INVENTORY:

1 — "'Theo. You're famous,' Mara said, and Theo lost his count at eleven." (opening, flyer scene) — mechanism: deflation / interrupted count — source: character (Mara's direct warmth colliding with Theo's counting tell, planted as his Ch14–15 chair-count promise) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: announces public post-kiss pressure inside Theo's own competence register before a word of interiority — workshopped: no

2 — "holding it out to him the way you'd hand someone their own mail" (flyer scene) — mechanism: incongruity simile — source: character (mail is Theo's domestic-logistics register; the image needs the photo-of-recipient situation, which is this book's flyer thread) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: makes the flyer ordinary and therefore inescapable — workshopped: no. NOTE: this consumes the chapter's single "the way you'd" recognitional-simile slot (span cap from Ch11). I checked "the way a painting can let hands do" (June's canvas paragraph) against the same family: it is craft-observational, not generic-you/people. Count stands at 1/1 — at cap, not over.

3 — "June's hand fisted in his jacket like she was keeping him from a curb" (flyer description) — mechanism: incongruity (tenderness read as pedestrian safety) — source: character (Theo can only parse the kiss photo through care logistics) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: re-describes the Ch13 kiss in the POV that wasn't holding the camera; the pressure object is made specific — workshopped: no

4 — "'That's the camera,' Theo said. / 'It's a phone,' Mara said." (flyer scene) — mechanism: deflation, literal correction — source: character (Theo's documented credit-deflection; Mara's practical correction) — funniness: 2 — portable: I considered ruling yes — the punchline unit could transplant — but the joke only fires because Theo is dodging fame generated by a kiss he can't classify; the pressure is non-portable: **no** — dramatic work: shows the dodge and the cohort's refusal of it in nine words — workshopped: no

5 — "Theo looked down at the address block and found no correction to make." — mechanism: deflation of reflex — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: his proofreading instinct has no purchase on the actual problem; quiet thesis of the chapter — workshopped: no

6 — "He had a route. The route had three zones." (Ben, flyer distribution) — mechanism: deadpan anadiplosis / escalation-by-flatness — source: character (Ben's planning shape, here with new stakes — flyer distribution, not transit, satisfying the Ch06 tracker order) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the cohort normalizing the photo is the pressure; also loads the chapter's best payoff (item 17) — workshopped: no

7 — Sam drags the side table six inches; "'There,' Sam said. 'Now people see it first.'" — mechanism: comic staging + deadpan redundancy — source: character (Sam makes room physically) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: physicalizes the public pressure; Theo's face-down counter-move is where the laugh lands — workshopped: no

8 — "Theo put his copy face-down on the side table and finished the chairs wrong twice before he got fourteen." — mechanism: repetition-with-escalation of item 1 — source: character — funniness: **1** — portable: no — dramatic work: measures the flyer's effect — workshopped: no. **BLOCKING.** Second firing of the count gag, unvaried in mechanism, within twelve lines of the first; by "finished the chairs" the reader has already predicted "wrong." This is the inherited chair-count joke the tracker watch anticipated. (Full counting census: items 1 and 8 comic, June's "fourteen of them, count visible" plot-bearing, "chairs in eights" deflection-plot, item 20 varied — only item 8 repeats without variation.)

9 — Clementine family: "two clementines balanced on top" → "Priya read hers and quietly moved the clementines to June's station." — mechanism: wordless-care deadpan — source: character (Priya's voice card: adjusts conditions, no comment) — funniness: 2 (the station move — her entire reading of the fear card is a fruit relocation) — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort tenderness without speech, before the room knows it will need it — workshopped: no. NOTE: family count for the chapter is **five** touches (box-top, station move, peel-stop, "like a tip," "riding on the flap") against the Ch07 tracker order "closed, do not turn fruit into new coffee-order tic." See revision order 3.

10 — "started decanting medium into small jars, eight of them, as if the evening were about jars." (Odile aside) — mechanism: deadpan misdirection / ironic understatement — source: character (Odile's engineered indifference, read by the one person who knows she is conducting) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — eight jars is one per student and the book's number; the prop is class-material, the count is the spine — dramatic work: reread-consistent Odile (watching while performing not-watching) without a wink — workshopped: no, though I flag it as the chapter's most caption-shaped clause; it survives because the irony is Theo's earned knowledge, not narrator garnish, and the object is literal

11 — "fixing the keys--he repainted the keys three times, the keys were fine--" — mechanism: self-aware repetition / displacement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: avoidance made visible in paint, which is the assignment's whole premise — workshopped: no

12 — "grayed it down with the green's complement like a first-year" — mechanism: deadpan self-diagnosis with technical truth — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the complement is the chapter's specific green/orange interval) — dramatic work: executes the packet dial "competence less smooth under pressure" in craft terms, not adverbs — workshopped: no

13 — "Ben said 'Nice save' without turning around. Theo said 'Thanks' with his palm still flat over the cup." — mechanism: dramatic-irony deadpan — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: his shaking witnessed and misread as competence — the chapter's argument in two words — workshopped: no

14 — "'You left the underpainting.' / 'That was the assignment,' Theo said. / 'It's better than the assignment,' Luis said, and moved on." — mechanism: delayed material verdict — source: character (Luis: brief material verdicts, one volley, inside his cap) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: peer benediction that doesn't puncture the rawness because it's about paint — workshopped: no. I checked the assignment/assignment echo against the banned paired-echo-confirmation family: it is cross-speaker reversal, not confirmation; passes.

15 — "looked at him over the top of nothing, because her glasses were still in her hair." — mechanism: payoff of planted detail (glasses planted at the rules speech) / deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile without lens-armor at the one critique that matters — workshopped: no

16 — "'You started with furniture,' she said." — mechanism: insult-as-diagnosis — source: character (Odile's licensed mode) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the wrong-first fear without a theme speech — workshopped: no

17 — "Ben skipped zone three of the flyer route entirely." (packing-up silence) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation / gag converted to grief instrument — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the room's rawness measured by an abandoned plan; the comic register withdrawing IS the emotional report — workshopped: no. **Strongest item in the chapter.**

18 — "Priya had left the second clementine on June's bag like a tip." — mechanism: incongruity simile — source: **narrator-overlay** (the object already carries Priya's care; the simile is wit painted over it) — funniness: **1** — portable: **yes** ("left X like a tip" transplants anywhere) — dramatic work: none the bare object doesn't already do — workshopped: no. **BLOCKING** on both score and portability, and it sits at the head of the raw aftermath, where sweetening costs most.

19 — "'Do you want me to take the catalogs back?' … 'Nine's a lot of shelf.'" — mechanism: deflection-comedy, care as retreat — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (nine catalogs is the armed Ch17 bomb; the dramatic irony is enormous) — dramatic work: he offers to defuse the discovery without confessing — the card's "genuine attempt, failed without melodrama" — workshopped: no

20 — "On the way out, nobody said *fear*. Theo counted that too." — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (the counting tic turned on an absence of language) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the chapter's comic tell into its grief register; this is what item 8 should learn from — workshopped: no

21 — "He recognized the plan making itself useful and kept it anyway." (penultimate paragraph) — mechanism: wry self-diagnosis — source: character interiority — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: executes the card's hardest requirement (he can know he is failing and still delay) without self-condemnation-as-nobility — workshopped: checked as the near-closer polish candidate; it passes because it is specific to this plan and this man, not a maxim, and the actual closer is lights/bolt/keys, kept flat

DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:
- **Density:** front-loaded into the flyer sequence, deliberately silenced through the painting and critique movement, returning muted and converted (items 17, 20) in the aftermath. For an emotional-peak fear chapter in a lightly-comic register, this placement is correct and has a named reason: the comedy withdraws exactly where rawness must hold, and its withdrawal is itself rendered (zone three, the peel). The peel-stop ("Priya's clementine stop being peeled halfway through, the skin's small tearing quitting in the middle") also satisfies the no-"room went quiet"-without-source rule concretely.
- **Variety:** deflation ×4, deadpan ×5, repetition-with-variation ×4, incongruity simile ×4, insult-diagnosis, staging, dramatic irony. No mechanism dominates. Not MONOTONOUS.
- **Sweetness:** the critique sequence is left sharp — Luis praises paint, not pain; Odile's verdict is a prohibition; nobody jokes June or Theo out of the wound. The one sweetening instance is item 18, ordered cut. Not OVERSWEETENED after that cut.
- **Cringe:** none; nothing condescends to or overshoots the cozy-romance target reader. The flyer banter runs four beats and ends on an object — no sitcom rhythm.
- **Ch15 inheritance sweep (ordered):** no call-station/list-frame interiority in Theo POV (the opening count is interrupted by Mara, as the packet required); no Nia-shaped zingers; no noon/deadline echo. Clean.
- **Odile quotability:** aphorism-grade count is ~4 (card epigraph; "your partner is a subject you can't look at"; "Leave the wrong where I can find it"; "Pairs hang together or they lie") against the post-Ch13 guidance of ~3 for class chapters. See revision order 4.

VERDICT: **CLEAR** — comedy lands in this book's register: 19 of 21 items at funniness-2, overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced, one narrator-overlay instance total, mechanisms varied, and the chapter's best move is comedy converting into the grief register rather than relieving it. Strongest surviving item: "Ben skipped zone three of the flyer route entirely." Weakest surviving item: "'There,' Sam said. 'Now people see it first.'" — flat-funny and earns its place by escalating the pressure, but it is the closest the chapter comes to a beat that merely smiles. Two item-level blocking findings stand; the chapter is not committable until the orders below are executed.

REVISION ORDERS:
1. **Item 8 — "finished the chairs wrong twice before he got fourteen."** Failure: second firing of the count gag, mechanism unvaried, twelve lines after the first; predictable on arrival; flagged chair-count-joke inheritance. Fix: keep the closed loop (the count must still resolve at fourteen — June's canvas weaponizes "fourteen of them, count visible") but break the predicted beat: have him get fourteen in one pass and not trust it, recounting a correct count — funnier, less predictable, and it characterizes (his competence surviving while his belief in it doesn't). Do not substitute straightening/squaring business; that family sits at 3 with a no-decorative-instance note from Ch07.
2. **Item 18 — "left the second clementine on June's bag like a tip."** Failure: funniness-1, portable, narrator-overlay; sweetens the head of the raw aftermath. Fix: cut the simile, keep the object — "Priya had left the second clementine on June's bag." Priya's voice card does the rest; the caption is doing nothing the fruit isn't.
3. **Clementine family density — five touches against the Ch07 tracker order ("closed; do not turn fruit into new coffee-order tic").** With order 2 executed, also flatten "with the clementine still riding on the flap" to literal ("with the clementine still on the flap") or cut the mention. Keep the box-top setup, the station move, and the peel-stop — those three are load-bearing for the care thread and the quiet-source rule. Target: three touches, zero similes.
4. **Odile aphorism count (~4 vs. ~3 guidance).** Flatten "your partner is a subject you can't look at" into plainer rule mechanics in the rules speech — it is the only aphorism-grade line not doing irreplaceable work. Keep "Leave the wrong where I can find it" (it licenses the underpainting the whole chapter turns on) and keep "Varnish neither. They're a pair now. Pairs hang together or they lie" (material logistics carrying S-RULE-01 pair-drift seed work without a wink).

CLEAR
