The Rehearsal

school shirt is open and the hollow V of her neck is turning an angry stippled red.
    “How?”
    “Because if there was some tragic story behind it all,” Julia says, “it would be like a reason or a cause. Like with that girl Victoria.”
    “Isolde’s sister.”
    “Yeah,” Julia says hotly. “Isolde’s sister. Whatever she does now, if she goes off the rails or whatever, and ends up sleeping with a billion people and drinking heaps and failing all her exams, people won’t think that she’s just a loser or a slut. They’ll know it’s because she’s damaged , because there’s a reason behind everything, which is that she was raped. Whatever she does from now on will just be evidence. So it’s kind of like she’s free. She can do anything and she won’t be responsible. She’s got a reason .”
    “That’s a very interesting way of looking at it,” the saxophone teacher says.
    “ I want a reason,” Julia says. “If it turned out that I was damaged, then it wouldn’t be my fault anymore. It wouldn’t be something gross, it would be something tragic. It would be an effect —an effect of something out of my control. I’d just be a victim.”
    “You all want to be damaged,” the saxophone teacher says suddenly. “All of you. That is the one quality all my students have in common. That is your theme and variation: you crave your own victimhood absolutely. You see it as the only viable way to get an edge upon your classmates, and you are right. If I were to interfere with you, Julia, I’d be doing you an incredible favor. I’d be giving you a ticket to authorize the most shameless self-pity and self-adoration and self-loathing, and none of your classmates could even hope to compare.”
    “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Julia says.
    The two of them look at each other in silence for a moment.
    “What details would you choose to include?” the saxophone teacher says. “Those sharp mosaic-sliver details that would line your alibi like the tight angled coins on a chain-link vest.”
    “Nothing physical, at first,” Julia says. “That would be too obvious. The lie would shine too brightly, and they’d find me out. Something psychological. Something insidious and dripping. Some slow erosion that in the end would be far worse, far more subtle and damaging, than any quick backstage fumble or teasing slap.”
    “It’s still going to be a lie, Julia,” the saxophone teacher says. “At the heart of it. You won’t be satisfied. At bottom, all it will be is a lie.”
    “How do you know?” Julia says. “How do you know how you have influenced me? How do you know I’m not damaged? How do you know I don’t nurse some small criticism, some throwaway comment that you made and have now forgotten but I remember every time I stumble or I fail? A tiny something that will dig deeper and deeper, like a glass splinter working its way from my finger to my heart? Some tiny something that will change the shape of me forever—how can you know?”
    For once the saxophone teacher has nothing to say. She looks out the window at the birds.
    Wednesday
    The saxophone section of the Abbey Grange jazz band is gap-toothed now: first Victoria, who has chosen not to return, and then Bridget, who never will. The cavities have been filled with lesser players, and the chairs shuffled a fraction closer to tighten the curve.
    “Bridget would have really liked this,” says first trombone every now and again, knowing that dead people are always very sentimental and always full of joy and appreciation for the simple things. Some of them still weep, not for Bridget, who was unmemorable, but for themselves, imagining that they themselves had died, and how irreplaceable they would be.
    The school’s Christian group was tight lipped and private about the sacking of Mr. Saladin and its aftermath; on the subject of Bridget’s death it blossoms. A man’s powerful and senseless attraction to a girl he had been instructed to protect is a human mystery. More marketable is the divine mystery of this one lampless girl mown to extinction in the dewy dark: it is right up their alley, and the Christian group thrives. Advertisements for prayer groups spring up around the school. Enrollments for youth camps run a record high. A Christian pancake stand appears in the quad at lunchtime, managed by a zealous few who roll the pancakes in lemon and sugar and shine brightly with an inner light. They don’t hand out tracts or