Someone pushes Bobo, and he falls backward along the corridor. Everyone is shouting, but Lyt and his allies quickly fall silent. Bobo is lying on the floor, and a couple of feet behind him stands Benji. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there with his eyes half open and his hair a mess, as if they’d started the fight next to the bench he’d spent the night sleeping under. Hands in pockets, an arrogant look in his eye, so certain of his own effect that it isn’t even meant to be threatening.
“Are we going to do this now, Lyt, or do you want to fetch more friends first?” Benji asks, as if he was wondering if Lyt wanted a medium or large drink with his burger.
Lyt’s friends glance at him for guidance. Lyt meets Benji’s gaze, but not for long. He manages to utter an insult, but it doesn’t sound particularly convincing as he mumbles, “Who cares, we’ll do this on the ice instead. Good luck with your goddamn lesbian coach! She suits you! You’ve always played like pussies!”
Benji is standing on his toes, Lyt on his heels. When the teachers come hurrying through the corridor, Lyt raises his hands a little too quickly and pretends it’s their fault, and he sets off in the other direction. But Benji doesn’t move, doesn’t look down, and everyone who sees that knows what it means for the balance of power in the school.
* * *
One of the pupils who pays extra attention is Leo Andersson.
* * *
Maya and Ana are standing at Maya’s locker when they hear the commotion and shouting. It’s as if school buildings are intentionally built with acoustics so that sounds will always reach you no matter where you are, so that the pupils will never be able to escape one another. Maya sees the staff hurry toward the disturbance, sees some final-year students swinging wildly at each other farther along one of the corridors. She realizes it’s ridiculous the moment the words leave her mouth, but she asks out loud, “What are they fighting about now?”
A girl the same age as her spins around a couple of feet away, her voice dripping with derision when she replies, “Don’t act stupid, you lying piece of—”
One of the girl’s friends stops her before she says the last word. As if that makes any difference. Maya stares at her slightly too long. The girl’s eyes are wide open, her fingernails digging into her palms as she shouts, “Like you don’t know what they’re fighting about! You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? The fact that all the trouble in this whole damn town is about you! Maya Andersson, Beartown’s very own little princess!”
She says Maya’s name as if she were spitting on her grave. The girl’s friends pull her away. She’s got a red Hed Hockey badge on her backpack—her boyfriend and brother both play there. They used to be friends with Kevin Erdahl.
Maya and Ana stay where they are, leaning against the lockers so hard they can feel the metal doors shake in time with their heartbeats. This will never end. Never. Maya groans in resignation, “How many things can they actually hate me for? I’m either a rape victim or a lying bitch or a . . . a princess?”
Ana stands beside her, staring at the floor, then clears her throat noisily and suggests, “Look . . . if it’s any consolation, I still think you’re just a perfectly ordinary idiot!”
Maya’s mouth struggles to remain solemn but can’t resist breaking into a broad grin. “You’re so stu—”
“Says the idiot!” Ana snorts.
Maya bursts out laughing.
* * *
You must never let the bastards see you do the opposite.
* * *
Bobo is crawling about on the floor like an overweight deer. Amat runs over and holds out his hand and together with Benji pulls him to his feet, groaning.
Amat grins. “How can you possibly be so heavy but so easy to knock over?”
Bobo, who isn’t exactly known for his sharp wits, unexpectedly manages to fire back, “My cock affects my center of gravity.”
Amat and Benji’s laughter echoes along the corridor. They’re the only three members of last season’s junior team who are still with Beartown Ice Hockey, and right now that feels as though it might just be enough.
“Have you heard I’m practicing with the A-team today?” Amat asks excitedly.
Bobo nods, then looks suddenly perplexed. “What did Lyt mean, ‘lesbian coach’?”
Amat and Benji stare at him in surprise. “You haven’t heard that Beartown’s A-team has got a new coach?”
Bobo’s face radiates incomprehension. Rumors may spread quickly in Beartown, but not quickly enough to reach Bobo.
“Yeah, but a lesbian? We’re going to have a lesbian coach?”
Benji says nothing. But Amat clears his throat. “Bobo . . . we said the A-team.”
“Are you saying I don’t belong on the A-team?” Bobo snaps.
Amat shrugs. “If we need an extra obstacle in training, maybe. Your skates are actually faster when you’re not wearing them . . .”
Benji bursts out laughing and Bobo tries to grab Amat, but Amat is far, far too quick for him.
* * *
They’re joking, all three of them, but deep down none of them knows if he’s really good enough. If there’s any chance of their making the A-team. And where would that leave them? If they’re no longer hockey players?
* * *
The school slowly fills with staff and students. A new term, equal measures of expectation and anxiety, bittersweet reunions with everyone you love and everyone you hate, and the knowledge that there’s no way to avoid breathing the same air as both groups.
In the headmaster’s office sits a young teacher, Jeanette, making a last attempt to persuade the man in the smart jacket who’s massaging his temples in front of her.
“Just give me a chance! Let me turn it into part of PE!”
The headmaster sighs. “Please, Jeanette. After everything that happened this spring, I just want to get this school through one term without any scandals and attention from the media—and you want to teach the students how to fight?”
“It’s not . . . for heaven’s sake . . . it’s martial arts!” Jeanette snaps.
“What did you say it was called again?”
“MMA, mixed martial arts,” Jeanette repeats patiently.
The headmaster rolls his eyes. “ ‘Arts’? It always seems a bit odd to call it an ‘art,’ don’t you think? It’s not like you can put on an exhibition of broken noses, is it?”
Jeanette clasps her hands together in her lap, possibly to stop herself from throwing something at him. “Martial arts teaches students discipline and respect for their own and other people’s bodies. I’ve already got somewhere to do it, up at Adri Ovich’s kennels, just let me ask the students if they’re interested, and—”
The headmaster polishes his glasses more thoroughly than necessary. “I’m sorry, Jeanette. The parents would go mad. They’d see it as you teaching their children to be violent. We can’t afford any more controversy.”
He stands up to indicate that it’s time for Jeanette to leave his office, but the moment he opens the door a hand very nearly hits him in the face. The man standing outside was just about to knock on the door.
“I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a very long year,” the headmaster mutters.
Jeanette is standing behind him, unable to conceal her curiosity. “Hi!” she says.
The man in the doorway smiles. “I’m . . . I’m starting work here today?” he says.
“Yes! Our new philosophy and history teacher!” the headmaster exclaims, grabbing some sheets of paper from a shelf before adding “And maths and science and . . . French? Do you speak French?”
The male teacher in the doorway looks as though he’s about to protest, but Jeanette gestures with a smile that he should go along with it. The headmaster heaves a pile of books and papers into his arms. “Best get going, then! Your schedule’s on top there!”
The teacher thanks him and sets off along the corridor. The headmaster watches him go and sighs, “Freshly qualified. I know I should be happy that
he’s come here of his own volition, but dear Lord, Jeanette? How old do you think he is?”
“Twenty-five? Twenty-six?” Jeanette guesses.
“And you saw the way he looks.”
“I didn’t notice a thing,” Jeanette deadpans.
“The school is raging with hormones, and we employ a teacher who looks like he’s in a bloody boy band! We’ll have to lock up half the female students,” the headmaster mutters.
Jeanette coughs under her breath. “And probably some of the female teachers, too.”
“What?” the headmaster says.
“What?” Jeanette repeats innocently.
“Did you say something?”
“No! I’ve got a class now!”
The headmaster mutters unhappily, “You can put up one poster about your martial arts training. One poster, Jeanette!”
Jeanette nods and goes out into the corridor. She pins up four posters and watches the new teacher’s hips as she heads after him along the corridor.
* * *
The new teacher is standing in the classroom writing on the board as the students tumble into the room in little clusters. When the bell rings, it can barely be heard over the scrape of chairs and the sound of backpacks being dropped on the floor, as well as the enthusiastic chatter about everything that’s happened during the summer and the fight that just broke out in the corridor.
Benji comes in last of all, and hardly anyone notices him. His hair is still a mess, his denim shirt is half tucked in, as if he’d just pulled on his pants in a darkened room. He looks the way he did when he got out of the bed in a cabin in a campsite between Beartown and Hed not long ago, on the night that was full of Nietzsche and cold beer and warm hands.
All the other students in the room are too preoccupied with one another and themselves to see the new teacher turn toward the door and lose his breath. Benji’s not an easy young man to surprise, but he stops, his chest pounding with shock.
* * *
The teacher is wearing the same blue polo shirt as he was that night.
20
Shaving Cream in Your Shoes
It’s hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else’s lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.
* * *
When the class is over, the students rush out of the classroom as if it were on fire, as usual. Benji seems to be last by accident; he’s good at giving the impression of nonchalance. The teacher is sweating with nerves, the collar of his blue polo shirt flecked with moisture.
“I . . . I didn’t know you were still at school, Benjamin. If I’d known . . . I thought you were older. It was a . . . a mistake! I could lose my job, we shouldn’t have slept together . . . I don’t make a habit . . . you were just . . . just . . .”
Benji steps closer to him. The teacher’s hands are shaking. “Just a mistake. I was just a mistake,” Benji says, finishing his sentence for him.
The teacher nods helplessly with his eyes closed. Benji stares at his lips for a few moments. When the teacher opens his eyes again, Benji is already gone.
* * *
Bobo goes straight home after school as usual, throws his backpack into his room, gets changed, and goes out to help his dad, Hog, in the workshop. Just as he always does. But today Hog rather than Bobo is the one keeping an eye on the clock.
“That’s enough, Bobo. Get going!” Hog says when it’s time.
Bobo nods, relieved, and shrugs off his overalls. Hog notes that they’re getting to be too small for him. While Bobo fetches his hockey gear Hog hesitates for a long time before saying anything, possibly because he doesn’t want his son to see how full of anticipation he is. Fathers’ hopes can so easily suffocate their sons. But in the end he can’t help asking, “Nervous?”
It’s a stupid question, Bobo’s as nervous as a long-tailed cat between two rocking chairs. This is his first training session with the A-team, he’s eighteen years old, and hockey has a definitive way of letting children know when they’ve grown up. The son shakes his head, but his eyes are nodding. His dad grins. “Keep your head down and your mouth shut. Do your best. And wear a pair of shoes you don’t like.”
Bobo opens his mouth to make the noise he’s made ever since he was little when he doesn’t understand something: “Huh?”
“The older A-team players will fill your shoes with shaving cream while you’re in the shower. They’ll make life hell to start with, but you just have to accept that. Remember, it’s a sign that they respect you. It’s when they’re not messing with you that you need to be worried, because that means they know you’re on your way out of the team.”
Bobo nods. Hog looks as though he’s about to pat him on the shoulder but reaches for a tool from the bench behind him instead. Bobo turns to go change his shoes, but Hog clears his throat, “Thanks for your help today.”
Bobo doesn’t know what to say. He helps his dad in the workshop every day, but his dad never thanks him. But today he goes on: “I wish your life could be less complicated. That you only had to worry about school and hockey and girls and whatever your friends worry about. I know it’s been tough, having to help in the workshop, and now all this business with your mom not . . .”
He tails off. Bobo doesn’t finish the sentence. He just says, “No problem, Dad.”
“I’m so damn proud of you,” Hog says, looking down under the hood of a Ford.
Bobo goes and gets an old pair of shoes.
* * *
Amat is the smallest guy in the locker room. He’s doing his best to make himself even smaller; he can feel the way the older players are looking at him and knows they don’t want him there. Bobo’s sitting beside him, and it’s worse for him because he’s big. The older players, the ones who didn’t find other teams when the club was teetering close to bankruptcy in the summer and are damned if they’re going to lose their places to a gang of juniors now, immediately start to target him. Just little things, someone hitting him with his shoulder, someone accidentally kicking his gear across the floor. As they start to joke about noisily, Bobo desperately tries to make funny comments. It’s obvious that he’s trying too hard to gain acceptance, and for that reason it only makes things worse. Amat tries to nudge him with his elbow to get him to shut up, but Bobo is on a roll. One of the older players grunts, “So we’re getting a female coach now, too? Can’t the GM find some other way to drum up a bit of PR? Are we going to end up as some sort of political gesture?”
“There’s no way she got the job on her own merits, this is to meet a quota!” another snaps.
“Have you heard she’s a lesbian?” Bobo blurts out, a little too loudly.
The older players ignore him. But one of them says, “Definitely a rug muncher. You can tell just by looking at her.”
“Huh? What’s a rug muncher? Oh, hang on . . . I get it! Lesbian, right? I get it!” Bobo yelps.
No one reacts. The older players just go on, “Can’t a hockey team just be a hockey team? Does everything have to be political? It’s only a matter of time before they replace the bear on our shirts with a goddamn rainbow!”
As if struck by lightning Bobo exclaims, “And force us to play in, like, ballerinas’ tutus!”
He stands up and does a clumsy pirouette, stumbles into a bench, loses his balance, and falls flat on his back on top of two hockey bags. Then something happens. A couple of the older players laugh. At him rather than with him, but as long as they’re looking at him he devours their attention. He gets to his feet and does another pirouette, and one of the older guys pretends to be serious and says, “Your name’s Bobo, right?”
“Yes!” Bobo nods intently.
The other players grin expectantly, aware that the older man is teasing the boy.
“You ought to show her your cock,” he says.
“Huh?” Bobo say
s.
The older player points at him demonstratively. “The new coach. She’s a lesbian. Show her your cock! So she can see what she’s missing!”
“Let the anaconda out of the cage, Bobo! You’re not chicken, are you?” another player cries, and soon they’re all shouting, as if he were getting ready to attempt the long jump.
“But she . . . won’t she be . . . angry?” Bobo wonders in confusion.
“She’ll just think you’ve got a decent sense of humor!” one of the older players replies eagerly.
In hindsight it’s easy to say that Bobo’s crazy, but when you’re eighteen years old in a locker room full of grown men who are suddenly cheering you on, “no” is the hardest word in the world.
So when Elisabeth Zackell walks past in the corridor, Bobo leaps out of the locker room as naked as the day he was born. He’s expecting her to be shocked. Or at least jump. She doesn’t even raise an eyebrow.
“Yes?” she asks.
Bobo squirms. “I . . . well . . . we heard you were lesbian, so I . . .”
“BOBO WANTED TO SHOW YOU HIS COCK SO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE MISSING!!!” someone shouts from the locker room, followed by two dozen men giggling hysterically.
Zackell puts her hands on her knees and leans forward in interest toward Bobo’s crotch.
“That?” she wonders, pointing curiously.
“Huh?” Bobo says.
“Is that the cock you’re talking about? Wow. I’ve seen women with bigger clitorises than that.”
Then she turns and walks toward the ice without another word. Bobo has turned bright red all over when he steps back inside the locker room.