Beartown

  “If I report this to the headmaster, he’ll have to suspend you. Maybe even expel you from school. And shall I tell you something, Benjamin? Sometimes I think that’s what you want. It’s as if you’re trying to prove to the whole world that there’s nothing in your life that you aren’t destructive enough to have a go at wrecking.”

  Benji doesn’t answer. She hands him his jacket.

  “I’m going to switch the alarm off, then I’m going to let you into the gym so you can have a shower. To be honest, you smell so terrible that I should probably call pest control as well. Have you got any clean clothes in your locker?”

  He tries to smile when she helps him up.

  “So that I look presentable when the headmaster arrives?”

  She sighs.

  “I’m not going to report you. You’re going to have to ruin your life on your own. I’m not going to help you.”

  He meets her gaze and nods gratefully. Then his voice suddenly becomes adult, his eyes a man’s instead of a boy’s:

  “I’m sorry I called you sweet cheeks. That was disrespectful. I won’t do it again. Nor will anyone else on the team.”

  He rubs his neck, and Jeanette almost regrets telling the truth when she met up with Adri at the pub in Hed and was asked what his behavior in school was like. But she knows he’s telling the truth when he says that no one on the team will call her that again, and she wonders how he has come to have such authority over the others. That a single word from Benji can make any hockey player in the entire school start or stop doing anything. It almost makes her miss playing the game herself. She and Adri were childhood friends, and they used to play together over in Hed. Sometimes she feels that both she and Adri stopped too soon, and wonders what would have happened if there had been a girls’ team in Beartown.

  “Go and shower,” she says, patting Benji’s hand.

  “Yes, miss,” he smiles, his eyes a boy’s again.

  “I’m not hugely fond of being called ‘miss’ either,” she grunts.

  “What would you like to be called, then?”

  “Jeanette. Jeanette will do absolutely fine.”

  She fetches a towel for him from the gym bag in her car, and he follows her to the gym. After she’s switched the alarm off and unlocked the door for him, he stands in the opening and says:

  “You’re a good teacher, Jeanette. You just had really bad timing, getting us in your class when we were at our best.”

  At that moment she understands why the team follows his lead. The same reason why the girls fall for him. When he looks you right in the eyes and says something, no matter what crap he may have done immediately before, you believe him.

  * * *

  Kevin’s dad knots his tie, adjusts his cuff links, and picks up his briefcase. At first he considers calling good-bye to his son from the door like he usually does, but he changes his mind and goes out through the terrace door instead. He puts his briefcase down and picks up a stick. They stand side by side and take turns firing shots. It must be ten years since the last time.

  “I bet you can’t hit the post,” his dad says.

  Kevin raises his eyebrows, as if it’s a joke. When he sees that it isn’t, he pulls the puck back a couple of inches, flexes his wrists gently, and sends the puck flying into the metal. His dad taps his stick on the ground approvingly.

  “Luck?”

  “Good players deserve luck,” Kevin replies.

  He learned that when he was little. His dad has never let him win so much as a table- tennis match in the garage.

  “Did you see the statistics from the match?” the boy asks hopefully.

  His dad nods and looks at his watch. Walks toward his briefcase.

  “I hope you don’t imagine that the final is an excuse for you not to put one hundred percent into your schoolwork this week.”

  Kevin shakes his head. His dad almost touches his cheek. Almost asks about the red marks on his neck. But instead he clears his throat and says:

  “People in this town are going to try to stick to you more than usual now, Kevin, so you need to remember that viruses make you sick. You need to be immune to them. And the final isn’t just about hockey. It’s about what sort of man you want to be. A man who goes out and grabs what he deserves, or one who stands in a corner waiting for someone to give it to him.”

  The father walks off without waiting for a reply, and his son stands there with scratch-marks on his hand and a heartbeat that won’t stop throbbing in his neck.

  * * *

  His mom is waiting in the kitchen. Kevin stares at her uncertainly. There’s freshly made breakfast on the table. A smell of bread.

  “I . . . Well, it’s probably a bit silly . . . but I took this morning off,” she says.

  “What for?” Kevin wonders.

  “I thought we could . . . spend some time together. Just you and me. I thought we could . . . talk.”

  He avoids her gaze. She looks a little too desperate for him to be able to handle eye contact.

  “I have to go to school, Mom.”

  She nods, her teeth biting into her lower lip.

  “Yes. Yes. Of course . . . it was silly. I’m silly.”

  She feels like going after him and asking a million questions. Late last night she found sheets in the dryer, and he’s never washed so much as a sock for himself before. There was a T-shirt there too, with bloodstains that hadn’t quite come out. When he was in the garden this morning firing pucks she went into his room. Found the blouse-button on the floor.

  She wants to go after him, but she doesn’t know how to talk to an almost grown man through a closed bathroom door. She packs her briefcase and gets in her car and drives half an hour into the forest before stopping. She sits there all morning, so that no one at work will ask why she’s there so early. Because she told them she was going to be spending the morning with her son.

  * * *

  Kira is standing with her hand against the door of Maya’s room, but she doesn’t knock again. Her daughter has already said she’s ill, and Kira doesn’t want to be that mother. The nagging, uncool, anxious “helicopter parent.” She doesn’t want to knock again to ask if there’s actually something else wrong. You can’t do that; nothing makes a fifteen-year-old girl clam up more than the words “Do you want to talk?” You can’t just open the door and ask why she has suddenly started washing her own clothes of her own volition. After all, what is Kira? The secret service?

  So Kira does the not-nagging, not-anxious, not-helicopter, cool-mom thing. She gets in her car and drives off. Forty-five minutes into the forest she stops the car. Sits there alone in the darkness and waits for the pressure on her chest to subside.

  * * *

  Lyt opens the door and looks like he’s just seen a cake.

  “Kevin! Hi! Er . . . what . . . ?”

  Kevin nods at him impatiently.

  “Ready?” Lyt asks.

  “For . . . what? School? Now? With you? You mean . . . do I want to walk to school? With you?”

  “Are you ready or not?”

  “Where’s Benji?”

  “Fuck Benji,” Kevin snaps.

  Lyt stands there in shock with his mouth open, unable to think of anything to say. Kevin rolls his eyes impatiently.

  “Are you waiting for Communion or what? Shut your mouth, for fuck’s sake. Let’s go.”

  Lyt stumbles off and hurries to make sure he’s got his shoes on the right feet and his outdoor clothes at least relatively close to the appropriate body parts. Kevin doesn’t say a word all the way, until his outsize teammate grins and pulls out a hundred-kronor note.

  “So do I owe you this or not?”

  He starts giggling uncontrollably when Kevin takes it. Kevin tries to look nonchalant as he says:

  “But keep your mouth shut about it, okay? You know what women are like.”

  Lyt has never looked more euphoric than when he was given the chance to share a secret with his team captain.

  * * *
/>
  Maya’s phone rings, and she wishes with all her soul that it might be Ana, but it’s Amat again. She hides the phone under her pillow as if she were trying to smother it. She doesn’t know what to say to him, and she knows that Amat will primarily be wishing he hadn’t seen anything at all. If she doesn’t answer the phone, maybe the two of them can find some way of pretending that nothing happened. That it was just a misunderstanding.

  She removes the batteries from all the fire alarms and opens all the windows before putting her blouse on the floor of the shower and setting light to it. Then she sets light to a carton of cereal, letting the top burn before putting it out and leaving the remains on the kitchen counter. When her mom, a woman with the nose of a hungry grizzly bear, comes home and wonders why there’s a smell of smoke, the explanation will be that Maya managed to knock the carton of cereal onto a lit burner on the stove.

  She carefully sweeps up the remains of the blouse from the shower and only then does she realize that the buttons have melted and stuck to the drain, and the synthetic material hasn’t turned to ash the way she had hoped. If Ana had been there, she would have said: “Shit, Maya, if I ever murder anyone, remind me NOT to ask you for help!” She misses her. God, how she misses her. For several minutes she sits on the bathroom floor crying and trying to make herself phone her best friend, but she can’t do that to her. Can’t drag her into this. Can’t force her to carry this secret.

  It takes more than an hour to clean the bathroom and get rid of the remains of the burned blouse. She puts them in a plastic bag. Stands shaking in the doorway and stares at the garbage bin ten yards away. It’s light outside now, but that doesn’t make any difference. She’s scared of the darkness, in the middle of the day.

  25

  Ana is walking to school alone. Holding her phone in her hand like a weapon. Maya’s number on the screen, her finger on the button, but she doesn’t call. The most important promise they made was never to leave each other, not because of safety but because the promise made them equals. They’ve never been equals in any other way. Maya still has two parents. A brother. A home that doesn’t smell of cigarettes and vodka. She’s smart, funny, popular. Gets better grades. She’s musical. Brave. She can get better friends. And she gets guys.

  If Ana left Maya alone in the wilderness Maya would die. But what she didn’t realize when she left Maya alone at a party was that it amounted to the same thing.

  Ana keeps her finger on the button, but doesn’t call. In a few years’ time she’ll read an old newspaper article about research showing that the part of the brain that registers physical pain is the same part that registers jealousy. And then Ana will understand why she hurt so badly.

  * * *

  Amat and Fatima are standing at the bus stop as usual, but nothing else is the same. When Fatima was out shopping yesterday everyone said hello to her. When she went to the cash register, Tails, who owns the whole store, came over and tried to give her everything free of charge. She didn’t let him, of course, no matter how wealthy he was, and in the end the huge man threw up his hands and said with a chuckle, “You’re as stubborn as winter; I can see where Amat gets it from!”

  His white car is coming along the road now, a couple of minutes ahead of the bus. He stops and says he’s been to one of his other stores and just happened to be passing. Fatima doesn’t know if it’s true. At first she declines his offer of a lift to the rink, but changes her mind when she sees the way Amat is looking at the car. Tails is driving, Fatima is sitting in the passenger seat, and in the rearview mirror she can see how proud that makes her son. That he has been able to make this happen.

  As the boy practices on his own that morning, Tails sits in the stands alongside the A-team coach and the GM. When Fatima goes into the club president’s office to empty the trash can, the president stands and picks it up off the floor for her. Shakes her hand.

  * * *

  The school corridor is already full of people when the boys walk in. Everyone turns to look at them, and Lyt has never been so happy that Benji isn’t around. The attention from people who think he’s Kevin’s new best friend is dizzying. That’s why he doesn’t react when Kevin mutters that he “needs to shit,” goes into one of the bathrooms. His old best friend would have known that Kevin never does that at school if he can possibly help it.

  Inside, in the dark, Kevin tears the hundred-kronor note into tiny pieces and flushes them down the toilet. He doesn’t switch the light on. Doesn’t look at himself in the mirror.

  * * *

  Amat catches up with Zacharias at the lockers. They haven’t seen each other since the game, and only now does it occur to Amat that perhaps he should have called. When he sees the disappointment and anger in Zacharias’s eyes, he realizes he should have done more than that.

  “Hi . . . sorry about Saturday, everything happened so fast, I—”

  Zacharias slams his locker shut and shakes his head.

  “I get it. Team party. With your new team.”

  “Look, that’s not what I meant—” Amat says, but Zacharias doesn’t let him get as far as an apology.

  “It’s okay, Amat. You’re a star now. I get it.”

  “Come on, Zach, I . . .”

  “My dad said to congratulate you.”

  This last remark hurts Zacharias most of all. His dad works at the factory. Everyone loves hockey there; because the team was founded by factory workers they still feel that it belongs to them. Zacharias would have done any number of ridiculous things to be able to send his dad off to work as the father of a junior team player. The fact that his son is friends with one of them was enough to put a smile on his dad’s face all way there.

  Amat swallows the words he feels like saying and tries to find others instead, but doesn’t have time before Zacharias’s cap flies off his head and his body thuds into the lockers. Two final-year pupils whose names Amat doesn’t know laugh loudly.

  “Oops! Didn’t see you!” one of them grins.

  “That must be the first time someone hasn’t seen you, eh, fatty? How much have you eaten? Another fat kid?” the other one leers, pinching Zacharias’s stomach.

  This sort of thing happens to Zacharias a lot. It’s been going on for years, so the shock for all concerned is almost unimaginable when he suddenly flashes forward and headbutts one of them in the chest as hard as he can.

  The older boy staggers, as if a sandbag had just hit back, and it takes a moment for him to come to his senses. But then his fist smashes straight into Zacharias’s mouth. Amat cries out and throws himself between them. The two final-year pupils evidently don’t go to hockey matches because they don’t hesitate to knock him to the floor.

  “What have we got here, then? A little terrorist? You’re from the Hollow, aren’t you?” Amat says nothing. The older boy goes on:

  “There’s nothing but terrorists and fucking camels in the Hollow. Is that where you’re from?”

  Amat doesn’t answer back. He’s had a whole lifetime to learn that it only makes things worse. One of the older boys drags him up by his top and snarls:

  “I said: Where. Do. You. Come. From?”

  No one has a chance to react. The noise when the back of a head hits a locker is so deafening that at first Amat thinks it must be his. Bobo picks one of the final-year pupils off the floor. Even though he’s a year older than Bobo, he must be at least twenty pounds lighter. Bobo’s voice is on fire when he clarifies:

  “Beartown. His name is Amat, and he’s from Beartown.”

  The older boy’s eyes flit about until Bobo lets go of him, only to slam the back of his head into the locker again. With his face pressed up against the older boy’s, he asks:

  “Where’s he from?”

  “Beartown! Beartown! Fuck . . . it was only a joke, Bobo!”

  Bobo lets go of him, and he and his friend run off. Bobo helps Amat up, and tries to hold out his hand to Zacharias too, but Zacharias brushes it aside. Bobo says nothing.

  “
Thanks,” Amat says.

  “You’re one of us now. No one touches us,” Bobo smiles.

  Amat looks at Zacharias. There’s blood seeping from his friend’s nose.

  “I . . . I mean . . . we . . .”

  “I’ve got a class. See you at lunch. Everyone on the team always sits at the same table. Come and find us,” Bobo interrupts, then disappears.

  Amat nods as he walks off. When he turns around Zacharias has already taken his jacket and bag from his locker and is heading for the exit.

  “What the hell, Zach? Wait! Come on, he HELPED you!”

  Zacharias stops but doesn’t turn around. He refuses to let Amat see his tears when he says:

  “No, he helped you. So run along, big shot. Your new team is waiting for you.”

  The door closes after him. Amat’s conscience and a sense of guilt and injustice wash over him. If he hadn’t been so worried about getting injured and missing the final, he would have slammed his fist into one of the lockers. He picks up his phone from the floor. Calls no one.

  * * *

  Benji is on his way to the classroom, but he happens to pass the bathrooms just as Kevin emerges from one of the cubicles, and it throws him off balance like an elbow from out of nowhere. Kevin hurries past, but Benji stops dead. He’s not easily surprised, but he’s left standing with his mouth half-open and his eyes half-closed. Kevin avoids looking at him, as if he didn’t exist.

  As long as the two friends can remember, anyone who has seen them play has said that they seem to be on the same wavelength, a secret frequency that only they can access. They don’t need to look at each other on the ice to know where the other is. Neither of them has ever been able to put it into words, but whatever it was, there’s nothing but static now. Kevin brushes the wall of the corridor, sheltered by Lyt, and the other juniors automatically fall in on all sides. Benji has never known who he would have been if he didn’t have his team, but he’s starting to realize that he’s about to find out now.

  When Kevin, Lyt, Bobo, and the others go into the classroom, Benji stands outside trying hard not to prove to the whole world that there is nothing in his life that he isn’t destructive enough to have a go at wrecking. He really does try.