Writing in Holden's Narrative Voice

5th October 2021
Writing in Holden’s narrative voice
Chrissake. It was October, the time of the year when every grade was dragged to some lousy
school trip which was supposed to help us learn about teamwork and friendship or
something. But the school trips were not anything like that at all. It really wasn’t. For most
of the time, it would just be those phony ass jocks horsing around with the cheerleading
squad who seemed to not have much interest in them at all.
The grade eleven class were chosen to go camping at Watkin Glen State Park this year. It
was the most popular camping site among the private schools in New York. Now that says
something. That reminded me of when I was ten years old, this supposed friend of my mum
came over for tea and goddamn! You would not believe how much of a snob she was. She
was the mayor’s wife and I remember that only because she could not stop boasting about
it. Anyways, being the stuck-up snob that she was, she blabbered on about this park for a
good hour. She said that she wanted to spend quality family time or something, but she
refused to stay as the soil was inorganic. I mean, her whole family was a mess. The mayor
was recently exposed for his underground drug dealing on the newspaper and his son was
messed up. Like, real messed up. He had spent most of his childhood in rehab and had
serious anger issues but his parents gave the school a shit load of money to let him in. He
was actually sitting behind me in the bus and God! That annoying sonuvabitch. He was
strangling the crap out of the poor kid next to him and kept kicking my chair from the back
just to annoy me, which it did.
To distract myself away from his kicks, I looked around the bus to observe what everyone
else was doing. Sitting across the bus was Stradlater. Through the whole ride, that sexy
bastard did nothing but horse around with this girl from the cheerleading squad. She had
long, blonde locks that were being held together by a full bottle of hairspray which you
could smell from a mile away and compared to the other girls in the cheerleading squad, she
wasn’t very pretty. She had that unpleasant, phony smile, and she wasn’t as skinny as the
other girls from the squad. She also looked extremely dumb, and I think she was. She looked
at Stradlater with sparkles in her eyes which just screamed how much she loved him. And
boy, you could just see that narcissistic sonuvabitch smirking as he leaned in for a kiss.
Hell, I could not bear another second of watching that crap, so I grabbed my duffel bag
sitting next to me and took out my book to read. It was ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’
written by Thomas Hardy. D.B gave his copy to me before he left for Hollywood but I was
too upset then about him being prostituted to Hollywood and all to actually give it a read.
As I flipped opened the book, a blue letter slipped out and fell onto my lap. It had a
mahogany-coloured wax seal which was stamped with the stamps which we were each
given by our grandfather before he passed away six years ago. They were all one of a kind
and were custom made by some real professional so I could easily recognise all my siblings’.
Anyways, I tore open the letter to find two expired tickets for ‘The 39 steps’, Phoebe’s all-
time favourite, and a small note which wrote, “Tickets for your thirty-nineth time to watch
the movie!” I usually despised the idea of movies, but this was an exception and don’t ask
me why, it just was.
Looking forward to reading the book, I stashed the letter into my bag and adjusted my
glasses to read. Of course, I was damn cursed, so the bus suddenly halted right as I began
reading and everyone in the bus jolted back and forth. As my body slammed into the seat in
front of me, I heard a glass crack. I opened my eyes to find the right lens of my lousy reading
glasses cracked. Thankfully, it was still intact so I just stuffed them into my duffel bag and
lined up to get out of the old vomity bus.
As we all pushed each other out of the way to get out of the bus, we were all welcomed by
A bunch of big, muscly dudes with khaki attire and red fox orange kerchiefs stood in a
straight line, just like in the militaries, and belted out ‘Welcome’ in harmony with their
phony ass smiles. It was so obvious that underneath their wide, teethy smiles, they all did
not give a crap about us and were tired of their jobs. Boy, it depressed me.
As they continued to chatter on about safety and all, we all grabbed our bags and ran
around our small tenting area to claim our own places. I claimed a tent in the corner with
my duffel bags and I sat down on the chair right outside the tent for a smoke. Beside my
tent, some girl who I hadn’t seen before settled in her things and sat on her chair. She
looked at me and asked, “Hey, do you have an extra to be lit?” I wasn’t sure what to do so I
just handed her mine, which was definitely the dumbest thing I had ever done because
really, I had a whole box in my pocket. I observed her for a while as she took a smoke and
she didn’t mind. She had glowy, dark skin and long curly hair with highlights. She was weird
but definitely very cool. She wore this dark brown bomber jacket and flared black slacks
which contrasted to most girls’ casual frilly dresses and all. She wasn’t the conventional
pretty face but she was pretty in the sense that she had an extremely charming face. God, it
killed me. It really did. Maybe this trip won’t be too lousy after all.

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5th October 2021

Writing in Holden’s narrative voice

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