Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise is a metafictional novel told over the course of three interlinked narratives.

It’s the early 1980s, and Sarah and David are acting students at CAPA, or the Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts. They meet under the tutelage of Mr. Kingsley, an intense and theatrical drama teacher who facilitates “trust exercises” over the course of his lessons. When the theater lights are turned off during one such exercise, the two teens meet by chance in the dark and wordlessly exchange a few small acts of intimacy.

During their summer break, Sarah and David enter into a relationship in earnest. Under the anonymizing haze of vacation, things go well. Eventually they begin sleeping together, sneaking out to meet in secret when neither of their houses is vacant. But when the academic year starts up again in the fall, it’s clear that the two of them have different ideas about the rules of their relationship. David shows up to school with a gift for Sarah, excited to give it to her in front of their classmates. Sarah is mortified and rejects the gift, telling him she’ll take it later. David, embarrassed, begins avoiding her entirely.

Shortly into the term, preparations begin for a new drama production. On one of these long, unsupervised days, Sarah and David meet in the hallway and sneak off to sleep together in secret. To her chagrin, he begins ignoring her afterward. Eventually, she sees him talking to a talented, pretty singing student and she realizes he’s begun to move on. In a lunchtime meeting with Mr. Kingsley, Sarah confesses everything—her still-burning love for David, her envy of his privilege, her exhaustion with her 6 a.m. weekend shifts at a nearby bakery.

When Sarah gets home, her mom tells her that Mr. Kingsley has called to suggest that Sarah quit her bakery job. Sarah’s mom is livid—not with the suggestion, but with the overreach. In her eyes, Mr. Kingsley is injecting himself into their family’s business. Sarah is angry, too. By calling her mom, Mr. Kingsley has broken the implicit trust between them. As Sarah contemplates the incident further, though, she begins to see it differently: he might have been making a play for some authority in her life.

Mr. Kingsley begins deliberately pairing Sarah and David for trust exercises shortly thereafter, and the attention of the group becomes too difficult for Sarah to bear. The relationship between the three of them—Sarah, David, and Mr. Kingsley—has noticeably shifted, and eventually, Mr. Kingsley stops inviting her to his office to talk. She begins to feel more and more alone at CAPA.

Sarah notices that Mr. Kingsley has begun inviting another student—Manuel—to his office in her stead. On opening night of the play, a cast party is held at the house Mr. Kingsley shares with his husband. Sarah finds Manuel taking clothes out of a wardrobe in Mr. Kingsley’s attic, and they argue. Manuel implies that he knows what Sarah did in the music room hallway during auditions, and she flees the party in tears.

During the play’s final performance, Sarah—now working in costumes—gives the clothes to Manuel’s parents, saying they’re a gift from Mr. Kingsley, who is his boyfriend. By spring term, Manuel is absent from the program. When pressed, Mr. Kingsley responds that he’s having “family issues.” Around this time, Sarah’s mother calls the principal to lodge a complaint against Mr. Kingsley.

Excitement begins to spread through CAPA about a group of students who will soon be visiting from England with a traveling production of Voltaire’s Candide. The troupe will all stay with CAPA...