Trust Exercise

15-year-old Sarah and David are dating during the summer after their freshman year of high school, and both are frustrated that they can't yet drive. In a flashback to their freshman year, Choi describes the background to their relationship. Sarah and David are theater students (though they spell this "Theatre") at the prestigious CAPA. Their program is run by a charismatic gay man, Mr. Kingsley, who dominates their experience at the school. Early in their relationship, Mr. Kingsley had the students perform an exercise in which he turns off the lights and has them crawl around in the dark. After an unknown student gropes Sarah's breasts, she and David find each other and kiss in the dark before the lights come back on.

Sarah and David's relationship is in part characterized by the difficulty they have in meeting. The summer after freshman year, David travels to London with his family and sends Sarah postcards. When he returns, he tells his mother he is going to the Jewish Community Center to play racquetball, but instead goes to Sarah's apartment, where they have sex. Later, they meet on the college campus in town and have sex at the university's stadium, though Sarah finds the experience unsatisfying. Back at school for sophomore year, Sarah finds herself increasingly uninterested in hanging out with Joelle, her former best friend. She is further disturbed when David shows up and very publicly tries to give her a present; she values privacy in their relationship. However, when she turns the present down, David sees this as a rejection and assumes they have broken up.

Directed by Mr. Kingsley, the sophomore theater students begin a new exercise, "Ego Reconstruction," which has been kept secret from them and heavily mythologized by older students. These older students are a close group, although Sarah slept with Brett, half of a powerful couple with Kayley, the previous year. During Ego Reconstruction, Mr. Kingsley picks one student to sit in the center of a circle. He first picks Joelle, who breaks down while talking to Sarah, wondering why they're not friends anymore. Crying, Joelle runs out of the room, and Mr. Kingsley sends Sarah after her. Begrudgingly, Sarah goes. Feeling that she has to offer Joelle some excuse for her distance, Sarah describes her issues with David, giving up the privacy that is so important to her to appease her friend.

Although Sarah and Joelle make up, the exercise makes Sarah resentful. She later talks one-on-one with Mr. Kingsley about it. While she may have been kind to Joelle, she feels that she lied to her friend. Mr. Kingsley reframes the experience as one that helped Sarah find her own kind of truth. He asks her about life outside school, as well. Rehearsals for the mainstage production begin. Neither Sarah nor David has an important role on stage, leaving them with little work to do. Nevertheless, they spend long periods of time at school to assist the production. One day, David and Sarah run into each other during rehearsals; they go to the music room, where they have sex. As they finish, the door closes across from them, indicating that someone was watching them.

Ms. Rozot, a new movement teacher, arrives at the school. At first, the students mock her but soon start admiring her. She has them perform an exercise in which they move around the room any way they want. At the beginning, everyone acts silly, but the exercise becomes serious. Sarah begins crying and flees to the bathroom. Ms. Rozot follows her. With Sarah locked in a stall, Ms. Rozot figures out that she is upset over a relationship and explains that these emotions get less intense as we get older. The auditions for the musical Guys and Dolls approaches. Sarah is certain that junior Erin O'Leary will get the main female role. Manuel, a sophomore who was frozen by stage fright when performing in public during a sight-reading class, dresses up in formal but cheap clothing, and he surprises everyone by singing an impressive rendition of "Ave Maria." Both Erin and Manuel get leading roles in the musical.

Sarah continues to meet with Mr. Kingsley on a one-on-one basis. This disturbs her slightly, as she knows other students will see her as "Troubled" (45). She is very tired from working such long hours at school, as well as working at a bakery on weekends to earn money for a car. When describing her situation to him, Sarah mistakenly gives him the impression that her mother needs the money that Sarah earns. She often cries during their meetings, and sometimes talks about her history with David. After one of these sessions, Mr. Kingsley calls Sarah's mother to tell her that Sarah has taken on too much. This infuriates Sarah's mother, who feels that Mr. Kingsley has overstepped his boundaries by interfering in Sarah's life outside of school.

In an unnamed class exercise, Mr. Kingsley sets up two chairs facing each other. He has Sarah and David sit in those chairs. Insisting that they make eye contact and hold hands, he berates them for not being natural or relaxed enough: "Is that the best you can do?" (55). Sarah swears to herself that she won't cry during the exercise but ends up crying. Mr. Kingsley tells David, "I won't rest until you cry" (57). During the break, David yells at her for telling Mr. Kingsley about their romantic past; this is formatted as dialogue in a play. Sarah's mother's observation about Mr. Kingsley overstepping also appears again, also formatted this way.

Back in the classroom, Sarah must repeatedly tell David something concrete about himself as part of the exercise. She starts with "You're wearing a blue polo shirt" (59), while he repeats, "I'm wearing a blue polo shirt" (59). They are supposed to use different inflections as they repeat this exchange, but do not. Other students show how this exercise should go, as Colin tells Julietta, "Your hair is curly" (59), proceeding to, "You're a virgin" (62). Sarah and David try again, as David tells Sarah, "Your eyes are blue" (62), but Mr. Kingsley stops them, apparently disgusted with their performance. Joelle and Manuel take over, as Joelle tells Manuel, "Hablas español" (63), in a successful exchange.

Choi then provides an interlude in which she describes the students' futures. In the future, Joelle will run away. Pammie will decide to become an astronaut. Taniqua will become an actress on a TV show about cops, though it will underutilize her comic talents. Norbert will become a manager of Whataburger. As for Sarah, Ms. Rozot's prediction will come true, and she will find it easier to deal with her emotions. A stranger on the street will help her zip up her dress without embarrassing her. Meanwhile, all Choi tells us about David is that he will be different; she describes him as "so changed it will be hard to give credence to the David [Sarah] first knew in these mid-teenage years" (66).

As rehearsals for Guys and Dolls continue, the theater students are expected to stay late to assist. During a Friday evening break, Sarah sees Manuel come out of Mr. Kingsley's office. She thinks about Mr. Banks, the geometry teacher who goes particularly easy on Sarah and William, not requiring them to do the assigned work. Instead, he has Sarah perform, making her flip her hair back like in a hair commercial. Although Mr. Banks has a reputation for dating and being inappropriate with students, Sarah goes with him when he invites her out to lunch, believing that he will not cross that line with her. He doesn't, and they have a pleasant time.

On the opening night of the musical, Manuel performs very well. At the party at Mr. Kingsley's house after the show, Sarah feels excluded from the larger group of theater students. She goes upstairs to an attic bedroom, where she finds Manuel changing clothes. She challenges him, asking if he lives there and if not, why he keeps clothes at Mr. Kingsley's house. Manuel makes a sarcastic comment about her putting on a good show in the music room, apparently referring to when she and David had sex there. Later that night, a student named Greg comes out as gay to Sarah, Pammie, and Julietta. Sarah reflects on how little the students know about each other: For example, they all know that William's mother is strict, and Colin's father hits him, but they don't know details. She considers what she knows about Manuel.

Later, working on costume crew, Sarah finds an Armani shirt in the costuming area that she knows is not part of any costume. She knows it belongs to Manuel. Although Joelle is Manuel's dresser, Sarah irons the shirt—then hides it. She does this throughout the run of the show with two more shirts. One night, Manuel's mother and a young female relative of his attend the show. Afterwards, Sarah runs up to them with a bag full of the shirts. She tells them that the shirts are a gift from Mr. Kingsley to Manuel because they are boyfriends. Manuel never comes back to the school. Mr. Kingsley only tells the students that Manuel is experiencing family trouble. This is the final break between Joelle and Sarah, who are no longer friends.

Still worried that Sarah has taken on too much, Sarah's mother has demanded a discussion with the principal, Mrs. Laytner. Mrs. Laytner asks many questions about whether Sarah is overwhelmed, but Sarah is annoyed at being there and claims that she is happy with her schedule. Later, back in the classroom, Sarah and David again must participate in the unnamed exercise. David tells Sarah that she’s tall, but they once again annoy Mr. Kingsley with their seeming inability to go deeper. Now 16, David has a car that his parents gave him, and he drives Sarah home after school.

Eight students from England come to visit to put on a show of Voltaire's Candide, accompanied by two chaperones: Liam, in his mid-twenties, and Martin, who is 40. Initially, only two of the male students stay at David's house, but the other two end up coming to stay there as well, drawn by the appeal of having their own apartment above the garage with the other boys. The headquarters for the girls becomes Karen Wurtzel's house, where, though Karen is reclusive, her mother Elli entertains them.

Sarah thinks that the English students all seem older and more mature than their American counterparts, while Martin and Liam feel like a separate unit. The school administrators are excited to have the English there to perform in their new, expensive theater. They have sold many tickets and do a special sneak peek for the students. Before this, the news that Sarah slept with Brett the year before comes out, alienating Sarah from the juniors as well as her own class. The students all go to watch the show, which is an overtly sexual and intense pantomime that makes them uncomfortable. The school cancels the production.

After the sneak preview, Martin and Liam drive up to Sarah in the school parking lot in Karen's car. They invite her out, but she explains that she only has a car because she is picking her mother up from work. They work around this, following Sarah to her mother's work at the university and driving her from there. Sarah tells her mother she is spending the night at Karen's; her mother does not remember Karen. In the car, Martin and Liam are boisterous, playing off each other and mostly ignoring Sarah, except as an audience member: "I'm trying to impress this girl, aren't I?" (102). Sarah finds Liam handsome but unsexy. The group picks Karen up at a frozen yogurt shop, TCBY. Karen takes over driving, ignoring Sarah even as the group goes to eat together at Mama's Big Boy.

After dinner, the group goes to get beer, then drives to Mr. Kingsley's house, where Martin and Liam are staying. When they arrive, Karen pulls up directly in front of David's car, watching Sarah's reaction. Angered by this, Sarah teases Karen about Martin, asking if her mother has a problem with the fact that Martin's 40. Karen says that she does: “That's why we're not hanging out at my house anymore" (110). The others go into the party, but Sarah stays behind outside. She goes into David's car, imagining David and Lilly, one of the English girls, in there, and staring at his car phone. Sitting in the car, she masturbates, freezing only when Liam comes out to look for her. However, he does not see her. A few minutes later, Sarah goes inside the house, saying she was buying cigarettes.

Liam pulls her up to the attic room where she saw Manuel and where he is now staying. It has become filthy. He asks her about her history with David, then compliments her and tells her she looks like Sade, a singer. Sarah wants to go back downstairs, but he insists they say. He begins kissing her, and they proceed to have sex that disgusts Sarah, who thinks of his body in terms of "dismaying physical extrusions" (115). Liam talks dirty to her, which horrifies her; as they have sex, Sarah has an unwanted orgasm. Afterwards, he wants to stay in his room, but she begs him to go downstairs. He states that he's been obsessed with her for a long time. Downstairs, they go into a gazebo with other couples, all of them making out. David sees them. Sarah claims that she needs to go to the bathroom, but Liam follows her back inside. She ends up in Mr. Kingsley's bedroom, where Martin is playing with dildos. Sarah doesn't know what these are; Martin throws one at her, and she asks him repeatedly what it is. Martin and Liam just tease and ignore her.

Mr. Kingsley comes home early from the opera because his partner, Tim, is not feeling well. He finds the group in his room and tells Sarah to go home. By the time she gets outside, everyone else is gone. Sarah walks to Big Boy and calls David's car phone twice, though he doesn't pick up. Stranded, Sarah calls Karen's house. Karen is asleep, but her mother, Elli, tells Sarah she will send a cab to get her. The cab takes her to Karen's house, where Elli gives Sarah pajamas and has her take a shower before giving her vitamins. Seeing that Sarah is heartbroken, Elli explains her theory that girls are more mature than boys, then cuddles her. Sarah let this happen: "Sarah indeed was too tired to answer or move or to flinch from her bedmate's enveloping touch" (131).