The Rehearsal

saying you didn’t know,” he said. “About the sister.”
    “No,” Stanley said. He felt himself shrivel further. How stupid was he? He had never even asked this girl’s last name. He had never asked—about her family, about her life at home, about the house where she woke up and showered and ate breakfast and practiced her saxophone with the scruffy leaves of her sheet music around her on the floor: these were scenes he had never imagined. He had never imagined this girl beyond the time he had spent with her: she had simply been—what? A function of himself, maybe. She had simply presented a role for him to fill.
    The Head of Movement said, “But you did have a relationship with this young girl.” He enunciated carefully, placing a slight emphasis upon young , as if he were pressing his fingerprint upon the word.
    “Not… I mean… it wasn’t… she consented,” Stanley said. “Yes, we had a relationship.”
    “Until she’s sixteen, Stanley, her consent doesn’t count for much,” the Head of Movement said. He drew away and looked down his nose at Stanley as if he meant to wash his hands of the whole affair.
    “They can’t come,” Stanley said. “The parents. They can’t be there. They can’t know about it.”
    “No,” the Head of Movement said. “They can’t.”
    “What are we going to do?” Stanley asked. “Do we cancel?”
    “The play is not my responsibility,” the Head of Movement said. “The ticket sales are not my responsibility. This girl is not my responsibility. My job is only to let you know what you need to know. I don’t make people’s choices my business. I don’t want to know what you did with this girl. But if this is in any way damaging to the Institute—I’m compelled to act.”
    Stanley nodded dumbly.
    “Really, Stanley,” the Head of Movement said at last, for the first time expressing real exasperation at this pale and twitching victim seated before him in the small room. “I mean, how could you not know that somebody was watching you? For Christ’s sake. You must have been being bloody careless, if somebody was watching the whole time.”
    September
    “Stanley,” Isolde said, “do you want to go all the way with me? Some time?”
    Stanley ran his finger down her cheek. Deep inside he was irritated at her for even mentioning it, for giving the prospect a shape, a voice. It seemed indecent. He would have preferred to leave the act unmentioned until it was over. He would have preferred not to speak at all, to stop her mouth with his and tug at her cuffs and her waistband and unpeel her swiftly like a ripe fruit. Her question was logistical, organizing, reductive. He would not have asked it. He was a romantic.
    “Do you think we’re ready?” Stanley said, cunningly answering her question with a question, but looking at her with such a grave and contrite expression that she would be fooled into thinking he was truly engaging with the matter at hand.
    “Yeah,” Isolde said. She began to smile before she’d finished the word, and then he was smiling back at her and moving in to kiss her and laugh with her, laugh against her, his teeth against hers.
    “I do too,” Stanley said. “I think we’re ready.”
    “Do you want to?” Isolde said shyly.
    “Course I want to,” Stanley said. “I was only waiting until you were sure. I didn’t want to put any pressure on you. I wanted you to be the one to ask.”
    This wasn’t really true, but he was pleased with the way it sounded.
    October
    The Head of Movement’s office door was open, and Stanley didn’t knock. He padded up to the doorframe and lingered there for a moment before he began to speak.
    “I should have failed,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to say. I should have failed the Outing. I told someone outright that I was doing an acting exercise. I even told her I was doing Joe Pitt.”
    The Head of Movement looked up at him, the light from his desk-lamp drawing down the shadows around his eyes and his mouth. “Why?” he said, making no move to gesture Stanley inside, and so Stanley remained at the doorway with his hands tugging at the straps of his backpack, moving his weight from foot to foot.
    “Because otherwise she might have thought that Joe Pitt was really me,” Stanley said. “I didn’t want her to think that.”
    The Head of Movement sighed and rubbed his face with his hands.
    “Stanley,” he said, “why are you telling me this? You don’t want a failing grade on