The chapter opens with reflections on memory, noting how childhood summers feel perpetually sunny and how forgetting can be stranger than remembering. Near the end of his life at thirty-nine, the artist often murmured Joar’s name in his sleep and spoke of birds, chili sauce, stolen bicycles, and racing shopping carts; sometimes he appeared to swim in bed and cried out, “Where’s Ali?” These memories establish the emotional fabric of the friends’ past. Ted recalls meeting Joar and the artist at twelve and, though they had only each other for more than a year, he remembers those years as if there were always four of them.

Twenty-five years earlier, the friends had a ritual at the sea and in winter streets: each would surface or call in the dark shouting “HERE!”—four voices in a set order, with an unnamed girl first, then Joar, the artist, and Ted. This remembered cadence hints at the presence of a fourth friend long before the narrative names her.

The narrative then moves to the summer they were fifteen. The morning after Joar lay awake gripping a knife beneath flowers, waiting to confront his abusive father, his friends waited at a crossroads for him until late morning. When Joar failed to appear, they walked to his building, saw his open window with geraniums and lavender, and hesitated to call. Joar suddenly appeared at the doorway with dirt-streaked fingers, explaining that his mother had him repot plants. His mother, sensing his dark intent without seeing the knife, had recognized danger in his eyes and the open window.

As the three set off toward the pier, Joar hid the knife in his backpack and Ted, feeling helpless, unexpectedly turned funny to ease the tension. Ted shouted “Artichoke!” at a squirrel, recalling a childhood prank when his brother taught him the wrong word for “squirrel,” a story that had once made Joar and the artist laugh when they were twelve. They laugh again now, with Joar adding a joke about tricking his mother into believing people allergic to fur cannot eat kiwis. Their laughter reaches Joar’s mother at the apartment, who smiles through soil-stained hands.

That afternoon becomes one of their happiest. The artist clutches a backpack filled with pills stolen from Ted’s father’s bathroom; Joar grips his knife-laden backpack; Ted shares overly dry cookies. Between jokes about the cookies “eating” them, they pass the parking lot where Joar’s father’s car sits, with narration foreshadowing that later a police car will be there, men from the harbor will stare up with shame, the apartment will smell of geraniums and lavender, and a body will lie on the floor. For now, it is early summer and light.

Amid this brightness, Joar looks around and asks, “Where’s Ali?” The narrator reflects that in hindsight it felt obvious there had always been four friends, and that the painting later known as The One of the Sea might once have been titled The Boys and Her. A voice then bellows “HERE!” behind them, and Ali appears, flying around the corner, confirming the quartet.