"No brothers or sisters, huh?" he said, and I just kept looking down. Dal had told us about this part of it. It was an interview. Dal said it was so they could find stuff out about you and then use it against you. I just wanted it to end. I wanted this whole thing to end.
"How are your parents?" he said, and I looked up at him, not really knowing what he meant. How were they? I just looked at him, squinted my eyes a little.
"I mean, do you like living with them? Are things okay at home?"
"Yeah," I said, and slid my eyes to the side. Of course things weren't okay at home. My house was awful, the worst of all of us. I swallowed hard, wishing he'd get off this stupid subject.
"Do they ever hit you? Beat you?" he said.
"Yeah," I said, kind of wishing I had lied and said no. No, of course not, they'd never do that.
"How often?" he said, and he kept trying to make eye contact with me but I couldn't look at this guy. What did he care about this, anyway? This was just his job and to him I was a rotten kid, a criminal, I killed someone. The other kids in this place, most of them didn't do nothing like that. They probably stole stuff from stores and stole cars and maybe jumped people and they wrecked public property or they got caught drinking out in public. None of these kids was probably in here for such a serious thing like I did.
"Often enough," I said. And I thought maybe he was thinking, if he was one of those that thought this way, my bad upbringing lead me to do what I done. But I didn't think that was the case. I did it, not because my old man beat me or nothing like that, and not because I live on the poor side of town and not because of anything else but except that I did it. They were drowning Ponyboy and I just didn't know what else to do. I didn't mean to.
"Do you ever drink?" he said, and I glanced at him, happy that we were not gonna talk about my parents anymore.
"Sometimes," I said.
"How about smoking?" he said, and I kind of sighed. Smoking, drinking, getting beat. I didn't want to be talking to this guy much longer.
"Smoking? Yeah, I smoke,"
"How about school? Do you go to school?"
"Yeah,"
"What grade are you in?" He was still trying to get me to look at him. I was staring at these sneakers they gave to me. They were like tennis shoes or something.
"Tenth,"
"How do you do in school?" he said, and I sighed again. I hated this.
"Not that good," I said.
"Why not?" Jesus! I wish this guy would just quit! What does all this matter, anyway?
"Uh, I don't know. It's like I'm not that good at reading cause the words sometimes, the letters, they get jumbled up or something. So it takes me too long to read shi-stuff. Plus I miss a lot of school, I skip sometimes. I don't know. I'm just not good at it. I got held back last year and probably would have this year, too, since I ain't doing much better,"