“Well, that depends, I suppose. I heard someone once say that men dance the same way they have sex. So, if you want everyone here to think you're the kind of guy who just sits around and—" He stood up. "Let's dance.”

“All right, Mortensen, last chance. Are you ready to make the switch from voyeur to exhibitionist?”He inclined his head toward me curiously. “Are we still talking about dancing?”“Well, that depends, I suppose. I heard someone once say that men dance the same way they have sex. So, if you want everyone here to think you’re the kind of guy who just sits around and—”He stood up. “Let’s dance.”

“I believe in the complexity of the human story and that there’s no way you can tell that story in one way and say, This is it. Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dances in the public arena. The Igbo people say, If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena. Dancing. If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world’s stories should be told—from many different perspectives.”

“Luke grabs my hand. I turn to see a look of pure horror on his face. "This," he says, "is a dance?" "You were expecting what?" I say. "Why are they not dancing?" I look around the gym again. "Well, most people are dancing." I nod at the freshman boys, who have resorted to doing the robot. "They're dancing." Luke looks completely unconvinced. "And the music," he says, "is it always this.....loud?" I laugh. "You sound like you're forty. You have been to a dance before, right?" Luke looks offended. "Yes. Of course. But it was more..." he surveys the gyrating bodies around us "....civilised that this." He turns to me accusatory. "And you. Have you been to a dance?”

“People say that rape is not sex, that it's violence," Lucy says, bitterly. "But it's also sex. You can't get around that," she says. "he didn't run me over with a car. He had sex with me. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to have sex with an eighth-grader. You're not supposed to have sex when you're in eighth grade. It was very intimate. You can't get around it. This part of the body," she says, gesturing from her heart to her lower abdomen, though I understand she means to indicate her vagina. "If you're sitting around with a group of women, talking about various traumas, someone will say, I got beaten by my mother. But if you say, I got raped, it's a different thing."I wonder if that is true. Is rape really the worst sort of violation? I'm not sure. I often wonder why it matters whether we're penetrated or not. There is the pain, but the pain doesn't last. The shame does.”

“I'm so glad you're okay.""So, how do we celebrate my okayness? It's my day off. Let's go crazy. Glow-in-the-dark bowling?""No""I'll let you use the kiddie ball.""Shut up. I do NOT need the kiddie ball.""The way you bowl, I think you might."He grabbed her in an exaggerated formal dance pose and whirled her around, backpack and all, which didn't make her any more graceful. "Ballroom dancing?""Are you INSANE?""Hey, girls who tango are hot.""You think I'm not hot because I don't tango?"He dropped the act. Shane was a smart boy. "I think you are too hot for ballroom or bowling. So you tell me. What do you want to do? And don't say study.”