The narrative returns to the past, describing the summer the future artist C. Jat would turn fifteen, when he began drawing skulls—first in the air, then in a sketchpad, and finally beside his signature on the painting that would become world-famous. The text stresses that the true miracle was not fame but that the painting was finished at all, given how little the boy thought of himself.

The boy grew up in a dangerous neighborhood and attended a school steeped in violence, which made him good at running and living in constant stress. He believed he had no talent for art and was certain of his own worthlessness, fearing he would disappoint everyone. His close friend Joar always ran beside him, deliberately putting himself between danger and the artist; Joar, short but fierce, had been routinely beaten by his father and was skilled at fighting.

The artist excelled at seeing beauty outside himself and felt alien in school, town, and body. That spring he had cried so much he felt empty, not shy but convinced of his flaws. His friends tried to make him laugh through jokes and exhausting sprints to the pier, where Joar often leaped into the sea first, teasing the others. The artist would later paint Joar with a blurred outline, as if Joar were always on the verge of being lost.

As an adult, the artist would look back and recognize the summer as saturated with violence and funerals, a period that began and ended with death. By August, Joar would have watched his mother be beaten for the last time and resolved to kill his father. Yet, between these dark bookends, the summer was also full of love, friendship, loud laughter, and reckless stunts—fireworks in mailboxes, riding shopping carts downhill, and drying socks in a toaster.

The season became the foundation for the painting and for the artist’s awakening. He later understood his teenage years as simultaneous extremes of brightness and darkness, and childhood as homesickness—being born in the wrong place—where friends were fellow castaways. One day in June, the artist whispered that he could try to paint the sea, and Joar eagerly encouraged him, silently motivated by fear for the artist’s life after noticing pills and cuts.

The boys’ unspoken understanding was heavy: the artist feared drowning his friends in his anxiety, while Joar feared losing him if he did not paint. A long, tense silence on the pier broke when one of them farted, triggering shared laughter before they jumped into the sea together, overwhelmed by its capacity to hold their hearts.

Floating on their backs, the artist asked Joar if he truly believed not all of them would survive to adulthood. On a calm, clear day, Joar answered that the artist would live—“you’re going to live forever”—though the others might not. The narrator immediately counters this prophecy with, “Not to be mean, but he was wrong,” implying that even the artist’s survival or immortality was not as Joar predicted.