The dining-hall aftermath: the gift-body, the cherry-tomato willing, and the bed-rumor surfaces

pivotal · 11 Nov YDAU, supper

• When: 11 Nov YDAU, 1810h., E.T.A. dining hall, after the exhibition
• What: Fresh off nearly beating Hal, Stice sits at the best table, oblivious of the awe rippling off the younger kids (R.H.I.P.), regaling the room with his parents' Xmas rows (event 1). Then he goes abstracted, staring at a cherry tomato perched on the incline of his salad bowl and trying to will it to roll — not with a finger but with "concentrated will," flexing "some kind of psychic muscle he's not sure he even has," summoning the same "coercive reverence" he'd felt on court as balls swerved to his inner will. Here the narration delivers the full gift-body portrait (event 2). Troeltsch's tuition-complaint blurts out the campus rumor — "Stice's bed moves around" — jerking Stice's head up in alarm ("Who says my bed moves?"), and he tells the table "Never open your eyes underground: my old man's dictum." Hal privately notes Stice has "a secret suspicion about a secret that has more to do with the actual table than with the people at the table."