It’s as if Peter and Kira are living in parallel now rather than together. After the funeral they walk out of the church side by side, but there’s a distance between them, just enough to prevent their hands accidentally brushing against each other. They get into separate cars, but neither of them puts the key into the ignition. They’re both falling apart, at opposite ends of the parking lot.

It’s terrible being dependent on other people, the pair of them have always known that. One summer night a few years ago, they were sitting on the steps in front of the house; there’d been a news report of a road accident in which two young children had died, and it had brought their own grief back to them. You never stop losing a child. Kira whispered to Peter, “God . . . it was so painful, darling . . . when Isak died, if I’d had to deal with that much pain alone . . . I’d have killed myself.” Perhaps she and Peter have managed to stick together through everything because they didn’t trust themselves to cope alone. So they were constantly on the hunt for other things to live for: each other, the children, a job with a purpose, a hockey club, a town.

Peter looks through the windshield and sees Kira sitting in her car. So he gets out and walks over to her, opens the passenger door, and says tentatively, “We should go back to their house, darling. To Hog and the children.”

Kira nods slowly and wipes eyeliner from the small lines in the skin around her eyes. When Isak died, Hog and Peter’s other childhood friend, Tails, traveled all the way to Canada as soon as they could. They knew Peter and Kira would be in shock, so Tails helped with the practical arrangements, papers and documents and insurance. To start with, Hog mostly sat on the steps in front of the house, unsure of what to do. He’d never even been abroad before. But he noticed that the handrail of their living room stairs was broken, and handrails in Canada are much the same as they are in Beartown, so Hog fetched some tools and mended it. Then he went on mending things for the next few days.

“Your car or mine?” Peter whispers now.

“Mine,” Kira says, moving her purse from the passenger seat.

She drives to Hog and the children’s house. Halfway there she cautiously reaches across. Peter takes her hand and holds it tight.

* * *

Fatima, Amat’s mother, is already there. She’s standing in the kitchen making food, and Kira helps her. Amat is there, too, he goes to get Bobo and his brother and sister and says the only thing a teenage boy can think of to say to a friend who’s just lost his mother: “Do you want to play hockey?”

They fetch sticks and a puck. Bobo wraps his tie around his head again, holds the younger children’s hands, and sets off toward the lake. It’s frozen over, the world is white, and they play as if nothing else matters.

* * *

Peter finds Hog in the garage, he’s already gone back to work. His hands need to be busy to stop his heart from breaking even further.

“Is there anything I can do?” Peter asks.

Hog is sweaty and distracted when he replies, “The roof got damaged in the storm, can you take a look at it?”

Grief can do that to a person—he’s forgotten that his friend is all thumbs and couldn’t even mend his own handrail in Canada. But Peter loves Hog, the way children love their best friends, so he fetches a ladder and clambers up onto the roof.

While he’s sitting up there, without the faintest idea of where to start, he sees a cavalcade of cars approaching through the forest. At first Peter thinks it’s Hog’s family, but when the cars stop, a group of young men get out.

Teemu and Vidar are first, followed by Spider and Woody, then another dozen men in black jackets. They usually get their cars and snowmobiles fixed here, as do their parents. If a snowblower or piece of forestry machinery or even a kettle breaks around here, people bring them to Hog. So they’re here now, now that he’s broken. Teemu walks into the garage, shakes the mechanic’s oil-smeared hand, and says, “We’re sorry for your loss, Hog. What do you need help with?”

Hog wipes the sweat and dirt from his face. “What have you got?”

“A carpenter, an electrician, a few guys who are just strong, and some who aren’t much use at all,” Teemu says.

Hog gives him a weak smile.

* * *

Peter is still sitting on the roof when Woody and Spider climb up. They look at each other, and Peter takes a deep breath and admits, “I don’t know anything about roofs. I don’t even know where to start . . .”

Woody doesn’t say anything. He just shows Peter what to do. Then the three of them spend several hours working together. When they finally climb back down, they may well be enemies again, but they’ve taken a breather up on the roof. Death can do that to us, too.

* * *

Teemu goes into the kitchen. He stops abruptly when he catches sight of Kira. Her jaw muscles tense and her fists clench, so quickly that Fatima instinctively stands between them without knowing who’s in greater danger. But Teemu takes a step back, his shoulders sink, and he lowers his head, making himself as small as possible. “I just want to help,” he says.

Because sometimes it’s easier to do something rather than say something. So Fatima and Kira glance at each other. Kira gives a curt nod and Fatima asks, “Can you cook?”

Teemu nods. Fatima knows who his mother is, she realizes that the boy had to learn to prepare meals at an early age. She asks him to chop vegetables, and he does it without protest. Kira washes up afterward. Teemu dries. They don’t make peace, but they take a break. The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.

* * *

It’s so easy to place your hope in people. To think that the world can change overnight. We demonstrate after an attack, we donate money after a disaster, we lay our hearts bare online. But for every step forward we take, we take an almost equally large step back. Seen over time, every change is so slow that it’s barely visible when it’s happening.

* * *

The bell rings in Beartown School. Classes start. But Benji is standing a hundred feet from the entrance with feet made of cement. He knows who he is in everyone’s eyes now, one hockey game isn’t going to change that. They may accept him on the ice, as long as he’s the best, but he’s always going to have to give them much more than everyone else now. He will always have to be grateful just for being allowed to take part. Because he isn’t one of them. And never will be again.

He knows people are still writing shit about him, saying shit, making jokes. It doesn’t matter who he is, how good he is at a particular sport, how much he fights, how hard he plays. In their eyes he will still only be one thing. A certain type of person will always take everything he ever achieves and boil it down to the same three letters. Like the note on the door of the cabin at the campsite, where the letter “A” was drawn like a target, flanked by the letter “F” and “G,” with a knife stuck through the middle. That’s all he’s allowed to be now.

* * *

He turns around to walk off in the other direction. For the first time in his life he’s scared of school. But there’s a young woman standing a short distance away, waiting. She doesn’t touch him, but her voice still stops him in his tracks.

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

Benji stops, his eyes wide open. “I can’t bear it . . . how do you do it?”

Maya’s voice is weaker than her words. “You just go in. With your head held high and your back straight, and you look every single bastard in the eye until they look away. We’re not the ones there’s something wrong with, Benji.”

Benji hears himself crack as he asks, “How did you bear it? Back in the spring, after . . . everything . . . how did you cope?”

The look in her eyes is hard, her voice brittle. “I refuse to be a victim. I’m a survivor.”

* * *

She walks toward the school. Benji hesitates for an eternity before following her. She waits for him. Walks by his side. Their steps are slow; perhaps it looks as though they’re moving slowly, but they don’t creep quietly into that corridor. They take it by storm.

43

We’re Everywhere

The days blur together in Beartown this year; perhaps we can’t bear to keep track of either time or our feelings. At some point the autumn comes to an end and winter arrives, but we barely notice. Time merely passes, most of us are preoccupied just trying to get out of bed each morning.

* * *