Isolde shoots her a vicious look. “It’s sick,” she says. “It’s sick like when kids dress up their pets like real people, with clothes and wigs and stuff, and then make them walk on their back legs and take photos. It’s just like that, but worse because you can see how much she’s enjoying it.”

“I’m sure your sister is not enjoying it,” the saxophone teacher says.

“Dad said it would probably be years and years before Mr. Saladin gets properly convicted and goes to jail,” Isolde says. “All the papers will say child abuse, but there won’t be a child any more, she’ll be an adult by then, just like him. It’ll be like someone destroyed the scene of the crime on purpose, and built something clean and shiny in its place.”

“Isolde,” the saxophone teacher says, firmly this time, “I’m sure they are scared only because they know the sin is still there. They know it snuck up inside her and stuck fast, wedging itself into a place nobody knows about and will never find. They know that his sin was just an action, a foolish deadly fumble in the bright dusty lunchtime light, but hers—her sin is a condition, a sickness lodged somewhere deep inside for now and for always.”

“My dad doesn’t believe in sin,” Isolde says. “We’re atheists.”

“It pays to be open minded,” says the saxophone teacher.

“I’ll tell you why they’re so scared,” Isolde says. “They’re scared because now she knows everything they know. They’re scared because now they’ve got no secrets left.”

The saxophone teacher gets up suddenly and goes to the window. There is a long pause before Isolde speaks again.

“Dad just goes, I don’t know how it happened, honey. What’s important is that now we know about it, it won’t happen anymore.”

Wednesday

“So they called off jazz band this morning,” Bridget says. “They go, Mr. Saladin can’t come in this afternoon. He’s helping with an investigation.”

She sucks her reed noisily.

“You know it’s something really serious,” she says, “when they cross between not enough information and too much. Normally, see, they would have just gone, Listen up, you lot, jazz band’s canceled, you’ve got three minutes to get your shit together, get out and enjoy the sunshine for once, come on, I said move.”

This girl is good at voices. She actually wanted to be Isolde, because Isolde has a better part, but this girl is pale and stringy and rumpled and always looks slightly alarmed, which are qualities that don’t quite fit Isolde, and so she plays Bridget instead. In truth it is her longing to be an Isolde that most characterizes her as a Bridget: Bridget is always wanting to be somebody else.

“Or,” she says, “they would have gone the other way, and told us more than we needed to know, but deliberately, so we knew it was a privilege. They would have done the wide-eyed solemn holy thing that goes, Come on everyone, we need your full attention, this is really important. Mr. Saladin’s had to rush off because one of his family has fallen ill. Okay, now this could be really serious and it’s really important you guys give him the space and consideration he needs if and when he comes back to class.”

This is a theory that Bridget has been thinking about for some time, and she gleams with the pleasure of it. She screws down her reed and blows an experimental honk.

“Helping with an investigation,” she says contemptuously, returning to readjust the mouthpiece. “And they all came in together to say it, all in a pack or whatever, breathing together, quick breaths in and out, with their eyes back and forth sideways, and the principal at the front to break the wind, like the chief goose at the front of the V.”

“Geese usually rotate, I think,” the saxophone teacher says absently. “I gather it’s quite hard work breaking wind.” She is rifling through a stack of sheet music. The bookcase behind her is stuffed with old manuscripts and bleeding stray leaves on to the floor.

The saxophone teacher would never interrupt Isolde in such a dismissive fashion: that was one of Bridget’s reasons for wanting the role. Bridget remembers all over again that she is pale and stringy and rumpled and thoroughly secondary, and then flushes with a new determination to reclaim the scene.

“So they shuffle in,” she says, “in their V formation or whatever, this gray polyester army all trying really hard not to look at anybody in particular, especially not the big gaping hole next to first alto which is where Victoria usually sits.”

Bridget says “Victoria” with emphasis and evident satisfaction. She looks at the saxophone teacher for effect, but the saxophone teacher is busy shuffling papers with her big veined hands and doesn’t flicker.

“The doors to the practice rooms have little windows of reinforced glass so you can see in,” Bridget says, trying harder this time. Her voice gets louder the harder she tries. “But Mr. Saladin pasted the booking sheet over his, so all you can see is the timetable and little slivers of white light all around the edge if the light’s on inside. When Victoria had her woodwind tutorial all the slivers would go out.”

“Found it!” says the saxophone teacher, and she holds up a handful of sheet music. “ ‘The Old Castle’ from Pictures at an Exhibition. I think you’ll find this interesting, Bridget. We can talk about why the saxophone never really caught on as an orchestral instrument.”

The saxophone teacher sometimes feels disgusted with herself for baiting Bridget in this way. “It’s just that she tries so desperately hard,” she said once to Bridget’s mother. “That’s what makes it so easy. If it wasn’t so obvious that she was trying, I might be tempted to respect her a little more.”

Bridget’s mother nodded and nodded, and said, “Yes, we find that’s often the trouble.”

Now the saxophone teacher just looks at Bridget, standing there all stringy and rumpled and trying so desperately hard, and raises her eyebrows.

Bridget reddens with frustration and deliberately skips all the possible lines about Mussorgsky and Pictures at an Exhibition and Ravel and why the saxophone never really caught on as an orchestral instrument. She skips all that and goes straight for a line she likes.

“They treat it like a dosage,” she says, even louder this time. “It’s like a vaccination where they give you a little slice of a disease so your body can get a defense ready for the real thing. They’re frightened because it’s a disease they haven’t tried on us before, and so they’re trying to vaccinate us without telling us what the disease really is. They want to inject us very secretly, without us noticing. It won’t work.”

They are really looking at each other now. The saxophone teacher takes a moment to align the pile of papers with the edge of the rug before she says, “Why won’t it work, Bridget?”

“Because we noticed,” says Bridget, breathing hard through her nose. “We were watching.”

Monday

Julia’s feet are always scuffing, and she has a scab around her mouth.

“They called an assembly for the whole form this morning,” she says, “and the counselor was there, all puffed up like he’d never felt so important in his life.”

She talks over her shoulder while she unpacks her case. The saxophone teacher is sitting in a slice of cold sun by the window, watching the gulls wheel and shit. The clouds are low.

“They started talking in these special quiet honey voices like we’d break if they spoke too loud. They go, You’re all aware of the rumors that have been circulating this past week. It’s important that we talk 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.