Chapter 36
36
T he simplest and truest thing David knows about hockey is that teams win games. It doesn’t matter how good a coach’s tactics are: if they’re to stand any chance of working, first the players need to believe in them. And each one of them needs to have the same words imprinted in his head a million times: Play your part. Focus on your task. Do your job.
David is lying in bed beside his girlfriend, his hand on her stomach.
“Do you think I’m going to be a good dad?” he asks.
“You’re going to be a really, really, really annoying dad,” she replies.
“That’s mean.”
She tweaks his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. He looks so sad that she starts giggling.
“You’ll have a tactical plan for the birth, and you’ll try to set up a contraction strategy with the midwife because there’s bound to be some sort of record to try to beat. You’ll get it into your head that the length and weight percentiles are a competition. You’ll be the most annoying, argumentative, best dad in the world.”
His fingers trace the outline of her navel.
“Do you think he... or she... the child... do you think it will like hockey?”
She kisses him.
“It’s really hard to love you without loving hockey, Dave. And it’s really, really, really hard not to love you.”
He’s lying on his back with her legs gently twined around his.
“This business with Kevin. With... everything. I don’t know what to do.”
She whispers without hesitation:
“Your job, darling. You can’t get involved in that; you’re not a policeman and you’re not a lawyer. You’re a hockey coach. Do your job. Isn’t that what you always say to the guys?”
***
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” the headmaster says into the phone. He’s already lost track of how many similar calls he’s received this morning.
“I WANT YOU TO DO YOUR JOB!” Maggan Lyt shrieks at the other end.
“You have to try to understand that I can’t preempt a police inves...”
Saliva spatters the phone when Maggan replies:
“Do you know what this is? It’s a CONSPIRACY against the whole hockey team! This is all about JEALOUSY!”
“So... what do you want me to do?”
“Your job!!!”
***
Bobo is stacking car tires in the garage. He’s stressed and angry as he puts the tools back in their places on the wall and pulls off his dirty overalls.
“I have to go to school now, Dad.”
Hog scratches his beard, looks at his son, and perhaps he feels like saying something, without actually knowing what that thing might be.
“You’ll have to help me finish this later.”
“We’ve got practice this evening.”
“This evening? But the season’s over!”
“It’s not obligatory. But everyone will be there. For the team’s sake. Lyt says we have to stand united for Kevin.”
“Lyt says that? William Lyt?” Hog exclaims. He’s never heard anyone in that family talk about standing united on any subject, but he can see in his son’s eyes that there’s no point discussing this unless he wants an argument, so he merely grunts:
“Just don’t forget that you’ve got things to do here too.”
Once Bobo has showered he runs out to the road. Ann-Katrin and Hog watch him from the kitchen window. They can see Lyt and at least ten more juniors standing there waiting. They go everywhere together now.
“We’ve got to talk to him. I saw Maya at the hospital, I SAW her, and she didn’t look like a girl who was lying,” Ann-Katrin says, but her husband shakes his head.
“We can’t get involved in this, Anki. It’s none of our business.”
***
Jeanette is fighting against the black lump in her stomach, trying to suppress the heartburn and migraine she always gets when she’s not sleeping properly.
“I’m just saying, we ought to talk to the students about it. We can’t just pretend nothing’s happening.”
The headmaster sighs and waves his phone.
“Please, Jeanette, you’ve no idea of the pressure I’m under here. The phone’s been ringing all morning. The parents have gone mad. I’ve even had journalists calling! We’re simply not equipped to handle something like this!”
Jeanette cracks her knuckles; she does that when she’s nervous, an old habit from her hockey days.
“So we just stay quiet?”
“Yes... No... We... Christ, we can’t add to the rumors and speculation. What’s wrong with people? Why can’t we all just wait until the investigation is finished? That’s why we have courts, isn’t it? We can’t set ourselves above the law, Jeanette, that isn’t our responsibility. If it turns out... If what this student is saying about Kevin... if it’s true... then time will tell. And if it isn’t, then we need to be sure we haven’t done anything stupid.”
Jeanette wants to scream, but doesn’t.
“What about Maya? If she comes to school today?”
The headmaster’s facial expression goes from sure to unsure to panic-stricken in the space of just a few words.
“She won’t, obviously. She wouldn’t. Do you think she will?”
“I don’t know.”
“She won’t. Surely she won’t? You don’t have her in any of your classes, do you?”
“No, but I’ve got half the players on the team. So exactly what do you want me to do?”
The headmaster throws his hands up in resignation. “What do you think?”
***
They’re sitting in the cafeteria, chairs touching, heads together. There’s fire in William Lyt’s eyes.
“Where the fuck is Benji? Has anyone seen him?”
They shake their heads. Lyt jabs his index finger down hard on the table.
“My mom’s arranged for us all to get a lift to Hed today, okay? We’re leaving just before lunch. Don’t mention it to anyone not on the team. If the teachers make a fuss, they’ll just have to talk to our parents. Okay?”
They nod. Lyt bangs his fist on the table.
“We’re going to show the bastards doing this, all of them, that we stand together. Because you know what this is, don’t you? It’s a conspiracy against the whole team. It’s jealousy. A conspiracy, and fucking jealousy.”
The boys nod in agreement, determined. They’ve all got dark circles under their eyes. Several of them have been crying. Lyt slaps them on the shoulder, one by one.
“We have to keep the team together now! The whole team!”
He looks directly at Bobo as he says this.
***
Amat is standing by his locker. It looks like he’s about to be sick inside it. Bobo heads toward him from the cafeteria and stops awkwardly behind him.
“We have to... keep the team together, Amat. Kevin is being released by the police today, so we’re going to our first classes, but then the whole team’s going to Hed together. It’s important that we all go as a group. To... show.”
***
They both avoid looking toward the row of lockers where Maya has hers. All the pupils going past stare at it without actually looking in that direction, a trick you soon pick up when you’re a teenager. The door of the locker is covered in black ink. Five letters. All she is to them now.
***
Kevin is led out through the door of the police station in Hed, hands holding onto him carefully as if he can’t walk on his own. On one side his dad, on the other his mom, and around them like a protective wall of flesh and blood is a group of middle-aged men in jeans and smart, tailored jackets, ties knotted as tightly as their fists are clenched. Most of them are sponsors of the club, two are board members, several are prominent businessmen and entrepreneurs in the region, one a local politician. But if anyone asks, they would never present themselves that way, just say: “Friends of the Erdahl family. Just friends of the family.” A few steps behind comes the junior team. One or two of them still look a bit boyish, but en masse they’re men. Silent and menacing. There to prove something, to someone.
Kevin’s mom tenderly wraps a blanket around his shoulders as they help him into the car. The men surrounding them don’t slap him on the back the way they usually do, they pat his cheek lovingly instead. Perhaps that makes it feel easier for them. As if it’s the boy who’s the victim.
***
Benji is sitting on a low wall twenty yards away. His cap is pulled down low over his forehead, his hood pulled up so that the shadows hide his face. None of the adults even notice him, but Kevin does. For a single second, just as his mother is wrapping the blanket around him and before the car door closes, his eyes meet those of his best friend. Until Kevin looks down.
***
By the time the cavalcade of cars following Kevin’s dad leaves Hed, Benji is already long gone. The only person left on the street outside the police station is Amat. He puts his headphones in, raises the volume, sticks his hands hard in his pockets, and sets off to walk all the way back to Beartown on his own.
***
Ana walks into the school dining room, the same storm of shrieks and clattering as usual. On a desert island in the corner sits Maya, alone, so isolated that no one has even sat down at the tables next to hers. Everyone is staring without looking. Ana walks toward her but Maya looks up, like a creature caught in a trap warning another not to get too close. Maya shakes her head softly. Ana’s footsteps shift the gravity of the whole planet with each step she takes, as she lowers her head and goes and sits down at another table, in a different corner. The shame of that moment will follow her until her dying day.
A group of older girls—Ana recognizes them from the kitchen at Kevin’s party—head toward Maya. First as if they’re pretending she doesn’t exist, then, in a flash, as if she’s the only thing that does. One of them steps forward with a glass in her hand. Maya sees the others position themselves as a barrier toward the rest of the room, so that even if everyone sees exactly what happens, everyone will be able to claim afterward, when the teachers ask, that their “view was obscured.” That they “didn’t see the incident.”
“As if anyone would want to rape YOU, you disgusting little bitch...”
Milk runs down Maya’s hair, drips down her face and down inside her top. The glass doesn’t break when the girl hits her across the brow with it, nor does her brow. For a fleeting moment Maya sees the fear in the girl’s eyes when she starts to worry she’s gone too far, that Maya might start bleeding and collapse on the floor. But Maya’s skin is thick. And her attacker’s eyes are soon filled with derision again. As if the person she attacked is no longer human.
***
Everyone sees it but no one sees it. The dining room is simultaneously filled with noise and utterly silent. Maya hears the giggling as a muffled roar in her ears. She sits there calmly with pain throbbing through her brow and forehead, and slowly wipes herself with the few small napkins on her tray. They quickly run out. She refuses to look around for more, but suddenly someone puts a thick pile down next to her. A different hand, almost as big as her own, starts wiping the table. She looks at him and then shakes her head, almost beseechingly.
“It’ll only get worse for you if you sit here,” she whispers.
“I know,” Leo says.
Her little brother sits down beside her and starts to eat. In a sea of stares, he seems unconcerned.
“So why do it, then?” his big sister asks.
Leo looks at her with their mother’s eyes.
“Because you and I aren’t like them. We aren’t the bears from Beartown.”