* * *

When Benji opens his locker one morning, there are notes at the bottom, as usual. But one of them is different. Just one word: “Thanks.” The next day there’s another one, in different handwriting, saying “I told my sister I’m bisexual yesterday.” A few days later there’s a third note, again in different handwriting, which says, “I haven’t told anyone else, but when I do I’m not going to say I’m gay, I’m going to say I’m like you!” Then someone sends him an anonymous text: “Everyones talking about u they c u as a symbol I hope u know how important u are to all of us who darent say anything!!!!”

Just a few small notes and messages. Just words. Just anonymous voices who want him to know what he means now.

Benji throws them into the same garbage can as all the other notes. Because he doesn’t know which feels worst, the threats or the love. The loathing or the expectations. The hate or the responsibility.

* * *

He receives another sort of text message, too. They always start the same way: “Hi! Don’t know if I’ve got the right number, are you the homosexual hockey player? I’m a journalist, I’d like to interview . . .” One morning Benji and his sisters go down to the lake, drill a hole in the ice, and drop his phone through it. Then they drill some holes farther away and fish and drink beer and keep quiet for the rest of the day.

* * *

When Beartown Ice Hockey plays its next game on the road, the rumors about Benji have reached that town, too. In every town he plays in from now on, there will be people who shout the most disgusting things they can think of to get him off balance. But Benji doesn’t give in, he just scores goals instead. The more they yell, the better he gets. After the game Bobo hugs him and exclaims happily, “If they hate you, you’re doing something right! You’re the best! They’d never hate you this much if you weren’t best!”

Benji tries to smile. Pretend it’s nothing. But he can’t quite stop himself from wondering how long he’s going to have to be the best. How long it’s going to take before anyone just lets him play.

* * *

Ana and Vidar are the sort of love story in which neither of them really knows how to behave. So they end up just going for walks, every day, in the forest. The snow gets deeper in tandem with their infatuation.

One afternoon he touches her and she starts to cry hysterically. When he doesn’t understand why, she tells him about Benji. How everyone found out about it, about the photograph, and Maya’s furious reaction.

“I don’t deserve you, I’m a horrible person! I must be a psychopath!” she cries.

Vidar stands in front of her, and he might as well be naked when he replies, “Me, too.”

How could anyone help falling even more in love with him then? Perhaps someone knows. Ana isn’t one of them.

The next morning when they get to school, Ana waits until she catches sight of Benji. When he opens his locker, small paper notes fall out, and Ana realizes what’s written on them, she knows how much of other people’s hatred Benji is having to carry within him now.

“I have to . . . ,” she whispers to Vidar.

Vidar tries to stop her, but it’s impossible. She’s suddenly set off along the corridor. Benji looks up in surprise and tries to hide the notes.

“I know you hate me, but—” Ana begins, but doesn’t manage to say more before the tears start to fall and her voice breaks.

“Why would I hate you?” Benji wonders, and only then does Ana realize that Maya hasn’t told anyone, not even him.

“It was me . . . it was . . . took the picture of you and . . . it was me! Everything you’re going through is my fault . . . it was me!”

Her face contracts into wrinkles of shame that will never quite smooth out. Her whole body is shaking. Then she runs off, out of the school, away, away, away. Benji stands there for a moment, and his eyes meet Vidar’s. The goalie does something he never does: he hesitates.

“She—” Vidar begins, but Benji cuts him off. “It’s okay. Go after her.”

* * *

So Vidar does. He runs after her, doesn’t catch up with her until they’re half a mile away; she’s so fast and strong that he doesn’t stand a chance of getting her to slow down. So he runs alongside her. Straight out into the forest until neither of them can breathe or think anymore. Then they collapse into the snow and just lie there.

* * *

Vidar doesn’t say a word. It’s the finest thing anyone has ever done for Ana.

* * *

Maya is sitting alone in the cafeteria, as she does every day. But out of the blue someone sits down opposite her, as if he’s been invited. She looks up. Benji points at her plate. “Are you going to finish that, or can I have it?”

Maya smiles. “I shouldn’t sit with you. You’ve got a bad reputation.”

Benji looks impressed. “Ouch.”

She laughs. “Sorry.”

Sometimes you have to laugh at the crap, that’s how you make it bearable. Benji grins. Then he says, “You should forgive Ana.”

“What?”

“She told me she posted the pictures of me and . . . and . . . me and . . .”

He’s invincibly strong and unbelievably fragile at one and the same time. He reminds Maya a lot of Ana sometimes.

“Why should I forgive her? What she did to you was horrible!” she snaps.

“But you’re like sisters. And sisters forgive each other,” Benji manages to say.

Because he’s got sisters. Maya tilts her head and asks, “Have you forgiven Ana?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because people make mistakes, Maya.”

* * *

Maya eats her lunch without saying anything else. But after school she walks through Beartown, knocks on a door, and, when Ana opens it, says at once, “Get your running gear on.”

Ana doesn’t ask why.

* * *

That saves their friendship.

45

Cherry Tree

Whenever we get someone really good at sports in such a small town, this far into the forest, people in Beartown usually say it’s like seeing a flowering cherry tree in the middle of a frozen garden.

Peter Andersson was our first, so when he made it all the way to the NHL it didn’t matter to us that he played only a handful of games before his career was cut short by injury. He was there. One of us had made it to the best in the world. Peter transformed the whole town, he condemned us to a lifetime of never-ending, impossible dreams.

* * *

Zacharias is sixteen years old. People like him are easily forgotten in stories like this one. Most people know him only as “Amat’s friend.” They know who Amat is because he’s good at hockey, and hockey is the only thing that counts here. Zacharias’s life is the sort that just carries on in the background.

He and Amat grew up with Lifa, and there may never have been three such different boys around here who ended up being best friends anyway. Zacharias’s parents never liked Lifa, especially when he started to be seen with the “bandits,” as Zacharias’s parents called anyone in the Hollow who didn’t seem to have a job to go to. But Amat, dear Lord, Zacharias’s parents worshipped him. When he started playing on the A-team, they were as proud as if he’d been their own son. As if they wished he were. And things like that are impossible for a boy like Zacharias not to notice.

Zacharias played hockey right up until this spring, even though he was the worst player on every team and didn’t even enjoy it much. He went to practices for his parents’ sake, put up with it for Amat’s sake. When he heard there wasn’t going to be a junior team this year he felt relieved, because it gave him an excuse to stop. He really only wanted to sit at home in front of his computer anyway. So when his mom and dad came home one day, all excited about an “open tryout” at Beartown Ice Hockey, he was overwhelmed with anxiety.

“You have to go!”

Zacharias has never been able to explain to his parents how badly bullied he has been throughout his childhood. For everything: his weight, his appearance, his address. They’ve never seen him that way. They’re from the same generation as Peter Andersson, the generation of impossible dreams. Zacharias mumbled, “It doesn’t work like that, Mom, you can’t just show up—”

But his dad interrupted, “It’s an open session! Anyone can turn up! And the factory is sponsoring Beartown Ice Hockey now! Just tell the coach that—”