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I flunked that damn History exam. I was never good at History, but I gave it a go because Spencer was such a nice guy and all. I never even saw the point of History. It was just learning about a load of dead people who did things before we were even born. We should be learning about things happening at the moment, current events and all that.
We'd been doing about the Egyptians. They were a pretty weird bunch, wrapping up dead people and burying them with their possessions. I'd hate that. You'd just rot away eventually and everything would go to waste. When I go, I want to be cremated and scattered somewhere nice. I couldn't really get interested in the topic. It was all too boring and complicated.
Anyway, I'd only glanced through the textbook a couple of times during the whole term, so I already knew I was going to fail the exam. I was already flunking everything except English. One more fail probably wouldn't make much difference.
There were ten minutes left and I still hadn't finished the final essay on the Egyptians. I’d only written one paragraph. Brossard was sitting on my right, so I sneaked a look at his paper. He was scribbling away and had already covered two sides of paper. Everyone else was the same. Heads down, scribbling away. The room was dead silent except for the scratching of pencils. Boy, I sure wanted to get out of there. There was no point in me even doing the exam, seeing as I was gonna be leaving soon. And old Spencer was clearly going to flunk me. I didn't want him to feel too bad about flunking me, so in the last five minutes I wrote a little note at the bottom of the paper.
‘Dear Mr Spencer. That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, Holden Caulfield.’
That should do it, I thought to myself. Makes me sound all sincere, like I really tried my hardest. But in all honesty, I couldn't give a damn about the exam. I was sick of it all; the school, the teachers, and especially the people. They were all phonies. Boy, I can’t stand phonies. Anything fake really irritates me, which was another reason why I couldn't wait to get out of Pencey.
I glanced at the clock at the front of the classroom again. Still a few minutes left, but I had nothing to do. I thought about how my parents would feel when they found out about me flunking and getting kicked out of school. They’d be disappointed in me, of course, but they probably wouldn't be surprised. I could never stay in one place for long.
Finally old Spence cleared his throat and declared that the exam was finished. The room was filled with noise as we all scraped our chairs back and grabbed our bags, desperate to get out of there as soon as possible. My last exam at Pencey Prep, I thought to myself as I trudged out the door. I was one step closer to escaping.