In My Room, Goddammit

If you really want to hear about it, the whole goddamn world could be going up in flames, and I’d still be in that crumby little room, sitting on the edge of my bed with the light off and my socks still on. It’s stupid, probably, but it’s the only place that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to hustle me.

I don’t even know when it started. Maybe after Allie died. Maybe even before that. All I know is, once I shut the door — really shut it, with that soft little click that nobody else seems to hear — it’s like I stop being Holden, the goddamn phony-calling, flunking-out screw-up, and just turn into this quiet kid who thinks too much and doesn’t tell anybody all that David Copperfield crap. I tell my secrets to the walls. Can you believe that? The walls.

They’re good listeners, though. Better than most people, anyway. They don’t interrupt you or try to fix you or anything phony like that. They just sit there and let you talk until your throat goes dry and your eyes get heavy.

Sometimes I lie on my back and make up these big, stupid plans about running away to some cabin in the woods where nobody knows me, and I can raise ducks or something. It sounds dopey, I know. But I do it anyway. That’s what I do in there — do my dreaming and my scheming. Say these quiet little prayers even though I don’t believe in it anymore.

It’s not always sad in there. I laugh at yesterday. Mostly at old memories — the really good ones that sneak up on you like ghosts. Stuff like Allie making up baseball poems, or Phoebe riding that damn carousel over and over. Those things feel brighter in the dark.

Anyway, now it’s night. It’s real dark out, and everything’s real quiet except for the little hum the radiator makes when it’s trying to heat up. Allie used to think the expression was peach dark. That killed me. I’m alone, but it’s the kind of alone that doesn’t hurt. I won’t be afraid.

I’m in my room but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

In my room.

In my room.