The Rehearsal

amused.”
    “Good,” said the Head of Acting abruptly. “Tell us why you want to be an actor.”
    “I want to be seen,” said Stanley. “I don’t really have a bigger answer than that. I just want to be seen.”
    “Why?” said the Head of Acting, his fountain pen hovering above the page.
    Stanley said, “Because if somebody’s watching, you know you’re worth something.”

FIVE
    Monday
    “Thanks all for coming in, people,” the counselor is saying as Isolde walks in. He raises his palms like he is a politician or a priest. “I’d really like to build on some of the issues that we raised in our last session. I thought that today we could talk about taking control.”
    The room is almost full. Isolde looks around for a seat, nodding tersely at a few of her sister’s friends who look at her with sad round eyes as if they are imagining themselves in her shoes and feeling very sorry for themselves indeed. Isolde scowls. She slips into a chair and tries to scrunch down as low as possible. The counselor smiles at her, a horrible rubbery proud smile that makes Isolde’s skin creep, and she quickly looks away, down at her fingernails and the worn tatty cuffs of her school jersey. She suffers being questioned and patted and caressed by the girl sitting behind her, a stout motherly figure who was Victoria’s tennis partner in intermediate school and once shared a paper bag of sweets with Isolde under the trees at the end of the lawn.
    The girl settles back into her chair like a fat tufted hen, and Isolde can hear her say to the girl sitting next to her, “They’re keeping her in the dark I reckon. Makes sense.”
    “Who can tell me what the issue is here?” the counselor is saying, spreading his arms to include them all. “It starts with B,” he adds, silencing the girls who are about to volunteer possible answers that do not start with B. The girls lean back and think of all the B words they have heard the counselor use.
    “ Boundaries ,” the counselor croons at last, and there is a collective exhalation. “Boundaries, people.”
    Isolde sits very still and gives nothing away, folding into herself and glassing over as if she is pushing her face into a mask. Vultures, she thinks to herself, using her mother’s word. Her mother had said it when she saw the contented headlines in the morning paper. Vultures, she said, and then swooped down and ripped off the front page, but ineffectually so the column headline was vertically halved and the piece that remained read Teacher Sex . Vultures, Isolde thinks now, as the whispers eddy around her and the counselor smiles his plump greasy smile.
    The counselor is saying, “Maybe you might let this sort of thing happen because you just don’t know how else to respond.”
    Isolde sighs and wishes she were dead.
    “Why do I have to go?” she asked her mother last night, slapping the pink form down next to the chopped onions and the flour. “It’s seventh formers and music students and then me . I’ll be the only fifth former there and everyone will know and it’s humiliating . They all pity me and I hate it.”
    Isolde’s mother chewed at her lip in the way she did when she knew she was out of her depth.
    “I suppose you could refuse to go, honey,” she said distractedly, “but it might end up seeming like you were taking a stand. You might draw attention to yourself, and that might not be what you want. It might be better for you to just go along and put your head down. I’m not sure. You decide.” She smiled in a vague but encouraging way. “Poor lamb,” was the last thing she said before turning back to the onions, her disinterest settling over her daughter like a damp chemical mist over a household fire.
    Isolde snatched back the pink form and stalked out of the room. “I have to go to counseling because of you,” she snapped as she passed Victoria in the hall.
    “Why?” Victoria asked, stopping and looking thoroughly surprised.
    “Because they want to quarantine,” Isolde shouted. “They want to keep us all in one place so the sickness won’t spread and they can figure out a vaccine. They want to put us in a concrete yard and take our clothes off and hose us down and scrub us with sandpaper and turpentine and rags made from old Y-fronts that have turned gray. It’s like you’ve left big inky handprints on all of us, everyone you’ve ever met, but especially me, I’m the most inky, I’m like dripping ink, it’s running down my