On the road that links the row houses to the rest of the town, Benji stops his bicycle at the point where his mother can no longer see him and lights a joint. He lets the smoke fill him, feels the sweet calmness rise and fall. His long, thick hair stiffens in the wind, but the cold has never bothered him. He cycles everywhere, no matter what time of year it is. At practice, David often commends him on his calf muscles and sense of balance in front of the other players. Benji never replies, because he suspects that saying, “That’s what you get if you ride a bike through deep snow every day when you’re high as a kite” isn’t the answer the coach wants to hear.
On his way to his best friend’s house he passes through the whole of Beartown: the factory that’s still the largest employer in the town, but which has “effectivized its personnel” three years in a row now—a fancy way of saying people have been laid off. The big supermarket that has closed down its smaller competitors. A street full of stores in varying states of disrepair, and an industrial area that is just getting quieter and quieter. The sports store, which has one section for hunting and fishing and another for hockey, but very little else worth mentioning. A little farther out is the pub, the Bearskin, frequented by the sort of men who make it such an excellent destination for any curious tourist eager to find out what it’s like to get beaten up by the locals.
Toward the forest, off to the west, is a garage and—farther in among the trees—the kennels that Benji’s eldest sister runs. She raises two types of dogs: hunting dogs and guard dogs. No one around here wants dogs for pets anymore.
There’s not much to love about this place apart from hockey. But on the other hand, Benji hasn’t loved very much else in his life. He inhales the smoke. The other guys keep warning him he’ll get kicked off the team if David finds out he smokes weed, but Benji just laughs, secure in the knowledge that would never happen. Not because Benji is too good to be thrown off the team, definitely not, but because Kevin is too good. Kevin is the jewel, Benji the insurance policy.
* * *
Sune looks up at the roof of the rink one last time. At the flags and jerseys hanging there, memories of men soon no one will be old enough to remember. Alongside them hangs a shabby banner bearing what used to be the club’s motto: “Culture, Values, Community.” Sune helped hang it there, but he’s no longer sure what it means. Sometimes he’s not sure if he knew back then either.
“Culture” is an odd word to use about hockey; everyone says it, but no one can explain what it means. All organizations like to boast that they’re building a culture, but when it comes down to it everyone really only cares about one sort: the culture of winning. Sune is well aware that the same thing applies the world over, but perhaps it’s more noticeable in a small community. We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.
The old man stands up and makes his way toward his office, with his back creaking and heart hardened. The door closes behind him. His personal belongings are already packed in a small box that’s tucked under the desk. He won’t make a scene when he gets fired, won’t speak to the press. He’s just going to disappear. That’s how he was brought up, and that’s how he’s brought others up. The team comes first.
* * *
No one really knows how the pair of them became best friends, but everyone has long since given up any attempt to separate them. Benji rings the doorbell of the house that’s more than half the size of the entire block where he lives.
Kevin’s mom opens the door with her ever-friendly yet constantly stressed smile, clutching her phone to her ear, while behind her Kevin’s dad walks past talking loudly into his. The walls of the front hall are decorated with family photos, but those framed pictures are the only place Benji has ever seen all three members of the Erdahl family side by side. In real life one of them always seems to be in the kitchen, the other in the study, and Kevin in the garden. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. A door closing, an apology directed at a phone. “Yes, sorry, it’s my son. The hockey player, yes, that’s right.”
No one raises their voice in this house and no one ever lowers it either—all communication has had its emotions amputated. Kevin is simultaneously the most and least spoiled kid Benji has ever met: the fridge is full of prepared meals made in exact accordance with the nutrition plan provided by the team, delivered every three days by a catering company. The kitchen in the Erdahl family’s house cost three times more than the whole of Benji’s mom’s row house, but no one ever prepares a meal in it. Kevin’s room has everything a seventeen-year-old could dream of, including the fact that no adult except the cleaner has set foot inside it since he was three. No one in Beartown has ever spent more on their son’s sports career, no one has given more to the team in sponsorship than his dad’s company, yet Benji can count the number of times he’s seen Kevin’s parents in the crowd of spectators on the fingers of one hand, and still have two fingers left. Benji asked his friend about it once. Kevin replied: “My parents aren’t interested in hockey.” When Benji asked what they were interested in, Kevin replied: “Success.” They were ten years old at the time.
When Kevin is top of the class in history tests, which he almost always is, and goes home and says he got forty-nine out of fifty questions right, his dad merely asks in an expressionless voice: “What did you get wrong?” Perfection isn’t a goal in the Erdahl family, it’s the norm.
Their home is white and precise, an advertisement for right angles. When he’s sure no one’s looking, Benji silently nudges the shoe-rack one inch out of line and touches a couple of the photos on the wall so that they’re hanging ever so slightly crooked, and as he walks across the rug in the living room he lets his big toe fleetingly mess up some of the fringe. When he reaches the terrace door he sees Kevin’s mom’s reflection in the glass. She’s going around mechanically putting everything back to how it was, without missing a beat of her telephone conversation.
Benji goes out into the garden, grabs a chair, and goes to sit near Kevin, then closes his eyes and listens to the banging. Kevin pauses, his collar black with sweat.
“Are you nervous?” he asks.
Benji doesn’t open his eyes.
“Do you remember the first time you came out into the forest with me, Kev? You’d never been hunting before and held your rifle like you were scared it was going to bite you.”
Kevin sighs so deeply that half of the air probably escapes from another bodily opening.
“Aren’t you ever going to take anything in life seriously?”
Benji’s broad grin reveals an almost imperceptible difference in the color of his teeth. If you send him into a skirmish, he’ll come out with the puck, even at the cost of one of his own teeth, or someone else’s.
“You almost managed to shoot me in the balls. I take that very seriously.”
“So you’re really not nervous about the game?”
“Kev, you and a gun anywhere close to my testicles make me nervous. Hockey doesn’t make me nervous.”
They’re interrupted by Kevin’s parents calling good-bye. His dad in the same tone he would use to say good-bye to a waiter in a restaurant, his mom with a cautious little “sweetheart” at the end. As if she really is trying but can’t quite manage to make it sound like anything more than a line she’s learned for a play. The front door closes, two cars start up out in the drive. Benji fishes another joint from the inside pocket of his jacket and lights up.
“Are you nervous, Kev?”
“No. No, no . . .”
Benji laughs; his friend has never been able to lie to him.
“Really?”
“Okay, what the fuck, Benji, I’m shitting myself here! Is that what you want to hear?”
Benji looks like he’s fallen asleep.
“How much have you smoked already today?” Kevin chuckles.
“Nowhere near enough,??
? Benji mumbles, and curls up on the chair as if he were thinking of hibernating for winter.
“You know we’ve got to be at school in an hour?”
“All the more reason.”
“If David finds out, you’ll get kicked off the tea—”
“No, I won’t.”
Leaning on his stick, Kevin says nothing and just looks at him. Of all the things in the world you can be envious of your best friend for, this is what Kevin would most like to have: the ability that Benji has always had to not give a shit about anything, and to get away with it. Kevin shakes his head and laughs in resignation.
“No, you won’t.”
Benji falls asleep. Kevin turns toward the goal and his eyes turn black. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.
* * *
Again. Again. Again.
* * *
At home in his kitchen David does his last push-ups. Then he showers, gets dressed, packs his case, and grabs his car keys to drive to the rink and start work. But the very last thing the thirty-two-year-old coach does before leaving the house is put his coffee down on the little table beside the door and run into the bathroom. There he locks the door and turns the taps on in both sink and bathtub so that his girlfriend won’t hear him throwing up.
7
It’s only a game. Everyone who plays it gets told that from time to time. A lot of people try to tell themselves that it’s true. But it’s complete nonsense. No one in this town would have been the same if that game hadn’t existed.
* * *
Kevin always goes to the bathroom just before he and Benji go to school. He doesn’t like using the bathrooms at school, not because they’re disgusting, but because they make him feel stressed. They make him feel anxious in a way he’s never quite been able to identify. He can only relax enough at home, surrounded by overpriced tiles and a sink that’s as exclusive as it is impractical, carefully selected by an interior designer who invoiced for many more hours than the workmen. This house is the only place in the world he has ever learned to be alone.
Everywhere else, in the rink or at school or even on the way to and from them, he is part of a group. Always in the middle, with the team gravitating toward him in order of their ability on the ice, the best players closest to him. At home Kevin learned to be alone at such a young age that it became natural, but now he can’t bear being alone anywhere else.
Benji is waiting outside the house. As always. A boy with less control of his impulses than Kevin would have hugged him. Instead he just nods and mutters, “Let’s go.”
* * *
Maya walks away from her dad’s car so fast that Ana has to jog to keep up with her. Ana holds out a plastic cup.
“Do you want some? I’m on the green smoothie diet now!”
Maya slows down and shakes her head. “Why do you keep doing those diets? Why do you hate your taste buds so much? What have they ever done to you?”
“Shut up, this is really good! Try it!”
Warily, Maya puts her lips to the edge of the cup. She takes half a sip before spitting it out.
“It’s got lumps!”
Ana nods happily.
“Peanut butter.”
Disgusted, Maya picks at her tongue with her fingers, as if it were covered with invisible hairs.
“You need help, Ana. Serious help.”
* * *
Beartown used to have more schools, because there used to be more children. Now there are just two buildings left: one for primary and middle school pupils, and one for high school. They all have lunch in the same cafeteria. The town is no bigger than that anymore.
Amat runs to catch up with Lifa and Zacharias in the parking lot. The three boys have been in the same class all the way through school, and have been best friends since preschool, not because they are particularly similar but because they shared the fact that they weren’t like everyone else. In places like Beartown, the most popular children become leaders at a young age; teams are invisibly chosen as early as the playground. Amat, Lifa, and Zacharias were the sort of children who got passed over. They’ve stuck together ever since. Lifa is less talkative than a tree, Zacharias louder than a radio, and Amat just appreciates the company. They make a good team.
“. . . such a clean headshot! He tried to chicken out and hide . . . What the hell? Are you even listening, Amat?”
Zacharias, wearing the same black jeans and black hoodie and black cap that he seems to have been wearing since they were ten years old, interrupts his speech about his evidently extremely impressive performance against a heavily armed sniper in a virtual universe last night and shoves Amat in the shoulder.
“What?”
“Did you even hear what I was saying?”
Amat yawns. “Yeah, yeah, headshot. Amazing. I’m just hungry.”
“Did you go training this morning?” Zacharias asks.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not right in the head, getting up that early.”
Amat grins.
“So when did you get to bed last night?”
Zacharias shrugs and massages his thumbs. “Four o’clock . . . Okay, five, maybe.”
Amat nods.
“You spend as much time gaming as I do training, Zach. We’ll see who turns professional first!”
Zacharias is about to answer when his head is knocked forward hard by the slap of an open palm. Zacharias, Amat, and Lifa know it’s Bobo before they even turn around. Zacharias’s cap lands on the ground to the sound of laughter from the juniors who have suddenly surrounded them. Zacharias, Amat, and Lifa are fifteen years old, the juniors are only two years older, but they’re so much more developed physically that there could easily have been ten years between them. Bobo is the biggest of them, as wide as a barn door and ugly enough to make rats move house. He shoves Zacharias hard with his shoulder as he walks past, and Zacharias stumbles and falls to his knees. Bobo laughs with feigned surprise and the juniors surrounding him join in.
“Nice beard, Zach. You look more like your mother every day!” Bobo smirks, and before the juniors’ laughter dies away he goes on:
“Have you got any hair on your balls yet? Or do you still cry in the shower when you realize it’s just fluff from your underpants? Fuck, Zach . . . Seriously, though, there’s something I’ve been wondering: the first time you, Amat, and Lifa slept together, how did you work out which of you guys was going to lose his virginity first?”
The juniors head off toward the school. They’ll have forgotten the exchange within thirty seconds, but it takes a long while for their laughter to die away for the boys behind them. Amat sees the silent hatred in Zacharias’s eyes as he helps him up. It grows stronger each morning. Amat worries that one day it’s going to explode.
* * *
All kinds of things, big and small, can make you love being part of a team. When Kevin was at primary school he went with his dad to the Christmas market in Hed. His dad had a meeting, so Kevin went around on his own looking at the displays and stalls. He got lost and was five minutes late getting back to the car, and his dad had already left. Kevin had to walk all the way back to Beartown on his own in the dark. The snowdrifts by the sides of the road reached his thighs and it took him half the night to get home. He staggered, wet and exhausted, into the silent house. His parents were already asleep. His dad wanted to teach him the importance of being punctual.
Six months later the hockey team was playing in a tournament in another town. The rink was the biggest the boys had seen, and on the way to the bus Kevin got lost. The older brothers of three of the players in a team Kevin had humiliated a couple of hours earlier found him, dragged him into a washroom, and beat him up. Kevin will never forget the look of astonishment on their faces when another primary-school kid showed up and took on all three of them in a storm of kicks and punches. Benji and Kevin were both covered with blood and bruises when they arrived at the bus more than forty-five minutes late. David was standing there waiting. He had told the rest of the team to le
ave without him; he’d catch the train with Benji and Kevin when they showed up. But every player on the team had refused to get on the bus. They weren’t old enough to know their multiplication tables, but they knew that a team didn’t mean anything if you couldn’t depend on each other. That’s both a big and a small thing. Knowing that there are people who will never abandon you.
Kevin and Benji are alone when they enter the school, but exert a magnetic pull as they move along the corridor. Bobo and the other juniors flock around them instantly, and within ten paces they have become a group of twelve people. Kevin and Benji don’t think it odd, the way you don’t if something’s been going on your whole life. It’s impossible to say what it is that catches Kevin’s attention, because the day before a game there’s usually nothing on the planet that can distract him, but as he passes a row of lockers his eyes meet hers. He stumbles into Benji, Benji swears at him, Kevin doesn’t hear.
* * *
Maya has just put her bag in her locker, and when she turns around and Kevin’s eyes meet hers she closes the locker door so quickly she nips her hand. It’s over in a moment—the corridor fills with bodies, and Kevin disappears in the crowd. But the friends you have when you’re fifteen years old obviously aren’t going to miss a thing like that.
“Sooo . . . are you interested in hockey all of a sudden now?” Ana teases.
Embarrassed, Maya rubs her hand.
“Shut up. What the . . . ?”
Then her face breaks into a brief smile:
“Just because you don’t like peanut butter doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t like . . . peanuts.”
Ana laughs so hard she ends up spraying the inside of her locker with smoothie.
“Okay, fine! But if you do talk to Kevin, the least you can do is introduce me to Benji, yeah? He’s . . . mmm . . . I could eat him all up. Like . . . butter.”
Maya’s brow furrows with disgust, then she pulls the key from her locker and starts to walk off. Ana watches her and throws her arms out.
“What? So YOU’RE allowed to say things like that, but not me?”