Ramona phones Teemu. They have a brief conversation because neither of them wants the other to hear their weakness. Ramona doesn’t say she wants Vidar to have a better life than Teemu’s, and Teemu doesn’t say he wants the same thing. Then Ramona asks Teemu for a favor, and she waits up until he phones her back to say that it’s done.
Teemu stands outside a small house in a different part of town until the lights go off in the children’s room. When he knows that only the adults are awake, he doesn’t ring the doorbell, he doesn’t knock on the door; they’ll never know how he got in. He just stands there in the kitchen while they reach for the kitchen counters to cling on to and try to catch the glasses their shaking hands have just knocked over. He sees that they know who he is, so all he has to do is pick up a hockey bag, drop it onto the table, then ask, “Does Alicia live here?”
The adults nod, terrified.
“From now on the kitty at the Bearskin pub will pay for all her hockey equipment each year for as long as she wants to play. I don’t know if she has any siblings in the house, but she’s got brothers now. And the next adult who hurts her will have to explain why to each and every one of us.”
He doesn’t need to wait for an answer. When he leaves the house, none of the people left behind dares to move for several minutes, but eventually the bag is carried up to Alicia’s room. The four-and-a-half-year-old is dreaming deeply about the sound of pucks hitting a wall, and for a long time she won’t have any bruises she doesn’t get on the ice. She will play hockey every day, and one day she will be the best.
* * *
The girl may be fast asleep tonight. But the bear inside her has just woken up.
25
“Mother’s Song”
William Lyt is like all other teenagers: permanently on the boundary between hubris and the abyss. There’s a girl he likes, she’s in the same class, back in the spring they were at a party and she kissed him on the cheek when she was drunk and he’s still dreaming about it. So when he’s standing by her locker today his facade crumbles and he asks, “Hi . . . look . . . would you . . . I mean . . . would you like to do something sometime? After school? You and . . . me?”
She looks at him with distaste. “Do something? With you?”
He clears his throat. “Yes?”
She snorts. “Ha! I’m from Beartown, and that means something to some of us! I hope Benji crushes you in the game!”
It isn’t until she’s walking off that Lyt sees she’s wearing a green T-shirt bearing the text BEARTOWN AGAINST THE REST. Her friends are wearing similar shirts. When they pass Lyt, one of them snarls, “Kevin Erdahl’s a rapist, and you’re no better!”
Lyt stands there, comprehensively flamed. All his life he’s tried to do the right thing. He’s attended every practice, loved his captain, obeyed his coach. He’s followed all the rules, done as he’s been told, swallowed his pride. Benji has done the exact opposite, always. And who’s the one everyone loves, in spite of all that?
* * *
How can William Lyt feel anything but hatred about this?
* * *
When he turns around, he sees Leo standing at the other end of the corridor. The twelve-year-old has just seen William Lyt’s weakest point, and the little bastard’s grin pierces the eighteen-year-old’s skin all over. William goes into a bathroom and punches his own thighs until tears spring to his eyes.
* * *
When school is over for the day, Maya and Ana change into tracksuits and run into the forest. It’s Ana’s idea, and a weird one, because Maya has always hated running, and even if Ana has spent almost all her life running through the forest, she’s never done it specifically as exercise. Never in circles. Even so, Ana forces Maya out this autumn, because she knows that even if Kevin is no longer in Beartown, they still have to reclaim the things he stole. Twilight. Solitude. The courage to wear earbuds when it’s dark, the freedom to not look over your shoulder the whole time.
They run only where there are lights. They don’t say anything but are both thinking the same thing: guys never think about light, it just isn’t a problem in their lives. When guys are scared of the dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys.
They run a long way. Farther than either of them thought they could. But they stop abruptly some way from Ana’s house, beside the running track that coils around the Heights. It’s the best-lit patch of track in the whole of Beartown, but that’s irrelevant. That was where Maya held the shotgun to Kevin’s head.
* * *
She’s hyperventilating. Can’t bring herself to take another step. Ana puts a comforting hand on hers.
“We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Maya nods. They walk back to Ana’s. Outside the door Maya lies and tells her friend that she’s fine, that she can go home on her own, because Ana is fighting hard to make everything normal again and Maya can’t bear to disappoint her.
* * *
But when she’s alone she sits down on a stump and cries. Sends a text to her mom: “Can you pick me up? Please?”
* * *
At a time like that, there’s no mother in this forest or any other who drives faster through the trees.
* * *
No one knows exactly where violence comes from; that’s why someone who fights can always find a reasonable justification. “You shouldn’t have provoked me.” “You know how I get.” “It’s your own fault, you deserved it, you were asking for it!”
Leo Andersson is twelve years old and has never had a girlfriend. When a girl two years older comes up to him at his locker in school, he feels a rush of intoxication that he will never experience so strongly again.
She smiles. “I saw you on the beach when you stood up to William Lyt. Pretty brave!”
Leo has to hold on to the locker door as she walks off. When he has lunch, she sits down at the same table. That afternoon, after his last class, she appears in the corridor and asks if he wants to walk her home.
Leo is usually picked up by one of his parents so he has time to get to hockey practice. But his parents have been in their own little worlds recently, and Leo isn’t planning to play hockey this autumn. He wants to be something else now, he doesn’t know what, but when this girl looks at him he thinks, “I want to be the sort of person she thinks is brave.” So he texts his parents to say he’s going over to a friend’s. They’ll just be relieved they don’t have to pick him up.
The girl and Leo take the path that runs through the tunnel under the main road between the school and the residential area on the other side. He takes a deep breath and summons up the courage to reach out his hand and take hold of hers. The tunnel is dark, and she slips from his fingers and runs. He stares in surprise as he hears her shoes patter on the concrete. Then there are other sounds, from other shoes. They’re walking into the darkness from both directions. One of them is the girl’s older brother. Leo didn’t notice the red top under her jacket.
The council installed this tunnel many years ago after years of campaigning by parents saying that children shouldn’t have to cross the busy road. The tunnel was supposed to keep children safe. But now it’s a trap instead.
* * *
When Kira picks Maya up, her daughter pretends that everything is fine again. She’s starting to get good at that. She says she twisted her ankle while she and Ana were jogging, and Kira is happy. Happy! Because a twisted ankle is so normal. It’s part of normal sixteen-year-old life.