Zackell turns to Vidar and calls, “Take a break and have a drink!”
The other players stop shooting. Vidar takes off his helmet; his sweaty black hair is stuck to his face. He turns his back on Zackell and lifts his water bottle. So she takes aim and fires a slap shot that hits him hard right in the back. Vidar jumps and turns around, and Zackell immediately fires another shot that whistles past his unprotected head just a foot away.
Teemu yells “No!” from the stands, but Vidar doesn’t hesitate, he’s already set off toward Zackell at full speed. No one on the ice has time to realize what’s happening, so if Teemu hadn’t known his brother so well, Zackell might not have got out of the rink alive. Vidar throws himself at her, taking wild swings with his gloved hands, and Teemu sets off from the stands, wrenches open the door to the bench, and leaps over the boards. His boots slip on the ice, but he manages to grab hold of his brother and uses all his strength to wrestle him onto the ice and pin him down. Spider and Woody are a few steps behind, and it takes all three of them to stop Vidar from getting up and beating Zackell to death.
“ARE YOU COMPLETELY INSANE???!!!” Teemu yells at her, but the female coach isn’t remotely frightened and is grinning from ear to ear.
“Can you promise that he’ll show up for practices on time and he’ll play every game?”
Vidar is still struggling frantically to pull free of his friends’ iron grip. Teemu glares at Zackell. “You could have killed him! He . . . You could have died! He could have killed you.”
Zackell nods delightedly. “Exactly! Vidar doesn’t give a damn about me being a woman, he was going to kill me anyway, wasn’t he? To him I’m just a hockey coach. Can you promise that he’ll show up on time to each practice?”
Teemu peers at her. She’s obviously crazy. “You mean he’s got a place on the team?”
Zackell snorts. “A place on the team? I’m building the whole team around him! I’m going to make him a professional!”
Teemu swallows hard and replies tersely, “Okay. I promise he’ll show up on time for practice.”
Zackell nods and leaves the ice at once. She’s done here. The other players at the open session will merely receive a short message telling them that they’re not good enough for her team. She’s honest, fair, and unsparing. Just like the sport.
* * *
Out on the ice Vidar eventually calms down. He lies on his back, sweaty and exhausted. Teemu sits down next to him. Vidar turns to him skeptically and mutters, “What the hell, bro, are you crying?”
“I’m not fucking crying,” Teemu snarls, and turns his face away.
“You look like you’re—”
“BACK OFF!” Teemu yells, and hits Vidar’s arm so hard that his little brother curls up whimpering on the ice while Teemu gets to his feet and walks out of the rink.
* * *
Elisabeth Zackell bounces into Peter Andersson’s office. “Did you see the tryout?” she blurts out.
“Yes,” Peter says.
“Can he play?” Zackell asks.
“Can you control him?” Peter asks.
“No! That’s the whole point!” Zackell says jubilantly.
She looks happy. It gives Peter a headache.
* * *
Outside in the parking lot there’s an old Saab. Teemu comes out of the rink, lights a cigarette, walks alone toward the car, gets into the passenger seat, and closes the door behind him. When he’s sure no one is watching, he leans his head on the dashboard and closes his eyes.
* * *
He’s not crying.
* * *
Back off.
* * *
The next morning Ana sits next to Vidar on the bus again. He’s playing Minecraft, because he has to concentrate so he doesn’t get too nervous to dare to ask her, “I’m going to be playing on the Beartown A-team. Do you want to come and watch?”
Ana sounds suspicious. “I didn’t know you played hockey. I thought you were a hooligan, like the others in the Pack.”
She says “the Pack” without fear. No one else in this town does. Vidar’s counterquestion is shy, almost hurt: “Don’t you like hooligans?”
She snorts. “I don’t like hockey players.”
He laughs. She’s pretty good at making him laugh. But before the bus stops at the school he says seriously, “The Pack aren’t hooligans.”
“What are they, then?” Ana asks.
“Brothers. Every one of them is my brother. They stand up for me, and I stand up for them.”
* * *
She doesn’t judge him for that. Who wouldn’t want to have brothers?
* * *
Maya is driven to school by her mom. Kira doesn’t ask why Ana doesn’t go with her anymore, she’s too happy that Maya lets her drive her all the way to school without feeling embarrassed. Just six months ago her daughter always asked to be let out a few hundred yards away so she could walk the last bit herself. But now Kira is allowed to drive all the way to the bus stop and her daughter leans over the seat, kisses her on the cheek, and says: “Thanks! See you later!”
Those words are far too insignificant to topple a grown woman, but they mean the world if you’re someone’s mom. Kira drives away on a cloud.
* * *
Maya, on the other hand, walks into school alone. She fetches her books alone, sits in classes alone, eats lunch alone. It’s her choice, because if she can’t trust her best friend, who can she trust?
* * *
Ana walks into the school not far behind Maya. It causes a very particular sort of chill to have to see your best friend every day and know that she’s no longer that. They used to part with a secret handshake that they came up with when they were children: fist up, fist down, palm, palm, butterfly, bent fingers, pistols, jazz hands, minirocket, explosion, ass to ass, “outbitches.” Ana came up with the descriptions. At the end, after they banged their backsides together, she always threw her hands into the air and yelled, “And Ana is out, bitches!”
Now Maya walks into school without even noticing that Ana is behind her. Ana hates herself, perhaps more for what she has done to Maya than for what she did to Benji, so this is her final act of love. To make herself invisible.
Maya disappears into the corridor. Ana stands motionless, broken. But Vidar reaches out his hand. “Are you okay?”
Ana looks at him. There’s something about him that makes her answer honestly, so she replies, “No.”
He runs his fingers manically through his hair and mumbles, “Do you want to get out of here?”
Ana smiles sadly. “Where?”
Vidar shrugs. “Don’t know.”
Ana looks around in the corridor. She hates it. Hates herself here. So she asks, “Do you want to go for a walk?”
“A walk?” Vidar repeats, as though it’s a foreign word.
“Don’t psychopaths go for walks, then?” Ana wonders.
He laughs. They leave the school and walk side by side through the forest for hours, and that’s where Ana falls for him. For all his clumsy, jerky, nervous gestures. He falls for her because she’s invincible and brittle at the same time, as if she were made of both eggshell and iron. He tries to kiss her, because he can’t stop himself, and she kisses him back.
* * *
If they had lived their whole lives with each other, they would have become something remarkable together.
* * *
The headline in the local paper after the press conference reads “New Jobs—But Half Earmarked for Workers from Hed!”
The article includes numerous quotes from politicians. Most are shocked when the reporter demands a response and try to give neutral answers, to avoid provoking either side. The only one who deviates from that line is of course Richard Theo. He manages to make his statement sound spontaneous, even though he’s prepared it in minute detail. “What do I think about the factory’s quotas? I don’t like any form of quota. I think that Beartown jobs should go to Beartown workers.” It’s hardly soaring oratory, but it travels fast.