Here, in the half-light of the gymnasium, we witness one of nature's most delicate rituals, and our subject has chosen a position of great strategic wisdom: the far wall.
Observe. Along one flank of the territory, the young males cluster in a tight defensive knot, shoulders hunched, eyes darting, none willing to be the first to break formation. Across the open plain, forty feet of gleaming lacquered floor, the young females gather in their own dense herd, moving as one organism, disappearing together toward the watering hole and returning together, always together.
Between these two populations lies the dance floor itself: vast, echoing, lit by shifting colored lights, and almost entirely empty. Only the very bold venture into it.
Our subject is not yet bold. Watch as the specimen executes the ancient survival behaviour of its kind: it produces the glowing rectangle from its pocket, stares into it with tremendous urgency, and pretends, with heartbreaking commitment, to have somewhere else it would rather be. There is no message. There is no one texting. This is camouflage. This is the possum playing dead.
Now, a shift in the music. The tempo slows. A low murmur passes through both herds like wind across the savanna, and something extraordinary begins. A single male detaches from the pack. He crosses the open ground, exposed, trembling, every eye upon him, and extends one hand toward a female with the grave formality of a creature offering its whole heart on an open palm.
Our subject watches this from the wall. Does not move. Cannot move. Files the moment away, deep in the folds of memory, for a braver season not yet arrived.
And so the young survive another night by not being seen.
Next year, perhaps, the wall will not hold them.