“But then there’s the A-team!” Amat says brightly, but Bobo lets out a dry snort. “I’ll never make the A-team. This is my last season if I don’t get faster. Then there’s just repairing cars with Dad for the rest of my life.”
Amat doesn’t say anything more; he doesn’t need to. Everyone who’s played hockey for as much as five minutes as a child knows that there’s no better sport. No greater rush. Amat takes a deep breath and says something he will never admit to anyone else: “I was frightened today, Bobo. I was terrified the whole way through the game. I wasn’t even happy when we won, just relieved. I . . . Shit, do you remember when you were little and used to play out on the lake? That was nothing but fun. You didn’t even think, it was just the only thing you wanted to do. It’s still the only thing I want to do. I have no idea what I’m going to do if I can’t do this; hockey’s the only thing I’m any good at. But now . . . it just feels like . . .”
“Work,” Bobo concludes, without even looking at him.
Amat nods.
“I was scared the whole time. Does that sound sick?”
Bobo shakes his head. They don’t say any more about it. They just fire their pucks without speaking. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.
Bobo nods and grins. They’re fifteen and seventeen years old, and in ten years’ time they’ll remember this evening, when all the others were inside having a party, and they stood out here and became friends.
*
The night is clear and full of stars, the trees are still, and they’re standing behind the barn smoking. Benji never usually gets high with strangers, because most of the time it’s an intimate and solitary act for him, and he doesn’t really know why tonight should be an exception. The way the bass player made his own space on the stage, maybe. Like he was in some other dimension. Benji recognized it. Or longed for it.
“What have you done to your face?” the bass player asks, pointing at the scar on his chin.
“Hockey,” Benji replies.
“So you’re a fighter?”
His accent betrays the fact that he’s not from this part of the country. The question reveals that it’s probably his first visit.
“If that’s what you want to know, you shouldn’t look for scars on people’s faces. You should be looking for scars on their knuckles,” Benji replies.
The bassist takes some deep drags, blows his bangs from his eyes.
“Of all the sports I don’t understand why anyone would play, hockey is the one I understand least.”
Benji snorts.
“Isn’t the bass what people who can’t play the guitar play?”
The bass player laughs loudly, and the sound sings between the trees and hits Benji in his head as quickly as in his chest. Very few people have that effect. Very few people are tequila and champagne at the same time.
“Have you always lived here in Hed? Don’t you get cabin fever in a town this small?” the bassist smiles.
His gaze alternates between shy and greedy as it roams across Benji’s lips. Benji lets the smoke filter up over his cheeks.
“I live in Beartown. Hed is big in comparison. What are you doing here?”
The bassist shrugs his shoulders, tries to sound nonchalant, but all the hurt inside him shines out.
“My cousin sings in the band. Their bass player went off to college somewhere and they asked if I wanted to move here and play for a couple of months. They’re really shit and we get, like, a crate of beer in return for playing, but I’d just . . . I was in a bad relationship. I needed to get away.”
“It’s hard to get any farther than this,” Benji says.
The bass player listens to the trees, feels tentative snowflakes land on his hands. His voice trembles in the darkness.
“It’s more beautiful than I thought. Here.”
Benji goes on smoking with his eyes closed. He wishes he’d smoked some more. Or was drunk. Maybe then he would have dared. But now he just says: “Not like where you’re from.”
The bass player inhales Benji’s smoke. Nods down toward the ground.
“We’ll be playing here again next Sunday. If you want to come. It would be . . . I’d like to get to know someone. Here.”
His black clothes fall gently over his thin frame. His movements are soft and light, so free from exertion that he seems weightless. In a forest full of predators he stands above the covering of snow like some sort of bird. His breath is cold as it reaches Benji’s skin. Benji extinguishes the glow in his hand and takes two steps back.
“I need to go in before my sister sees me standing out here.”
“Big, tough hockey player, but you’re scared of your sister?” the bass player smiles.
Benji shrugs his shoulders lightly. “You would be too. Who the hell do you think taught me to fight?”
“See you next Sunday, then?” the bass player calls.
He doesn’t get an answer.
*
Maya is standing in the kitchen when she suddenly realizes that Ana is gone. She goes to look for her. The guys see her leaning against the wall to keep her balance as the alcohol tosses her around inside, like a penguin on an unsteady piece of ice. Lyt leans closer to Kevin’s ear and whispers: “The GM’s daughter, Kev, Christ, you’ll NEVER get to fuck her!”
“Want to bet?” Kevin grins.
“A hundred kronor.”
Lyt nods. They shake on it.
*
Afterward Maya will remember bizarre details, like the fact that Kevin had spilled a drink on his shirt and the stain looked like a butterfly. No one will want to hear her talk about that. The only thing they’ll ask about that night is how much she’d had to drink. If she was drunk. If she held his hand. Gave him signals. If she went upstairs voluntarily.
“Lost?” he smiles when he finds her beside the stairs.
By that point she’s been around the ground floor three times without finding the bathroom. She laughs and throws her arms out. Forgets Ana.
“This is a completely crazy house. It’s like you live in Hogwarts.”
“Do you want to see upstairs?” he asks.
She’ll never stop wishing that she hadn’t gone with him up the stairs.
*
Katia’s car starts reluctantly on the eighth or ninth attempt.
“You can sleep over at the kennels with Adri tonight.”
“No, drive me home,” Benji says sleepily.
She pats him on the cheek.
“No, because you see, sweetie: Adri and I love our little brother. And if you go home to Mom smelling of beer and weed one more time, we won’t have a little brother anymore.”
He grunts and shrugs his jacket off, and makes a pillow out of it against the window. She pokes him on his arm, just below the sleeve of his T-shirt, where the tattoo of the bear peeps out, and says: “That bass player was sweet. But I suppose you’re going to tell me he isn’t your type, the way you do about everyone?”
Benji replies with his eyes closed:
“He didn’t like hockey.”