It was Rodri who taught Mumble to skate. They attended their first hockey training session together in Hed, and it was Rodri who suggested that Mumble should go in goal: “You don’t need to be good at skating for that, and you never need to worry about getting beaten up, because no one can touch the goalkeeper, and the whole team will defend you! It’s sort of a secret rule, even if they think you’re a mongo, on the ice you’re just the goalkeeper!” That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever given Mumble, the chance to hide behind padding and a helmet and just be allowed to join in. They played together for several years, Rodri had big dreams but not much talent, but for Mumble it was the other way around.

  They met up every day after school. During the summer holidays they spent all their time together. It was always Rodri who came up with what they should do. He dreamed of being a hero, he could spend hours conjuring up scenarios in which he rescued children from a burning house or defenseless women from bloodthirsty murderers. They often sat in Mumble’s basement and looked at the school yearbook and discussed which girls he would like to rescue most and how they should demonstrate their gratitude afterward. Naturally, the girls didn’t even know who Rodri and Mumble were, but soon they would realize what they had missed out on, Rodri was convinced of that.

  If Rodri had been better at hockey, perhaps the sport might have made him a hero, but he felt the coach never gave him a chance to show what he could do. There was always one of the rich, popular, good-looking boys who was allowed to play instead. It was an intolerable injustice that Rodri could never accept: that the boys all the girls already wanted to sleep with were also the ones who were best at hockey. So in one training session Rodri got into a fight with one of his teammates, and when the coach stepped in Rodri hit him so hard he fractured his jaw. “That boy has no limits, he never has, he’s always been a little psycho!” declared one of the other coaches who lived on the same street as Rodri, and so Rodri was thrown out of the club. Mumble was left there. He was so quiet and took up so little room that it was as if no one really reflected on the fact that he was still best friends with the psycho. Mumble was the goalkeeper, after all, and you can’t touch the goalkeeper.

  Rodri still came around to Mumble’s each evening. Waited for him outside the ice rink after training. Mumble got better and better at hockey, but there was hardly anyone who noticed. Rodri got more and more dangerous, but no one noticed that either. They became teenagers and one day Rodri arrived at the ice rink on a moped. He said one of his brothers had gotten it for him. He had cigarettes too. Soon he taught Mumble all about drugs, without Mumble ever taking any himself, Rodri used to sit on his bed and talk manically for hours about things he had seen online: politics, conspiracy theories, porn, guns, chemistry. He dreamed of producing his own methamphetamine. It would make him rich and you didn’t need much equipment to make it, he said. They could make it in Mumble’s house. Rodri’s house was no good because his brothers would just use whatever they made. Then he would talk about girls, the way he always had, ever since the boys were in primary school. Rodri still hadn’t slept with anyone, but he would soon, he swore. The words he used about girls changed so slowly and gradually that it was hardly noticeable. “That pretty one” became “that hot one,” then “that sexy one,” and “the one with nice eyes” became “the one with big tits,” and “the mean one” became “that fucking little whore.” Soon he was sitting in Mumble’s room pointing out the worst whores in the school yearbook, one after the other. He said exactly which ones had slept with who at all the parties he and Mumble never got invited to. The worst whores were obviously the hockey whores, according to Rodri, because they only slept with hockey players. Which was unfair. Because they were already the biggest and strongest and most popular. They already had everything. One evening he lectured from Mumble’s bed: “Feminism has fucked everything up for men! It’s biological, did you know that? That women should stay at home and have babies and look after the home, and men should build society and protect the family! Women say they want equality, but they actually want tyranny, you understand that, right? They never want guys like us. Because we’re losers. They only want the meanest guys. Because they say they want freedom but biologically they want to be dominated. It’s in their nature. They want a man to force them up against a wall. Do you know how many girls have fantasies about burglars? A masked man attacking them? They don’t dream about heroes. That’s just in films. Heroes never get the girls in real life!”

  Mumble didn’t take it seriously. Or else he didn’t understand. He just tried to nod and make his friend happy. When the drugs faded from Rodri’s body he would start to sweat, then he would freeze, then he would borrow one of Mumble’s red training tops from the hockey team. His friend fell asleep on the floor next to Mumble’s bed. He slept there the next night because his brother had fallen out with some other guys in town and there could be trouble at home, Rodri said. Before he fell asleep the second night he related a new fantasy he had, about how he and Mumble could stop those guys and kill them and become heroes.

  * * *

  The next day they became heroes for real.

  * * *

  Ruth left the country exactly two and a half years ago, just after what happened with Maya and Kevin became public knowledge. Maya had gone to the police and the whole town had turned against her. Everything was going to change in time, but no one knew that then. Ruth didn’t stay to find out what happened. She had been through all that herself a few months earlier, she knew what this forest did to girls like her and Maya.

  * * *

  Shoot. Dig. Silence.

  * * *

  During the last two and a half years of her life, far away from here, Ruth hated herself most for two reasons: that she left her little brother, Matteo, alone in that terrible house with their terrible parents, and that she had forgotten to take her diary. She didn’t dare contact Matteo because she was worried her parents might find out where she was. She wrote in her diary right up to the day she left, and the moment she left it was too late to go back for it. She wondered if anyone would find it, and hoped that it wouldn’t be her little brother. She wished him a real childhood, cycling and playing computer games and only encountering evil in comic books. Every day she counted the weeks and months before Matteo turned eighteen, so she could go back and get him. She didn’t have time. The six-year age gap was too great. And maybe he wouldn’t even have wanted to go with her if he could?

  The sister and brother loved each other even as little kids, but they never had much in common. Besides, Matteo had something Ruth lacked: their mother’s love. She always went where he did, and because Ruth couldn’t stand her she kept her distance as much as she could. Their mother and all her neuroses. Her phobia of stale smells that made her air the whole apartment until it was freezing, her conviction that the neighbors were spying on them, her fear that the dogs in the area were the Devil in animal form. There was no end to it. Their dad just sat in a different room with his books, physically present but more and more distant mentally. As if he was conjuring up mental illness as a means of escape. Ruth both hated and envied him that ability.

  Every weekend they went to their church, full of other families that were different in the same way as Ruth’s. That had just as many rules, just as many prohibitions, where everyone just talked to their children about fearing God but never mentioned love. One day Ruth yelled at her mother: “You say we have to be God’s servants, but that’s just another word for slaves!” Her mother had one of her hysterical breakdowns. Several years later Ruth still couldn’t say for sure if they were real or if her mother was just pretending. Ruth didn’t regret it though, she just hated herself for how upset it made Matteo.

  She stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her, but was forced to go back home again that evening. She had no one to flee to then. She had no friends at school, all the girls there were perfect little dolls with perfect clothes and perfect parents and perfect lives. They giggled and talked behind Ruth’s back, saying “she’s in a religious cult” and that “her family is crazy.” In the end it became so normal that it didn’t even hurt anymore. Ruth became good at staying out of the way, making herself invisible, all she thought about was surviving school until she was eighteen and could go somewhere far away and choose a different life. At least she did until one day she found her first real friend and everything changed. Ironically enough, it happened in church. A family that had just moved to Hed appeared, and their daughter was the same age as Ruth. Her name was Beatrice. They became best friends instantly. They shared the same hatred of the rules and prohibitions, they both had a sense that they were living on the wrong planet, as soon as Ruth got the chance she started taking the bus to Hed and when Beatrice’s parents were away they listened to music and wore makeup and watched films they would never normally be allowed to watch. That was the best time in Ruth’s life. You never get the same kind of friends again like you have when you’re a teenager. Not even if you keep them your whole life. It will never be the same as it was then.

  When they were sixteen Beatrice managed to get them invitations to a party in Hed. They drank and smoked like all the other youngsters and for the first time Ruth felt almost normal. She even kissed a boy, and ended up on a sofa in a dark room with him, where he tried to have sex with her but he couldn’t manage to get up what he needed to get up. Ruth laughed nervously at him and he became furious. He rushed out and ran home. The next day Ruth heard from Beatrice that he had told everyone in school that they had had sex and that she was useless in bed. That was how Ruth learned that the truth doesn’t matter to guys. The rumor that she had been at a party in Hed spread to the school in Beartown and for a while the perfect girls couldn’t decide whether to call her “Hed whore” or “cult slut.” When she turned seventeen, Beatrice gave her a pair of good headphones so she wouldn’t have to hear them. That evening they drank hooch alone in the forest and Beatrice hissed happily in her ear: “Damn, I love being drunk! Shit, now I need to pee! I’m going to pee like a camel!” Ruth laughed so hard she was rolling around on the ground. She never had another friend like Beatrice, no one ever gets that.

  The text came so suddenly the next day, when Ruth was on her way home from school, so drenched in panic that it froze her blood: My parents have found my hiding place!! They’ve called your parents!!!!!! Ruth ran the last bit of the way but it was too late. Her mother had turned her room upside down and found everything. The thongs, cigarettes, birth control pills, she had no idea what her mother would think was the most damning. But for Beatrice it was even worse, because her dad found her phone and all the messages from boys. Within a week Beatrice had moved away from Hed, she was sent to an even smaller town over six hundred miles away to live with a relative. Ruth couldn’t help thinking that the girls at school were right: they really were dealing with a fucking cult.

  * * *

  It was Rodri’s idea, as usual. “Let’s get the moped and go to Beartown! Find some Beartown whores! You know that all the girls in Beartown fancy guys from Hed, right? That’s because Beartown guys have such small cocks. It’s genetic!”

  Mumble didn’t want to go, but he didn’t want to say no either. He didn’t want to disappoint his friend when he was in such a good mood. So they put their red jackets on, so the girls would know straightaway that they were from Hed, and set off. They didn’t find any girls, of course, it was far too cold, so they just stopped by the side of the road in the forest near the lake and Rodri drank beer and talked about things he had read. He was interested in religion at the time, he talked and talked and much later Mumble would wonder if that was the worst thing of all about Rodri: that he was so intelligent. That he could do the terrible things he was about to do in spite of that.

  It was starting to get late, and with the darkness came an even rawer cold, they were about to turn the moped around and head back to Hed when Mumble peered down toward the lake and saw the child on the ice. He wasn’t standing up, he was just lying there with his body spread out in panic, to make himself as light as possible. On the shore stood several older children shouting and mocking him. Mumble began to run, at first Rodri didn’t understand why, but when he did he saw his chance to become a hero:

  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” he yelled, and when the kids on the shore ran off he wanted to run after them and kill them but Mumble stopped him, pointing to the child out on the ice.

  It was Rodri’s idea to take their jackets and tops off and tie them together to form a rope. Mumble was the lighter of the two, so he crawled out on his stomach close enough to throw it to the boy. Then they pulled Matteo to safety. He was so cold and scared that he could hardly say a word through his chattering teeth, but they managed to get a name and which direction his home was in. Mumble rode the boy’s bicycle and Rodri followed slowly on the moped with the boy sitting behind him.

  Matteo’s sister was the only person at home. She came running out and hugged her brother so hard that he couldn’t breathe. Then she thanked the guys in the red jackets from the bottom of her heart.

  “Ruth!” she said, holding her hand out in introduction.

  “Rodri!” Rodri smiled.

  Three years later she dies in a country thousands of miles away. He’s never even been there. But Matteo knows he’s still the one who kills her.

  98 Stones

  Every community has places that have strange names whose origins everyone has forgotten. Beartown has “the Hollow” and “the Heights,” which at first were presumably just nicknames based on the geography, but which at some point became proper names used on road signs. In the end no one can really remember how that happened. Or whose idea it was.

  Early on Saturday morning there’s a knock on the door of the Andersson family’s home, hard but not aggressive. The clenched fist hitting the wood belongs to someone who has lost, someone who almost won, but she’s still proud enough to stand with her back straight.

  Peter opens the door, the smell of freshly baked croissants hits the editor in chief, she’s holding a cardboard box in her arms and looks as surprised by the smell as he is to see her.

  “Hello… I…,” Peter begins.

  They’ve never met before, but obviously he knows who she is. The forest isn’t that big.

  “I wanted to give you this,” she says ceremoniously, nudging him in the chest with the box.

  It’s lighter than he expects. He looks down between the flaps and sees that it’s full of documents.

  “I don’t understand…”

  She breathes slowly to stop herself from screaming.

  “You have good friends, Peter. Powerful friends. I hate the corruption in these godforsaken towns, but now I suppose I’m part of it. Richard Theo wanted me to give you this so you could be confident that we won’t write any articles about you. This is everything we managed to unearth about you and Beartown Hockey.”

  He looks down into the box. She’s expecting him to play dumb, or perhaps get angry, she’s almost hoping for the latter, it would have been good for her self-image. But instead he blinks, moist-eyed, and asks:

  “So this is all my fault?”

  The editor in chief shuffles involuntarily on the steps.

  “Yes… yes, that’s one way of looking at it. For what it’s worth, in a way I’m glad I didn’t have to ruin your life. I know your daughter has been through hell. You seem to be a good dad, so I assume you’ve been through hell too. I’ve heard that you do a lot of good things for youngsters in this town. Perhaps that… balances things out.”

  He can see in her eyes that that isn’t true. She still wishes she could have nailed him. Sent him to prison. He cheated, and she’s the sort of person who can never quite live with that. She turns and is walking back to her car when he suddenly calls out:

  “Can I ask… do you think it’s possible to atone for a crime without serving out your sentence?”

  She looks back over her shoulder.

  “How do you mean?”

  Peter clears his throat, clearly upset.

  “I know what my crime was. I looked the other way. I didn’t ask questions. I pretended I couldn’t feel that something was wrong. I didn’t get involved. I… kept quiet.”

  The editor in chief takes a deep, cold breath and feels almost calm. It feels almost like justice, that confession, maybe she can live with this victory.

  “What is it you say in that club of yours? ‘High ceilings and thick walls’?” she asks.

  “Yes. Is that how I can make amends? By making the walls thinner?” he asks genuinely.

  The editor in chief never expected the conversation to go this way. She has to fumble for thoughts and arguments, and eventually comes up with:

  “My dad loves history. Medieval, most of all. Whenever we went on vacation when I was little we had to go around looking at churches, and he would talk about every stone in them. I remember him saying that when a rich man had committed terrible sins, the priests would say he could get God’s forgiveness if he built a cathedral. Obviously that was just a way for the priests to trick someone into paying for their ridiculously flashy building projects, not altogether unlike the way hockey clubs exploit councils to build ice rinks these days, but when I was little it was… well… I don’t know… I still thought there was something nice about that. That powerful men at the end of their lives had to humble themselves by turning their money into stone.”

  Peter stands there looking down into the box, his tears dripping slowly onto the contents.

  “Thank you.”

  The editor in chief bites her lip. Then she whispers: