The Catcher in the Rye

After the customary Saturday night steak dinner, which Holden presumes is so the parents who visit on Sundays will be impressed about what the students are eating, Holden and his friend Mal Broussard intend to head into town to see a movie. Holden asks if he can invite Ackley, and Mal begrudgingly agrees.

Back in his room, Holden waits for Ackley to get ready by opening a window and packing a snowball. He carries it with him until the bus driver makes him throw it out. Broussard and Ackley have both seen the movie, so instead the three of them eat hamburgers and play pinball for a while before heading back.

When they return, Ackley won’t leave Holden’s room, and he tells him an obvious lie about sleeping with a girl. Eventually, Holden uses the excuse of Stradlater’s composition to get Ackley to leave.

Holden writes about his brother Allie’s baseball mitt, which was covered in poems so Allie would have something to read in the outfield. Allie was Holden’s younger brother, and he died of leukemia a few years before the events of the novel. Holden was 13 when Allie died, and he remembers his brother as a kind, almost angelic figure.