# Chapter 22 Narrator-Publicist Audit (critical distance)

Scope: every narrator description of June Park (protagonist, POV) and Theo Brennan (visibly favored character in this chapter) in `output/chapters/chapter_22.md`, tested against markers 1-5 and the strip test. POV per reading guide §1-2: close third, June chapter; no declared publicist-narrator design in the guide, so free-indirect admiration must be attributable to June as a fallible perceiver on the page.

Calibration note: both local codex audits (`chapter_22.adversarial_register.md`, `chapter_22.editor_scored_check.md`) quote lines absent from the current text ("He looked bad in the specific way of someone who had slept in ninety-minute installments," "Look at you" / "I'm trying not to ruin it," "If you're the reason...") and cite line numbers past the file's end. They audited a prior draft. Their CLEAN/PASS verdicts were not relied on; this audit is against the current text only.

Fallibility frame (required for any attribution ruling): the chapter installs June as an explicitly fallible perceiver three times — "put on the good sweater, telling herself it was the warm one" (line 23), confirmed wrong at line 177 ("the cold working through the good sweater, which was, as suspected, not the warm one"); and her own on-page admission that her perception of Theo has been motivated: "And I got worse at noticing. The good easel was just free. The clean jars were just there. I didn't ask who was making it happen" (line 79). Admiration routed through June is therefore attributable to a perceiver the book treats as capable of misreading, and whose admiration of exactly this man's competence the chapter itself indicts as the mechanism of harm.

## Per-line verdicts

**Marker 5 — adjective campaigning (the closest call in the chapter):**

- `EARNED — "His coffee order was the same as it had been in week one, black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation, and she had watched him doctor it this morning." (line 163) — the on-page action that backs it: "she had watched him doctor it this morning" (line 163) and the observed evidence of the operation itself: "He moved the sugar caddy beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." (line 139).` Strip test run anyway: remove "the single inefficient thing in his entire operation" and a complete concrete observation survives (order unchanged since week one; she watched him doctor it). Attributable perceiver: June, mid-catalogue ("She looked at him. The white at his thumbnail. The bad shave.", line 163). Critically framed: the chapter treats Theo's efficiency as the instrument of the lie, in his mouth ("I called it taking care of you because that sounded better," line 71) and hers ("Don't be useful right now," line 85). This is the most admiring surviving line in the chapter; it survives on attribution plus the chapter's own indictment of the quality being admired.

**Marker 1 — mystique assertions:**

- Checked every physical description of Theo. Strongest counter-candidate: "June looked at him for longer than she'd meant to. His collar sat crooked under his coat. A narrow pale line below his ear said the razor had missed there. Primer, or maybe just white paint, showed at the base of his left thumbnail" (line 73). Verdict: `EARNED` — this is the inverse of mystique: a bad shave, a crooked collar, paint under a nail, read by a painter's eye. The one interpretive clause ("which meant he'd been in the stockroom with his own work lately") is June's inference, marked as provisional by the narrator: "She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for" (line 73). No line claims Theo is unreadable, misunderstood, or beyond comprehension; his texts are read twice and June explicitly registers her own uncertainty as uncertainty: "She still did not know whether that was kindness or Theo giving himself somewhere to stand if she said no" (line 13).

**Marker 2 — effect-on-others framing:**

- Checked for generalized/hypothetical reactions grading either character's presence. NONE found. Every reaction in the chapter is one named character's specific reaction: "He went still, cup halfway back to the table." (line 89); "He winced. June laughed, first time all morning." (line 175). No "the kind that made people..." construction exists in the chapter.

**Marker 3 — cosmic-flattery figuration:**

- Strongest counter-candidate: "She waited for the list, schedules and keys and how he would restructure the known world so this could never happen again. He reached for his cup instead." (line 61). Verdict: `EARNED` — the hyperbole is June's dry anticipation of Theo's tic, and the scene immediately falsifies it ("He reached for his cup instead"); the figure mocks the habit rather than glorifying the man. Second candidate: "It was 8:04. She sent it before the hour could argue with her." (line 21) — strip test: "It was 8:04. She sent it." remains; the flourish personifies the hour, not June's courage, and is June-voiced self-management, not narrator praise.

**Marker 4 — gesture inflation:**

- Strongest counter-candidate: "Theo stood halfway when he saw her and sat back down, which she appreciated, because there was nothing to do at the top of that gesture and they both knew it." (line 29). Verdict: `EARNED` — the narrator deflates the gesture rather than crediting it with communicative power; the admiration ("which she appreciated") is attributed to June by name-on-page. "they both knew it" is a minor omniscient reach but asserts shared awkwardness, not eloquence. No small movement anywhere in the chapter is credited with conveying "paragraphs" of anything; the kiss is written with the angle wrong and a cold nose (line 165).

**Restraint-crediting pattern (Theo's apology and kiss restraint — checked as cumulative publicity):**

- "He opened his mouth. She watched him nearly do it anyway, nearly tell her she'd had no way to know, and then he drank his coffee instead." (line 81) — `EARNED` — the mind-read ("nearly tell her she'd had no way to know") is June's watching, and it converts to on-page action: he drank his coffee instead. Attributable perceiver: June.
- "He flattened both palms on the Formica, nowhere near her." (line 113) — `EARNED` — pure blocking; spatial fact.
- "His hands stayed in his pockets the whole time." (line 165) — `EARNED` — the kiss restraint is reported as physical fact inside June's sensory field during a kiss she initiates, controls ("brief because she made it brief"), and immediately re-frames on her terms ("That happened because the terms are set," line 167). Cumulatively, Theo's restraint is rendered five times (lines 29, 61/81, 113, 139, 165) and every instance is an action or a refusal-of-action in scene materials — which is precisely the source's prescribed fix ("describe what the character actually does and let the reader decide if it's impressive"). No instance is an assertion of restraint without the action; the pattern is characterization, not campaign. The one spoken assessment of it — "Keep doing the quiet version." (line 141) — is June's dialogue, not narration.

**June's New York decision (checked for narrator campaigning on her bravery):**

- The decision speech (lines 89-91): "I said no to Tasker Friday morning. ... I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you." The narration framing it is: "She made herself finish." (line 91) — effort reported, not graded; no narrator adjective (brave, hard, unflinching) appears anywhere near it. Verdict: `EARNED` — backed by dated, checkable actions in her own dialogue: "I called Nia from the sidewalk ... I gave her Asha's name after asking Asha first. I'm taking Dana's room, and I sent Kessler the W-9." (line 91). The text also polices inflation from inside the scene — Theo: "I'm not making more of it than that." June: "That's the right amount." (lines 93-95). Second candidate: "Then she wrote what she meant." (line 17) — the narrator asserts June's directness, but the meant thing is printed in the next line ("Sunday. 9. Just coffee.", line 19) after three drafts shown failing (line 15); the reader can verify the claim against the evidence. This satisfies the reading guide §8 earned-stay test: staying is legible as for-herself-first, and the narrator does not congratulate her for it.

**June self-image check (close-third voicing her own self-image):**

- "That was fine. Her life had earned one confusing receipt." (line 143) and "which was the correct level of involvement" (line 97) — `EARNED` — free-indirect June, comic at her own expense, consistent with her voice card ("jokes aimed at herself"); neither asserts she is mysterious, brave, or special. The chapter frames her self-image critically where it matters (line 79, quoted above).

## Chapter verdict

`CRITICAL-DISTANCE-HELD` — no unattributed publicity. Most admiring surviving line: "the single inefficient thing in his entire operation" (line 163) — perceiver: June Park, named in the same paragraph ("She looked at him."), her admiration of Theo's competence explicitly established as fallible and as the thing that burned her ("I didn't ask who was making it happen," line 79); the observation itself rests on watched action ("she had watched him doctor it this morning"). The chapter's method is the source's fix already applied: Theo is rendered in crooked collar, missed shave, paint under a thumbnail, a cup turned a quarter turn, hands kept in pockets — actions and flaws, with every judgment about them carrying June's name.

REVISION ORDERS: none.
