As he tells the story, Ted leaves out the part about the knife and how Joar sometimes carried it with him. Louisa likes Ali, and Ted says Ali and Joar would have liked her too. 

Louisa says Ted should give the train conductor his name. Ted refuses, and Louisa wonders if he isn’t Ted’s “type” because he has tattoos. Before Ted can react, Louisa tells the conductor that Ted just got released from prison. Ted is mortified, and Louisa says she’s just trying to make him seem more edgy and less nerdy.

Ali often stayed at Ted’s house for food and electricity, as her father neglected to pay bills—after her mother died, her father was careless. The tone shifts as Louisa asks Ted if Ali was sexually assaulted. While Louisa never experienced this, Fish did. Ted tells her that once, when his brother came home, Ali instinctively reached for a knife. She confided in Ted that a friend of her father’s had drugged and sexually assaulted her. She ran away, hid in the woods for a day, and never told anyone, but the incident led to depression and suicidal ideation. Soon after, they moved, and she met the boys and started sleeping with a knife. 

Louisa asks about the skulls in the artist’s paintings, and Ted admits the artist “stole” them. He begins to recount the competition story, but Louisa interrupts, realizing she doesn’t want to hear about the friends’ deaths. Changing her mind, she tells him to start from the beginning.

Louisa sketches while Ted tells the story. When he tries to see her sketch, she violently jerks it away from him. 

Ted says that the only reason Joar never killed any of the bullies at school was because of his injuries from his father’s abuse. Joar didn’t see himself as a hero, and he worried about his uncontrolled rage and that he was becoming like his father. When a bully named “Bulldog” locked Ted inside a locker, Joar returned the favor by padlocking Bulldog inside another locker, where he wet his pants. 

When the school janitor came to break the padlock on the locker, he saw that the owner had skull tattoos, which inspired the artist to start including them in his drawings. Joar and Bulldog fought, but the damage was minor compared to what Joar’s father did to him when he got home. Joar knew his time was running out, and he wanted to do all he could to save his friends. He somehow knew Ted would survive and tasked Ted with taking care of the artist. Once, the friends discussed their favorite superheroes and what superpower they wished they had. Ted remembers that he was too afraid to say he wished that he could stop time so he wouldn’t lose his friends.

Ted excuses himself to the restroom. Alone, he regrets being so vulnerable with Louisa and sharing so much of himself through the story. He has the sudden urge to be rid of her and considers leaving her. He bumps into her as he emerges from the restroom. The train has stopped due to technical issues, and they leave the train to walk around. 

Louisa wonders if Ted’s stab wound was painful; the most painful injury she ever experienced was a broken arm from one of her foster parents. She asks Ted if he will return to teaching, but he isn’t sure. Louisa apologizes for her reaction to him trying to see the sketch. Ted understands, likening the unfinished art to Louisa: “[Y]ou’re like the drawing, you’re not ready yet. But one day I think you’re going to do something important” (183).

Louisa finds a newspaper that features an article about the artist’s death. The article has a photo of his home, where Ted lived. It is a beautiful house, but Ted can’t imagine staying there without him. Louisa asks if they were partners, and Ted says they were almost, but the artist loved someone else. Louisa says she understands that kind of love. Ted regrets that he considered leaving her.

Ted continues his story, telling Louisa about the time the friends had the idea to use dish soap to blow bubbles in the school hallway. One of the popular girls slipped on the soap and faked that she’d broken her foot. She returned to school on crutches, but when she saw a cute dog, she dropped the crutches and ran. Her friends pranked her and put her crutches on the roof. When the janitor, who was once an aspiring artist himself, went onto the roof to get the crutches, he slipped and broke his foot. The artist became the “temporary janitor” afterwards.

The janitor, named Christian, was 20 years old. He covered the skull tattoos on his arms with long sleeves. The school told him to paint a wall white, but instead, he filled it with art. The artist met Christian on the day he painted the wall, and after he saw the artist’s sketchbook, Christian invited him to paint on the wall too. He told the artist that his mother encouraged his art, and he went to art school but had to leave because of substance use. Christian encouraged the artist to continue creating, quoting his mother: “Great art is a small break from human despair” (195). Meeting Christian came at a pivotal time, as the artist had lost the will to live.

Though the artist’s parents didn’t physically abuse him, they emotionally abandoned him, and he often overheard them wishing he were more “normal.” He became withdrawn and anxious, and art was his only escape. School was torturous, not just because of the bullies but also the teachers. 

The artist hated art class because the teacher, whom they called “Owl,” forced him to follow rules. The artists couldn’t draw on command when Owl demanded that he draw a flower, and Joar came to his defense and told the teacher to draw one instead. The artist’s friends worried about him because they knew about the pills he took from Tom’s house. When the artists showed the group his contribution to Christian’s wall, they hoped he’d found his voice as an artist and a reason to keep living.

A woman with a baby sits near Ted and Louisa on the train. Ted doesn’t like babies and is uncomfortable around them. When the conductor passes by, he tells them a joke, and Louisa suggests that Ted tell one. He reluctantly tells a joke about penguins, and no one laughs except the conductor. The woman asks Louisa to hold her baby while she goes to the restroom. Louisa asks Ted to continue the story because she can deal with an unhappy ending better while holding a baby.

Ted continues to tell his story. He relates that Christian’s mother loved and cherished him from the moment he was born. She took him to art galleries, taught him about renowned artists, and nurtured his talent. As a teenager, he developed a substance abuse disorder, and she tried to get him help through rehabilitation programs, but nothing seemed to work. She got him the job as the school janitor, hoping it would be beneficial to him. 

After he met the artist, Christian called his mother to tell her he’d met someone like them. For several days, the artist and Christian collaborated on painting the wall. Christian shared how his mother supported his art, and the artist wished his parents would accept him in that way. 

Christian occasionally experienced nosebleeds but brushed them off. He gave the artist his mother’s phone number in case he ever needed assistance and urged him not to harm himself. One day, Christian didn’t show up at the wall, and the artist found out that he had died from a heart attack. The school painted over their work, calling it “graffiti.” 

The artist sketched a picture of Christian painting the wall and left it on his grave. Christian’s mom found it and cherished his gift. School ended for the year, and the artist did not pass the art class. His friends worried he wouldn’t survive losing Christian. That summer, Joar learned about the art contest.

Holding the baby prompts Louisa to ask Ted if he believes in God. He says that sometimes he felt a sense of God when he watched the artist create. Ted says the contest prize was for the painting to be hung in a museum, which Ali thought was pointless. However, it was her idea for the artist to paint them. The artist captured “not the way they looked, but how they made him feel” (220). Ali wanted to name the painting The One of Ali, but the artist called it The One of the Sea as a joke. Louisa recalls a memory of her and Fish making snow angels as Ted is temporarily transported back to that one summer.

After Christian died, the artist threw the pills in the ocean and began visiting his grave and sketching what would become the painting. Christian’s mother was an art history teacher, and Ted says she inspired him to become a teacher as well. Ted is taking Louisa to her for help with selling the painting. Ted has a flashback to the day of the stabbing and is sure he will never return to teaching. He falls asleep, and when he awakens, Lousia isn’t there, but she left him a sketch.

Louisa feels like the whole situation is too good to be true, and she has been contemplating leaving the train for a while, but she wanted to hear the end of the story. She decides to leave while Joar is still alive, at least in the story, and leaves the painting with Ted. She remembers what Fish taught her about disappearing and eases her way off the train and into the crowd. Then she sees two men.

Louisa recalls that Fish told her never to trust men, though Fish was always falling for men and their empty promises. One night, Louisa took Fish to the public library, and they broke in and spent the night there. Louisa read fairy tales to Fish, explaining that they were the best stories because the main character never dies. The security guards almost caught them, but they managed to hide in the bathroom. Their adventure ended when Fish accidentally opened an emergency door and set off the alarm. As they ran back to the foster home, Fish declared it her best night ever and that life was a miracle.

Louisa tried to fit in with the popular girls at school, but Fish preferred “finding older friends in a fog of bottles and pills” (234). She never offered Louisa drugs or alcohol, though. After Fish turned 18, the foster parents accused her of stealing jewelry, and she ran away. The police found her dead from an overdose in the library, surrounded by fairy tale books.

Louisa runs from the men. She regrets leaving Ted because he seems like a nice person. However, she feels that Ted’s belief in her is “too much responsibility. All she can give him is disappointment” (236).