They point at the pictures with feverish fingers - there, yeah, and there - we'll get there one day, maybe even next summer, the three of them in the van setting off on a legendary surf trip, in search of the most beautiful wave in oceanic history, driving until they find that wild and secret place...
-- Narrator re: Simon, Christophe, and Johan (chapter 2)

Importance: While waiting for the sun to rise, the boys sit in Christophe's van and look at a surfing magazine, fantasizing about future surfing trips, and perhaps even catching the "perfect wave" (8). This scene is meant to represent the vast potential of Simon's life, all of the possibilities for his future that are snuffed out in an instant when he is thrown from the van.

Révol has been drawing something else from it: the naked awareness of his existence. Not the feeling of power, a megalomaniac exaltation, but its very opposite: the influx of...
-- Dr. Révol (chapter 4)