The chapter opens with sensory memories of sea air and a squelch, leading to a scene where Ali warns Joar too late about stepping in dog feces. The four friends—Ted, Ali, Joar, and the artist—joke and tease each other as they walk, capturing the lightness of mid-summer and the subtle sadness of vacation’s midpoint.

Earlier that day, after days of rain, they enjoyed a brief spell of sunshine at the pier. They swam in their underwear, dried off while eating Ted’s cookies and Joar’s stolen soda, and chatted. Ted shyly explained the word “petrichor,” prompting Ali and the artist to encourage him about becoming a teacher. Their banter shifted to a TV program and the nature of wealth and poverty, with Ali and Joar debating passionately as usual.

Talk turned to how they would fund the artist’s supplies for the competition. The artist tried to withdraw, but Ted and the others kept looking for ways to help, trading jokes and insults that kept spirits high. The artist soaked in the sounds and smells, a feeling he would later paint as part of the sky, equating heaven with summer.

On the way home, after more teasing—especially of Ted’s fear of dog mess—they continued to process recent grief. It had been just over a week since Ted’s father’s funeral; Ted was returning nightly to a dark, silent home, while his friends tried to buoy him with constant humor.

They then noticed something in a bush: a bird tangled in a net. Joar stopped Ted from touching it due to a superstition about mothers rejecting handled chicks. Ted and the artist examined it and realized the bird was dead. They gently freed it and buried it. At Joar’s prompting, Ted improvised funeral words he remembered from his father’s service, and Ali added a brief, sad dance. The artist covered the small grave.

A peeping sound revealed a second bird still alive, emaciated and trapped. Ali asked the artist, whose gentle hands calmed living things, to free it. The artist lifted it out; the bird did not fly, likely too frightened or weakened. They sought a container, and the artist produced his old pill box, which once held the pills he had discarded. Despite misgivings, they placed the bird inside, with Joar helping inexpertly.

Joar carried the box carefully as rain began, shielding it with his body. Near home, he insisted on taking the bird to his mother, confident she would know how to save it. The others did not argue, though even Ali sensed it was a bad idea. The chapter closes with the rain and wind feeling like they carried away the children’s summer, marking the beginning of the end of that season.