* * *
When Beartown Ice Hockey plays its next game on the road, the rumors about Benji have reached that town, too. In every town he plays in from now on, there will be people who shout the most disgusting things they can think of to get him off balance. But Benji doesn’t give in, he just scores goals instead. The more they yell, the better he gets. After the game Bobo hugs him and exclaims happily, “If they hate you, you’re doing something right! You’re the best! They’d never hate you this much if you weren’t best!”
Benji tries to smile. Pretend it’s nothing. But he can’t quite stop himself from wondering how long he’s going to have to be the best. How long it’s going to take before anyone just lets him play.
* * *
Ana and Vidar are the sort of love story in which neither of them really knows how to behave. So they end up just going for walks, every day, in the forest. The snow gets deeper in tandem with their infatuation.
One afternoon he touches her and she starts to cry hysterically. When he doesn’t understand why, she tells him about Benji. How everyone found out about it, about the photograph, and Maya’s furious reaction.
“I don’t deserve you, I’m a horrible person! I must be a psychopath!” she cries.
Vidar stands in front of her, and he might as well be naked when he replies, “Me, too.”
How could anyone help falling even more in love with him then? Perhaps someone knows. Ana isn’t one of them.
The next morning when they get to school, Ana waits until she catches sight of Benji. When he opens his locker, small paper notes fall out, and Ana realizes what’s written on them, she knows how much of other people’s hatred Benji is having to carry within him now.
“I have to . . . ,” she whispers to Vidar.
Vidar tries to stop her, but it’s impossible. She’s suddenly set off along the corridor. Benji looks up in surprise and tries to hide the notes.
“I know you hate me, but—” Ana begins, but doesn’t manage to say more before the tears start to fall and her voice breaks.
“Why would I hate you?” Benji wonders, and only then does Ana realize that Maya hasn’t told anyone, not even him.
“It was me . . . it was . . . took the picture of you and . . . it was me! Everything you’re going through is my fault . . . it was me!”
Her face contracts into wrinkles of shame that will never quite smooth out. Her whole body is shaking. Then she runs off, out of the school, away, away, away. Benji stands there for a moment, and his eyes meet Vidar’s. The goalie does something he never does: he hesitates.
“She—” Vidar begins, but Benji cuts him off. “It’s okay. Go after her.”
* * *
So Vidar does. He runs after her, doesn’t catch up with her until they’re half a mile away; she’s so fast and strong that he doesn’t stand a chance of getting her to slow down. So he runs alongside her. Straight out into the forest until neither of them can breathe or think anymore. Then they collapse into the snow and just lie there.
* * *
Vidar doesn’t say a word. It’s the finest thing anyone has ever done for Ana.
* * *
Maya is sitting alone in the cafeteria, as she does every day. But out of the blue someone sits down opposite her, as if he’s been invited. She looks up. Benji points at her plate. “Are you going to finish that, or can I have it?”
Maya smiles. “I shouldn’t sit with you. You’ve got a bad reputation.”
Benji looks impressed. “Ouch.”
She laughs. “Sorry.”
Sometimes you have to laugh at the crap, that’s how you make it bearable. Benji grins. Then he says, “You should forgive Ana.”
“What?”
“She told me she posted the pictures of me and . . . and . . . me and . . .”
He’s invincibly strong and unbelievably fragile at one and the same time. He reminds Maya a lot of Ana sometimes.
“Why should I forgive her? What she did to you was horrible!” she snaps.
“But you’re like sisters. And sisters forgive each other,” Benji manages to say.
Because he’s got sisters. Maya tilts her head and asks, “Have you forgiven Ana?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because people make mistakes, Maya.”
* * *
Maya eats her lunch without saying anything else. But after school she walks through Beartown, knocks on a door, and, when Ana opens it, says at once, “Get your running gear on.”
Ana doesn’t ask why.
* * *
That saves their friendship.
45
Cherry Tree
Whenever we get someone really good at sports in such a small town, this far into the forest, people in Beartown usually say it’s like seeing a flowering cherry tree in the middle of a frozen garden.
Peter Andersson was our first, so when he made it all the way to the NHL it didn’t matter to us that he played only a handful of games before his career was cut short by injury. He was there. One of us had made it to the best in the world. Peter transformed the whole town, he condemned us to a lifetime of never-ending, impossible dreams.
* * *
Zacharias is sixteen years old. People like him are easily forgotten in stories like this one. Most people know him only as “Amat’s friend.” They know who Amat is because he’s good at hockey, and hockey is the only thing that counts here. Zacharias’s life is the sort that just carries on in the background.
He and Amat grew up with Lifa, and there may never have been three such different boys around here who ended up being best friends anyway. Zacharias’s parents never liked Lifa, especially when he started to be seen with the “bandits,” as Zacharias’s parents called anyone in the Hollow who didn’t seem to have a job to go to. But Amat, dear Lord, Zacharias’s parents worshipped him. When he started playing on the A-team, they were as proud as if he’d been their own son. As if they wished he were. And things like that are impossible for a boy like Zacharias not to notice.
Zacharias played hockey right up until this spring, even though he was the worst player on every team and didn’t even enjoy it much. He went to practices for his parents’ sake, put up with it for Amat’s sake. When he heard there wasn’t going to be a junior team this year he felt relieved, because it gave him an excuse to stop. He really only wanted to sit at home in front of his computer anyway. So when his mom and dad came home one day, all excited about an “open tryout” at Beartown Ice Hockey, he was overwhelmed with anxiety.
“You have to go!”
Zacharias has never been able to explain to his parents how badly bullied he has been throughout his childhood. For everything: his weight, his appearance, his address. They’ve never seen him that way. They’re from the same generation as Peter Andersson, the generation of impossible dreams. Zacharias mumbled, “It doesn’t work like that, Mom, you can’t just show up—”
But his dad interrupted, “It’s an open session! Anyone can turn up! And the factory is sponsoring Beartown Ice Hockey now! Just tell the coach that—”
“That what, Dad? That she should let me play because my dad works at the factory?” Zacharias snapped, and regretted it at once.
Beartown Ice Hockey was set up by factory workers, and the older workers still think of it as the factory’s club. Now that the factory’s new owners are promising more jobs for people who don’t have one and more work for those who have, as well as sponsoring the club, Zacharias’s dad has started to hope that everything is going to be like it used to be again. An affluent town, a club in the top division, permanent jobs, maybe even a chance for the family to move out of the apartment in the Hollow and buy a little row house. Nothing big, nothing flashy, just one more room and a slightly bigger kitchen. Heating that’s more reliable in the winter.
“Sorry, Dad . . . I didn’t mean . . . ,” Zacharias said quietly.
His dad’s eyes were still glinting with happiness. It would mean a huge amount
for both parents to see Zacharias play with the bear on his chest again. So Zacharias attended the open tryout. Of course he did.
He gave it all he had. It was nowhere near enough. Afterward he didn’t even get a pat on the shoulder from the coach, she just said, “Sorry, we’ve got everyone we need, but thanks for coming,” without so much as a second glance.
When he got home, his parents looked as though they were fighting to hold back tears. Many years from now he’ll look back on that and realize what a sign of devotion that was: they were so incapable of seeing how bad he was at hockey that they were genuinely disappointed.
That evening his mom had another go at him about playing computer games. He tried to explain how good he’d gotten, playing online, that he can hold his own against the best in the world. That he’s even been invited to take part in a competition in another town.
“A competition? In that? That’s a computer game, Zacharias—that’s not a sport!” his mom snorted.
* * *
Zacharias sat up playing all night, but her words tore at his chest.
* * *
Alicia isn’t even five years old yet, and children of that age shouldn’t be as good at escaping from preschool as she is. “We can’t be held responsible for that! This isn’t a prison!” the staff protested when Sune took her back for something like the twentieth time. “It feels like it to her,” Sune replied. Alicia was devoted to him, because he understood.
He kept trudging back from the rink to the preschool with her each day, and she kept running away again to go and watch the practices. Any practice. The A-team, little league, figure skating, it didn’t matter. As soon as the ice was empty for as much as a minute, she pulled her skates on and started to play. How do you stop that?
On one of the days when Sune dragged her back to preschool, the staff took pity on him and invited him in for coffee. In the end everyone accepted that it was easier if Sune just picked Alicia up from preschool in the morning, took her to the rink, and brought her back to preschool in the afternoon in time to have coffee there.
One day in early winter, the staff mentioned that the preschool was riddled with mold, that they’d complained repeatedly to the council but had been told there were no suitable alternative premises. Sune looked at Alicia. Thought the matter through carefully. Then he walked back to the rink, went up to Peter Andersson’s office and asked him, “Do you really need this office?”
“Sorry?” Peter said.
Sune gestured toward the rest of the upper floor of the rink. “Almost all these offices are empty! There’s only you, me, and Zackell here! Who else? A couple of office temps? The janitor?”
“There isn’t anyone else. We . . . we’re the club . . .” Peter said.
Sune grabbed pen and paper and started to draw. “We knock out these walls. Put in proper ventilation. It’s perfectly feasible!”
“Sorry, but what are you talking about?” Peter asked.
“More than a club! We can build more than a club!” Sune thundered.
* * *
The next day he went to the politicians with his plan to build a preschool inside the ice rink. Most of them are dubious, some are openly scornful, but one of them sees the potential at once. When the other councillors say no, this one politician goes to a parents’ meeting at the preschool and mobilizes an email campaign. Eventually that convinces the other politicians to restructure the budget. Sune is given money to build the first “ice rink preschool” in the country. The children spend as much time playing on skates as they do in shoes that winter. A few years from now Alicia will say it was those extra hours of practice that made her so fast and technically proficient.
* * *
She will have forgotten that the politician who attended the parents’ meeting was named Richard Theo. But at the next election there will be plenty of parents with young children who remember him.
* * *
“It’s only sports.” That’s what we try to tell ourselves.
* * *
Amat calls Zacharias late one evening.
“What are you doing?” Amat asks.
“Gaming,” Zacharias replies.
Amat used to make fun of him for using that word. “Gaming” instead of “playing games,” as if Zacharias were trying to make it sound like . . . a sport.
“Do you feel like coming out for a while?” he asks.
“Out? Now? It’s as cold as a polar bear’s asshole!”
Amat laughs. “I bet polar bears’ assholes aren’t cold at all! Just come out!”
“What for?”
Amat swallows. “Because I’m so nervous about the game against Hed that I can’t sleep. Just come out.”
So Zacharias goes out. Of course he does. They walk around the Hollow, freezing and talking, the way they used to when they were younger and had nowhere else to go.
“How’s the gaming going?” Amat asks.
“Just don’t, okay?” Zacharias says, hurt.
“No, seriously! Tell me . . . I . . . look, I just need to talk about something apart from hockey.”
Zacharias sulks for a while. But eventually he says, “It’s going well. Really well, actually. I’ve been invited to take part in a competition.”
“Can I come and watch?” Amat asks immediately.
Zacharias can’t possibly describe how proud he is to be asked. So he just grunts, “Sure.” Then he adds crossly, “But not if you’re going to say the same shit as my parents! That it’s not a real sport simply because it isn’t hockey!”
Amat mutters guiltily, “Is that what your parents say?”
Zacharias kicks at the snow. “They dream of having a son like you, Amat. Hockey’s the only thing that counts in this town.”
* * *
Amat doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing he can say.
* * *
Maya arrives at the barn up at the kennels. Jeanette is already training inside with the sandbag, but Ana stops warily in the doorway.
“Is it okay if she joins in?” Maya asks.
Jeanette lets out a breathless, surprised laugh. “Of course! If there are three of us, we’ll soon be a real club!”
She isn’t prepared for what happens next, none of them is, not even Ana herself. But when Jeanette shows her a hold that she and Maya have been practicing and Maya tries to remember exactly how to contort her limbs in order to get out of the hold but fails, Ana asks, “Can I try?”
Jeanette hesitates. “This is—well—pretty advanced. Maybe we should start with something lighter?”
“Can’t I just try?” Ana asks.
So Jeanette lets her try, because sometimes you have to let some people fail in order for them to learn. The only problem with that theory is that Ana doesn’t fail. Jeanette shows her the movement, and Ana duplicates it on her first attempt. Jeanette shows her a more difficult move, then another, even harder, and Ana manages them all by her second or third attempt.
Jeanette is panting with her hands on her knees after twenty minutes, but Ana doesn’t seem out of breath at all. Jeanette’s old coach used to talk about “physical intelligence” and how some martial arts practitioners seem to have an equivalent of a musician’s perfect pitch: when they see something, their body knows instinctively how to do the same thing. Ana played hockey for a few years when she was younger, but she’s never done any martial arts. Even so, her physique seems perfectly suited to it. She’s grown up in the forest, running on uneven ground, jumping and climbing. Her dad’s a hunter and fisherman, she’s tracked and shot and dragged heavy animals with him since she was a child, she’s shoveled snow and dug ditches and drilled holes in the ice on the lake. She’s strong, supple, resilient, and tougher than one of the Bearskin’s pork chops.
Jeanette holds her hands up and says, “Hit me as hard as you can.”
“Seriously?” Ana asks.
Jeanette nods. “As hard as you can!”
Maya is sitting on the floor, and she’ll never forget seeing this
happen. Ana hits so quickly and so hard that Jeanette staggers backward. Ana just explodes. Jeanette and Maya start laughing. Ana doesn’t even realize what’s so special about what she’s just done, but Jeanette is already planning her career.
The three women inside the barn are wet with sweat; the landscape outside is deep-frozen, covered in snow, sunk in darkness.
* * *
But the whole town smells of cherry blossom.
* * *
Early one morning Zacharias’s parents’ doorbell rings. Amat is standing outside. Zacharias’s mother looks both happy and frustrated. First the happiness: “Amat, how lovely to see you! Congratulations on getting onto the A-team, we’re so proud of you. Just think, we’ve had you running about here for so many years, you can’t imagine how much we boast about you to the neighbors! Your mom must be so proud of you!”
Before Amat has time to reply, she moves straight on to the frustration: “I’m afraid Zacharias isn’t home. He’s gone to play computer games with some friends. Several hours away! Can you imagine? What on earth’s the point of that?”
Amat takes a deep breath, because he’s very fond of Zacharias’s parents, but he says firmly, “Zach isn’t playing games with ‘some friends.’ It’s a huge competition. He qualified ahead of thousands of other players. You should come and watch him with me.”