* * *

  Ana is on her feet in the stands and hears the first shot. Like everyone else, she thinks it’s kids letting off firecrackers. Then she hears the screaming and from the angle she has when she stands on her seat, she can just make out the corridor down by the boards, and the door to the locker room. She sees when Benji throws himself straight out through it, right at the pistol, and tackles Matteo to the ground. The following two shots go right through his heart, right through his body, right through the ceiling. When Matteo gets to his feet again the next shot hits him in the head. Ana doesn’t even need to see who fired to know. No one else could have done that.

  * * *

  She runs straight toward the emergency exit where she knows her dad is standing with his rifle in his hands. Matteo is dead before his body hits the floor.

  * * *

  But so is Benji.

  * * *

  Everyone who knew Benjamin Ovich, particularly those of us who knew him well enough to call him Benji, would have wished him a really long story. A secure life. A happy ending. We hoped, oh, how we hoped, but deep down we probably knew that he wasn’t the sort who would get that. Because he was always the sort of person who stood in the way, the sort who protected, the sort who ran. He always thought he was the bad guy in all stories, the real heroes always do, that’s why stories about boys like him never end with them growing old. Stories about boys like him only end with us no longer dreaming of time machines, because if one was ever invented in the distant future, it would already have been used to travel back here by someone who loved him.

  * * *

  There are so many of us.

  * * *

  We can’t fight against evil. That’s the most unbearable thing about the world we have built. Evil can’t be eradicated, can’t be locked up, the more violence we use against it, the stronger it becomes when it seeps out under doors and through keyholes. It can never disappear because it grows inside us, sometimes even in the best of us, sometimes even in fourteen-year-olds. We have no weapons against it. We have only been given love as a gift in order to cope with it.

  Everyone is running in different directions, trying to find a way out. But Ana and Maya stumble down the stands and force their way through the crowd, when Maya’s foot gets caught and she screams, Ana throws everything and everyone around her out of the way until she’s free, then they rush toward the locker room. The first people they see in the corridor are Amat and Bobo, covered in Benji’s blood. Bobo is holding his friend in his arms and rocking him as if he were merely sleeping. But he’s gone. He no longer exists.

  There are thousands of things Maya’s instincts are yelling at her to do just then, but all she hears is the scream. Not her own, but a little girl’s. She’s standing three yards behind Benji’s body and just screaming and screaming and screaming. No one seems to hear. Everyone is so paralyzed, they’re just staring at the blood and the bodies, no one sees the child. Perhaps Maya sees herself in Alicia. Perhaps this is the moment when she becomes an adult, she doesn’t know. But instead of kneeling beside Benji like everyone else, she picks Alicia up out of the chaos and runs, out through the emergency exit, past Ana’s dad, out into the parking lot and on into the forest. She sits there keeping the girl hidden in her embrace so she can cry and scream without having to see what’s happening in the ice rink. Maya just wants to protect her from the blood and the images and the memories, that’s all she’s thinking, she doesn’t even let her own brain absorb the fact that Benji is dead. It’s impossible. “Protect the child, protect the child” is all she’s thinking. Perhaps there are more men with guns in there, perhaps there will be more shots, so protect the child protect the child protect the child. People come rushing out into the parking lot. Screams and sirens pierce the last streaks of daylight. Maya wishes she could stop shaking, she wishes she could hold the girl tighter, that she could hug away all the shock and despair and all the terrible darkness that will never leave either of them now. But she doesn’t know how, she isn’t big enough, isn’t strong enough. She can’t breathe, she’s gasping for air, trying to think away the blood and death on the floor in there and she needs to be strong for the child’s sake. But how do you do that? Where do you find the strength? She doesn’t have it. She’s certain she’s going to collapse on the ground in the snow when she feels two arms around her own shoulders. It’s her mother. Kira didn’t run toward the fire, she ran after the children. Behind her comes Tess and soon other women will come, from all directions, in red and green jackets, some even in black. They wrap their arms around each other, in circles, ring after ring, forming a wall around Alicia.

  Nothing that happens to the girl in the rest of her life will ever be worse than this. But in the very worst moment, in the midst of the greatest terror, mothers and big sisters from the whole forest ran here to protect her.

  * * *

  No one can fight against evil. But if it wants to take Alicia, it’s going to have to go through every last one of them first.

  * * *

  Almost everyone runs as if they don’t understand what’s happening. Adri Ovich runs as if she already knows.

  * * *

  Words? There are no words for this.

  * * *

  Everything is just shock.

  Everything is just darkness.

  Everything is just empty.

  * * *

  We have gotten used to so many types of violence, but we could never foresee this one. This one we will never understand. This one we will never get over. Adri picks up her brother and he feels so small in her arms. She carries him out of the ice rink and the whole town stops breathing. A hole in every heart.

  * * *

  How will the sun rise tomorrow? How can daylight still exist? What is the point?

  * * *

  Lev is out of his car before it’s even stopped moving. Ana’s dad is standing on his own by the emergency exit with his rifle in his hands. Everyone is screaming inside. It doesn’t take Lev many seconds to understand what has happened when he sees the blood and the bodies on the floor. He sees the pistol, he could rush over and snatch it up because it’s the only thing that could be traced back to the scrapyard and him. But he has too much to regret now, too many sleepless nights ahead of him with Matteo’s face in the darkness. Good people can be capable of great evil, and evil people can be capable of great good. So instead of thinking about saving himself Lev turns around and saves someone else. He sees Ana come running over, so he grabs hold of the hunter beside him and asks:

  “Your daughter?”

  Ana’s dad nods, confused, as if he’s lost consciousness but his body hasn’t realized it yet. Lev waves hysterically to get her to come over to them, and Ana runs, jumping over the blood. She will never forget that, never forgive herself for that. Even if Benji is dead, even if she did it to protect the living, even if it’s what he would have wanted her to do.

  Neither she nor her dad really know who Lev is. They’ve heard the rumors, like everyone else, but that’s all. He doesn’t seem to be in shock, perhaps the only person who isn’t, he’s seen too much in other forests.

  “YOUR CAR? WHICH ONE IS YOUR CAR, YES?” he yells.

  Only then does Ana understand what he’s thinking, what she needs to do to help, and how badly this could end for her dad if she doesn’t. She grabs her dad and drags him like an overgrown child across the parking lot, he’s already crying but she can’t allow herself that luxury. She drives, he sits beside her, Lev follows them. They stop in the forest, down by the lake where no one can see them from the road, Ana fetches tools from the back of the truck and they work together to make holes in the ice. A lot of holes, all spread out. Then they dismantle the rifle and scatter the pieces in different parts of the lake.

  Then they drive to Ana’s dad’s house, where Lev goes straight into the kitchen without asking permission. The dogs sniff curiously but don’t stop him. He searches the cupboards and finds hidden bottles of drink that Ana’s dad had hoped his daughter wouldn’t pour away so that he has enough ammunition for a relapse.

  “Drink, yes?” Lev says, and starts pouring three glasses.

  “Are you totally fucking mad? Are you going to start DRINKING now when it’s too fu…,” Ana snaps, but Lev just hands her the glass and replies:

  “What do the police call it? ‘Alibi,’ yes? Alibi. We were never at the ice rink. We were here, yes? We were drunk. Your dad can’t shoot anyone drunk, yes? Alibi.”

  Ana and her dad breathe out in a single long sigh of melancholy as they accept his reasoning. They have no other choice. Then they empty their glasses. Lev pours more alibi. They say nothing at all, and are soon drinking alone: Lev sits on the floor in the hall, her dad sits in his chair by the fire, Ana in the kitchen. She cries and cries and cries, and this is the last time she gets drunk.

  She has never had any idea what job she wants to do, but now she will spend her life trying to save others people’s. She doesn’t know that yet, but this is where it starts, because she couldn’t save Benji’s. So she can’t afford to drink from now on. She loves her dad, but she can’t risk turning into the sort of person who falls asleep in a chair in front of the fire the next time someone bangs on the door in the middle of a storm. The next time someone cries for help. The next time she might be able to save the world.

  * * *

  “What an incredible place this is, in spite of everything,” Maya’s mom once said. Her dad replied: “What’s incredible is that it’s still here. That there are still people here.”

  Maya will remember how incomprehensible it was that the sun even rose on the day after Benji’s death. That she was still alive. That she kept going. But she understands her parents, for the first time, really understands them. How they learned to cry inwardly when Isak died. Silently, silently they cried for years so that Maya and Leo wouldn’t hear. How the very air must have hurt their skin. How they must have wanted to lie down with their cheeks to the ground and whisper into the grass to the child beneath it. How they must have hated themselves for not being able to die with him.

  How many of all the things they have done since then have been their attempts to achieve something important, something grand, something worth getting to Heaven late for? Almost everything.

  It’s unbearable that the sun rises again, that Maya is here and not Benji, for the rest of her life she will stop almost daily and think: “Would he be proud of me? Have I lived a worthy life? Been a good enough person?” Because of course that’s all she is, all everyone she grew up with in Beartown is: hopelessly simple but horribly complicated. Ordinary, unusual people. Unusually ordinary people. We try to just live our lives, live with each other, live with ourselves. Accepting joy when we find it, bearing grief when it finds us, and being amazed at our children’s happiness without falling apart when we think that we can never really protect them.

  Maya has never felt that she belonged here, but this place finally belongs to her more than anyone else. The little town in the big forest. She will talk about the people here with her back straight, her voice steady, will say that most of us don’t want anything remarkable: a job, a home, good schools. Long walks with the dog. The elk hunt. A cup of coffee at the start of the day and a cold beer at the end of it. A good laugh. Nice neighbors. Safe streets to cycle on. A lake where you can learn to skate in winter and sit in a boat for nine hours and catch zero fish in the summer. Snowball fights. Trees to climb. A new hockey season. All that. That’s all we demand.

  She will say that people around her love a simple game, even those of us who don’t love it at all. A stick each, two goals, us against you. Bang bang bang. She will say that we’re just trying to live, damn it. Live in spite of each other. Live for each other.

  * * *

  Live on.

  * * *

  Soon millions of people will know Maya’s name, but every night she will only be singing for Benji. Not all her songs will be about him, but they will all be his, somehow, even the ones that are Ana’s. One evening, several years from now, Maya will be so famous that she’ll be performing in one of the biggest arenas in the whole country. It will be sold out. The first time she steps out into it she will realize what it is used for when concerts aren’t being held there. It’s an ice rink. It’s the biggest moment in her career, and she cries her way through every song.

  105 Trees

  When Benji is buried, it isn’t in a church with open doors but under the bare sky. Two entire towns turn up. The notification in the newspaper is superfluous, everyone knows the time and the place already, even the factory closes, but beneath Benji’s name is printed what everyone is feeling:

  This hurts too much to touch with words.

  It was the man at the undertakers’ who showed the quotation to the Ovich sisters. “My favorite poet, Bodil Malmsten,” the man said, a little embarrassed at his own declaration of love. Now she’s the Ovich sisters’ favorite poet too.

  Their brother is laid to rest beside their father, not far from Ramona and Vidar. Around here we usually say that we bury our children under our most beautiful trees, but not even the best among us can find a tree beautiful enough to watch over Benjamin Ovich. So we grow new ones, all around the stone bearing his name, we let Alicia and other children plant them in the soil so that they grow up around him. Until he is no longer sleeping in a churchyard, but where he was always safest and happiest. In a forest.

  * * *

  Words?

  * * *

  This hurts too much.

  * * *

  Alicia comes to the funeral hand-in-hand with Adri and Sune. When she sees Maya she lets go of them and runs, not for her own sake but for Maya’s.

  “Are you scared?” the girl asks.

  “Very scared. And very sad,” Maya replies with her eyes buried in the girl’s hair.

  “Is Benji scared, do you think? Will it be dark and cold down there in the ground?” Alicia asks.

  “No, no, Benji isn’t scared. He isn’t even here,” Maya replies.

  “Isn’t he?” Alicia wonders, with her first smile in thousands of breaths.

  Maya blinks a million times.

  “He’s on the ice somewhere laughing now. He’s playing hockey with his best friends. He’s lying on his back looking at the stars. He isn’t scared. In a hundred years you’ll see him again, and tell him about all the things you’ve done. All about your fantastic life. All your adventures. He’ll look forward to that.”

  When Alicia runs back to Adri, Maya sits in a corner of the church and writes on her arm with a pen. She fills her skin. Then she asks Benji’s mom and sisters if she can sing at the funeral. She stands on the church steps. The forest has never been as silent as it is then. Slowly, slowly, everything she wants to say to him leaves her:

  Are you scared? Someone who loves you wanted to know.

  I said: Oh no—he’s in a different form though

  Because the grave’s only a place for memory

  The earth around his coffin isn’t where he’ll be.

  Where you are now I cannot say

  You’re not here, you’ve gone away.

  There’s a folding chair by the water and there

  I think you sit and laugh and feel a love so rare.

  There’s ice around your island, you’ve got your skates,

  There goes a boy whose beauty never fades.

  You’re playing a game, don’t even feel cold,

  There plays a boy who’ll never grow old.

  You’re everything you wanted to be

  You’re safe and happy, wild and free.

  I don’t know where you are now my friend

  But in a hundred years we’ll meet again.

  * * *

  There are many types of leadership. The one we find easiest to admire is, of course, always the one that involves having the courage to lead your followers out into the unknown, bravely going where no one else has gone, upward, forward. But what helps, more than anything, to take Beartown back to mornings where we can breathe again at all after all that has happened is something far less conspicuous. Bobo and Amat lead all the players on the A-team out into the town and they gather the children together. They play and they play and they play. In the ice rink, on the lake, in yards between apartment blocks. They play and they play and they play. It’s the only cure they know, the only way they know how to make the world a little better.

  Big City goes with them, silent at first but soon something else, something new for him: he becomes the sort of person who talks. Puts a hand on a shoulder, picks up someone who’s fallen, carries someone who’s gotten hurt. As time goes on he starts to realize that when he sets off the others follow, rather than the other way around. In other teams he was always notorious for being complicated and peculiar and disloyal. Here he becomes the opposite.

  One evening when they are playing with the children the parents stay and watch. The following evening one dad asks if he can join in. Soon everyone is playing, everywhere.

  It’s that sort of town, where everything can change and the people can be transformed. Where we find the strength to play even though our lungs are screaming. Possibly because we’re used to withstanding the darkness, both inside and outside. Possibly because we live close to wilderness. But perhaps most of all because, just like everyone else in every other place: If we don’t have tomorrow, what’s the alternative?