That afternoon, Misty Meyer gets on the bus with Patch, and the driver, Norma, silently lets them ride without asking for fare. In Branton, Patch takes the posters from his bag and the two of them spend the hot afternoon putting them up, continuing Patch's search.

Afterward, Patch and Misty sit at the bus stop, share a soda, and talk for the first time at length about ordinary parts of Misty's life. Their conversation is awkward but increasingly easy, moving from jokes to small embarrassments, which shows a fragile closeness growing between them. They ride back to Monta Clare and go to the edge of the lake, where they lie together until dark.

At the lake, Misty shifts from casual talk to the emotional weight she has been carrying since Patch saved her. Misty says her father cannot speak plainly about what happened and that other people treat Patch as both heroic and unsettling. Misty then breaks down, admitting that she was terrified, that she left Patch behind, and that normal outings with other people made her want to scream because Patch had been trapped somewhere terrible while life went on for her.

Patch comforts Misty and tells her she had no choice but to run. Patch then speaks about the therapist he is forced to see and reflects on mistakes, trying to frame suffering and error as part of learning rather than something simple or final. When Patch walks Misty back to town and sees her movie group waiting outside the theater, including Chuck, Misty says that every pleasure she had while Patch was gone felt stolen from him. Watching her return to her ordinary life, Patch realizes that her closeness to him may come from guilt and penance rather than a future they could share, and he thinks bitterly that he had little to lose in the first place.