My Friends

Louisa runs until she can’t anymore, finally breaking into a parked car to sleep. She hasn’t slept this well since Fish was alive. Meanwhile, C. Jat has been taken to a hospital, where he dreams of the summer he turned 15. When he wakes up, he confuses Ted at first for Joar. Ted has known C. Jat most of his life. He reassures C. Jat that the police were so busy with him that Louisa probably got away. It’s hard for Ted to see how weak C. Jat has become.

C. Jat tells Ted that he tried to sneak into the auction to see The One of the Sea one last time, but a guard didn’t recognize him and kicked him out. Ted worries about C. Jat, who was supposed to wait for him in a café. But when Ted left the café to go to the auction, C. Jat secretly followed. He was in the alley because he was trying to climb in a window. Ted reminds C. Jat that he’s not 14 anymore. C. Jat begins to cough in a way that worries Ted. He urges C. Jat to treat himself well and try to live as long as possible.

Ted reveals that he succeeded in the mission that C. Jat gave him earlier—he managed to buy The One of the Sea. It took almost all the savings that C. Jat had left from his career as an artist. Now, the painting is in a box in the corner of C. Jat’s hospital room. Ted comments that he saw the graffiti skulls C. Jat painted in the alley and that he hadn’t seen those in a long time. C. Jat describes how Louisa inspired him.

Ted stays by C. Jat’s bedside for what feels like several days but is only one evening. By the morning, C. Jat is dead, and the news spreads around the world. The last thing C. Jat tells Ted is to find Louisa and give her The One of the Sea.