- Bombshell? Dropped. Huge Hans demands Sofie's virginity.
- The girls try to come to her rescue, and of course Sofie says no, but Huge Hans asks how they know his bike didn't mean as much to him as her innocence means to her.
- They have to admit they don't. Talk about a philosophical conundrum (that has a very clear answer, if you ask Shmoop).
- Huge Hans, therefore, decides that he's going to be the one to rape her the following afternoon, and four other boys have to be at the sawmill to stand guard.
- The next day at school, Eskildsen, ever the clueless adult, tells the class that he's never seen them so quiet, and remarks that their behavior has been awfully strange this year. Ya think?
- Sofie, Agnes says, just sits at her desk looking "like… a saint… who was about to meet her death."
- In the meantime, Pierre Anthon is going totally off the deep end, yelling about chimpanzee DNA from up in his plum tree. (We share it with them, apparently, and therefore there's nothing special about being human, and therefore we should all just die.)
- Agnes decides that maybe Sofie knows the true secret of meaning: there's definitely something that matters, even if it's something you have to lose.
- The following day—okay, prepare yourselves for something ugly—there's a handkerchief on top of the pile of meaning, covered with blood and semen.
- Sofie's walking around like she's in pain, but also like she's the keeper of a great secret. Agnes tries to get details out of her, but Sofie won't cough them up.
- And now there are just three people left before the heap is complete: Holy Karl, Pretty Rosa, and Jon-Johan.
- Sofie chooses Holy Karl and says he has to give up nothing less than Jesus on the Cross.