“Come on. Let’s go inside. The game starts soon. We can sort this out later.”

  Johnny and Lev’s guy stand where they are and watch them go. Johnny feels his pulse racing. None of those men was Peter Andersson, but he realizes now that each of them reminded him of Peter Andersson. And that was evidently enough.

  “Thanks!” Lev’s guy says.

  Johnny turns around and nods curtly.

  “Let me know if they bother you again. This isn’t their parking lot. The entire district doesn’t belong to Beartown Hockey, even if they think it does.”

  Lev’s guy puts his hand on his heart and gives a short bow of gratitude. Johnny hasn’t the faintest idea of what to do in response, so he fumbles with the zip of his jacket and gives a sort of wave that turns into half a salute. Lev’s guy prepares a hot dog for him and hands it over. Johnny feels in the back pocket of his jeans for money but is waved away.

  “Free for firemen!”

  Johnny nods appreciatively. He eats as he walks. It’s a damn fine hot dog, he concludes, definitely better than the crap they serve in Beartown’s cafeteria.

  * * *

  Ana, Maya, Leo, and Big City are wandering about by the ice rink, drifting from group to group. Ana disappears from sight for a minute at most, then returns with eight cans of beer in a plastic bag.

  “How… how did you do that?” Leo gasps.

  “I just asked a guy,” Ana says, as if it was obvious.

  “She can find beer anywhere, even at a funeral!” Maya confirms.

  “Surely that’s the EASIEST place to get hold of beer?” Ana exclaims.

  They sit down on some rocks at the far end of the parking lot and drink. Maya lets Leo have one, she drinks two, Ana three. Big City declines, he’s got training this evening.

  “Are you worried the coach will shout at you?” Ana teases.

  “No. I just don’t want to disappoint her,” he eventually admits when he can’t think of a good lie.

  Maya pats him on the shoulder encouragingly, then says in her very thickest forest dialect:

  “If you don’t want to disappoint people, you’ve come to the wrong town. We’re not happy unless we’re a bit disappointed here, you know.”

  Big City smiles awkwardly. Maya has never seen anyone with so little reason to be modest be so shy.

  “I’m good at disappointing people. I’m trying to get worse at it.”

  The beer was stronger than she expected and Maya drank both hers pretty quickly, so she’s about to say something extremely inappropriate, but she doesn’t have time before Leo mumbles:

  “I don’t feel well…”

  “HAVE YOU DRUNK ALL THE BEERS YOU LITTLE SHIT?” Ana roars, turning the empty bag upside down.

  Leo’s head is spinning too much for him to be able to reply.

  * * *

  For once, Kira is grateful that the temperature is below freezing, it gives her an excuse to hide behind a thick coat with the collar turned up, a woolly hat pulled down over her eyes. She slips unnoticed through the crowd outside the ice rink, texting her daughter to ask where she is, then gets a minor shock when she finds Maya and Ana behind the counter in the cafeteria, where they’re selling hot dogs and chocolate balls with a group of players from the boys’ teams dressed in green jackets.

  “Hi Mom!” Maya exclaims in surprise, as if she’s forgotten that she was the one who asked her to come.

  “We’re trainees!” Ana informs her cheerfully.

  Kira leans over the counter and whispers through their breath:

  “Have you… been drinking?”

  “A tiny little bit!” Ana roars in a way that she herself imagines is a whisper.

  “Where’s Leo?” Kira wonders.

  “Bathroom!” Ana giggles with considerable restraint, and Maya starts giggling hysterically. Kira does her best to be angry with them. She really does try. But they’re too happy and she’s too tired and in far too great a need of family members she doesn’t have to worry about. So she goes around the counter and makes the girls drink some water, then she ends up standing there herself, selling chocolate balls and hot dogs. Just like old times.

  * * *

  Tess and Bobo come up to the cafeteria, not actually holding hands, but as close to each other as they can manage. So close that their hands and fingers occasionally get tangled up. Quick glances, fleeting smiles, tiny electric shocks everywhere.

  Big City is standing in a corner eating chocolate balls, Bobo stops to talk to him, Tess turns around and looks the way her little brother did when he caught sight of Amat the other day.

  “Is that… is that Kira Andersson? The lawyer?” she hisses to Bobo, tugging at his arm.

  “Yes? Kira! HI KIRA!” Bobo yells, waving, and Tess adopts an expression that she will use every time he embarrasses her in public until they grow old together. Kira looks up and waves back, and when she meets Tess’s gaze the girl blushes so hard that Bobo thinks she’s got something stuck in her throat and is about to perform the Heimlich maneuver before he gets a serious telling-off from his girlfriend, the first but certainly not the last. Kira comes over and hugs Bobo, and holds her hand out:

  “Hello, my name’s Kira…”

  “I know, I know, you’re the lawyer!” Tess babbles.

  “Yes, how did you know that?” Kira laughs, surprised.

  “I go past your office when I pick up my little brother from school. I’ve seen the sign. So… I looked you up online…,” Tess confesses, blushing hard again.

  “Tess wants to be a lawyer too!” Bobo adds, because he hasn’t yet learned to keep quiet in situations like this.

  He’ll get it right eventually. He’s going to have plenty of years in which to practice.

  “I… that isn’t settled yet… but I do want to study law. But everyone says it’s really difficult,” Tess says, embarrassed.

  “It’s supposed to be hard. That’s why it’s worth doing,” Kira smiles amiably, seeing all her own insecurities when she was that age, when she used to wash up in her parents’ restaurant in the evening and wonder if she could ever stand a chance among all the rich kids at university.

  “Do you think I could do it?” Tess asks, so bluntly that it surprises both her and Kira.

  She starts to stammer an apology for asking such a silly question, but Kira takes her arm warmly and replies:

  “I’ll say to you what my mom said to me: there’s only one way to find out.”

  Tess’s eyes are radiant, and she replies without thinking:

  “I want to help other girls. Girls who get raped or assaulted or… I mean, not that it’s ever happened to me! But I know it happened to your daughter! I want to be one of the people who… help. Like you!”

  Kira didn’t exactly go to the cafeteria today prepared to have the wind knocked out of her, so it takes her a moment to catch her breath.

  “It can be a tough job at times,” she says in a low voice.

  “Everyone in my family has a tough job,” Tess whispers back.

  Kira can see the fire in the girl’s eyes and thinks that this must be what it’s been like for Peter all these years: this is what a cherry tree in blossom looks like. So she smiles and nods slowly and reaches in her inside pocket for her wallet.

  “Here’s my card, my cell phone number’s on the back. Call me whenever you want. Come to the office whenever you want. If you really want to do this… if you really want it… then I promise to help you.”

  Tess holds the card as if it were a golden ticket to a chocolate factory. She realizes too late that she sounds like a crazy stalker when she says:

  “I heard that your daughter moved to go to college in another town. Did that make you very sad?”

  The corners of Kira’s mouth tremble.

  “Yes. But I’m very proud as well.”

  The words pour out of Tess as if someone had turned her upside down:

  “All the law courses are a really long way away and my mom doesn’t want me to move.”

  “Moms never do,” Kira admits.

  There a thousand other things Tess wants to ask, but she doesn’t get the chance because someone suddenly yells from the stairs leading down to the rink:

  “FIGHT! THERE’S A FIGHT!”

  Then they hear the shouting from below. Men yelling to their sons in panic, other men yelling at each other in rage. Then the clatter of footsteps as everyone tries to get away from something much worse.

  85 Hearts

  Hed Hockey’s thirteen-year-olds go into the away team’s locker room but come out again just as fast, green in the face. It stinks in there, a nauseating, corrosive, disgusting smell that fills their nostrils so fast that their gag reflex doesn’t stand a chance. A gang of boys in their early teens in green tops and back-to-front caps are giggling hysterically until the caretaker realizes what’s happened and chases them out into the parking lot with a hammer in his hand. Hed’s thirteen-year-olds stand there retching. The smell could be butyric acid, or old prawn shells, or rotten meat, it’s the oldest trick in the book in Beartown to psych out an opposing team. Lovely, lovely Beartown with their PR brochures about how sponsoring them is the right thing to do, but this is how immaturely they behave. Everyone in Hed is used to it, but this sort of thing is usually done to the adult team. Not thirteen-year-olds. This game is different.

  “WE ARE THE BEARS!” the crowd roars from the stands. “WE ARE THE BEARS!” a sea of black jackets repeats, making the walls vibrate down in the corridor where Ted and his teammates are standing. Their coach is trying to give them instructions about where to get changed instead, but he can’t make himself heard over the noise. “HED BITCHES HED BITCHES WE’RE GOING TO KILL YOU HED BITCHES!,” the crowd roars and Tobias, who is standing alongside, sees the terror in the young players’ faces, they’re just children, sending them out onto the ice this evening would be like sending them off to war. Tobias catches his younger brother.

  “Ted!”

  “Yes?”

  Tobias grabs hold of his younger brother’s arm and yells:

  “Think about cake!”

  Ted lets out a surprised laugh and his whole body relaxes in his older brother’s grip.

  “What?”

  “You love cake! Think about cake and you’ll relax!”

  “You’re really stupid…”

  Tobias nods seriously.

  “Don’t be scared because they’re shouting out there, okay? Be grateful! Do you want to play in the NHL? Then you need to be able to play in front of a crazy crowd, and they don’t come crazier than this bunch of psychopaths. If you can survive this, you’ll be able to cope with anything else in the future. Just go out there and play your game and make the people yelling shut up. Every time they scream, you score a goal. So break them. Take everything they love away from them.”

  The younger brother leans his head close to his brother’s and says:

  “Thanks, Toby.”

  His big brother hisses:

  “Don’t thank me. Go out there and win. Crush their fucking hearts.”

  Their eyes meet briefly. The big brother has always been as tough as anything off the ice, but often gave way on the ice, but the younger brother is the opposite. As long as Tobias protects Ted this side of the boards, no one will be able to stop him on the other side. They’re fifteen and thirteen years old, but the playing career of one of them is almost over while the other’s has only just begun. When Ted follows his team toward the doors leading to the parking lot so they can get changed in their parents’ cars, Tobias stays in the corridor with his hands in his pockets. While the younger brother gets ready for the game, the older brother turns and goes and stands among the Hed supporters in the standing area. A few of the older guys recognize him, they used to go to the same school, now they’re shouting and waving for him to come and stand with them.

  “It was you who hit those Beartown fags here the other day and got suspended from your team, right?” one asks.

  Tobias nods, slightly reluctantly. They slap him on the back.

  “No way in the world should you have been suspended! You should have gotten a medal!” Tobias knows who they are of course, his dad has always told him to stay away from their sort: “Those idiots are only looking for trouble, Toby, when you get older you’ll realize that you’re going to have enough trouble in life without going to look for it…” But when the guys sing and jump in the stands, it makes Tobias’s heart pound. His ears roar, the adrenaline is pumping. So he sings and jumps as well.

  When Ted’s team steps back into the rink after getting changed, several of their dads follow them, all the way to the players’ entrance, furious about the stench in the locker room which forced the boys to get changed in such humiliating circumstances out in the parking lot. They’re yelling about “unsportsmanlike behavior,” and someone grabs hold of a thirteen-year-old from Beartown who yells something inaudible back, which obviously makes all the dads of the Beartown team rush down to the players’ tunnel to defend their boys, and that’s how easily it all kicks off. That’s how quickly it happens.

  * * *

  Benji and Adri arrive at the ice rink just before the game starts. Sune was too upset to come with them. He’s gone out for the same walk he always used to take his dog on, at the same time, and he’ll do that for a long while yet. When he gets out of breath and has to stop and clutch his chest, he still whispers “You run on ahead” out of habit.

  Benji and Adri go up to the standing area for Beartown fans. The black jackets close ranks around them on all sides without a word. Adri knows that many of them have been off hunting elk this week, they’ve interrupted the hunt to come home and watch a game between a bunch of thirteen-year-olds, and that isn’t a good sign. For anyone.

  Teemu is standing closest to her and Benji. “BEARTOWN FAGS,” the Hed supporters roar, “HED BITCHES,” the Beartown fans respond. It’s only words for the time being, but Teemu glances at Benji and Adri to see their reactions. From Benji he gets no reaction at all, just slow breathing and neutral eyes, as if he’s either slowing down from something or getting ready for something. From Adri Teemu gets just a short glance and a surprised:

  “I can’t believe you’re so calm.”

  Teemu nods secretively.

  “I’ve promised that we’ll be calm today.”

  “Promised who?” she wonders.

  “The club,” he replies.

  He hasn’t even told his closest associates that he’s spoken to Tails. He’s just told everyone that they need to stay calm unless he gives a direct signal, and they obey, not out of fear but because they love him. It’s a brotherhood no one else in this town understands, he knows that, but if anyone comes close, it’s probably Adri. He still has difficulty interpreting the look on her face now, probably because she isn’t really sure how she feels, she’s torn between feeling proud of Teemu and his guys for not starting any trouble already, and a longing for them to do so. Throughout her life Adri has seen so many people hurt others that she’s grown tough, but when someone harms an animal she loses all her inhibitions. Her mind turns black. She understands Teemu more than ever at moments like that.

  “BEARTOWN FAGS,” one stand is chanting.

  “HED BITCHES,” echoes back.

  The chants roll back and forth across the ice. Normally the stands would be almost empty for a game between thirteen-year-olds, but this hasn’t been a normal week. On Saturday the towns’ A-teams will meet in the first game of the season, and Adri finds herself wondering what the hell these guys will bring with them then. Tanks?

  “MURDER, PLUNDER, RAPE, AND BURN! WE’D HAVE SCREWED YOUR SISTERS IF YOU HADN’T SCREWED THEM FIRST!” some of the Hed supporters are chanting.

  “IF YOU WANT IT, COME AND GET IT! NO ONE FROM HED DARES TO FIGHT!” Teemu’s guys are shouting around Adri.

  The number of red fans over in Hed’s stand can’t match the number of green fans, largely because they aren’t as well organized, when they sing they’re a hundred separate voices, but when Teemu’s guys raise their voices they do it as one man. A single, terrible man capable of anything. Everyone over in Hed’s stand knows this, of course, they know they’re in the minority, so they do what all supporters do in those circumstances: they seek out their opponents’ weakest point. Anything that can be yelled to get at them, hurt them, wound their pride. They hit upon the easiest and worst thing possible.

  As Ted and the other thirteen-year-olds are elbowing their way past the shoving match their dads have started down in the players’ tunnel and step out onto the ice to warm up, a rumor starts circulating through Hed’s stand: something about Sune, the former A-team coach. Something about a dog that was in Beartown’s team photograph. Something about how even the most feared members of the Pack are mourning the animal’s loss.

  What happens next is simple and effective, spontaneous and obvious, incredibly stupid and instantly destructive: a young guy off to one side behind Tobias starts to bark.

  “Woof woof woof,” and at first some of the other guys around him just laugh.

  Then someone else does it louder:

  “Woof! Woof! Woof!”

  Suddenly the whole stand is barking. It starts as a joke, but quickly becomes threatening. Salt in open wounds. A direct provocation. Beartown’s supporters don’t respond by singing, nor by chanting, they do something much worse: they fall totally silent. And then everything else falls silent too.

  It’s hard to explain how a packed ice rink sounds if you’ve never experienced it, but even ordinary popcorn eating children and hot dog munching pensioners have an ability to shut out the wall of sound after a while. Especially in Beartown. Everyone is so used to the fact that the fans in the two standing areas chant “BITCH” and “FAG” at each other that they may as well have been doing it in a foreign language, the popcorn eaters and hot dog enthusiasts don’t even hear them, they sit back in their seats and chat about mortgages and grandchildren and the weather. Perhaps they’re also a bit complacent, because it’s been more than two years since there was a real fight in here. Everyone has forgotten how it sounds when the Pack makes a charge, everyone feels safe, like children with their noses pressed against the glass of the lion enclosure. The black jackets’ yelling is like a whirring extractor fan in a kitchen that you don’t even notice until someone switches it off.