The fourth or fifth retorts, “There are probably more here already. They’re everywhere these days.”

The first snorts, “It’s all very well if they’re discreet about it, but why does everyone have to make such a fuss about things? Does everything have to be political now?”

The third leans forward on his barstool, and it’s hard to know if it’s the chair or his body creaking when he asks Ramona for another beer. As she pours it, he says, “I tell you, if this new coach beats Hed in the first game, she can sleep with my wife for all I care.”

They laugh again, all five of them, at one another as much as with them.

* * *

Ramona gets out some nibbles for them, the old bastards. Nuts for the nuts.

* * *

Peter rings on the door of the Ovich family’s row house. Benji’s mom opens it. “Peter! Come in and eat!” she commands at once as if he were late, even though he hasn’t seen the woman in he doesn’t know how long.

Benji isn’t home, which Peter is pleased about: he’s not here to see him. All three of his sisters are sitting in the kitchen, Adri, Katia, and Gaby. Their mother cuffs each of them across the forehead in turn for not laying a place for their guest quickly enough.

“I won’t stay long, I’ve already eaten,” Peter starts to say, but Adri grabs his arm. “Shhh! If you turn down Mom’s food, you’re a braver man than I thought!”

Peter smiles, at first amused, then alarmed. You can joke about most things with the Ovich family, but not food. So Peter eats, three helpings more than he can manage, plus coffee and four different types of biscuits, and is given the rest to take home in plastic containers and aluminium foil. Adri walks him happily to the door. “You’ve only got yourself to blame if you show up here at dinnertime.”

Peter puts a hand on his stomach. “I wanted to talk about Benjamin.”

“We realized that. That’s why we let Mom talk to you about everything else,” Adri says with an even broader grin.

She composes herself when she sees the serious look in Peter’s eyes.

“We’ve got a new coach. Elisabeth Zackell.”

“So I’ve heard. Everyone’s heard that. It’s even been in the paper.”

Peter holds out a crumpled sheet of paper. Adri reads the names, sees her brother’s, but it’s as if she doesn’t quite grasp the significance of the “(C)” beside it. Peter helps her out: “She wants to make Benji team captain.”

“Of the A-team? Grown men? Benji’s—”

“I know. But this Elisabeth Zackell doesn’t seem . . . how can I put it? She doesn’t do things the way other people do,” Peter says forlornly.

Adri smiles. “No, and thank God for that. But my brother as captain? Does she have any idea what she’s letting herself in for?”

“She says she doesn’t want a team, she wants a gang of bandits. Can you think of anyone who’d make a better bandit than your brother?”

Adri tilts her head to one side. “What do you want from me?”

“You have to help me control him.”

“No one can do that.”

Peter scratches his neck nervously. “I’ve never been much good with people, Adri. But this Elisabeth Zackell, she’s—”

“Even worse?” Adri suggests.

“Yes! How did you guess?”

“Sune called me. He said you’d be showing up.”

“So you let me sit through that whole meal completely unnecessarily?” Peter exclaims.

“Are you saying there’s something wrong with my mom’s cooking?” Adri snaps, so sharply that Peter backs away with his hands in the air, as if he were being robbed in an old cowboy film.

“Please, Adri, just help me. We need Benji if we’re going to stand any chance of winning.”

Adri looks at the sheet of paper in her hand. “But you need a Benji who’s a leader. A bandit but not a lunatic.”

“We need a Benji who’s not quite . . . not quite so Benji as usual.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Adri promises.

Peter nods gratefully. “And we need you as coach of the girls’ team, if you’re still up for that. I can’t afford to pay you, and I know it’s a thankless task . . .”

“It’s not thankless,” Adri says.

Peter can see the fire inside her. You understand it only if you’re a hockey person. They part with a firm handshake, the general manager and the sister, the father and the girls’ team’s coach. But before Peter leaves Adri asks, “Who are you getting the money from? Who’s this ‘mystery sponsor’ the paper’s been writing about, what do they want?”

“Who says they want anything?”

“Everyone with money wants something, Peter. Especially when it comes to money and hockey.”

“I can’t say anything until it’s official. You can understand that, can’t you?” Peter pleads.

Adri’s reply sounds almost threatening but is actually sympathetic. “Just don’t forget who stood up for the club when things were at their worst.”

Adri doesn’t have to mention the Pack. Peter knows what she means by the people who stood up.

“I’ll do my best,” he promises.

* * *

Even though they’re both well aware that that’s never enough in this town.

19

The Same Blue Polo Shirt

It’s still warm when the autumn term starts at Beartown School. The sun is shining, the clouds are drifting light and high, the temperature is still lying treacherously about short sleeves and garden furniture, but if you’ve lived here all your life you can feel winter coming. The cold will soon freeze the lakes, snowflakes will fall, heavy as oven gloves, and darkness will land on the town as if it had been attacked from behind by an angry giant who tosses all the buildings into a black sack to use on the model railway in the secret room in his basement.

It feels as though in Beartown every year comes to an end in August, which may be why it’s so easy to love a sport that starts in September. Outside the school building someone has hung green flags in the trees. This seems innocent enough to a lot of people, but to others it is a provocation.

* * *

It doesn’t start here. But it gets worse from here.

* * *

Ana and Maya are standing two hundred feet from the entrance, taking deep breaths and holding each other by the hand. All summer they have been free, but a school is a different sort of island. It’s not the sort where you can hide away with your best friend but one where you drift ashore unwillingly after some terrible accident. All the pupils are shipwrecked here, none of them has chosen the company of the others, they’re all just trying to stay alive until the term is over and they can get out of here.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to get my rifle?” Ana asks.

Maya laughs. “Fairly sure.”

“I wouldn’t shoot anyone. Not badly, anyway,” Ana promises.

“You can put laxative in the milk dispenser in the cafeteria if anyone’s stupid,” Maya says.

“And take the lightbulbs out of all the bathrooms and stretch plastic wrap across all the toilets,” Ana nods.

Maya laughs. “You’re so sick.”

“Don’t let the bastards see you cry,” Ana whispers.

“Never,” Maya replies.

They walk into the school side by side. The stares cut into their skin, the silence threatens to burst their temples, but they walk with their heads held high. The two of them against the world. The walk to Maya’s locker is less than a hundred feet, but nothing in life will ever frighten them so much. Two young women striding straight through a school full of whispers, without lowering their eyes once. You can’t show these women a damn thing after what they’ve already seen.

* * *

William Lyt is marching along the corridor surrounded by four of his teammates. Maybe they’re not actively seeking out foes, maybe they just swing around the corner and bump into Bobo by accident. But the fight is instantaneous, almost instinctive in its clumsiness, and in the narrow corridor the young men flail around as if they’d stumbled into a swarm of bees. In the spring, when Amat stood up at that meeting in the rink and said he’d seen Kevin rape Maya, some of these guys set off toward the Hollow one night to punish him. Bobo was with them but changed sides at the last minute. If he hadn’t taken such a severe beating for his new friend, they might well have killed Amat. That fight isn’t over yet.

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.