Zackell shrugs. “Sure. Why not? It can hardly get any worse.”

A minute or so after Vidar bounces happily into the locker room to get his goalie gear on, another young man appears in the corridor. He’s walking calmly, not running, and stops in front of Zackell. He asks politely, the way you do if you have sisters, “Do you need another player?”

Zackell frowns. “Are you thinking of having sex with anyone in the locker room?”

Benji tries to figure out if she’s joking. It’s impossible to tell. “No,” he says.

“Okay,” she says.

Any normal coach would have scrubbed Benji from the lineup when he failed to show up for the first period. But Zackell isn’t normal. She made the judgment that even if Benji wasn’t here, he was still better than anyone else. Some people understand that, most don’t. She steps aside, he goes inside the locker room. It was quiet before he arrived, and it’s even quieter now.

His teammates are sitting there, two dozen pairs of eyes staring at the floor, and for the first time Benji doesn’t know what to do in there—where he should sit, how he should start to get changed, not because he’s uncomfortable but because he’s worried someone else might be. He’s different now.

He takes his shoes off, but that’s as far as he gets. He rushes into the toilet and slams the door shut behind him, but everyone can still hear him being sick. His eyes are streaming, and he clutches the edge of the toilet so hard that the fixtures start to creak. If he’d had a means of escape right then, he might well have taken it, but there’s only one way out of there. So who does he want to be? Everyone has moments when that’s decided. When we choose.

He wipes his face, unlocks the door, and steps back into the locker room. It’s the smallest of gestures, and all his teammates are still silent when he emerges, but when he gets back to his place, his shoes are full of shaving cream. Not just his. Everyone’s. Every pair of shoes under every bench. Because the men around him want him to know that he’s no different from anyone else. Not in here.

* * *

Benji sits down on the bench. Hesitantly pulls his shirt off. Suddenly a voice rises above the silence, from an unexpected direction opposite Benji, “How do you know if you’re sexy?” Amat asks.

Benji sits there bare-chested, his head tilted to one side. “What?”

Amat’s face is red. Everyone is staring at him, he’s never felt more embarrassed, but he persists, “I mean . . . how do you know what girls think is sexy about guys? Or what guys think is sexy about . . . guys?”

Benji’s eyebrows sink. “What the hell are you actually asking, Amat?”

Amat clears his throat. “You’ve showered with me, so you should be an expert. Am I sexy?”

Before Benji has time to answer, Amat grins. “I’m not asking for myself. I’m asking for my best friend.”

Beside him Bobo jerks as if someone had given him an electric shock. It’s a small thing for one young man to do for another one, but you can handle a lot of things in life if you have a best friend. Even more if you’re allowed to be someone else’s. So Bobo coughs and manages to say, “I, erm . . . Benji . . . I was just wondering how . . . you know. How you know if you know if you’re . . . hot?”

Benji looks at Bobo, then at Amat, then back at Bobo again. Then he shakes his head. “I’ve never once looked at either of you in the shower!”

The locker room erupts in laughter, but one of the older players remains serious and asks brusquely, “What about the rest of us, then? Are you seriously suggesting you haven’t checked out any of us in the shower?”

Benji frowns. “Christ, I’d rather look at girls than you guys.”

The older player’s shoulders sink slightly. “I can’t help feeling a bit hurt by that.”

“I’ve been doing my best to stay in shape,” another one mutters disappointedly.

Bobo and Amat grin. It’s almost the same as usual. But Benji is more serious, and he points at Bobo’s arm. “I want one of those, too. If that’s okay.”

Bobo writes “Ann-Katrin” on a strip of tape and fastens it around Benji’s arm. The letters are uneven because Bobo’s hand was shaking.

* * *

Elisabeth Zackell is standing outside the locker room with Peter. She grunts unhappily, but Peter gestures firmly that she has to say something to the team. So she groans, walks in, and whistles loudly to get the men to be quiet.

“Okay. I’ve been informed that coaches are expected to give inspirational speeches in situations like this. So . . . well . . . you’re 4–0 down.”

The men stare at her, and she stares back. Then she goes on, “I’m just checking that you know. Four-zip! More than that, you’re not just behind, you’ve also been playing really badly. So only a bunch of complete idiots would think you stand any chance of winning this game!”

The men remain silent. Zackell clears her throat. Then she adds, “Anyway. I just want to say that I’ve been involved with hockey my whole life. And I’ve never met such a bunch of idiots as you lot.”

Then she leaves them. Peter stands in the corridor and watches her as she walks toward the ice. He’s never heard a better locker room speech.

* * *

Inside the locker room they’re all sitting motionless. Benji looks at the clock on the wall; they ought to be out on the ice by now, but no one’s moving. In the end Amat kicks Benji’s skate and says, “They’re waiting.”

“What for?” Benji asks.

“You.”

Benji stands up. The others do the same.

* * *

Then the members of the Beartown hockey team follow their captain through the door. Benjamin Ovich doesn’t walk out onto the ice. He takes it by storm.

* * *

The three Ovich sisters arrive at the Hed arena with their mom. They walk in with the body language of women who have seen far worse things in even colder places. They’re not scared.

The hall is full, every seat taken, everyone knows who they are but most people pretend not to. People whisper and point, but no one looks them in the eye. Perhaps some of them are ashamed, while others just don’t know what to say. Perhaps a number of them would like to, but it’s hard to be the first people to stand up.

* * *

But then five people do.

* * *

The uncles. They’re wearing green BEARTOWN AGAINST THE REST T-shirts, and as they walk up the steps they tease each other about how damn old they’ve gotten. One of them takes Benjamin Ovich’s mother by the arm and leads her to his seat. The other uncles give up their seats to the sisters. When Adri passes one of them, the old man squeezes her hand and says, “Tell your brother that the people who shout the loudest may be the most noticeable. But they’re not the majority. We are.”

The five uncles’ wives are sitting in the next seats along. One of them has a cooler by her feet. Obviously you’re not allowed to take things like that to a hockey game, but when the security guard on the door asked what she had in it, she said with deadly seriousness, “My cat.” When the guard started to protest, one of the other women leaned forward and whispered, “It’s dead, but don’t tell her, poor old thing.” The guard opened his mouth, but the third of the women grabbed his arm and asked, “Do you have fresh tomatoes? I don’t want those Belgian ones you usually have, I want proper ones! I have a coupon!” The fourth exclaimed cheerily, “What a lot of people there are tonight! What film are you showing, again? Is Sean Connery in it?” And before the fifth one could embark on her practiced “There’s going to be snow tonight, I can feel it in my knees!” routine, the guard had sighed, given up, and let them in, cooler and all. Now the women take some beers from it and share them with Benji’s mom and sisters, and then nine women from three generations drink a toast with each other. Five uncles stand on the steps alongside, like a guard of honor.

* * *

A cup of coffee is no big thing. Not really.

* * *

Everyone will remember the chanting from the Hed fans’ standing area: “Queers! Sluts! Rapists!” A lot of people will believe that that whole part of the stand was chanting, because it felt like it, and from a distance it’s hard to differentiate among people. So everyone in the standing area will be criticized, even though by no means all of them were chanting, because we’ll want scapegoats, and it’ll be easy for anyone wanting to moralize to say that “culture isn’t just what we encourage but what we allow to happen.”

But when everyone is shouting, it can be hard to hear the opposition, and once an avalanche of hate has started to roll, it can be hard to tell who is responsible for stopping it.