“No one!” Kira hisses.
“If the survival of the human race depended on it? The guy with the buns and the hair, right? Not the badger, surely?”
“Remind me, which one’s the badger?”
Her colleague does what Kira has to admit is a fairly impressive impression of a man who has recently been appointed to management and happens to bear a striking resemblance to a badger. Kira laughs so hard she almost knocks her coffee over.
“Don’t be mean to him. He’s a nice guy.”
“So are pigs, but we don’t let them inside the house.”
Her colleague hates the badger, not as an individual but for what he represents. He got a position in management even though everyone knows it should have gone to Kira. It’s a subject Kira tries to avoid discussing, seeing as she can’t bring herself to tell her friend the truth: Kira was offered the job, but turned it down. It would have meant too much work in the evenings, too much travelling. She couldn’t do that to her family. And now she’s sitting here, not daring to tell her colleague because she doesn’t want to see the disappointment in her eyes. That Kira was offered the chance but didn’t take it.
Her colleague bites off a broken nail and spits it out into the wastepaper basket.
“Have you seen the way he looks at women? The badger? Those beady little eyes. I bet you a thousand kronor he’s the sort who’d want you to shove a pen up . . .”
“I’m trying to WORK!” Kira interrupts.
Her colleague looks genuinely baffled.
“What? It’s an objective observation. I have extensive experience on the subject of markers, but fine, sit on your high horse and pretend you’re morally untouchable just because your husband’s in a coma!”
“You’re still drunk, aren’t you?” Kira says, laughing.
“Does he like that sort of thing? Peter? Pens?”
“NO!”
Her colleague apologizes at once, sounding upset:
“Sorry, is that a sensitive subject? Have you argued about it?”
Kira hustles her out of her office. She hasn’t got time for any more laughter today. She’s got a schedule to stick to, or at least try to. Then one of the bosses comes along and asks if she’s got time to “take a quick look” at a contract, which swallows an hour. A client rings with an urgent problem, which takes another hour. Leo rings and says his training session has been brought forward half an hour because the junior team needs more time on the ice, so she’ll have to get home earlier this afternoon. Maya calls and asks her mom to buy new strings for her guitar on the way home. Peter sends a text saying he’ll be late home tonight. Her boss comes in again and asks if Kira has time for “a quick meeting.” She doesn’t. She goes anyway.
Trying to be the right kind of guy. Even if it’s impossible to be the right kind of mom at the same time.
*
Maya can still remember the first time she met Ana. They held hands before they saw each other’s faces. Maya was six years old and was out skating on the lake on her own, something her parents would never have allowed, but they were at work and the babysitter had dozed off in an armchair. So Maya grabbed her skates and sneaked out. Perhaps she was looking for danger, perhaps she simply trusted that an adult hand would catch her before anything went wrong, perhaps she was just like most children: born to seek out adventure. Dusk fell sooner than she was expecting, she didn’t see the change in the color of the ice, and when it gave way beneath her the water paralyzed her before she even had time to feel frightened. She didn’t stand a chance, six years old, with no crampons or studs, and her arms so cold that she could barely cling on to the edge. She was already dead. Say what you like about Beartown, but it can take your breath away. In a single second.
She saw Ana’s hand long before she saw Ana. How one six-year-old girl managed to pull out another girl the same age, weighed down by a soaking wet snowsuit, Maya will never understand, but that’s what Ana was like. You can’t keep two girls apart after a thing like that. Ana, a child of nature who went hunting and fishing but didn’t quite understand people, ended up best friends with Maya, who was the exact opposite.
The first time Maya was over at Ana’s and heard her parents arguing, she understood that Ana was on thin ice in ways all her own. Ana has spent more nights at Maya’s than at home ever since. They came up with their secret handshake to remind each other that it was always “sisters before misters,” which Ana used to repeat like a mantra before she even knew what the words meant. She took every chance she got to nag Maya about fishing or hunting or climbing trees. It used to drive Maya crazy, seeing as she would much rather be at home playing her guitar, preferably next to a radiator. But God, she loved Ana!
Ana was a tornado. A jagged, hundred-sided peg in a community where everyone was supposed to fit into round holes. When they were ten years old she taught Maya to shoot a hunting rifle. Maya remembers that Ana’s dad always hid the key to his gun cabinet in a box on top of a cupboard at the back of the cellar that stank of mold. Apart from keys and a couple of bottles of vodka, the box was also full of porn magazines. Maya stared at them in shock. Ana noticed and simply shrugged her shoulders: “Dad doesn’t understand how the Internet works.” They stayed in the forest until the ammunition ran out. Then Ana, who always had a knife with her, made swords for them both out of tree limbs and they fenced among the trees until it got dark.
Now Maya watches her friend walk off down the corridor, sees her pull her arms down as if she’s embarrassed, without even daring to yell “OUT,” because all she dreams about these days is being as normal as possible. Maya hates being a teenager, hates sandpaper, hates round holes. Misses the girl who pretended to be a knight in the forest.
We become what we are told we are. Ana has always been told that she’s wrong.
*
Benji is slumped so low on his cushion in the headmaster’s office that there’s more of him on the floor than on the chair. They’re going through the motions. The headmaster has to tell him off for being late so often this term when all he really wants to talk about is hockey. Like everyone else. Any thought of expulsion or other disciplinary measures is out of the question.
From time to time Benji thinks about his eldest sister, Adri, the one with the kennels. The further the juniors have progressed in the tournament, the more Benji has realized how similar he is to the dogs: if you make yourself useful, you get a longer leash.
They hear Jeanette long before she storms through the door.
“THOSE ANIMALS . . . THOSE . . . I CAN’T BEAR IT ANYMORE!” she roars before she’s even entered the room.