Trust Exercise

Each section is labeled "Trust Exercise," in accordance with the novel's title, emphasizing the similarity in all three stories and the way that they combine to build a larger narrative. This title is based on Mr. Kingsley's exercises with his theater students, though whether these are the verbal repetitions he has his students do—the crawling around in the dark, or other practices—Choi leaves open. Instead, as she presents a sequence of unreliable narrators and new information that leaves the reader questioning supposedly established facts, each of the three narratives as well as the novel as a whole becomes a "trust exercise." The reader is asked to trust the storyteller—and time after time, the storyteller betrays this trust. In a sense, this parallels Mr. Kingsley/Lord and Martin's abuses of their positions. They are in positions of authority, in which their students are asked to trust them, and they repeatedly betray this trust.

As Choi's identical part headings ("Trust Exercise") make clear, each of the three stories within this novel are part of the larger narrative. However, additional "stories" in various forms also appear throughout the book. The CAPA students perform Guys and Dolls, bringing the tensions among them to the forefront. The British students come to perform Candide, which Martin (as director) has sexualized so much that CAPA administration finds it inappropriate and cancels it. This mirrors Martin and Lord's sexualization of his students, for which their respective schools later call them out.

Meanwhile, Sarah reads Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, a sexually explicit novel that the text explains she is too young for. Martin's play in the second section is another story, one that he uses to try to reclaim his own narrative and cast himself as the victim; however, Karen takes over this story by shooting him, changing the narrative yet again. Lord's version of events in the final section confuses Claire, as they do not align with the facts she has been given. Furthermore, his tribute video after his death whitewashes his relationships with his students. Though not presented as "art," these two narratives also add to the multiplicity of stories within the larger narrative.

The Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts (CAPA) is the primary location for the first section. It provides an example of a location in which students are both desperate to get ahead (in this case, as performers) and unusually close to their mentors (their teachers). By combining these characteristics in one location, Choi emphasizes how authority figures might take advantage of the younger and more vulnerable. She further explores the institution's culpability in the abuses that went on there, as the principal sits in on discussions about whether Sarah has taken on too much, cancels the sexualized performance of Candide, and finally chooses to rename the school after allegations against Lord come out posthumously. The school's new building shows the institution's desire to erase worse aspects of its past, but the fact that the administration is forced to rename it illustrates the impossibility of escaping these events.

Three sets of male genitals that Choi describes in Trust Exercise—Liam's, Martin's, and Lord's—are all described in unflattering terms, even when a female character sees them as desirable (as Karen does with Martin). Readers may wish to interpret this as a condemnation of men in general, but this does not hold true with Choi's depiction of David and Sarah's sexual experiences, which Sarah generally enjoys. Instead, it can be viewed as a way in which a purportedly pleasurable act becomes disgusting in cases of abuse.