The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier

Internet. I have a pen pal in Australia. He lives in Melbourne.”
    “Chat rooms on the Internet?”
    “There’s a teen chat room. But I only listen. Watch. I mean, I never say anything.”
    “Shy, right?”
    An inclination of the head. “I guess so.”
    “Spend a lot of time alone?”
    “Kind of. I have a little sister. Her name’s Emma. She’s a nice kid, smart.”
    “Friends?”
    “Not many. I guess I don’t make friends too easy.”
    Jason was impatient to get on with the questions about Monday, even though he didn’t think he had much to offer and would probably disappoint this Mr. Trent. He was also uncomfortable with these personal questions. What did they have to do with what he had seen or not seen that day? Maybe Mr. Trent was trying to find out how reliable he would be as a witness. The questions also made Jason realize how empty his life really was. The guys in the other rooms probably had a lot of things to tell—Jack O’Shea and Tim Connors could brag about the basketball games they won, for instance. What did he have to offer? An e-mail pen pal from Australia.
I read sometimes.
    “What kind of books do you like to read?” Mr. Trent asked, as if reading his mind.
    “All kinds. But I like mysteries. Horror stories. Stephen King. Science fiction.”
    “You don’t mind all that violence in those books? People killing each other?”
    “It’s only stories. They’re not real.”
    “How about movies and television? Do you like violent ones, too? Horror stuff?”
    Jason was puzzled. He liked horror stories but he wasn’t wild about them and somehow these questions made it sound like he was some kind of fanatic when it came to horror stuff.
    “I like other kinds of stories and movies, too. I mean, adventure. Like
Indiana Jones,
and
Star Wars
.”
    “They’re kind of violent, too, aren’t they?”
    “I don’t know.” He thought of them as cartoons, unrelated to anything in real life. “They’re unreal.”
    “You seem to be fascinated by things that are unreal,” Trent said.
    Do I? Jason wondered. He had never really thought about it.
    “Do you sometimes get confused between what’s real and unreal?”
    Jason squirmed, fidgeted, tried not to show his impatience and his growing uneasiness.
    “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
    He felt like he did in class when the teacher explained something that he didn’t understand, unable to process it in his mind. That was what was happening now with this real-unreal stuff.
    “I mean, are you always aware of what is real—what is happening to you at any given moment—or maybe what’s not real, but fantasy? Like a dream? Do you sometimes confuse a dream with what’s actually going on?”
    “No.” Emphatic. Why was he asking these questions?
    Trent wanted to move on. The boy’s attitude, his restlessness, his hands moving to his face, scratching at his arm, all indicated his innocence and his puzzlement. But his disposition toward violent movies and stories was now on the record for whatever use might be made of it later.
    Not wishing to make the boy uncomfortable, Trent changed tactics.
    “Now, let’s get down to the business about Monday, the day you worked on that puzzle with Alicia.” Avoiding the fact that that was the day of Alicia’s murder.
    Almost eagerly, Jason nodded.
    “Tell me about that day, Jason. Your activities in a general way, and then we can get down to specifics and I’ll help you remember what you think you don’t remember. Regard it as a kind of game, okay?”
    “Sure.” Relief in his voice.
    And Jason told him. How he spent the day, from the time he got up and ate breakfast and went to the Y with his mother, lunchtime, cheeseburgers, and the afternoon, visiting Alicia at her house and the jigsaw puzzle. Then home. Exactly what he had told the detective.
    Trent listened, his eyes and his ears alert to the boy’s voice, his postures and attitudes, taking note of the way the movement of his body either