"MOCK" by Kim Juyeon

MOCK

Mr. Garrioch,
I just liked it how “mock” had two different meanings – insult and phoniness, two things Holden really hates. I really had great ideas and I thought it started out great until I finished writing it and found out that it was all crap. I hate myself so much.

 

 

So, how come you’ve come here?

“Well, I sort of... don’t know. It’s all too complicated. Too long to explain.”

 

The hell, sonny! Who’d know it if ya didn’t, boy? Your momma?       

 

People laughed, probably to taunt me. Phoniness even here. For Chrissake, I’d never thought that criminals would be phony. I thought criminals were supposed to be cool and all, and where’s the cool in that? Maybe they were members of a gang, that’s why. What a shame to all the gangs in the world. The boss probably wouldn’t have wanted his kids to rot in jail scoffing at a boy that had nothing to do with them. Or maybe he did. Maybe he did.

 

Hey, son, ya not answering me? You scared? Want me to call your momma?

 

More insult. I decided not to listen to them anymore and started to think about home, and Phoebe and Allie’s baseball glove, and D.B. working in Hollywood and all. I mean I know I could talk and listen and think about all that at the same time, but, you know it just isn’t worth the effort.

And I remembered that they were all goners. Allie, young Phoebe, and.. and the real writer D.B. – they were dead, and the rye field no longer were filled with running people I knew and I’d never be the catcher in the rye again.

It made me feel mad, and bad for myself all at the same time. I mean, it was like this love-and-hate relationship between me and myself that always comes up in Rihanna’s song. What am I doing here? Why am I here, in this crumby stinky sticky place with all these stupid stinky people thinking about stupid stinky relationships? And all of a sudden I felt so lonely. I felt like running out of the room, except for the fact that there were more than three times the people that are supposed to be in this small stinking room and my leg was touching someone else’s and someone else was holding my hand and – and someone else was holding my hand? No. What? Yes, someone was. I looked round and found a small girl right next to me, and she was holding my goddamn hand. Goddamn. A girl. How long has it been since I’ve last seen a girl, a small girl even? I felt weird, because this girl made me think of Phoebe. She wasn’t the least similar-looking to her, but strangely, something in her eye made me… kind of want to puke. Not in a bad way, I mean. But it sort of disturbed me in some queer way. I don’t know.

 

I wanted to go to the rye field.

 

And this girl, she looks at me again and I feel the need, the urge to ask her this question, the question that has never been answered:

“Hey, do you know where’d the ducks all go in New York City?”