying whether the other person will think I’m being stupid or phony. Holden makes it look so damn easy. He shrugs off the insults, takes it all in, when I would be ready to explode. He even listens politely to the adults trying to give him advice. Like the old professor who feels sorry for him. Spencer, I think his name is. And Antolini, who’s convinced his precious protégé is headed for trouble. Sure, Holden caves a little to avoid hurting their feelings, but he refuses to get sucked into their games. And he doesn’t let them talk him out of how he feels. The whole world would be easier to take if people were like Holden and admitted what they didn’t understand up front.

  As much as The Disease makes me think about things I never thought about before, it isn’t
all that clear to me why I do stuff and react like I do. Every time I think I know what I want or how I feel, something changes before I can get a handle on it. Most of the things I say and do are mysteries to me. Holden deals with stuff like this, but he gets it, really gets it. I need him.

  You would think with five people in my family I’d have someone to talk to. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Joe’s not here most of the time. Nick only knows full speed ahead. He doesn’t sit down long enough to listen. Plus what my brothers think and feel is not what I think and feel. They have their own crusades. People always do.

  It’s funny, because everyone outside your family always figures your family really understands you. Like it’s in the genes you share or the fact that you all breathe the same air inside your house. But if you wait for your family to stop their regular routine and ask what’s bothering you, you may never get a chance to talk about it.

  Grandma Sumner used to say, “Listen up, gypsies,” like we were a traveling horde, instead of just three boys. No matter that we were her only three grandchildren. I never minded it because I liked the feeling of us three moving together. Like, you know, the old-world stories of big clumps of gypsies in those weird painted caravans with the dinner pot hanging from the back, odd parrots and goats and so many kids you can’t tell who belongs where. Although it may look like chaos, they all move in the same direction, to the same tune. And they cover for each other. Like they know it’s a conspiracy, us guys against the rest of the world.