Lyrics:

On a hill with a view of the last place I enrolled in school.
Felt like the start of break on Wednesday would never come.
Chewed the fat with a teacher and a roommate who hated my paper about my brother and his scrawled-on baseball glove.
Then I left a bit early, hunting hat on so I wouldn't be hunted and all.

(Figured I'd head back home after one last shout through the halls of Pencey. I was cold and it was late that night when I got on the train. It really was. The club car wasn't even open. I sort of lied about my name to that kid's mother even though she was nice. I'm the most terrific liar. I really am. It's terrible.)

Get off at Penn, oh, who to call now?
Take a cab to the Edmont.
Driver, where do the ducks go each winter?
No answer, no surprise.
Hat off, room got, upstairs…
Through the windows, something weird.
And after afterhours, no one's paid to talk tonight.

In a room with a gut full of nerves and five more bucks now gone
Lost and a little confused, but I've still got time to waste.
Set a date that goes wrong up and then complain, trip skating on the ice where the fish remain.
Oh, why does nothing pure ever stay the same?
I think getting frozen in time like that ain't such a bad deal and all if you think about the statues in museums; they're strong without motion.

That could be my duty in life.
Catching, meeting, stopping bodies in the rye.
You won't fall while I'm here.
I've seen the bottom and though ice smashes records, it's better than the thaw that melts dreams.

I don't feel too gorgeous right now.
With no one else to turn to, I snuck home without a sound.
But I'm too yellow to stay forever and face what I can't handle so I sort of left again.

When I hit the streets, I fell off the edge.
I had tried to protect, but I broke down instead and solace would only reward me a bed, a sore old man's lecture and pat on the head.
I would do anything at all if I got to see Allie again and not feel alone the way I do.
I would do anything at all if I got to rid myself of the phony theatrics and asterisks lining life…

When I hit the streets, I fell off the edge.
Two decades early I'm New York's first Rat, though unlike the next one the poets had said a little but I didn't wind up dead.
Still I would do anything at all if I got to, got to get a bang for real for once out of something true.
I would do anything at all if I got to go out west and not speak or hear a shred of the world as it is and how it will stay despite me…

On the floor in the checkroom I saw the hat pop right out of the crowd, lugging a suitcase, I didn't understand.
"Say, don't you wanna go be a traitor?"
"No, not unless you stay until later."
Compromise and faith in the bond shared, we split at the street and yet our feet arrived at the same place again.

On a carousel in the driving cold December rain, looping instead of linear, I swear I saw the smile that reminded me what living might have meant not confined to the sentiments of superficial love and loss and spite.

And that day I won't forget for quite some time.
Got t.b. or something inside, but it won't stop me from thinking about all the people you miss when you move on.
All I know is I sort of went home and that I'm alive…
…and that kills me.