When school is over for the day, Maya and Ana change into tracksuits and run into the forest. It’s Ana’s idea, and a weird one, because Maya has always hated running, and even if Ana has spent almost all her life running through the forest, she’s never done it specifically as exercise. Never in circles. Even so, Ana forces Maya out this autumn, because she knows that even if Kevin is no longer in Beartown, they still have to reclaim the things he stole. Twilight. Solitude. The courage to wear earbuds when it’s dark, the freedom to not look over your shoulder the whole time.

They run only where there are lights. They don’t say anything but are both thinking the same thing: guys never think about light, it just isn’t a problem in their lives. When guys are scared of the dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys.

They run a long way. Farther than either of them thought they could. But they stop abruptly some way from Ana’s house, beside the running track that coils around the Heights. It’s the best-lit patch of track in the whole of Beartown, but that’s irrelevant. That was where Maya held the shotgun to Kevin’s head.

* * *

She’s hyperventilating. Can’t bring herself to take another step. Ana puts a comforting hand on hers.

“We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Maya nods. They walk back to Ana’s. Outside the door Maya lies and tells her friend that she’s fine, that she can go home on her own, because Ana is fighting hard to make everything normal again and Maya can’t bear to disappoint her.

* * *

But when she’s alone she sits down on a stump and cries. Sends a text to her mom: “Can you pick me up? Please?”

* * *

At a time like that, there’s no mother in this forest or any other who drives faster through the trees.

* * *

No one knows exactly where violence comes from; that’s why someone who fights can always find a reasonable justification. “You shouldn’t have provoked me.” “You know how I get.” “It’s your own fault, you deserved it, you were asking for it!”

Leo Andersson is twelve years old and has never had a girlfriend. When a girl two years older comes up to him at his locker in school, he feels a rush of intoxication that he will never experience so strongly again.

She smiles. “I saw you on the beach when you stood up to William Lyt. Pretty brave!”

Leo has to hold on to the locker door as she walks off. When he has lunch, she sits down at the same table. That afternoon, after his last class, she appears in the corridor and asks if he wants to walk her home.

Leo is usually picked up by one of his parents so he has time to get to hockey practice. But his parents have been in their own little worlds recently, and Leo isn’t planning to play hockey this autumn. He wants to be something else now, he doesn’t know what, but when this girl looks at him he thinks, “I want to be the sort of person she thinks is brave.” So he texts his parents to say he’s going over to a friend’s. They’ll just be relieved they don’t have to pick him up.

The girl and Leo take the path that runs through the tunnel under the main road between the school and the residential area on the other side. He takes a deep breath and summons up the courage to reach out his hand and take hold of hers. The tunnel is dark, and she slips from his fingers and runs. He stares in surprise as he hears her shoes patter on the concrete. Then there are other sounds, from other shoes. They’re walking into the darkness from both directions. One of them is the girl’s older brother. Leo didn’t notice the red top under her jacket.

The council installed this tunnel many years ago after years of campaigning by parents saying that children shouldn’t have to cross the busy road. The tunnel was supposed to keep children safe. But now it’s a trap instead.

* * *

When Kira picks Maya up, her daughter pretends that everything is fine again. She’s starting to get good at that. She says she twisted her ankle while she and Ana were jogging, and Kira is happy. Happy! Because a twisted ankle is so normal. It’s part of normal sixteen-year-old life.

“Do you feel like doing something? We could drive to Hed and go for a coffee,” Kira suggests, with all the training in rejection of a mother of teenagers, so her heart skips a beat when her daughter unexpectedly replies, “Okay.”

They drink coffee. They talk. They even laugh, as if this were all normal, and of course Kira is the one who spoils it. Because she can’t help asking “How are you getting on with . . . counseling? Or with the psychologist? I don’t know the difference, but . . . I know you don’t want to talk to your dad and me, but I just want you to know that you . . . that you can if you want.”

Maya stirs her coffee. Clockwise, anticlockwise, in turn. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m feeling good.”

Kira dearly wants to believe that. She tries to keep her voice steady. “Your dad and I have been talking. I’m going to cut my hours for a while, so I can be home a bit more . . .”

“What for?” Maya blurts out.

Kira looks confused. “I thought you’d be pleased! If I’m . . . home more?”

“Why would I be pleased?” Maya wonders.

Kira squirms. “I haven’t been a good mother, darling. I’ve been so focused on my career. I should have spent more time with you and Leo. Now your dad has to focus all his effort on the club for a while, so—”

“Dad’s always focused all his effort on the club!” Maya interrupts.

Kira blinks. “I don’t want you to remember me as an absentee mom. Especially not now. I want you to feel that you’ve got a . . . normal mom.”

Maya puts her spoon down at that. Leans across the table. “Stop it, Mom. You know, I’m so damn proud of your career! Everyone else had a normal mom, but I had a role model. All the other moms have to say to their kids that they can be whatever they want when they’re older, but you don’t have to say that, because you’re demonstrating it every day.”

“Darling, I—” Kira begins, but her voice breaks.

Maya wipes her tears and whispers, “Mom. You taught me that I don’t have to have dreams. I can have goals.”

* * *

Perhaps William Lyt doesn’t want to hurt anyone. There’s a particular type of person who enjoys harming other people, but it isn’t clear if he’s one of them. One day he might wonder about that himself, how we end up the way we do. Unless he becomes the kind of person who goes through his whole life surrounded by excuses for violence: “You shouldn’t have provoked him.” “You know how he gets.” “You were asking for it.”

His friends are with him, but he doesn’t have their unconditional support. They’re not with him out of love or admiration, the way they followed Kevin and Benji; they’re just going along with him because he’s strong. So he needs to crush everyone who challenges him, because a lack of respect is like sparks in a summer forest: if you don’t trample them out at once, the fire spreads until you find yourself surrounded.

His guys stand at the ends of the tunnel. William goes in. It didn’t need to get out of hand, because William starts by saying “Not so tough now, are you?”

If Leo had looked frightened, it could have stopped there. If the twelve-year-old had just had the sense to tremble and sink to his knees and beg William for mercy. But it isn’t William who sees fear in Leo’s eyes, it’s Leo who sees it in William’s. So the twelve-year-old says mockingly, “How tough are you, little Willie? You wouldn’t even dare fight Benji! Are you going to wear a diaper when you play Beartown or what?”

Leo may not really know why he says this. Unless he doesn’t care. The girl tricked him; he’s going to carry a lump of black fury in his gut forever to remind him of how he felt when she ran and he realized that they’d planned this and how they must have laughed when they did. And there’s something about violence, about adrenaline, about the different frequencies in some people’s hearts.