Not sure yet what to make of Susan Choi's Trust Exercise

Not sure yet (13 thru) what to make of Susan Choi's new novel, Trust Exercise, which thus far is about a class of teens in a high school for the arts in Southern city that seems as if it might be Atlanta, but that doesn't really matter, anyone who's had anything to do w/ arts high schools will recognize the types and the struggles: the heart-throb who comes out as gay, the talented under-achiever, the lonely misfit who turns out to have a great operatic voice, the "hip" teacher who gets way too much involved in the personal lives of his students, et al. The two main characters - Sarah and David - are popular, talented if not star-quality kids from different socio-economic backgrounds: He a kid of privilege, she a kid in the projects who has to work part-time, although both it must be said are from supportive, artistic families. As the novel opens these two are beginning a sexual relationship, unusual in its fervor I would say for 15-year-olds (the setting is the 80s or 90s) - culminating, so to speak, in passionate sexual intercourse in the school hallway, while school is in session, if you can believe that (yes, anything's possible, but their judgment seems warped even for sexually advanced kids). For some reason unclear to their fellow students and their teacher (and to me) they more or less stop talking to each other after the hallway sex. OK, so far this may be enough to sustain a high-school musical - Glee meets Election - but I think Choi must have more in mind; there are long excursions into the "trust exercises," familiar to any who have studied drama, and a plot element introduced at about the point I've reached as a troupe of English acting students visit the school - lots of description of their production of Candide but not sure to what end. Also, surprisingly, Choi takes a step back to tell us of the fate of several of the secondary characters, one of whom becomes a TV star. I really liked Choi's American Woman (based on the Patty Hearst case) and am hoping the stakes will get higher and the plot more pointed as this novel progresses.