*
The school corridor is already full of people when the boys walk in. Everyone turns to look at them, and Lyt has never been so happy that Benji isn’t around. The attention from people who think he’s Kevin’s new best friend is dizzying. That’s why he doesn’t react when Kevin mutters that he “needs to shit,” goes into one of the bathrooms. His old best friend would have known that Kevin never does that at school if he can possibly help it.
Inside, in the dark, Kevin tears the hundred-kronor note into tiny pieces and flushes them down the toilet. He doesn’t switch the light on. Doesn’t look at himself in the mirror.
*
Amat catches up with Zacharias at the lockers. They haven’t seen each other since the game, and only now does it occur to Amat that perhaps he should have called. When he sees the disappointment and anger in Zacharias’s eyes, he realizes he should have done more than that.
“Hi . . . sorry about Saturday, everything happened so fast, I—”
Zacharias slams his locker shut and shakes his head.
“I get it. Team party. With your new team.”
“Look, that’s not what I meant—” Amat says, but Zacharias doesn’t let him get as far as an apology.
“It’s okay, Amat. You’re a star now. I get it.”
“Come on, Zach, I . . .”
“My dad said to congratulate you.”
This last remark hurts Zacharias most of all. His dad works at the factory. Everyone loves hockey there; because the team was founded by factory workers they still feel that it belongs to them. Zacharias would have done any number of ridiculous things to be able to send his dad off to work as the father of a junior team player. The fact that his son is friends with one of them was enough to put a smile on his dad’s face all way there.
Amat swallows the words he feels like saying and tries to find others instead, but doesn’t have time before Zacharias’s cap flies off his head and his body thuds into the lockers. Two final-year pupils whose names Amat doesn’t know laugh loudly.
“Oops! Didn’t see you!” one of them grins.
“That must be the first time someone hasn’t seen you, eh, fatty? How much have you eaten? Another fat kid?” the other one leers, pinching Zacharias’s stomach.
This sort of thing happens to Zacharias a lot. It’s been going on for years, so the shock for all concerned is almost unimaginable when he suddenly flashes forward and headbutts one of them in the chest as hard as he can.
The older boy staggers, as if a sandbag had just hit back, and it takes a moment for him to come to his senses. But then his fist smashes straight into Zacharias’s mouth. Amat cries out and throws himself between them. The two final-year pupils evidently don’t go to hockey matches because they don’t hesitate to knock him to the floor.
“What have we got here, then? A little terrorist? You’re from the Hollow, aren’t you?” Amat says nothing. The older boy goes on:
“There’s nothing but terrorists and fucking camels in the Hollow. Is that where you’re from?”
Amat doesn’t answer back. He’s had a whole lifetime to learn that it only makes things worse. One of the older boys drags him up by his top and snarls:
“I said: Where. Do. You. Come. From?”
No one has a chance to react. The noise when the back of a head hits a locker is so deafening that at first Amat thinks it must be his. Bobo picks one of the final-year pupils off the floor. Even though he’s a year older than Bobo, he must be at least twenty pounds lighter. Bobo’s voice is on fire when he clarifies:
“Beartown. His name is Amat, and he’s from Beartown.”
The older boy’s eyes flit about until Bobo lets go of him, only to slam the back of his head into the locker again. With his face pressed up against the older boy’s, he asks:
“Where’s he from?”
“Beartown! Beartown! Fuck . . . it was only a joke, Bobo!”
Bobo lets go of him, and he and his friend run off. Bobo helps Amat up, and tries to hold out his hand to Zacharias too, but Zacharias brushes it aside. Bobo says nothing.
“Thanks,” Amat says.
“You’re one of us now. No one touches us,” Bobo smiles.
Amat looks at Zacharias. There’s blood seeping from his friend’s nose.
“I . . . I mean . . . we . . .”
“I’ve got a class. See you at lunch. Everyone on the team always sits at the same table. Come and find us,” Bobo interrupts, then disappears.
Amat nods as he walks off. When he turns around Zacharias has already taken his jacket and bag from his locker and is heading for the exit.
“What the hell, Zach? Wait! Come on, he HELPED you!”
Zacharias stops but doesn’t turn around. He refuses to let Amat see his tears when he says:
“No, he helped you. So run along, big shot. Your new team is waiting for you.”
The door closes after him. Amat’s conscience and a sense of guilt and injustice wash over him. If he hadn’t been so worried about getting injured and missing the final, he would have slammed his fist into one of the lockers. He picks up his phone from the floor. Calls no one.
*
Benji is on his way to the classroom, but he happens to pass the bathrooms just as Kevin emerges from one of the cubicles, and it throws him off balance like an elbow from out of nowhere. Kevin hurries past, but Benji stops dead. He’s not easily surprised, but he’s left standing with his mouth half-open and his eyes half-closed. Kevin avoids looking at him, as if he didn’t exist.
As long as the two friends can remember, anyone who has seen them play has said that they seem to be on the same wavelength, a secret frequency that only they can access. They don’t need to look at each other on the ice to know where the other is. Neither of them has ever been able to put it into words, but whatever it was, there’s nothing but static now. Kevin brushes the wall of the corridor, sheltered by Lyt, and the other juniors automatically fall in on all sides. Benji has never known who he would have been if he didn’t have his team, but he’s starting to realize that he’s about to find out now.
When Kevin, Lyt, Bobo, and the others go into the classroom, Benji stands outside trying hard not to prove to the whole world that there is nothing in his life that he isn’t destructive enough to have a go at wrecking. He really does try.
When Jeanette takes attendance, she looks out of the window and sees Benji light a cigarette in the schoolyard, get on his bicycle, and ride off. The teacher hesitates for a moment. Then she marks him as present anyway.
*
Ana turns up the brightness of the screen to maximum, opens all her apps, and starts a film before leaving her phone in her locker. She treats herself like an alcoholic emptying her home of bottles. She knows that before the morning is over she won’t be able to resist calling Maya any longer. She wants to make sure that the battery will be exhausted by then, making it impossible.
*
It doesn’t matter who sits together that day. Everyone eats lunch on their own.
26