*
In ten years’ time a man will reverse a car out of a parking lot. When he looks out through the side window he will freeze to ice. A straight-backed woman with a guitar case in her hand will get out of another car. She was given the instrument by a friend when she was fifteen years old; she still refuses to play any other. She will see the man in the car, and she will stop, and for a few terrible seconds they will be back in a small town in a forest far away. Ten years before. When the man was a boy who was on his knees in the snow, begging for his life, and she stood over him with a shotgun and pulled the trigger.
*
Kevin falls to the ground. He has time to understand that he’s dying. His brain is convinced that it’s exploding in blood and snot. His heart stops beating. When it starts again, it beats so hard that it bursts his chest. He’s screaming with tears, with an infant’s senseless hysteria and panic.
Maya is still standing over him. She lowers the shotgun. From her pocket she takes out the single cartridge and drops it in the snow in front of him. She crouches down and forces him to look her in the eye as she says:
“Now you’ll be scared of the dark, too, Kevin. For the rest of your life.”
*
In ten years’ time the parking lot will be full of other people. Kevin’s wife will be pregnant. Maya will be standing a few yards away, with every possibility in the world of ending his life. She could walk right over and say what he is, humiliate and annihilate him in front of the person he loves most.
She will have all the power in that moment, but she will let him go. She will not forgive him, she will not pardon him, but she will spare him. And he will always know that.
*
And she will always know that he still, ten years later, sleeps with the light on.
*
When he drives away, sweaty and shaking, his wife will ask who the woman was. And Kevin will tell the truth. All of it.
*
In ten years’ time Maya will walk toward the rink. The security guards will hold back eager hands and try to quiet the voices calling out to her, but she will stop patiently and sign everything that’s handed to her, have photographs taken with everyone who asks. On the sign above them the words “Sold out!” will be flashing alongside the name of the performer who is appearing that night.
*
Hers.
50
Ana runs straight out into the night without knowing where she’s going. Her eyes flit about in panic until she sees the lights of the jogging track and hears the scream. When she reaches the edge of the forest she sees it all. Kevin and her best friend. He’s on his knees, crying hysterically. Maya turns and leaves him, passing between the trees before stopping dead when she catches sight of Ana. The fifteen-year-old girls look into each others’ eyes. Then they hug, without words, and go home.
Early the next morning, Ana will go and pick up the cartridge from the jogging track. She will put it back in its place with the rest of her dad’s ammunition. If anyone ever asks her where she was that night, she will say, “At home.” If anyone ever asks her what her best friend was doing, she will reply: “Sorry, I didn’t see that incident.”
*
The door of the rink opens. A boy on crutches comes in. Peter is on his way through the corridor outside the locker room, heading in the other direction, but stops in surprise.
“Benjamin . . .”
He doesn’t know what to say after that. He’s never known things like that. So all that comes out is: “How’s your foot?”
Benji looks past him, toward the rink. Like everyone who loves that last inch where the floor turns to ice, he can feel the wing-beats from over here. His eyes swing back to Peter when he replies: “It’ll be healed in time for the first A-team game. If Sune thinks I’m ready.”
Peter’s eyebrows knit together. He clears his throat uncomfortably.
“Benji . . . we aren’t even going to be able to pay any wages to the A-team. Christ, we might not even have a club by the autumn.”
Benji puts his weight down on his foot. The good one this time, not the broken one.
“I just want to play.”
Peter laughs.
“Okay, but, God, Benji, with your talent and your passion, you could really be something. I mean, seriously. You could be playing at an elite level in a couple of years. Hed Hockey are going to have a fantastic team, financial resources, you’ll have much better opportunities to develop there.”
Benji gives a nonchalant shrug. His answer is as short as it is uncompromising: “But I’m from Beartown.”
*
When skating classes start in the rink that year, four teenagers have been asked to attend as instructors. They stand in the center circle, in the team’s colors: green, white, and brown; like the forest, ice, and earth. This place built a club that was like itself. Tough and unyielding—in love as in everything else.
The boys look down at the bear painted beneath them. When they were little they were scared of it, and sometimes they still are. Amat, Zacharias, Bobo, and Benjamin: two have just turned sixteen, two will soon be turning eighteen. In ten years’ time two of them will be playing professionally. One will be a dad. One will be dead.
*
Benji’s phone rings. He doesn’t answer. It rings again, he takes it out of his back pocket and looks at the number. Takes a deep, cutting breath, and switches it off.
*
At a bus stop stands a bass player with a suitcase. He calls the same number, for the last time. Then he gets on the bus and leaves town. He will never come back here, but in ten years’ time he will suddenly see Benjamin’s face on television, and will instantly remember everything again. Fingertips and glances. Glasses on a battered bar top, smoke in a silent forest. The way snow feels on your skin when it falls in March, and a boy with sad eyes and a wild heart teaches you to skate.
*
When the children tumble over the edge out onto the ice, passing that last inch and losing their foothold, the boys at the center circle laugh and help the little things get up again. Try to teach them that there are other ways to stop than just drifting headfirst into the boards.
None of them sees the first skate of the child who’s the last one out. She’s four years old, a scrawny little kid in gloves that are too big for her, with bruises everyone sees but nobody asks about. Her helmet slips down across her eyes, but the look in them is clear enough.
Adri and Sune come after her, ready to hold the girl up, until they realize that there’s no need. The four boys at the center circle will build a new A-team next season, but that doesn’t matter, because in ten years’ time it won’t be their names that make the people of this town stand taller.
And they’ll all lie and say they were here and saw it happen. The first skate of the girl who will become the most talented player this club has ever seen. They’ll all say they knew it even then.
*
Because people recognize the bear around here.