SUZY
1
We were so completely shocked, Samantha and I were, when we saw the TV pictures of our friend Jerry shooting the policeman in the head. And the graphic way they showed it all in close up and in slow motion, and over and over and over again. It was quite disgusting the way the policeman’s head exploded like that. And the way they killed Jerry, it broke our hearts.
We loved Jerry. He was like our little brother. He was so cute. He loved to visit and hang out. He was always so quiet and shy, and reserved. We really thought that his shooting of the policeman was totally out of character.
I thought I noticed quite a change in him after he read my copy of Catcher in the Rye. I wasn’t surprised though. Everybody gets changed in some way. They get affected. But everybody gets changed differently. Everybody I know, that has read Catcher, had got a different take on it from the take I got. But they were all affected by it, charged up. The book has a power that is undeniable, but at the same time mysterious. It’s impossible for me to put my finger on it, on the precise thing that actually does it, does the transformation in the reader. But there is no doubting that it is hugely powerful. With Jerry, for example, he went out and bought a Holden Caulfield cap almost immediately after he finished the book. Not long after that, he started getting into trouble at school. I’m pretty sure that Catcher in the Rye was the catalyst for Jerry’s newfound rebellion, because that is what it does to people, it finds their voice for them, and they start to resist.
There can be no denying that Samantha and I found Jerry very attractive. How we wished that he had been a couple of years older. We could see that he was going to grow up into a totally knockout-gorgeous young Adonis. We used to have sexual fantasies about him at night when he wasn’t there. God, we got worked up. Anyway, we made a decision. We decided that for his seventeenth birthday we were going to, both of us together, pop his cherry. I can’t tell you how disappointed we were that we never got the chance.
Jerry’s death ripped our hearts out. The funeral really finished the job, though. Those black limos that rolled up and the seriously scary Mafia types that got out of them really blew our minds. I whispered to Samantha,
‘Who was Jerry mixed up with anyway?’
She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. And the way Phoebe arrived looking so gorgeous and everything. I must have started hallucinating with grief because I was seeing everything in black and white except for that young angel. The way she came, did her thing and left, was soooo cool.
All in all, I just wanted to say how much we loved Jerry, how much we loved having him around, and how much we miss him now. He will always have a place in our hearts.
…….