The Rehearsal

only once you were very sure that you could trust me. I’d look out for you. I promise.”
    “Why?” the girl said.
    “I think you’re interesting,” Stanley said. “I want to know you better.”
    The wind caught the edge of the girl’s skirt and tugged at it gently. She moved her knees closer together against the draught.
    “Last year,” she said, “I was standing at the bus stop after netball and one of the boys showed up on his bicycle, and I smiled at him and we talked about the people we knew and then he said, Guess what I got my girlfriend for Valentine’s Day? Pregnant. So I smiled and said, Congratulations. And then he scowled at me and he said, Jesus, we went to the doctor. She’s sixteen.”
    “I don’t understand,” Stanley said.
    “There’s no such thing as innocence any more,” the girl said, “there’s only ignorance. You think you are holding on to something pure, but you aren’t. You’re just ignorant. You are handicapped by everything you don’t yet know.”
    “But I see something pure in you ,” Stanley said quietly. “I see something in you that is different from all the others. I see a purity in you.”
    “The only difference between me and any of the others,” the girl said, flatly but with a kind of relish, “is at what price and under what circumstances I am prepared to yield.”
    April
    “Stage fighting,” the Head of Movement said, “is also known as combat mime.”
    Everyone was upright and alert today, hopping up and down on the balls of their feet and shaking out their fingertips. This was the class they had all been looking forward to, underlined on their timetables in red ink and attempted in advance in the secret of their bedrooms at home.
    “Stage fighting is not a form of violence,” the Head of Movement said. “It is a form of dance, a controlled dance that is rehearsed very slowly until it is perfected, and then brought up to speed. Next year you learn basic fencing, épée and sabre and foil. This year we focus simply on how to slap, punch and kick, drawing on the arts of kickboxing, capoeira and basic acrobatics. By the end of this year you should be able to choreograph and perform a fight that simulates punching, kicking and throwing your opponent, as well as being punched, kicked and thrown yourself.”
    He smiled at their eagerness and added, “You’ll learn that losing a stage fight is just as difficult and demanding a task as winning one. Now. Who can give me the definition of a special effect?” He looked around, but the students were blank and distracted, hopping from foot to foot and aching to begin. “A special effect,” the Head of Movement said patiently, “is something that does not happen, it only seems to happen. Stage fighting is a special effect. The violence that you simulate does not happen on stage. Anybody who doesn’t understand this will fail this section of the course. In previous years we have had students removed from this class because they do not understand the definition of a special effect.”
    He pointed at a chalked rectangle drawn on the gymnasium floor, and said, “All right. Everyone get inside the line, please.”
    The students moved forward in a crush to get inside the rectangle. The area was small and they had to cluster tightly, shuffling together and clutching at each other to keep their balance and stay inside the line. The girls drew their shoulders together and became ever so slightly concave, carefully bringing their upper arms forward and together from an instinct to protect their breasts. The boys snickered and shoved each other with their shoulders and the backs of their wrists. Stanley found himself in the middle of the crush, uncomfortably pinned between a pair of girls both facing inward. The girl in front breathed into his collarbone and carefully shifted her feet so they were tucked inside his own. The rough edge of her foot touched his, and she quickly shifted her weight to twitch away.
    “Before we begin fighting I want to start with a few exercises that will get us comfortable with touching each other,” the Head of Movement said. “This exercise is called The Raft of the Medusa. The aim of the exercise is to be the last person standing inside this rectangle. When I say you may begin, you must all start pushing each other. If any part of your body touches the floor outside the rectangle, you must leave the raft immediately. The last person to remain inside wins. Does everybody