The Rehearsal

people.”
    Julia looks over at Isolde but she is still staring at the counselor in the same blank way. Julia wonders if it is an act. She tries to think what it would be like to be Isolde, coming home from school each day like an envoy from a forbidden place, stepping around her sister, watching her across the dinner table as she mashes her potato into a glum paste, walking past the closed door of her bedroom, still with its faded peeling stickers and strip of stolen security tape, passing her toweled and dripping in the hall. Julia imagines a pinched weeping mother and a father picking at his tie as if it’s strangling him. She imagines urgent phone calls and people shouting in whispers and a damp shifting silence. She imagines Isolde in the middle of it all, trying to watch television or polish her school shoes or pick through the funny parts of the newspaper, alone and insulated by a patch of dead air like a ship in the eye of a storm.
    Julia watches as Isolde examines her fingernails serenely and nibbles at a cuticle.
    “This terrible case of child abuse,” the counselor is saying, “is a classic case of how seduction can be wielded as a means of gaining control. In preying upon this girl Mr. Saladin destroyed her right to the ownership of her own body. He abused his position of power as a teacher. He wielded his position of power to gain control .”
    He has moved the lectern aside, and leans casually against a desk edge, one hand in his pocket balled into a fist so it stretches the fabric across his pelvis and tugs gently at the zipper of his fly. With his other hand he plucks at the air as if he is conducting a piece that is very modern and very moving.
    “My goal for today,” he says smoothly, “is to talk about the ways in which I can help you guys to learn to take control. Does anybody want to say anything before we kick off?”
    They all shake their heads and smile at him, shifting in their seats like roosting hens. Then Julia says, “I do.”
    Everyone except Isolde turns to look at her in a rustling swoop. Julia blinks calmly and says, “I don’t agree that Mr. Saladin wanted to gain control.”
    The counselor frowns and reaches up to tug a tuft of hair at the nape of his neck. “You don’t,” he says.
    “No, I don’t,” Julia says. “Gaining control isn’t the exciting part. Sleeping with a minor isn’t exciting because you get to boss them around. It’s exciting because you’re risking so much. And taking a risk is exciting because of the possibility that you might lose , not the possibility that you might win.”
    The girls look her up and down, and marvel with a collective disgusted fascination. Their expression is the expression of any popular girl who takes time to regard an unpopular girl while she is speaking. They watch Julia as if she is a carnival act: intriguing, but it might make you feel a little sick.
    “It’s like gambling,” Julia says, even louder. “If you make a bet that you’re almost positively certain you’re going to win, it’s not going to cost you much adrenaline. It’s not that exciting and it’s not that much fun. But if you make a bet where all the odds are against you and there’s just a tiny, tiny glimmer of a chance that you might make it, then you’re going to be pumping. There’s a higher possibility that you might lose. It’s the possibility you might lose that gets you excited.”
    The girls start to shift and mutter, but Julia’s gaze stays fixed on the counselor, her eyes shiny and narrowed and hard. The counselor is looking at his shoes.
    “The fact that Victoria was underage and virginal or whatever wasn’t exciting because he could exercise more power over her,” Julia says. “It was exciting because he stood to lose so much more if anyone found out.” Julia has a way of cocking her head to emphasize the shock value. “He wouldn’t just lose her,” she says. “He would lose everything.”
    There is a small pause and then another rustling swoop as all the girls turn back to look at the counselor. He looks up, tugs again at his tuft of hair, and sighs.
    “I think we’ve deviated from the point,” he says. “What we’re concerned with here is the power imbalance. We’re concerned with the fact that, as a teacher, Mr. Saladin abused his position of power by seeking out a relationship with a student.”
    “We’ve only deviated from your point to my point,” Julia snaps. “And anyway, isn’t every relationship a