*

And when even the toughest can’t handle it: Who’s going to be the leader then?

*

David starts to get up, clearing his throat to attract the boys’ attention, then stops when he sees that they’ve already begun to sit down. Not because of David, but Benji. The boy is standing in the middle of the bus, and looks each of them straight in the eye in turn, before finishing up in front of Filip, a soft-spoken boy who’s a year younger than most of the team, and who lives three houses away from Kevin in the Heights.

“When we were little, Filip, and you were upset because you were smallest and worst on the team; when you couldn’t even shoot above the yellow strip at the bottom of the boards, what did David say to you then?”

Filip looks down at his lap, embarrassed, but Benji puts his palm under his chin and tips his head back. Filip wasn’t just a year younger, he was also far behind players like Bobo in purely physical terms for so many years that no one even noticed how good he was at everything else. He’s the type of guy who disappears in a locker room, never says anything, never causes problems, just goes along with things. In the past three years he has, in his usual unassuming way, become by far the best back on the team without anyone really noticing it happening.

“Ignore everything else, just concentrate on the things you can change,” Filip replies quietly.

Benji nods and pats him on the head. Then he turns to William Lyt.

“And what did David say to you, Lyt, when all the others learned to skate backward before you, and you didn’t think you’d be allowed to carry on playing?”

Lyt blinks hard and wipes his cheeks angrily.

“Concentrate on the things you can change.”

Benji takes hold of Lyt by the shoulders and looks into his eyes as he quotes their coach again: “We’re a team. We give each other power. When one man falls, another steps up.”

Lyt rubs his eyes with his sleeve and goes on:

“Team before self. Club before individual.”

When no one else can hear, Benji whispers to him: “We’re relying on you now, Lyt, you’re our star today. You have to lead us.”

If Benji had asked Lyt to kill someone at that moment, the boy would have done it without hesitation. No social scientist nor any member of a sports team really knows what makes them who they are, the leaders we follow. Only that we don’t hesitate when we see them.

Benji stops in front of Bobo, the giant who was the best back on the team until all the others learned to skate better than him.

“What’s the second-best thing in the world, Bobo?”

It takes a moment before Bobo replies hesitantly: “Fucking?”

Some of the juniors giggle. Benji lowers his head to Bobo’s big face.

“But first we’re on our way to do the best thing in the world, Bobo. And do you know how many things I want from you right now?”

Bobo stands up. “Just one, eh?”

“Win,” Benji says.

“Win!” Bobo shouts.

“WIN!” the whole bus roars.

*

David sits down in his seat. “WIN! WIN! WIN!” the team is chanting, and David deletes the text from Kevin’s father. When Lars comes over and asks if he’s heard anything about why Kevin was taken away by the police, David shakes his head and replies: “No. Nothing. Now we’re going to concentrate on the things we can change, Lars.”

*

Benji goes and lies down at the back of the bus. Sleeps the rest of the way.

32

There’s a town in a forest that loves a game. There’s a girl sitting on a bed playing the guitar for her best friend. There’s a young man sitting in a police station trying not to look scared. In a hallway in a hospital, a nurse walks past a lawyer talking loudly into her cell phone. In the stands in an ice rink in a capital city grown men and women are on their feet, shouting that they are the bears from Beartown, along with sponsors and board members who ten years before laughed at a GM who said that one day they would have the best junior team in the country. Now everyone who is connected to the club is here except the GM.

A team is waiting in a locker room, sticks in hand, waiting for a game to start. A little brother is waiting on a bench with a phone in his lap, waiting to see what his friends will write about his sister on the Internet when they find out what’s happened. A law firm gets a call from a wealthy client, and at another law firm a mother starts a war. The girl goes on playing her guitar until her best friend falls asleep, and in the doorway stands a father, thinking that the girls will survive this. They’ll be able to deal with it. That’s what he’s afraid of. That that’s what’s going to make the rest of the world go on thinking that everything is okay.

*

There’s a player with the number “16” on his back who, ever since he learned to skate, has had to learn exactly what it takes to win. He knows that games are won as much in the head as they are on the ice, and his coach has taught him how hockey is musical: every team has a rhythm and a tempo they like playing in. If you disrupt that rhythm, you disrupt their music, because even the best musicians in the world hate being forced to play out of time, and once they’ve started it’s hard to stop. An object in motion wants to keep going in the same direction, and the larger a rolling snowball gets, the more of a fool you have to be to dare to stand in its path. That’s what sportspeople mean by “momentum,” whereas in physics lessons at school teachers talk about the “principle of inertia.” David was always rather more blunt when he used to talk to Benji: “When something goes right for a team everything feels easy, so it automatically goes even better. But if you can cause a bit of trouble for them, only a very little bit, you’ll soon see that they manage to create a lot more trouble for themselves.” It’s about balance. The slightest puff of wind can be all it takes.

*