Beartown

  “What’s that on the floor?” he asks.

  * * *

  Ana is grinding her teeth so hard that her dad can hear it. He whispers:

  “They’re just frightened, Ana, they’re just looking for a scapegoat.”

  Ana wants to scream. She wants to yank open the door of the neighbor’s house, tear down the green flag, and shout: “Why isn’t KEVIN the scapegoat, then? WELL?” She wants to scream so loud that all the other neighbors here in the Heights can hear it too. Scream that she loves hockey. LOVES hockey! But she’s a girl, so what happens if she says that to a boy? He says: “Really? You’re a girl and you like hockey? Okay! Who won the Stanley Cup in 1983, then? Well? And who came seventh in the league in 1994? Well? If you like hockey you ought to be able to answer that!”

  Girls aren’t allowed to like hockey even just a little bit in Beartown. Ideally they shouldn’t like it at all. Because if you like the sport you must be a lesbian, and if you like the players you’re a slut. Ana feels like pushing her neighbor up against the wall and telling him that the locker room where those boys sit telling their stupid jokes ends up preserving them like a tin can. It makes them mature more slowly, while some even go rotten inside. And they don’t have any female friends, and there are no women’s teams here, so they learn that hockey only belongs to them, and their coaches teach them that girls are a “distraction.” So they learn that girls only exist for fucking. She wants to point out how all the old men in this town praise them for “fighting” and “not backing down,” but not one single person tells them that when a girl says no, it means NO. And the problem with this town is not only that a boy raped a girl, but that everyone is pretending that he DIDN’T do it. So now all the other boys will think that what he did was okay. Because no one cares. Ana wants to stand on the rooftop and scream: “You don’t give a shit about Maya! And you don’t really give a shit about Kevin either! Because they’re not people to you, they’re just objects of value. And his value is far greater than hers!”

  She wants so much. But the street is empty, and she stays silent. She hates herself for that.

  Ana’s dad still has his fingers resting clumsily on her shoulder as they go inside the house, but she slides away from his hand. He watches her as she carries the rifles down to the cellar. Sees the hatred in her. He will remember thinking: “Of all the men in the world that I wouldn’t like to be, he’s the one I’d like to be least of all: the one who hurt that girl’s best friend.”

  * * *

  “What’s that on the floor?” her brother repeats.

  “Water,” Jeanette replies.

  She knows there aren’t many pupils at the school who know how to break in here, whether or not they set the alarm off. She doesn’t know if the person who did this managed to get out before she and her brother showed up, or if they just didn’t care.

  Jeanette’s first lesson that morning is substitute teaching with a grade-nine class. She sees that Zacharias has ink on his hands. He smells faintly of solvent. In the corridor there’s a locker on which the word BITCH is no longer scrawled, because he spent part of the night scrubbing it clean. Because he knows what it’s like to be the one other people hurt, just because they can. Because he knows what the strong do to the weak in this town.

  Jeanette doesn’t say anything to Zacharias. She knows this is his silent protest. And her decision not to tell anyone about who broke in last night becomes her own silent protest.

  42

  When a child learns to hunt, they are taught that the forest contains two different sorts of animal: predators and prey. The predators have their eyes close together, facing the front, because they only need to focus on their prey. Their prey, on the other hand, have their eyes wide apart, on either side of the head, because their only chance of survival is if they can see predators approaching from behind.

  When Ana and Maya were little they used to spend hours in front of the mirror trying to work out which of them they were.

  * * *

  Tails is sitting in his office. The supermarket isn’t open yet, but the room is full. The men have come here because they don’t want anyone to see them meet at the rink. They’re nervous and paranoid. They talk about journalists snooping around. Use words like “responsibility” several times, explain to Tails that they “have to stick together now, so that this doesn’t get out of hand.” They are sponsors, board members, but today, of course, they are just concerned friends, dads, citizens. They all just want what’s best for the town. For the club. They all just want the truth to come out. One worried voice says: “Anyone can see . . . I mean, why would Kevin do a thing like that? It’s obvious it was voluntary, then she changed her mind. If only we could have dealt with this internally.” Another says: “But of course we need to think about both families, of course we do. The girl must be scared. They’re only children, after all. But the truth needs to come out. Before this gets out of hand.” At the end of the meeting, Kevin’s dad gets up and walks into town with Tails. Knocks on door after door.

  * * *

  Maya is awake early. She’s standing in the garage on her own, playing the guitar. She will never be able to explain what’s happening to her. How she went from being so destroyed that she was just lying on the bathroom floor in her mother’s arms, crying and screaming, to . . . what she feels now. But something happened last night. The stone through the window, the broken glass on the floor. BITCH in red letters. In the end, that does something to a person. Maya is still so scared of the dark that it feels like it’s clutching at her clothes if she so much as enters a room where the lights are out, but she realized something this morning: the only way to stop being afraid of the darkness out there is to find a darkness inside yourself that’s bigger. She’s never going to get any justice from this town, so there’s only one solution: either Kevin must die, or Maya must.

  * * *

  Ramona is drinking her breakfast when they arrive. Kevin’s dad, that Erdahl guy, walks in the way he walks into every room: as if it belongs to him. Tails comes stumbling after him, as if his shoes were too big for him.

  “I’m closed,” Ramona informs them.

  Tails grins. Just the way his dad used to, Ramona thinks. He was just as tall and just as fat and just as stupid.

  “We just want a little chat,” he says.

  “Off the record,” Erdahl adds.

  His eyes are set close together.

  * * *

  Kira’s office is full of boxes, her desk drowning in paper. Her colleague puts a cup of coffee down and promises:

  “We’re going to do everything we can, Kira. Everyone in the firm will do all that we can. But you need to be prepared that most cases like this, where it’s one person’s word against another’s . . . you know how they end.”

  Kira’s eyes are bloodshot, her clothes are creased. That’s never happened before.

  “I should have become a proper lawyer. I should have specialized in this. I should have . . . I’ve wasted my whole life on business law and crap like that when I should have . . .”

  Her colleague sits down opposite her.

  “Do you want to hear the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could bring in the world’s foremost expert in cases involving sexual offenses, Kira. But there’s no guarantee that would make any difference. It’s one person’s word against another’s, the police weren’t told until a week later, there’s no forensic evidence, no witnesses. In all likelihood the police will shut down their preliminary investigation within the next couple of days.”

  Kira flies up from her chair angrily and only just manages to stop herself hurling the coffee cup at the wall.

  “I’m not going to let them win! If I can’t win in court, I’ll have to find another way!”

  “What do you mean by that?” her colleague asks anxiously.

  “I’ll go after his dad’s company, their friends’ companies, I’ll dig up all the crap they’ve ever buried, every set of accounts,
every tax return, and I am going to hurt them. If they forgot to pay the tax on a single pen ten years ago, I’ll take them down!”

  Her colleague says nothing. Kira’s voice fills the office:

  “I’m going to attack everything and everyone they love, and I am going to protect my children, do you hear? I’M GOING TO PROTECT MY CHILDREN!”

  Her colleague stands up. There’s a trace of disappointment in her voice when she says:

  “That’s how wars start. One side protects itself, so the other side has to protect itself even more, and then we start swapping our own fear with their threats. And then we start firing at each other.”

  The coffee cup hits the wall at that.

  “SHE’S MY FUCKING CHILD!”

  Her colleague closes her eyes. They’re spaced far apart.

  “Maybe that’s when you really need to know the difference between vengeance and justice.”

  * * *

  Ana opens the door. Her dad has taken the dogs to the vet; the house is empty. Maya is standing outside with her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. It’s hard for both of them to know if they should cry or laugh, scream or joke—which of those will give them the best chance of survival.

  “I miss your annoying face,” Maya eventually whispers.

  Ana smiles.

  “I miss your horrible taste in music.”

  Maya’s lower lip quivers.

  “I don’t want you to get caught up in this. I’m just trying to keep you out of it all.”

  Ana puts her hands on Maya’s shoulders.

  “I’m your sister. How much more caught up in it can I get?”

  Maya stares at her until her eyes sting.

  “I’m just trying to protect you.”

  “You’ve been trying to protect me all my life, and can I tell you something? You’re really shit at it! I’m obviously completely screwed up in the head, so how well do you think your protection has been working?”

  They start laughing, both of them. “You’re such an idiot,” Maya sniffs.

  “But no one else loves you like I do, you idiot. No one!” Maya exclaims.

  “I know.”

  Maya’s eyes are shimmering when she asks:

  “Can we go out into the forest and do some shooting? I just need to get away, Ana. I just need . . . It’s just that shooting’s kind of relaxing. I thought it might help me get rid of some of my . . . aggression.”

  She’s lying now; she’s never done that to Ana. Ana looks at her for a long time. But she’s a real friend, so she goes and fetches two rifles without asking any questions.

  * * *

  Ramona puts her hands down on the bar. Observes the two men.

  “This is a business.”

  “What?” Tails wonders.

  Erdahl, on the other hand, sits calmly on his chair and smirks tolerantly.

  “She wants us to order something,” he says. Okay, two large whiskies, the best you’ve got, then we’ll talk.”

  She pours the drinks and Erdahl wastes no time. “You know who I am?”

  She snorts and drains her own glass. Erdahl interprets that as a yes. He raises his glass and very nearly spits the contents across the bar when it hits his tongue.

  “What the . . . This is your BEST whisky?”

  Ramona shakes her head.

  “It’s my worst whisky.”

  Tails empties his glass without any change of expression. He looks almost pleased with it. But his taste buds are as dysfunctional as the volume control on his voice. Erdahl pushes his own glass away in disgust.

  “In that case, can we have your best whisky, please? This one tastes like something you’d use to clean a boat.”

  Ramona nods obligingly. Gets out new glasses. Pours whisky from the same bottle as before. Erdahl stares at her. Tails can’t help grinning.

  “There’s only one sort of whisky at the Bearskin.”

  * * *

  Maya and Ana walk until the forest swallows them up. So far that even Ana’s dad would have needed several days to find their bodies. There they stand and fire their guns, shot after shot. Ana adjusts Maya’s posture occasionally, angling her shoulder and elbow, reminding her about how to hold her breath without actually stopping breathing. Ana asks:

  “Okay . . . what about this one? Live your whole life in Beartown until you get old, or move anywhere in the world but die within a year?”

  Maya answers by frowning, her whole face crumpling like a used napkin.

  “Stupid question?” Ana asks.

  “Pretty stupid.”

  “We’re going to get out of here, Maya. I’m not going to let us get stuck here. We’re going to move to New York, you’re going to get a recording contract, and I’m going to be your manager.”

  Maya starts to giggle; she didn’t believe she still had that sort of laughter left in her, but it just bubbles out.

  “No, no, no, you’re never going to be my manager.”

  “What? I’d be a BRILLIANT manager!” Ana retorts, insulted.

  “You’d be a terrible manager. Terrible. You can’t even look after your own cell phone.”

  “Yes, I can!”

  Maya raises her eyebrows.

  “Okay. So where’s your phone?”

  Ana starts feeling her body frantically.

  “Maybe not right NOW! But . . . Fine! I can be your stylist instead. Believe me, you NEED a stylist!”

  “What’s wrong with my style?” Maya wonders.

  Ana looks her up and down.

  “Sorry. You can’t afford my consultation fee. Get in touch when you’ve got your recording contract.”

  Maya roars with laughter.

  “You’re totally crazy.”

  “Or I could be your nutritionist! I’ve found a new juice diet that cleans out the whole intestine! What happens is that . . .”

  Maya covers her ears, turns around, and walks deeper into the forest. “Sorry, the reception’s really bad out here . . . shkkkrrrr . . . Hello? Hello?”

  She holds a phone to her ear, pretends to talk into it.

  Ana squints at her.

  “Is that my phone? Where did you find it?”

  “I’m driving into a tunnel now!” Maya shouts.

  Ana runs to catch up with her. They wrestle and hug each other. Watch the sun go up. Maya whispers:

  “Can I sleep at your place one night?”

  Ana doesn’t know what to say. Maya has never slept at her place, not once; it’s always been the other way around. But she’s a true friend, so of course she answers:

  “You don’t have to ask.”

  * * *

  Ramona empties her glass. Tails empties his. Erdahl’s eyes narrow.

  “Well, then. Let’s skip the pleasantries. You know why I’m here?”

  Ramona looks curious.

  “No, but I bet you’ve brought some gold with you. Tails has brought frankincense. And there’s a third wise man standing outside the door with his pants stuffed full of myrrh. Is that more or less right?”

  Erdahl breathes hard through his nose and makes a short, disgusted gesture toward the room.

  “This . . . pub . . . is one of Beartown Ice Hockey’s oldest sponsors. Obviously it doesn’t contribute a significant amount, but we all respect tradition. And I presume you’ve been informed that there’s to be an extraordinary meeting of members . . . in light of what has happened.”

  Tails coughs distractedly and adds:

  “We just want to talk, Ramona. The sponsors, all of us, feel that it’s important that we stand united at the meeting. For the sake of the club.”

  “And what does that mean?” Ramona wonders out loud with feigned docility.

  Erdahl is already fed up. He gets to his feet and informs her:

  “Some of the management needs to be changed. Peter Andersson is going to be voted out as GM and will be replaced by a more suitable person. Both the board and all the sponsors agree on that, but we respect the members and want the proposal to co
me directly from them. We’re here as a gesture of goodwill.”

  Ramona smiles sarcastically.

  “Yes, you strike me as the sort of person who’s always doing things as a gesture of goodwill. What’s Peter done that’s so unsuitable, if I might ask?”

  Erdahl growls through his teeth.

  “You know perfectly well what’s happened.”

  “No I don’t. And I don’t think that you do either. That’s why there’s a police investigation.”

  “You know what my son has been accused of,” Erdahl says.

  “You make it sound like he’s the victim,” Ramona points out.

  Erdahl finally loses his composure. Tails has never seen it happen, and he gets so scared that he knocks over his own and Ramona’s glasses. Erdahl screams:

  “My son IS the victim! Have you got any fucking idea at ALL what it’s like to be accused of this? HAVE YOU?”

  Ramona doesn’t move a muscle when she replies:

  “No. But, off the top of my head, it strikes me that the only thing that might be worse than being accused of rape is being raped.”

  “So you’re going to stand here and assume that that damn girl is telling the truth?” Erdahl snarls.

  “I’m thinking of standing here and allowing myself the liberty of not assuming that the girl is for some reason lying just because your son happens to play hockey. And she has a name. Her name is Maya,” Ramona replies.

  Erdahl laughs condescendingly.

  “So you’re one of the people who are going to try to blame this on hockey?”

  Ramona nods seriously and asks:

  “Have you ever played hockey?”

  “I stopped when I was twelve,” Erdahl admits.

  “In that case, you’re right. In that case, I do blame hockey. Because if it had kept hold of you for another couple of years, you might have learned to lose like a man. You might have learned that your son can make mistakes, and when he does you ought to stand up like a man and take responsibility for that. Not come here and dump all the blame on a fifteen-year-old girl and her father.”