5. Allie's Baseball Mitt!

On Sunday, we always had steak for dinner. It was the weirdest steak you ever saw, it really was. We only had it because when our mothers came the day after, they usually ask, “What did you have last night for dinner?”God dam phoneys! It was always dried up so much you could barely cut it.

After dinner, me and some of the other lads went out and had a huge snowball fight in the carpark. (It was snowing you see). It really was fun. It really was. After that though, there was nothing to do, I mean everyone else had gone out somewhere or another. So me and another guy, Mal Brossard decided to go into town to see a movie. I hate movies, they are crumby. They really are. I asked if Ackley could come with us, I felt pretty mean on him being on his own all the time. Mal doesn’t see eye to eye with Ackley, but still he said O.K. to be nice and all.

When we got into town, Mal and Ackeley had already seen the god dam film. We decided to stay out for a while, grabbing a bit to eat and playing pinball.

It was good in town, but it started to get boring so we decided to go back to Pencey, but it was still early. Once we were back, Mal went off, leaving me with Ackley. The goddamn phoney sat on my bed squeezing his pimples and lying all over my god dam covers and pillows. He then began telling me about some girl he was supposed to have had sex with the previous summer. I mean he was shooting the bull and all. He had told me the same story about 20 billion times and all, and each time it was completely different! I hate liars, I really do!

Eventually, I got him to leave and started with Stradlater's composition he asked me to do whilst he went out, wearing my god dam jacket! He had told me to do something descriptive. Simple descriptions of a room or a house or something like that, but I couldn't think of anything to write about like that. I really couldn’t. I spotted my brothers (Allie) baseball mitt. I decided to write about it. There was loads to write about you see. You know, it wasn't an ordinary baseball mitt; Allie had written all over his mitt in green ink. He did it so he had something to read whilst nobody was batting!

Allie died 3 years ago of leukemia, he was 2 years younger than me but he was more intelligent than me. Boy he was clever! He was always so happy and had this amazing red hair that made him stick out like a sore thumb. He was such a nice kid. I remeber the night Allie died. I slept in the garage that night, just thinking about him. I broke all the windows with my bare hands. I really did. I just couldn’t live without him.
Anyway, once I finished Stradlater's composition, which only took about 30 minutes, I just stopped and looked out of my window, just staring,just silently staring, listening to Ackley snore his head off in his room.