*
No one really knows how old Sune is. He’s the sort of man who seems to have been seventy for at least twenty years, and not even he can remember exactly how many of those he’s been the A-team coach. Age has made him shorter, stress and diet have made him wider. Nowadays he has the proportions of a snowman. He’s at work earlier than usual today, but is standing hidden at the edge of the forest outside the rink when the group of men emerge from the door. He waits until they get in their cars and drive off. Not because he’s embarrassed, but because he doesn’t want them to feel embarrassed in front of him. He’s known most of them all their lives, even coached many of them. The fact that they want to fire him and replace him with the coach of the junior team is the worst-kept secret in town. There’s no need for anyone to tell Sune not to turn the matter into a public conflict; he’d never do that to the club, and he knows it’s about more than just hockey now.
Beartown is in a poor part of a big forest, but there are still a few rich men here. They saved the club from bankruptcy, and now they want payback: the juniors are to lead the march back to elite level. Tomorrow they’re going to win their semifinal in the youth tournament, and next weekend the final. When the regional council decides the location of the new hockey-focused high school, they won’t be able to ignore the town with the best junior team in the country. The team will become the heart of the town’s plans for the future, and the high school will bring with it a new rink, and then a conference center and shopping mall. Hockey is becoming more than hockey, it’s becoming tourism, a trademark, capital. Survival.
So the club is more than a club, it’s a kingdom over which the strongest men in the forest are fighting for power, and there’s no place for Sune there. He looks at the rink. He’s given his whole life to it. He has no family, no hobbies, not even a dog. Soon he’ll be unemployed; he doesn’t know what he’s going to live off then. Or for. Even so, he can’t blame anyone—not the president and not the junior coach, and definitely not Peter. Poor Peter probably doesn’t even know about it yet, but they’ll force him to carry out the firing, make him wield the axe and explain his actions in the local paper afterward. To make sure that the club stands united, and that the walls remain thick.
Sooner or later any sports team has to decide what it really wants to achieve, and Beartown is no longer content merely to play. They’ll replace Sune with the coach of the junior team, for one simple reason: when Sune talks to his players before matches, he gives long speeches about them playing with their hearts. When the junior team coach stands in the locker room, he says just one word: “Win.” And the juniors win. They’ve done nothing else for ten years.
It’s just that Sune is no longer sure that’s all a hockey team should consist of: boys who never lose.
*
The little car rolls along freshly plowed roads. Maya is leaning her head against the window like only a fifteen-year-old can. Farther south, spring has arrived, but Beartown only seems to have two seasons, and winter is such an obvious fact of life here that summer always seems to catch everyone by surprise. No one has time to get used to the two or three months of sunlight that are granted to them before it is snatched away again, and for the rest of the year it can sometimes feel as if they might as well be living underground.
Ana flicks Maya’s ear hard with her finger.
“What the . . . ?” Maya exclaims, rubbing that whole side of her face.
“I’m bored! Let’s play a game!” Ana pleads.
Maya sighs but doesn’t protest. Because she loves the smoothie-slurping idiot, and because they’re fifteen and her mom is always telling her, “You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”
“Okay, how about this one: blind and brilliant at fighting, or deaf and brilliant at—” Ana says.
“Blind,” Maya says without hesitation.
This is Ana’s favorite game; they’ve played it ever since they were little. There’s a degree of reassurance in the fact that there are still some things they don’t grow out of.
“You haven’t even heard the alternative!” Ana protests.
“I don’t give a shit about the alternative. I can’t live without music, but I can live without seeing your stupid face every day.”
“Idiot,” Ana sighs.
“Moron,” Maya grins.
“Okay, this one, then: always have boogers in your own nose, or go out with a guy who always has boogers in his nose.”
“Always have boogers in my nose.”
“The fact that you picked that answer says so much about you.”
Ana tries to hit Maya on the thigh but Maya swings away and punches her friend’s arm hard instead. Ana screams and they burst out laughing at each other. At themselves.
In the front seat of the car, with an ability that has been finely tuned over the years to shut out the wavelength of his big sister and her best friend and sit isolated in his own thoughts, Leo turns to his dad and asks:
“Are you coming to watch me train today?”
“Yes . . . I’ll try . . . but Mom will be there!” Peter replies.
“Mom’s always there,” Leo says.
It’s a statement from a twelve-year-old boy, not an accusation. But it still feels like one to Peter. He’s checking his watch so frequently that he has to tap it to reassure himself it hasn’t stopped.
“Are you stressing about something?” Ana says from the backseat in that tone that makes you want to start throwing things if you happen to be stressed.
“I’ve just got a meeting, Ana. Thank you for asking.”
“Who with?” Ana asks.
“The club’s president. We’re going to talk about the junior team’s match tomorrow . . .”
“God, everyone keeps going on about the junior team. You do know that it’s just a stupid game, don’t you? No one really cares!”
She’s joking; she loves hockey. But Maya quickly hisses: “Don’t say that to him today!”
“He’ll go crazy!” Leo agrees.
“What do you mean, crazy? Who’ll go crazy?” Peter asks. Maya leans forward.
“You don’t have to drive us all the way to school, Dad. You can drop us off here.”
“It’s not a problem,” Peter insists.
“Not a problem . . . not for you, maybe,” Maya groans.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you ashamed of me?”
Ana interjects helpfully, “Yes!”
Leo adds, “And she doesn’t want anyone to see you because then everyone in her class will come over and want to talk hockey.”