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I put the glass and toothbrush on my dresser and straightened its doily. I picked some clothing up and began separating it by smell into wearable and unwearable.

‘Kyle says Jim Troeltsch tore some of Ortho’s face off trying to pull him off a window his face got glued to,’ Mario said. ‘And then Jim Troeltsch and Mr. Kenkle tried to put toilet tissue on the ripped parts, the way Tall Paul sometimes puts little bits of Kleenex on a shaving cut, but Ortho’s face was a lot worse than a shaving cut, and they used a whole roll, and now Ortho’s face is covered with toilet tissue, and the tissue’s stuck now, and Ortho can’t get it off, and at breakfast Mr. deLint was yelling at Ortho for letting them put toilet tissue on it, and Ortho ran to his and Kyle’s room and locked the door, and Kyle doesn’t have his key since the accident with the whirlpool.’

I helped Mario on with his police lock’s vest and affixed the Velcro nice and tight. Mario’s chest is so fragile-feeling that I could feel his heartbeat’s tremble through the vest and sweatshirt.

Coyle removed the apnea-guard. Strings of white nighttime oral material appeared between his mouth and the guard as he extracted it. He looked to Mario. ‘Tell him the worst part.’

I was watching Coyle very closely to see what he planned to do with the sickening mouthpiece he held.

‘Hey Hal, your phone has messages, and Mike Pemulis came by and asked if you were up and about.’

‘You haven’t told him the worst part of it,’ Coyle said.

‘Don’t even think about putting that thing down anywhere my bed, Kyle, please.’

Tm holding it away from everything, don’t worry.’

Mario used his tool to zip up the long curved zipper of his backpack. ‘Kyle said there was a problem with a discharge again —’

‘So I heard,’ I said.

‘— and Kyle says he woke up and Ortho was missing, and Ortho’s bed was missing as well, so he turned on the light —’

Coyle gestured with the appliance: ‘And lo and fucking-capital-B behold.’

‘—yes and lo,’ Mario said, ‘Ortho’s bed is up near the ceiling of their room. The frame has some way got lifted up and bolted to the ceiling sometime during the night without Kyle hearing it or waking up.’

‘Until the discharge, that is,’ I said.

This is it,’ said Coyle. The tin cans and accusations I’m moving his stuff around are one thing. I’m going to Lateral Alice for a switch like Troeltsch did. This is the straw.’

Mario said ‘And his bed’s up on the ceiling now, still, and if it falls it’s going to go right through the floor and fall in Graham and Petropolis’s room.’

‘He’s in there right now all mummified in toilet paper, sulking, with his bed hanging overhead, with the door locked, so I can’t even get my apnea-guard-cleaning supplies,’ Coyle said.

I’d heard nothing about Troeltsch apparently switching room-assignments with Trevor Axford. A gigantic wedge of snow slid down a steep part of the roof over our window and fell past the window and hit the ground below with a huge whump. For some reason the fact that something as major as a midterm room-switch could have taken place without my knowing anything about it filled me with dread. There were a few glitters of a possible incipient panic-attack again.