The Rehearsal Read Free Page A

through some things together so we can
     all be sure of where we’re at.”
    Julia turns on her heel, fits her sax to her neckstrap, and stands there for a moment with her hands on her hips. The sax
     is slung across her body like a weapon.
    “The counselor is a retard,” she says definitively. “Me and Katrina went once in third form because Alice Franklin had sex
     in a movie theater and we were scared she’d become a skank and ruin her life by having kids by accident. We told him all about
     it and how scared we were, and Katrina even cried. He just sat there and blinked and he kept nodding and nodding, but really
     slowly like he was programmed at a quarter speed, and then when we’d run out of things to say and Katrina had stopped crying
     he opened his drawer and got a piece of paper and drew three circles inside each other, and wrote
You
and then
Your Family
and then
Your Friends
, and he said, That’s the way it is, isn’t it? And then he said we could keep the piece of paper if we wanted.”
    Julia gives a mirthless snort and opens her plastic music folder.
    “What happened to Alice Franklin?” asks the saxophone teacher.
    “Oh, we found out later she was lying,” Julia says.
    “She didn’t have sex in a movie theater.”
    “No.”
    Julia takes a moment to adjust the spidery legs of the music stand.
    “Why would she lie to you?” the saxophone teacher asks politely.
    Julia makes a sweeping gesture with her hand. “She was probably just
bored
,” she says. In her mouth the word is noble and magnificent.
    “I see,” says the saxophone teacher.
    “So anyway they go, Maybe we could start the ball rolling by asking if anyone’s got something they want to get off their chest?
     And one of the girls started crying right then, before anything had even happened for real, and the counselor just about wet
     his pants with joy, and he goes, Nothing anybody says this morning will go further than this room, or some shit. So this girl
     starts saying something lame, and her friend reaches over and holds her hand or something sick like that, and then everyone
     starts sharing and saying things about trust and betrayal and confidence and feeling all confused and scared… and it’s going
     to be one fuck of a long morning.”
    Julia darts a glance over toward the saxophone teacher to see if the word has any effect, but the saxophone teacher just gives
     her a wintry smile and waits. Bridget would have balked and fluttered and turned scarlet and wondered about it for a long
     time afterward, but Julia doesn’t. She just smirks and takes unnecessary care in clipping the slippery pages to the edge of
     the music stand.
    “So after a while,” Julia says, “the counselor goes, What is harassment, girls?, looking at us all eager and encouraging like
     when teachers are torn between really wanting you to get the right answer but also really wanting you to be wrong so they
     can have the pleasure of telling you themselves. Then he goes, speaking softly and solemnly like he’s revealing something
     nobody else knows, Harassment doesn’t have to be touching, my darlings. Harassment can also be watching. Harassment can be
     if someone watches you in a way that you don’t like.
    “So I put up my hand and I go, Does it become harassmentbecause of what they watch? Or because of what they imagine while
     they’re watching? They all looked at me and I went really red, and the counselor touched his fingertips together and gave
     me this long look like, I know what you’re doing, you’re trying to sabotage the trust thing we’ve got going here, and I’m
     going to answer your question because I have to, but I’m not going to give you the answer you want.”
    The saxophone teacher stands up finally and picks up her own saxophone as if to say “enough.” But Julia is already saying
     it, thrust on by a strange sort of red-cheeked momentum.
    “
I
imagine things when I watch people,” is what Julia