As the confrontation escalated inside the church, Louisa reacted when a guard grabbed her. Panicking at being touched, she stabbed the guard’s forearm with her red pen and then sprayed him head to toe with white paint from her backpack, turning his black uniform into a white-streaked mess. When the guard lifted Louisa and her backpack and yelled for the police, she bit his ear, forcing him to hurl her out the church doors onto the sidewalk.

From inside, an older woman accused Louisa of trying to vandalize the painting and called her an activist. Louisa shouted back that it was not a painting of the sea but had the wind knocked out of her by the fall before she could finish her insult. With the guard pursuing and again ordering the police to be called, Louisa grabbed her backpack and sprinted away.

Running through the streets, Louisa focused on The One of the Sea, which she understood not as an image of water but of a fishing pier with three teenage boys at its end. She believed that most adults, fixated on the title and the investment value, overlooked the boys entirely. Louisa reveled in how the artist captured friendship and laughter, concluding that only someone who had known deep loneliness could paint with such tenderness.

She reflected that she had memorized every detail and no longer needed the postcard in her backpack because she had finally seen the painting up close. She noticed small skulls drawn beside the artist’s signature—knowledge she considered indelible and precious.

Doubling back cleverly, Louisa turned corners to reach the rear of the church where she assumed the guard would not look. Her plan faltered when she collided at full speed with a homeless man standing by a trash can. The impact threw her to the ground and knocked her unconscious, ending her flight behind the very building from which she had been expelled.