In this chap­ter, the nar­ra­tor reflects on the rou­tine Sat­ur­day night meals at Pencey Prep, where din­ner con­sist­ed of tough steak and lumpy mashed pota­toes, topped off with unap­pe­tiz­ing Brown Bet­ty for dessert. The meal, a sup­posed high­light for the stu­dents, was cyn­i­cal­ly under­stood as a means to impress vis­it­ing par­ents the fol­low­ing day. After din­ner, a snowy evening inspired a sense of youth­ful exu­ber­ance among the boys, prompt­ing snow­ball fights and child­like play­ful­ness.

The nar­ra­tor, lack­ing a date, planned an out­ing to Ager­stown with his friend Mal Brossard from the wrestling team to grab ham­burg­ers and catch a not-so-great movie. After some hes­i­ta­tion, they invit­ed Ack­ley, despite Mal’s reluc­tance, as the lat­ter often spent his Sat­ur­day nights alone and was per­ceived as annoy­ing. Ack­ley took his time get­ting ready, exem­pli­fy­ing his typ­i­cal behav­ior of over-ana­lyz­ing social sit­u­a­tions.

Once out­side, the nar­ra­tor attempt­ed to throw a snow­ball but lost inter­est in hit­ting any­thing. On the bus ride, the tri­o’s excur­sion only includ­ed ham­burg­ers and a bit of pin­ball, as both Brossard and Ack­ley had already seen the movie they had planned to watch. Upon return­ing to the dorm, Brossard sought to find a bridge game, while Ack­ley made him­self at home in the nar­ra­tor’s room despite his unwel­come pres­ence.

Ack­ley monop­o­lized the nar­ra­tor’s atten­tion with monot­o­nous sto­ries, par­tic­u­lar­ly about his less-than-cred­i­ble sex­u­al exploits, which the nar­ra­tor found tire­some and implau­si­ble. Even­tu­al­ly, the nar­ra­tor claimed he need­ed to write a com­po­si­tion for Strad­later to final­ly rid him­self of Ack­ley.

With some peace at last, he turned to writ­ing, ulti­mate­ly choos­ing to describe his late broth­er Allie’s base­ball mitt, which fea­tured poems penned in green ink. The poignant mem­o­ries of Allie came flood­ing back, por­tray­ing him as intel­li­gent and kind, con­trast­ing sharply with the nar­ra­tor’s cur­rent life full of frus­tra­tion. The chap­ter clos­es as the nar­ra­tor reflects on the dif­fi­cul­ty of his past and the lin­ger­ing pain from Allie’s death, as he con­nects emo­tion­al­ly while writ­ing about his cher­ished mem­o­ries asso­ci­at­ed with the mitt.