The Rehearsal

to go that far,” the boy said. “My shirt and everything. Cutting my hair. He only told me about the water-trough. I thought it would be okay. I thought I’d help them out or whatever. I said yes.”
    “Is there always a plant?” Stanley said. “Every year?”
    “I guess,” the boy said. He jerked his gaze away, past Stanley’s shoulder and down the stairs. “They’d never get away with it otherwise.”
    “They shouldn’t get away with it.”
    “Yeah,” the boy said, and shrugged. “It was just an exercise. It was only to make a point.”
    “But why ?” Stanley said. He spoke with more aggression than he intended. He felt the same dawning feeling of helplessness that he had felt in the Head of Movement’s office. In his confusion he was scowling at the boy, and now the boy scowled back.
    “I was just helping them out. They needed someone for their project. It’s no big deal.”
    “What about your shirt?” Stanley said. “Your shirt was a big deal.”
    The boy gripped the banister tighter. He was flushing. He clenched his jaw, and his shorn golden cap of hair moved angrily backward on his scalp.
    “Hey look, I appreciate your concern, all right,” he said, “but I’m not like a little bandwagon, you know, or some sort of a just cause that you can fight for. It was my fault, I should have asked them what they were planning on doing. It’s no big deal. You didn’t have to complain.”
    “They hurt you!” Stanley shouted.
    “Yeah, and came and found me afterward,” the boy said loudly. “After they’d taken off their masks and it was all over, and we talked and everything, and we sorted everything out. It’s not your problem. You weren’t there.”
    Stanley looked at the boy for a second and then stepped aside to let him through. The boy ducked his head and muttered, “Thanks anyway.” He slipped past Stanley, bounded down the stairs and disappeared.
    Stanley looked up through the high mullioned window that lit the stairwell, and breathed heavily. He found his hands were balled into fists and he vaguely felt like hitting something, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to hit, or even why. He stepped back as a flood of second-year actors thundered down the stairs, and as the crowd dwindled he looked up to see the Head of Acting descending calmly in their wake, holding under his arm a bundled mainsail, patched and rat-tailed and studded around its edge with reef-point eyelets filmed with rust. He looked preoccupied.
    “Stanley,” he said as he approached. “You’re the man who wanted to see me, is that right?”
    “It’s all right. I sorted it out with the Head of Movement,” Stanley said, stepping respectfully aside. “It’s all sorted out now.”
    May
    “This is an exercise in control and communication,” the Head of Movement said. “I want you all to divide into pairs and face each other. Starting with your palms together and your feet square, you will begin to move in exact tandem, each the mirror image of the other. You can move however and wherever you like, but I want to be able to walk among you and not be able to tell who is leading and who is following.”
    The class lumbered to its feet and Stanley found himself paired with the girl who had been sitting nearest to him. They smiled at each other quickly as they turned to face each other, and Stanley felt his heart leap. He felt a little stab of self-contempt and frowned to quash the feeling. He turned back to look at the Head of Movement, narrowing his eyes to show the girl that he was listening hard, and that he intended to take the lesson very seriously, and that despite what she may expect or believe he was utterly indifferent to the fact of her sex. In his vague peripheral vision he saw the girl watch him for a moment longer, and then turn back to the Head of Movement herself.
    “Between you,” the Head of Movement continued, “choose one person who will begin as the leader. You must also choose some sort of physical signal to indicate to each other that the leader will change. You can swap between yourselves as many times as you wish, back and forth. Eye contact is essential. We will conduct this exercise in silence.”
    The paired students leaned in to confer with each other in whispers. The Head of Movement turned away and pressed a button on the stereo surround system, wiping the dust off the protruding edge with his finger while he waited for the disc to load. The dust was thick and silver-gray,