*

Tails has spent the entire warm-up with his phone in his hand, trying to find out what’s happened to Kevin. Still nothing. He suspects that David is the first person Kevin’s dad will contact when they know anything, but he can’t get in touch with the coach from here.

The sponsors and board members around him are angry about the lack of information. They’re already talking about which lawyers to contact, which journalists to share the story with, who’s going to be punished for this.

Tails isn’t angry; his emotions have reached another level now. He looks at the parents in the stands. Tries to add up all the days and evenings and nights they’ve devoted to this team. He feels the weight of his own silver medal from another age around his neck. He doesn’t know who’s snatched their chance of victory from them, but already he hates them.

*

It’s Benji who tells David and Lars to let Lyt play in the center in place of Kevin. There will never be enough words to describe what that would mean to Lyt. Before the first face-off Benji stops in front of Amat and asks:

“Have you got your fast skates on today, then?”

Amat grins and nods. Their opponents are already talking loudly on their bench about “making number sixteen take his penalty calls.” They’re not idiots; they’ve seen Benji for the violent lunatic he is. So when the other team wins the face-off, Benji skates at full speed with his stick raised toward the player who gets hold of the puck, and everyone who saw number sixteen in the darkened corridor a while back obviously realizes that he’s going to ignore the puck and go straight in for the hit. His opponent braces his skates and tenses his body to absorb the impact.

It never comes. Benji goes straight for the puck and pokes it between the defenseman’s skates into the offensive zone, Lyt takes a hit in the neutral zone and is sent sprawling across the ice like a shot seal—a center sacrificing himself to give the third player in the line enough space. They get one single tiny chance in this game before their opponents realize how fast Amat is.

*

They take it.

*

Tails screams until his voice gives out when Amat waits out the goalie and lifts the puck into the top of the net. Parents rush down the stands as if they were going to vault the boards. Amat glides around the net with his arms in the air but doesn’t get far before he is engulfed by Benji, Lyt, and Filip. The whole team is on the ice in moments, under and over and on top of each other. Tails grabs hold of someone’s mother—he doesn’t know whose—and screams:

“WHERE ARE WE FROM?”

A moment ago they were all atheists. None of them is now.

*

They’re leading 1–0 after the first period. David doesn’t say anything to them; he doesn’t even go into the locker room. He stands in the corridor with Lars without a word. Hears the players tapping each other’s helmets. Their opponents pull back to 1–1, then go ahead 2–1, but just before the second intermission, Bobo gets one of his few shifts, and the puck finds him at the offensive blue line. He tries to pass but the puck hits an opposing player’s skate and bounces back toward Bobo. If the boy had had time to think, he would of course have realized that it was an idiotic idea, but no one has ever accused Bobo of being quick-witted. So he shoots. The goalie doesn’t even move, and when the net behind him does Bobo is left standing there, staring in shock. He sees the lamp light up, the numbers on the scoreboard change to 2–2. He hears the celebrations from the Beartown section of the stands, but his brain doesn’t register the sequence of events. The first one to reach him out on the ice is Filip.

“Win!” he yells.

“For Kevin!” Bobo howls, and throws himself at the glass with such mad pride that he forgets to take his stick back to center ice when play resumes.

*

Filip loves hockey, and so does his mom. And not like some vaguely interested parent who barely knows the rules. She worships this sport for all that it is. Tough. Honest. Definite. True. Straight answers, straight questions.

Maggan Lyt is standing next to her. She and Filip’s mom have known each other since they were children, and now live two houses apart. They used to go skiing together, got married the same year, had their sons just a few months apart, have stamped the numbness out of their toes in stands just like this one for more than a decade. Do you want to try telling them that hockey parents are fanatical? They’ll tell you to go to a junior cross-country skiing tournament and listen to the spectators there. Or talk to the slalom dad who rushes out onto the course and sabotages a whole tournament because he thinks the course has been set up to disadvantage his daughter. Or talk to the figure skater’s mom about how much a nine-year-old really ought to train. There’s always someone who’s worse. You can get almost anything to look normal if you make enough comparisons.

Filip’s mom never screams. Never shouts. Never criticizes the coach and never goes into the locker room. But she would defend Maggan to the end of the world and back if anyone criticized her friend’s behavior. Because they’re also a team. Filip’s mom has learned that you can’t ask parents to devote their whole lives to their children’s sport, risk the family finances, and then expect that passion never to overflow occasionally.

So when Maggan screams, “Are you blind!?” at the referee, Filip’s mom is quiet. When another parent screams, “For God’s sake, Ref, did you get dropped as a baby, or what? Does your wife make all the decisions at home?” she says nothing. Then someone says, “What kind of old woman’s pass was that?” and a man farther up the stands throws his arms up and yells, “Are we playing basketball now?” When one of the other team’s players holds a Beartown player a little too long against the boards without getting penalized, one parent yells, “Are you a homo or number twenty-two?” when the boy returns to the bench.

A mom with two small children farther down in the stands turns around and says: “Can you think about what you’re saying, please? There are children here!”

But Maggan replies, her voice dripping with derision:

“Well, sweetie, if you’re so worried about them leaving their cozy little nest and hearing something terrible, maybe you shouldn’t bring them to HOCKEY games!”

If you were to ask Filip’s mom why she doesn’t protest, she would say that you can love something without loving everything about it. You don’t have to feel embarrassed about not being proud. That applies to hockey, but it also applies to friends.

*