Adaptation by Subin Lisa Joo

Introduction: In the book, Holden sneaks into his house to meet Phoebe. Holden shows affection for Phoebe, looking around the room for a while and then waking her up. In my version, the main character goes to the third floor of the Chungmu-building to see someone called Jay.  This is based on chapter 21, starting from page 157.

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     The best laugh I had in years, was when Sabum Chun started running after me when I climbed up the stairs leading to the side doors of the Chungmu-building. He had screamed at me to use the front door, but when I ignored him, he started to charge towards me like an enraged bull. Boy, was he upset. The last time I had seen him get so excited was when he discovered that I had been secretly letting my classmates get away with not coming to the morning exercise. Anyway, there he was, running at full speed towards me, hollering at me to get off that stairs now. Startled by the sight of his face, I sprinted up the stairs, slammed the door shut and locked it. Enraged shouting came, muffled through the metal door. I didn’t care one bit. He was a bloody phony, anyways. I hated him. He acted all nice and kind when other teachers were around, but when he was alone with the students, he enjoyed making sure that they knew that he was the superior. Besides, the only reason they started not letting us use the side doors was because they didn’t want to clean the stairs. The school is a real phony. Boy, I hate phonies.

     Anyway, I climbed up the rest of the stairs to the third floor all quiet as hell, and the motion sensor turned the lights on. Old Jay didn’t even wake up. He was asleep, slumped forward on the piano. With the light on and the sunlight streaming through the windows and all, I just looked at him for a while. His head was turned sideways, resting on his arms, which was pressing the keys of the piano. He had his mouth way open. It’s funny. You take other kids, they look lousy when they’re asleep and they have their mouths way open, but he didn’t. He can even be snoring and all and he would still look alright.

     I headed towards the piano, very quiet and all, and leaned over his slumped figure, careful not to touch anything. Jay had been practicing the Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt. He had written notes all over the sheet music, emphasizing this part and that, and had drawn little hearts around Liszt’s name. That… took me by surprise, but he was a somewhat strange kid, strange in a lovable way.

     I pulled over a chair and sat down next to the piano. Several books were placed on top of the instrument, mostly piano scores. The one on the top was called Episodes in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Euclidean Geometry. I looked at the front page but quickly gave up on trying to understand it. After staring blankly at the circles and lines and triangles on the pages for a few minutes, I decided to wake Jay up. I mean I couldn’t sit there on the chair for the rest of my life, and besides, I was afraid that Sabum Chun would barge in on me all of a sudden yelling about dirty stairs. So I woke him up.

     He wakes up very easily. I mean you don’t have to yell at him or anything. All you have to do, practically, is lean forwards and tap on the high-E flat key on the piano, and bingo, he’s awake.

     “E flat!” he said right away, shooting up from his position on the piano. And then he notices me. “Hey, whacha doing here?” He was confused as hell to see me. You could tell.

     “Nice to see you too,” I reply, “the piano needs to be tuned.”

     He wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, I know. The keep telling the school that, but they never do it.” And he’s right. What did I say? The school is phony as hell.