He managed to stop himself before he blurted out “some goddamn car mechanic,” because that was what Bobo’s dad was, and what Bobo was going to be. Amat should have apologized at once, but he was too angry during those first few seconds, and then it was too late. Bobo turned and walked away, with his broad shoulders almost touching the floor, and Amat broke his stick. No one on the team so much as glanced at him as he gathered his things together in the locker room and stormed out of the rink.

  He didn’t play in the next game. Zackell merely informed the team that he was “injured.” How seriously and for how long, no one knew. He sat up in the stands for that game, and the next, but he didn’t turn up at all for the final games. Rumors began to circulate that he was faking it, that his mind was already on the NHL, that he didn’t give a damn about the club that had given him everything.

  “Am I supposed to go and show them my wrist or something?” Amat said to Lev, close to tears, as they sat in his car. Beartown had just lost their last game and failed to win the promotion to a higher league everyone had been dreaming about. They would never have been so high up the table without Amat, but now suddenly it was all his fault? “Doesn’t matter. You can never do enough. This is their game, their rules, you’ll never be one of them. People like you and me have to make our own rules, yes?” Lev replied.

  Amat didn’t go to the final training sessions, and he didn’t show up at the end-of-season club dinner. Bobo called a few times to ask why but Amat didn’t pick up, he knew Bobo wanted an apology but no longer felt he owed one to anybody. He had apologized enough, had been grateful enough. He trained on his own in the forest, but apart from that he barely left the area where he lived, and the only person he spoke to on the phone was Lev, and everything Lev said felt true: “Trust me, Amat, they don’t care about you. If you got injured again, could never play hockey again, would they care about you then? Pay your mom’s rent, yes? Not a chance! They just want to own you. You’ll see! The rich men will tell you not to go for the draft. They’ll try to get you to believe that you’re bad, because then they’ll have power over you, and you’ll stay here and play for their shitty little club! They don’t want you to turn professional because that would prove that everyone was wrong about you!”

  Late in the spring he was proved right. Fatima opened the door of the apartment and Peter Andersson was standing there again. The former general manager looked pathetic as he said, weighing his words very carefully: “I don’t want to get involved, Amat…” So Amat retorted at once: “So don’t, then!” Peter glanced at Fatima, but she made no attempt to calm her son’s fury, possibly because she knew there was no point, but possibly also because she thought he had a certain right to feel that way.

  Peter took a deep breath and made one final attempt: “I don’t know what other people have told you, Amat. What that guy… Lev… has promised you… but I’ve spoken to the agent I know over there, Amat. I think you should talk to him too. I’ve also spoken to a scout in one of the NHL clubs, a former player from when I was there, he’s been doing this for a long time now, Amat and… you need to understand that I’m not saying this to be mean… but he says you’ll be a long way down the draft. In the sixth or seventh round. The hundred-and-eightieth player, something like that.”

  Amat snorted: “Thanks for the vote of confidence!” Peter looked despairing. “I just mean… most people who are that low down in the draft don’t even get interviewed in person by the clubs. I just don’t want you to go all that way and end up disappointed. Maybe it would be better for you stay at home and recover from your injury and do some training, they’ll still draft you if they think you’re good enough, and you’d be able to follow the whole drafting process online, I really think that…”

  Amat interrupted him with a dark look in his eyes: “The difference between the agents you know and Lev is that Lev believes in me enough to pay for flights and a hotel for me!” Peter blinked sadly and gave up. He turned to leave, then stopped and said: “Okay. You’re a grown man now, Amat. Do what you want. But… can I give you some advice?” Amat shrugged his shoulders, so Peter said: “When you get to the hotel over there: go to the gym. And eat a proper breakfast. The scouts for the teams check things like that. They notice who’s eating doughnuts and fizzy drinks and who takes their diet seriously. If they see you in the gym the evening before the draft instead of playing video games or hanging out in the bar, they’ll know you’re willing to do whatever it takes to be the best.”

  Amat closed the door without a word. The next morning he woke up when someone knocked on the door. He found a courier standing outside with a new dishwasher and a note: “Not a gift! Tell your mom you’re buying it with your first NHL wages. LEV.”

  Naturally, his mother muttered that it was too much, because everything was always too much for her, but she accepted it because she could see what it meant for Amat. “When I come home you’re getting a castle,” he promised, and she kissed him on the cheek and whispered: “Nonsense! Don’t worry about me!” But he was her son, and she couldn’t stop him.

  It wasn’t until he got to the airport that Amat realized Lev wasn’t crossing the Atlantic with him. “They don’t give people like me visas. I’ve got a bit of a criminal record, and they love keeping tabs on people like us, yes? Don’t worry, I’ve got a friend over there, yes? We’ve organized everything! You’re going to be interviewed by the best clubs. Do you think they’d have interviewed you if they didn’t want to draft you higher than the sixth or seventh round? Don’t listen to Peter! He doesn’t want you to be a bigger star than he was, because then you wouldn’t have to be grateful anymore, and people like him would have no power over you! Yes?”

  Amat met Lev’s friend at the airport when he arrived, an irritable middle-aged man holding a sign with Amat’s name, spelled wrong. Amat had to pay for the taxi, and the friend barely looked up from his phone the whole way into town, and just said “See you tomorrow!” when they parted at the hotel reception desk. That evening Amat sat in his room on his own, so nervous that he contemplated emptying the minibar before finally going to the gym instead. He lifted as many weights as he could, and was inwardly delighted that his wrist didn’t hurt. He had been there for an hour when a very fit man in his sixties came in, ran for a while on a running machine without paying any attention to anyone else, but when he left he suddenly nodded to Amat and said: “Good luck tomorrow, kid.” Peter had been right about something after all.

  The following morning Lev’s friend knocked on the door and asked Amat for money to pay a chambermaid. When Amat asked why, the friend got annoyed: “Do you think we can get into the hotel where the big teams hold their interviews if we don’t bribe someone?” Amat stammered: “Lev said you’d already arranged interviews for me…” The friend rolled his eyes. “Lev said you were a star, but you sound like a spoiled little kid! Are we doing this or not?” Somewhat reluctantly, Amat went with him to the larger hotel, the friend vanished, and Amat spent several hours sitting in the lobby waiting for him. The friend never reappeared. Amat sat there all day. The man from the gym turned up in the lobby dressed in an expensive suit, but he didn’t even notice Amat. He was busy with other young players and their parents, all full of self-confidence and assurance, the sort who knew the world belonged to them. Late that afternoon the man in the suit came back alone, stopped in front of Amat, and fixed his eyes on him.

  “Amat, right?” he said. Amat stared back in horror, assuming he was about to be thrown out of the hotel, but instead the man said: “Do you have time for an interview?” Amat nodded distractedly, so shocked that Lev had actually managed to arrange this that he was lost for words. The man ushered him along a corridor and into a conference room containing a number of men, all from one of the best teams in the league. Amat’s head was spinning, his English was almost as shaky as his hands, but he replied to all their questions as best he could. It was less about hockey than he had expected, and he had no idea how they came to know so damn much about him: they asked him what it was like growing up with a single mother, about his relationship to his teammates in Beartown, why he hadn’t played in the final games of the season. He was sweating, it felt like a police interrogation, and only when it was over did the man in the suit say: “Send my best regards to Peter Andersson, alright? We’re old friends. He told me to keep an eye out for you.” The other men had already starting looking through their papers and were talking about another player, they didn’t even say good-bye. Amat blinked vacantly, stood up on unsteady legs, and left the room, crushed. So they had just done all this as a favor to Peter. Lev and his friend had tried to bribe half the hotel to get an interview, and all Peter needed to do was pick up the phone back home in Beartown. “Lev was right,” he thought. “This is their game, their rules.”

  The friend reappeared the following morning and asked if Amat had any money, then he disappeared again. When the NHL draft actually began Amat sat alone in the stands for the whole of the first round and watched as every team picked its new superstar. Later that evening he stayed in the gym until he collapsed. The next day he sat in the stands again from ten in the morning until six in the evening, watching as more than two hundred other eighteen-year-olds hugged their parents when they got picked, but no one picked him. The ice rink emptied, he sat there, the friend never showed up.

  Amat called Lev and cried down the phone, but Lev sounded untroubled. “Never mind, yes? Americans, they don’t know how to do business! I have a friend in Russia! He can get you onto a team there, yes? We’ll earn more money there than in…” He carried on talking, but all Amat could hear was a rushing sound. So that was it? He pretended the line was breaking up and ended the call, then he fell to pieces.

  When he got back to the hotel the man in the suit was waiting in the lobby. He shook Amat by the hand and flashed him a genuine smile: “I’m sorry it didn’t work out, kid. We really liked you, but we just don’t do business the way your uncle wants, okay? Go home, work hard, ask Peter to get you a real agent, and come back next year. Alright?” Amat stammered: “What… what do you mean… uncle? What uncle? What business?” The man in the suit didn’t reply, just patted him on the shoulder and left. Amat called Lev again and yelled: “WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?” Lev’s voice darkened: “Who do you think you are, Amat? You’re yelling at me after everything I have done, yes? Do you think I’d pay for your flight and hotel and not expect something in return? I don’t get paid by you like the other agents, I get paid by the club that takes you instead! But those Americans think they’re better than us, yes? They don’t want to negotiate, they think they can have you for nothing! Listen to me now, my friends in Russia…”

  Amat threw the phone on the floor, breaking it. He had to use the phone at the reception desk to call home and ask his mother to send money so he could buy a plane ticket. She had to borrow the money from a neighbor, and he hated himself. He drank and cried in his room all night. Drank, drank, drank. Early the next morning there was a knock on the door, he was still horribly drunk when he answered, the man in the suit was standing outside with his suitcases, and he jerked back from the alcohol fumes. Amat opened his mouth to explain but realized it was already too late. Peter had called the man again and had presumably pleaded with him, maybe Amat could get a final chance in one of the training camps that gathered together players who hadn’t been drafted, but not now. Not like this. The man sighed: “Tell Peter I did what I could. I hope you get yourself together, kid. Peter says you’re the best he’s ever seen. Don’t make him a liar.”

  The man left. Amat didn’t move. It was all over, just like that. He caught a flight and then took a bus all the way home, and shut himself away in the apartment in the Hollow. He kicked the dishwasher so hard he thought he’d broken his foot. The next day it was horribly swollen, and he didn’t run again for several months.

  * * *

  So now? What happens now?

  * * *

  When Beartown started their preseason training, Bobo called Amat several times a day. Amat didn’t answer, just sent a text saying he was injured. After a week Bobo only called twice a day instead of three times, then once instead of twice, until eventually he stopped calling altogether. Silence settled on the apartment in the Hollow, Amat spent all day asleep and was out all night, the recycling bin for glass in the basement filled up quicker than ever, and the days flew by on the calendar until he had wasted the whole summer.

  He didn’t run again until the night his mother was out alone in the storm. His body coped, his foot coped. The morning after that he starts running again, out in the forest until he throws up. Early on Saturday morning he finally plucks up the courage to send Bobo a text. Just three words: I need help. Bobo replies with three words: Where are you?

  When the twigs snap beneath his huge friend’s size 14 sneakers in the clearing behind him, Amat has a thousand excuses ready, but he doesn’t need a single one. Bobo’s smile tells him that everything is already forgotten.

  “Have you seen my friend Amat anywhere? He looks like you, only he’s about thirty pounds lighter!”

  Amat pinches his stomach in a self-mocking way.

  “I was in America and learned to eat breakfast like you!”

  “You’ve always been a short-ass, but now you’re wider than you are tall,” Bobo laughs.

  “I’m fat, you’re ugly—but at least I can lose weight!”

  “You’re quick, I’m strong—you might break your legs!”

  “I could weigh four hundred pounds and you still wouldn’t catch me, you stupid elephant!”

  Bobo roars with laughter.

  “We’ve missed you at training, mate.”

  Amat looks down at the ground.

  “Sorry I haven’t been answering my phone. I… you know… I was kind of an asshole for a while.”

  Bobo stretches his neck until it creaks.

  “Screw all that, are we here to run or talk?”

  That was all it took to get a friend like Bobo back again. The best sort of friend. They start running together, up and down, up and down. Amat throws up first, but soon Bobo joins him, he’s in worse shape now that he’s a coach than he was when he was a player, and he was never very fit then either. They carry on running up and down another ten times. As they stagger home afterward Bobo throws up one last time in the ditch beside the main road.

  “Lupines,” he gasps when he’s finished.

  “What?” Amat groans. He’s lying on the ground a short distance away, too tired to stand up and wait.

  Bobo repeats the word and jerks his head toward the purple flowers he’s just vomited his breakfast over.

  “Lupines. Mom used to like them. You’re not supposed to really, because they’re one of those ‘invasive species.’ ”

  Amat manages to find expression for all his feelings:

  “W-what?”

  Bobo sounds irritated, which doesn’t happen often:

  “Lupines, I just told you! Mom used to say they were beautiful, but one of the neighbors, an old bag who works for the council, said they’re a weed. The council’s trying to eradicate them, you know, because they’re ‘out-competing local plants,’ something like that. But you can’t eradicate them, because they just keep coming back. They’re strong as anything.”

  Amat laughs wearily.

  “Okay, what have you been sniffing?”

  Bobo straightens up. He holds out one fist to his much shorter and half-as-heavy friend and pulls him to his feet with a single tug.

  “They’re like you.”

  Amat grins at him, not understanding.

  “What are?”

  Bobo shrugs his shoulders and starts walking.

  “The lupines. They’re like you. You grew up in a ditch, and nothing can stop you either.”

  They say nothing more until they part outside Amat’s door. Amat is ashamed to realize that he’s hoping Bobo is going to ask him to come to training with the A-team later today. Bobo is ashamed because he doesn’t ask. There’s nothing he wants more, but Zackell doesn’t work like that, if Amat wants to play, he’s going to have to go to the rink himself and ask her. Amat knows that too, deep down.

  “Do you want to go running again tomorrow?” he asks instead.

  “Definitely,” Bobo nods.

  They hug briefly, then Amat watches the big lummox as he lumbers away, exhausted. He can’t help hoping that Bobo becomes a father, because he has all the best qualities for that: a big heart and a short memory.

  Amat goes up to the apartment and sits there with his phone in his hand, Zackell’s number on the screen. But he’s too ashamed of his weight, scared of turning up and being slow and bad, so he doesn’t make the call. He laces his shoes once more and heads out again instead, because that’s another cliché he remembers from the locker room: “If you want to achieve what no one else can, you have to do what no one else wants to do.” He used to snort at those words, but now he repeats them to himself in his head the whole stumbling way up the hill. When he stops retching in the clearing up at the top because there’s nothing left in his stomach, he lifts his eyes and looks all the way to the ice rink. From there he can see exactly how far the way back is to everything he has dreamed of. Ten months until the next NHL draft, but he can only change one day before then.

  * * *

  This one.

  35 Hiding places

  Matteo cycles home and sits down at his computer. He starts a game and focuses so hard on every movement with the weapon on the screen, the way you do when you’re trying to force yourself to forget. He can still hear his big sister’s voice so clearly: “Just stay away from them, the hockey guys!” That was her most important piece of advice to him on his very first day at school when he was six years old. She knew they would pick on him, because he was small and weak and different. She knew he couldn’t defend himself, there was nothing to be done about that, so she tried to teach him all she could to help him get through his time at school more or less intact: where the hiding places were, which teachers let you stay in classrooms during break, which route was safest to take coming home. “From now until your last year of high school, that’s only thirteen years, then you and I can go out into the world!” she told him the night before his first day of school. “Just stay away from the hockey guys.”