The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier Page A

there would be no response. Sarah Downes would not be calling back. Neither would the senator.
    His jaw began to ache, like an old enemy asserting its presence.
    “Don’t forget your appointment with the chief,” Effie said, sudden sympathy in her voice.
    She knew what awaited him at the meeting: a demotion not in rank but in everything else. Maybe the graveyard shift, midnight to eight. No more special privileges, no special time off for interrogations. There probably wouldn’t be any more calls for interrogations, anyway.
    The transcript lay there, waiting for him as he hung up the telephone. Waiting for him to open it again.
Trent Interview. Subject: Dorrant
. Jason Dorrant. Poor kid, but at least he was young, free, not caught and fixed in time, as if frozen in amber. Like so many others.
Like me.
    You are what you do, Lottie had said.
    But now I don’t do anything.
    T he nightmares stopped after a week or so and he wasn’t sure whether they really had been nightmares or just bad dreams. His father said nightmares were the kind where you dream that you’re awake and terrible things happen to you and there is no place to run to. Bad dreams were just that: dreams that were bad.
    Jason’s dreams were bad but he never could remember them, just the feeling they brought back when he woke up, the feeling that someone or
something
was chasing him and somehow he couldn’t run, his legs were frozen or, if not frozen, trying to walk in deep water. But nothing specific. And even that word
specific
scared him.
    But what really scared him was another feeling and this one was hard to describe, hard to even tell the doctor about, a feeling that he wasn’t really here in the world like other people, not able to connect, like he was out of context with the rest of the world, his house, his family.
    Specific
and
context:
words that terrified him because they brought back that small office and the man called Trent and what he said Jason did that he didn’t do.
    But he didn’t want to think about that.
    Didn’t want to think about that?
    No, he didn’t want to think about that.
    But knew he had to think about that.
    What he did. No, not what he did but what he
said
he did when he did not do it.
    Sometimes the pills helped, but he didn’t like to take them because they made a buzzing in his ears and didn’t take away that feeling that he wasn’t really
here
. Yes, of course he knew he was here, right here in the house or outside on the patio and next week at school but still not here, like nothing was real and he knew it wasn’t a dream.
    He did not like to be alone. He didn’t like it when nobody was around. Like now in the house, his father at work and his mother at the Y and Emma off somewhere. Sure you’ll be all right, Jason? his mother had asked, with that worried look on her face, the one expression she wore all the time these days. Sure, fine, he had said, because he didn’t want her to worry, didn’t want anybody to worry, he was the one who had done the terrible thing and he wanted to carry the guilt of what he did all by himself.
    But I didn’t do anything.
    Yes, I did.
    But he could never do what he said he did, what Mr. Trent got him to say.
    But how did Mr. Trent get him to say what he did when he didn’t do it? Could
never
do it, could never do something like that. Never.
    Never?
    But if you said you did it, maybe you
could
do it, maybe you could do something terrible like that. Maybe deep inside in that secret place of yours you really knew that you could do it.
    But how could I do it?
    Not how but why.
    Okay, how and why would I do it, then?
    Look, you already said you could do it, that you did it to little Alicia, when you could never do anything like that to her. But what about someone you
could
do it to?
    Like who?
    Like, oh, maybe Bobo Kelton.
    Yes, Bobo Kelton.
    See, you already said you could do something like that so why not really do it then, show them that you could do it, that what you said in