They take it.
* * *
Tails screams until his voice gives out when Amat waits out the goalie and lifts the puck into the top of the net. Parents rush down the stands as if they were going to vault the boards. Amat glides around the net with his arms in the air but doesn’t get far before he is engulfed by Benji, Lyt, and Filip. The whole team is on the ice in moments, under and over and on top of each other. Tails grabs hold of someone’s mother—he doesn’t know whose—and screams:
“WHERE ARE WE FROM?”
A moment ago they were all atheists. None of them is now.
* * *
They’re leading 1–0 after the first period. David doesn’t say anything to them; he doesn’t even go into the locker room. He stands in the corridor with Lars without a word. Hears the players tapping each other’s helmets. Their opponents pull back to 1–1, then go ahead 2–1, but just before the second intermission, Bobo gets one of his few shifts, and the puck finds him at the offensive blue line. He tries to pass but the puck hits an opposing player’s skate and bounces back toward Bobo. If the boy had had time to think, he would of course have realized that it was an idiotic idea, but no one has ever accused Bobo of being quick-witted. So he shoots. The goalie doesn’t even move, and when the net behind him does Bobo is left standing there, staring in shock. He sees the lamp light up, the numbers on the scoreboard change to 2–2. He hears the celebrations from the Beartown section of the stands, but his brain doesn’t register the sequence of events. The first one to reach him out on the ice is Filip.
“Win!” he yells.
“For Kevin!” Bobo howls, and throws himself at the glass with such mad pride that he forgets to take his stick back to center ice when play resumes.
* * *
Filip loves hockey, and so does his mom. And not like some vaguely interested parent who barely knows the rules. She worships this sport for all that it is. Tough. Honest. Definite. True. Straight answers, straight questions.
Maggan Lyt is standing next to her. She and Filip’s mom have known each other since they were children, and now live two houses apart. They used to go skiing together, got married the same year, had their sons just a few months apart, have stamped the numbness out of their toes in stands just like this one for more than a decade. Do you want to try telling them that hockey parents are fanatical? They’ll tell you to go to a junior cross-country skiing tournament and listen to the spectators there. Or talk to the slalom dad who rushes out onto the course and sabotages a whole tournament because he thinks the course has been set up to disadvantage his daughter. Or talk to the figure skater’s mom about how much a nine-year-old really ought to train. There’s always someone who’s worse. You can get almost anything to look normal if you make enough comparisons.
Filip’s mom never screams. Never shouts. Never criticizes the coach and never goes into the locker room. But she would defend Maggan to the end of the world and back if anyone criticized her friend’s behavior. Because they’re also a team. Filip’s mom has learned that you can’t ask parents to devote their whole lives to their children’s sport, risk the family finances, and then expect that passion never to overflow occasionally.
So when Maggan screams, “Are you blind!?” at the referee, Filip’s mom is quiet. When another parent screams, “For God’s sake, Ref, did you get dropped as a baby, or what? Does your wife make all the decisions at home?” she says nothing. Then someone says, “What kind of old woman’s pass was that?” and a man farther up the stands throws his arms up and yells, “Are we playing basketball now?” When one of the other team’s players holds a Beartown player a little too long against the boards without getting penalized, one parent yells, “Are you a homo or number twenty-two?” when the boy returns to the bench.
A mom with two small children farther down in the stands turns around and says: “Can you think about what you’re saying, please? There are children here!”
But Maggan replies, her voice dripping with derision:
“Well, sweetie, if you’re so worried about them leaving their cozy little nest and hearing something terrible, maybe you shouldn’t bring them to HOCKEY games!”
If you were to ask Filip’s mom why she doesn’t protest, she would say that you can love something without loving everything about it. You don’t have to feel embarrassed about not being proud. That applies to hockey, but it also applies to friends.
* * *
The mother with the young children demonstratively takes them by the hand, goes off to the steps, and sits down farther away. Out on the ice, Filip is chasing an opponent all the way across the ice, throwing himself forward to block a pass, and getting him off balance. Benji sets off toward them.
One sponsor higher up in the stands turns to Tails, nods toward the mother with the children, and snarls:
“Have we got the fucking morality police in today? What’s she doing here?”
The third period has only just started. Tails’s reply gets drowned out by the roar of the crowd when number sixteen steals the puck in the neutral zone, fakes out two opponents with a technique no one knew he had mastered, and slams a shot into the net that the goalie gets nowhere near.
Benji brushes aside the other players when they try to hug him, gets the puck from the net, and goes straight over to the Beartown parents. He stops by the boards a short distance away and waves to two ecstatic little children, then throws the puck to their mother.
The sponsor turns to Tails and asks: “Who . . . who’s that, did you say?”
“That’s Benji’s sister, Gaby. And those children’s uncle has just made it 3–2 for us,” Tails replies.
33
When Maya was little she always used to go to bed when she was sad. She always slept her way through anything that upset her. When she was eighteen months old her mom was driving a rental car with her in the backseat through the center of Toronto when it broke down at one of the city’s biggest intersections. There were buses blowing their horns, taxi drivers swearing, while Kira swore at some poor receptionist at the car-rental company on the phone. In the meantime the toddler looked around calmly, gave a big yawn, and fell asleep, and continued to sleep soundly until they got back home six hours later.
Kira is now standing in the hall of their house looking through the doorway at her daughter in her bed. Fifteen years old, she still sleeps whenever she’s in pain. Ana is lying next to her under the covers. Perhaps it’s different when you’ve had to bury one of your own children, or perhaps all parents feel this way, but the only thing Kira has ever wanted for her kids was health, safety, and a best friend.
You can get through anything then. Almost.
* * *
David will always remember this game. He will talk about the final minutes to his girlfriend throughout whole nights, tapping her stomach and whispering: “Don’t fall asleep! I haven’t got to the best bit yet!” Over and over again he will relate the story of how Amat threw himself down and blocked so many shots with his helmet that the referee eventually forced him off the ice to investigate whether it had been cracked. How Lyt played more minutes than anyone, and in the minutes he wasn’t on the ice he was a colossus on the bench: no one slapped more backs, shouted more encouragement, or lifted the spirits of more exhausted teammates. When a shattered Bobo stumbled over the step on his way off the rink and collapsed facedown, it was Lyt who caught him and fetched his water bottle. Meanwhile Filip played like an experienced senior out there, no mistakes at all. And Benji? Benji was everywhere. David saw him use the side of his skate to block one shot that was so hard his assistant coach, Lars, clutched his own foot on the bench and yelped:
“Shit, I felt that!”
Benji played through the pain; the whole team hit the wall and smashed through it with their foreheads and just carried on. Every one of them overperformed. Every one of them was the very best version of themselves. They gave their all. No coach could possibly have asked for more. They did their absolute, absolute, absolute
best.
* * *
It wasn’t enough.
* * *
When the other team makes it 3–3 with under a minute to go, a team falls to the ice, two dozen parents collapse in the stands, and so does a town in the forest. In the break before overtime three players throw up. Another two barely make it back to the ice because their muscles are cramping. Their jerseys are soaked through, every cell in their bodies drained. But it still takes more than fifteen extra minutes for the opposing team to break them down one last time. They play around, around, around, and in the end Benji can’t get there in time, Filip loses his man for the first time, Lyt’s stick is too short, Amat is a fraction too late down onto the ice to block the shot.
* * *
The entire Beartown Ice Hockey team is lying on the ice while their opponents dance around them, when their parents and friends storm in to celebrate. Only when the winners’ shouting and singing have moved to the locker room do Filip, Bobo, Lyt, and Amat begin to head toward theirs, inconsolable. Grown men and women are still sitting in the stands with their heads in their hands. Two children are crying uncontrollably in their mother’s arms.
* * *
This planet knows no greater silence than two dozen hearts after a loss. David steps into the locker room to see the players lying bruised and battered on the floor and benches, most of them so tired they don’t even have the energy to take their equipment off. Lars is standing alongside, waiting for the coach to say something, but David just turns around and disappears.
“Where’s he going?” one parent asks.
“We’re bad losers, because a good loser is someone who loses a lot,” Lars mutters.
* * *
It’s the captain of the opposing team who finally holds his hand out. He’s freshly showered and changed, but his jersey is covered with champagne stains. Beartown’s number sixteen is still lying on his back on the ice with his skates on. The stands are almost empty.
“Good match, man. If you ever want to change teams, you’d be welcome to come and play with us,” the captain says.
“If you ever want to change teams, you’re welcome to come and play with ME,” Benji replies.
The captain laughs and helps him up, then sees Benji grimace.
“Are you okay?”
Benji nods distantly, but lets his opponent support him all the way into the corridor.
“Sorry I . . . you know . . . ,” Benji says, making a slight gesture toward the broken lights in the ceiling.
The captain laughs loudly.
“Really? I wish we’d thought of doing something like that to you guys. You’re a hard bastard. You need some serious help, man, but you’re a hard bastard.”
They part with a firm handshake. Benji creeps into the locker room and lies down on the floor, without making the slightest effort to take his skates off.
* * *
Gaby is walking through the corridor with her two children, past all the other adults in green scarves and jerseys with bears on them, nodding to some, ignoring others. She hears one father call the referee “mentally retarded.” Then another mutters that “the bastard really needs to put his handbag down.” She takes the children straight to the car instead of waiting for Benji. She doesn’t want them to hear that sort of thing, and she knows what she’ll get called if she protests.
* * *
Another quarter of an hour passes before David returns with a plastic bag full of pucks. He goes around the locker room, giving one to each of the players. In turn his boys read the eight letters that are written on them. Some of them smile, some of them start to cry. Bobo clears his throat, stands up, looks at his coach, and says:
“Sorry, Coach . . . but I’ve got to ask . . .”
David raises his eyebrows, and Bobo nods toward the puck.
“You haven’t . . . you know . . . gone gay on us or anything, have you?”
Laughter can be liberating. Roaring with laughter can unite a group. Heal wounds, kill silence. The locker room rocks with giggles until David, with a broad smile, nods and replies:
“Extra cross-country running in the forest tomorrow when you get home. Thanks to Bobo.”
Bobo is already crouching beneath a hailstorm of rolled-up balls of tape from the others.
* * *
The second from last to get a puck in his hand is Benji. The last is Lars. David pats his assistant coach on the shoulder and says:
“I’m going to take the night train back, Lars. The hotel’s all booked for you; I’m trusting you to look after the boys.”
Lars nods. Looks at the puck. Reads the words as tears run down onto his tracksuit top: Thank you.
* * *
Gaby jumps when Bobo taps on her window. The kids have fallen asleep in the backseat, and she was at the point of doing the same.
“Sorry . . . you’re Benji’s sister, aren’t you?” Bobo says.
“Yes? We’re waiting for him, he said he wanted to come home with us rather than stay the night in a hotel. Has he changed his mind?”
Bobo shakes his head.
“He’s still in the locker room. We can’t get his skates off. He asked us to get you.”
When Gaby finds Benji she starts by telling him she loves him. Then she says it’s damn lucky for him that their mom had to work today and couldn’t come, because if she’d known that her son had played almost the entire third period plus fifteen minutes of overtime with a broken foot, yet still skated more than anyone else, she’d have killed him.
* * *
Filip stands for a long while next to his mother outside the bus in the parking lot. She wipes his cheeks. He whispers:
“Sorry. It was my fault. That last goal. I was marking him. Sorry.”
His mom hugs him as if he were little again, even though he’s now so big that he could have picked her up with one hand.
“Oh, sweetheart, what on earth have you got to apologize for? What have you ever had to apologize for?”
She pats his cheek. She knows how it feels; she’s stood there crushed at the end of a cross-country skiing race until the drops of sweat turned to ice crystals, feeling just the same. She knows what hockey can give, and what it takes in return. All the setbacks her son has overcome pass before her eyes: all the elite teams he didn’t get picked for, all the national teams he was never considered for, all the tournaments he’s had to watch from the stands. His mom holds a sixteen-year-old boy who has trained every single day of his life for this game. Tomorrow he will wake up, get out of bed, and start again.
* * *
In a room in a house on the floor beside her best friend’s bed, Ana is sitting curled up with a computer on her lap. Every so often she glances anxiously over the edge of the bed to make sure Maya hasn’t woken up. Then she goes back into all the places in the Internet where she knows everyone at school will go when they find out what’s happened. She plots a silent course via as yet un-updated statuses, a few pictures of cats and smoothies, the occasional disappointed account of the junior team’s loss in the final. But nothing else. Not yet. Ana refreshes all the pages again. She’s lived here all her life, she knows how quickly information spreads. Someone will know someone who has a brother who’s a cop or has a friend who works at the local paper or a mom who’s a nurse at the hospital. Someone will say something to someone. And all hell will break loose. She refreshes all the pages again, again, again. Hitting the keyboard harder and harder.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Lars tells the team that the hotel is booked, paid for by the sponsors, and that the boys can order as much room service as they like, get some rest, and go home tomorrow. The players ask where David is. Lars says the coach has gone home to be there when the police release Kevin.
“What if any of us want to go home?” Lyt asks.
“We can arrange that, if that’s what you decide,” Lars says.
Not one single player chooses to stay. They’re a team, and they head home to their team captain. T
hey’re halfway home that night when the news finally breaks on their cell phones. Why Kevin was picked up by the police, what he’s been accused of, and who it was who reported him. First one player says: “What are they talking about? I saw them at the party. SHE was the one who had the hots for HIM!” Then another says: “Fucking bullshit! I saw them go up to his room, she went FIRST!” And a third declares: “As if she didn’t want it! Did you see how she was dressed!? Little bitch.”
* * *
In a bed in a room surrounded by sticks and pucks and match jerseys, a little brother is woken up by the sound of his sister’s best friend in the next room, smashing a computer against the wall with full force. As if she hopes that the people who have written what’s inside it might shatter into a thousand pieces along with it.
34
Kira and Peter are sitting on the little step outside the house. They’re not touching each other. Peter remembers this distance so clearly. There were some days when he thought that grief was the only thing keeping them together, that Kira stayed with him even though he didn’t deserve it because she didn’t have anyone else to share the memory of Isak with. But other days, the opposite happened. Their grief split them apart, became an invisible barrier between them. It’s back now.
“It’s my fault,” Peter whispers.
Kira shakes her head hard.
“Don’t say that. It isn’t your fault. It isn’t hockey’s fault. Don’t give the bast . . . Don’t give . . . Don’t make excuses for him!”
“The club has nurtured him all his life, Kira. My club.”
Kira doesn’t answer. Her fists have been clenched so tight for so long that the marks her fingernails have left won’t fade for several days once she finally opens them. Throughout her whole working life she has lived for justice and the law, has believed in fairness and humanism, has stood against violence and revenge. So she is now using all of her inner strength to fight off the feeling that is overwhelming her now, but she can’t stop it, it just sweeps in with full force and destroys everything she believes in.