The Book Read Online Free PDF Page B

there it was. Or at least, there part of it was.
    He was right. The majority of the scene was missing from The Book. He felt the smart of betrayal and didn’t even understand why. There was nothing overtly graphic or politically insensitive or anti-establishment enough to cause alarm to anyone. It didn’t seem important enough to be censored. In fact, he had never heard of such censorship. Censorship itself was extinct. He had been raised in a censor-free environment. The only occasion in which things were removed from society was when they could cause actual damage.
    Or at least that was what he had been told.
    He looked down at the page and realized that if what he was reading was three pages prior to wherever it had originally been, then more than just the scene from the bar had been removed. If that was right, what had it been? A word on each page? A phrase? Perhaps it was something larger. Maybe an entire character had been removed. There was no telling. The truth was, The Catcher in the Rye had been altered and the only reason Holden even caught it was because he had known the story well enough to recognize the difference. The question that remained in his heart, as he knelt on the floor of his decaying apartment in the green glow of The Book, hung heavy in his chest and pulled him down toward the digital screen.
    What else had been altered?
     
     
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    A shrill noise squawked from the invoice pad as Marion stuffed it into the back of her pants before wiping the sleep from her eyes. As the men continued to unload the shipment from the truck, the sound of clinking beer bottles and the perfume of stale alcohol created a dissonance of sensory overload. They so grabbed her attention that she didn’t notice Holden walking up to the truck looking frantic and confused.
    “Hi, Hold. What happened to you last night?”
    “I need to know where these book pages came from. I…I nee…I need to know. I…you don’t understand. I read the entire book last night. I read the whole thing through because I just couldn’t believe…myself. I just couldn’t believe. So, I read it all the way through. And…I mean…I think I know it by heart enough to notice…if I had the whole book. So, I need to know where the rest of that book is.”
    “Hang on, tiger,” Marion responded in a soothing tone, “Why don’t you pick up one of these boxes and help me bring it inside.” Holden’s erratic breathing pulsed with the bobbing of his head as he bent to lift the case of beer and follow her into the darkened bar. She studied his irregular behavior and hollered back to the truck, “I’ll catch up with you guys in a minute.”
    Without warning, Holden ran straight to the bathroom. Marion couldn’t help but laugh. What she liked most about Holden was that he was a mystery she just couldn’t seem to solve. He was a different sort of man than she was accustomed to. She could never figure out what he was thinking. Although he was solid and predictable overall, there was a lingering question that always hung behind his eyes - a question she wanted to answer.
    Holden glided from the men’s bathroom with a torn scrap of paper and slammed it on the cold metal bar. It had come from the wall. Pieces of other books, torn and bent, bordered the single page. “Thanks for destroying my bar. Books don’t come too cheap these days. Oh wait, there aren’t any more books,” she spat sarcastically, reaching for the page. He swiped it back, blinking frantically. She dropped her hands to her sharply curved hips and bit her tongue. “What’s going on, wack jack? You’re acting crazy.”
    “I am going crazy,” he agreed, continuing to blink rapidly. “Do you have a copy of The Book…with you?”
    She shrugged absent mindedly and glanced down at the invoice pad the delivery guys were waiting for. “Um…somewhere. Why? I don’t really read, Holden.”
    “Listen. I have a feeling that something terrible is