*
Another quarter of an hour passes before David returns with a plastic bag full of pucks. He goes around the locker room, giving one to each of the players. In turn his boys read the eight letters that are written on them. Some of them smile, some of them start to cry. Bobo clears his throat, stands up, looks at his coach, and says:
“Sorry, Coach . . . but I’ve got to ask . . .”
David raises his eyebrows, and Bobo nods toward the puck.
“You haven’t . . . you know . . . gone gay on us or anything, have you?”
Laughter can be liberating. Roaring with laughter can unite a group. Heal wounds, kill silence. The locker room rocks with giggles until David, with a broad smile, nods and replies:
“Extra cross-country running in the forest tomorrow when you get home. Thanks to Bobo.”
Bobo is already crouching beneath a hailstorm of rolled-up balls of tape from the others.
*
The second from last to get a puck in his hand is Benji. The last is Lars. David pats his assistant coach on the shoulder and says:
“I’m going to take the night train back, Lars. The hotel’s all booked for you; I’m trusting you to look after the boys.”
Lars nods. Looks at the puck. Reads the words as tears run down onto his tracksuit top: Thank you.
*
Gaby jumps when Bobo taps on her window. The kids have fallen asleep in the backseat, and she was at the point of doing the same.
“Sorry . . . you’re Benji’s sister, aren’t you?” Bobo says.
“Yes? We’re waiting for him, he said he wanted to come home with us rather than stay the night in a hotel. Has he changed his mind?”
Bobo shakes his head.
“He’s still in the locker room. We can’t get his skates off. He asked us to get you.”
When Gaby finds Benji she starts by telling him she loves him. Then she says it’s damn lucky for him that their mom had to work today and couldn’t come, because if she’d known that her son had played almost the entire third period plus fifteen minutes of overtime with a broken foot, yet still skated more than anyone else, she’d have killed him.
*
Filip stands for a long while next to his mother outside the bus in the parking lot. She wipes his cheeks. He whispers:
“Sorry. It was my fault. That last goal. I was marking him. Sorry.”
His mom hugs him as if he were little again, even though he’s now so big that he could have picked her up with one hand.
“Oh, sweetheart, what on earth have you got to apologize for? What have you ever had to apologize for?”
She pats his cheek. She knows how it feels; she’s stood there crushed at the end of a cross-country skiing race until the drops of sweat turned to ice crystals, feeling just the same. She knows what hockey can give, and what it takes in return. All the setbacks her son has overcome pass before her eyes: all the elite teams he didn’t get picked for, all the national teams he was never considered for, all the tournaments he’s had to watch from the stands. His mom holds a sixteen-year-old boy who has trained every single day of his life for this game. Tomorrow he will wake up, get out of bed, and start again.
*
In a room in a house on the floor beside her best friend’s bed, Ana is sitting curled up with a computer on her lap. Every so often she glances anxiously over the edge of the bed to make sure Maya hasn’t woken up. Then she goes back into all the places in the Internet where she knows everyone at school will go when they find out what’s happened. She plots a silent course via as yet un-updated statuses, a few pictures of cats and smoothies, the occasional disappointed account of the junior team’s loss in the final. But nothing else. Not yet. Ana refreshes all the pages again. She’s lived here all her life, she knows how quickly information spreads. Someone will know someone who has a brother who’s a cop or has a friend who works at the local paper or a mom who’s a nurse at the hospital. Someone will say something to someone. And all hell will break loose. She refreshes all the pages again, again, again. Hitting the keyboard harder and harder.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Lars tells the team that the hotel is booked, paid for by the sponsors, and that the boys can order as much room service as they like, get some rest, and go home tomorrow. The players ask where David is. Lars says the coach has gone home to be there when the police release Kevin.
“What if any of us want to go home?” Lyt asks.
“We can arrange that, if that’s what you decide,” Lars says.
Not one single player chooses to stay. They’re a team, and they head home to their team captain. They’re halfway home that night when the news finally breaks on their cell phones. Why Kevin was picked up by the police, what he’s been accused of, and who it was who reported him. First one player says: “What are they talking about? I saw them at the party. SHE was the one who had the hots for HIM!” Then another says: “Fucking bullshit! I saw them go up to his room, she went FIRST!” And a third declares: “As if she didn’t want it! Did you see how she was dressed!? Little bitch.”
*
In a bed in a room surrounded by sticks and pucks and match jerseys, a little brother is woken up by the sound of his sister’s best friend in the next room, smashing a computer against the wall with full force. As if she hopes that the people who have written what’s inside it might shatter into a thousand pieces along with it.
34
Kira and Peter are sitting on the little step outside the house. They’re not touching each other. Peter remembers this distance so clearly. There were some days when he thought that grief was the only thing keeping them together, that Kira stayed with him even though he didn’t deserve it because she didn’t have anyone else to share the memory of Isak with. But other days, the opposite happened. Their grief split them apart, became an invisible barrier between them. It’s back now.
“It’s my fault,” Peter whispers.
Kira shakes her head hard.
“Don’t say that. It isn’t your fault. It isn’t hockey’s fault. Don’t give the bast . . . Don’t give . . . Don’t make excuses for him!”
“The club has nurtured him all his life, Kira. My club.”
Kira doesn’t answer. Her fists have been clenched so tight for so long that the marks her fingernails have left won’t fade for several days once she finally opens them. Throughout her whole working life she has lived for justice and the law, has believed in fairness and humanism, has stood against violence and revenge. So she is now using all of her inner strength to fight off the feeling that is overwhelming her now, but she can’t stop it, it just sweeps in with full force and destroys everything she believes in.
She wants to kill him. She wants to kill Kevin.