Peter looks around the table. He’s expected to “take it like a man,” but he’s no longer sure what the politicians see him as: the boy who was raised by Beartown Ice Hockey Club? Who became team captain and led a dying backwoods team all the way to become second best in the country twenty years ago? Or the NHL professional he later became? Before he was persuaded to come back home and become general manager of the club once it had tumbled through the leagues, where, against all odds, he built up one of the best junior teams in the country and made the little club big again. Is he any of those men?

Or is he just a dad now? Because it was his daughter who was raped. He was the one who went with her to the police that morning back in March. He was the one who stood in the parking lot outside the rink and watched as the police pulled the junior team’s star player off the bus just before they set off for the biggest game of their lives. He knows what all the men in here think, what men everywhere are thinking: “If it had been my daughter, I’d have killed the man who did that to her.” And not a night goes by without Peter wishing he was that sort of man. That he possessed that violence. But instead he accepts the cup of coffee. Because masculinity is hard at any age.

One of the politicians begins to explain, and his tone veers between sympathetic and patronizing: “You need to be a team player now, Peter. We have to act in the best interests of everyone in the district. A good reputation is vital to our hopes of attracting the World Skiing Championships. We’re going to build a new arena in Hed and establish the hockey school there . . .”

Peter doesn’t need to hear the rest; he’s heard this vision of the future, he was there when it was written. First the rink and hockey school, then the shopping center and better links to the highway. A conference hotel and a ski competition that gets shown on television. And then who knows? Maybe an airport? Sports are only sports until someone who doesn’t give a damn about sports has something to gain from them; then sports suddenly become economics. The hockey club was going to rescue the entire council district, and that remains the case. Just not Peter’s hockey club.

Another of the men, whose brain has evidently been on holiday for at least the past couple of hours, throws his arms out. “Yes, obviously we’re very sorry about . . . the situation. With your daughter.”

That’s what they say: “Your daughter.” Never “Maya,” never her name. Because that allows them to insinuate what they really want him to think about: If it had been anyone else’s daughter, would Peter have let Kevin play in the final? The politicians call it “the situation,” but the PR consultants the council has brought in call it “the scandal.” As if the problem wasn’t that a girl was raped but that it happened to become public knowledge. The PR consultants have explained to the politicians that there are other communities that have “been afflicted by similar scandals that have negatively impacted the town’s brand.” That’s not going to happen here. And the easiest way to bury the scandal is to bury Beartown Ice Hockey. Then everyone can point to the “raft of measures” and show how they’re building a bigger club in Hed, with “better morals and greater responsibility,” without having to answer for the fact that it’s the same men as always who are building it.

“All the damn journalists who keep calling, Peter. People are getting nervous! The council needs to turn the page!”

As if the journalists weren’t calling Peter’s family. Neither he nor Maya has spoken to them. They’ve done everything right, they’ve kept their mouths shut, but it doesn’t make any difference. They didn’t keep their mouths shut enough.

* * *

While eighteen-year-old William spent the summer gathering his team at Hed Hockey beneath the banner of a shared hatred of Peter Andersson, other conversations have been taking place in other parts of the district. William Lyt’s father is on the board of the golf club; he plays with bank managers and politicians and is popular not only because he knows people with money but also because he’s the kind of man who “speaks his mind.” The council needs the business community’s support to bid for the World Skiing Championships, so the business community has made one serious condition: one hockey club, not two. They say it’s a question of “responsible economics.” They stress the word “responsible.”

So now, down on the beach a few days before Midsummer’s Eve, all the young people’s phones start to buzz at the same time. First the beach falls silent; then a group of muscular eighteen-year-olds burst into loud, malicious roars of laughter. None louder than William Lyt. He climbs into a tree and hangs up two red Hed Hockey flags so that they billow out like bleeding wounds over the green leaves, the color of Beartown.

His team gathers in a semicircle beneath the trees, waiting for trouble. But they’re too big, too strong; everyone on the beach goes to the same school, so nobody dares. The beach belongs to Lyt after that. It is divided in the way that all worlds are divided between people: between those who are listened to and those who aren’t.

* * *

And the teenagers on the beach who see those young men and hate them without being able to do anything, the ones who love Beartown Hockey but aren’t strong enough to take on William Lyt’s gang, they now have to direct their fury toward someone else. Someone weaker.

* * *

Maya and Ana read the first anonymous texts, then they switch off their phones. “This is your fault.” “If the club dies so do you, slut!” “We’ll get your dad, too!” Ana and Maya know what’s happening now, know who’s going to bear the brunt of the hatred and threats.

Maya goes to the bathroom and throws up. Ana sits on the floor of the hall outside. She has read that support groups for victims of rape call themselves “survivors.” Because that’s what they do each day: they survive what they’ve been subjected to, over and over again. Ana wonders if there’s a word for everyone else, the people who let it happen. People are already prepared to destroy each other’s worlds just to avoid having to admit that many of us bear small portions of a collective guilt for a boy’s actions. It’s easier if you deny it, if you tell yourself that it’s an “isolated incident.” Ana dreams of killing Kevin for what he’s done to her best friend, but most of all she dreams of crushing the whole town for what it’s still putting Maya through.

The idiots won’t say it was Kevin who killed Beartown Ice Hockey; they’ll say that “the scandal” killed the club. Because their real problem isn’t that Kevin raped someone but that Maya got raped. If she hadn’t existed, it wouldn’t have happened. Women are always the problem in the men’s world.

Maya and Ana pack their backpacks, walk out through the door and into the forest without even knowing where they’re going. Because anywhere at all is better than here. Ana doesn’t take her rifle. It’s a decision she’ll regret.

* * *

Leo waits until it starts to get dark. He hides alone at the edge of the forest until the beach is empty. Then he creeps back down to the lake, climbs up into the tree, and sets fire to the red flags. He films the flames consuming the words and the Hed Hockey logo burning. Then he posts the clip anonymously online where he knows everyone in the school will see it.

People will say that violence came to Beartown this summer, but that won’t be true, because it was already here. Because people are always dependent upon other people, and we can’t ever really forgive one another for that.

5

Everyone Is a Hundred Different Things

A young man with a bare chest and a backpack is walking alone through the forest. He has a tattoo of a bear on his arm. A well-dressed lawyer is sitting in an office. She has photographs of her family on her desk and is just fielding another call from a moving company without understanding why. At the same time a stranger in a Jeep is driving along a main road with a list of names in the glove compartment.

Their cell phones buzz. Peter Andersson hasn’t even left the meeting in the council building, but the politicians have already leaked the news that Beartown Ice Hockey Club is going into liquidation. The politicians are learning things like that from their expensive PR consultants: that you have to “control the narrative.”

The young man in the forest, the lawyer in her office, and the stranger in the Jeep all pick up their phones. They are all involved.

* * *