Chapter 12 I Am Prepared to Burn in Here
I Am Prepared to Burn in Here
Anyone who devotes his life to being the best at one single thing will be asked, sooner or later, the same question: “Why?” Because if you want to become the best at something, you have to sacrifice everything else.
So the very first time Kira met Peter, that evening in the capital when Peter had just lost the biggest hockey game of his life and stumbled dejectedly into Kira’s parents’ restaurant, that was what she asked him: Why?
He could never answer it properly, and that drove her mad, but many years later, when they were married and had kids and a whole life together, she read a hundred-year-old quote from a mountaineer.
He was asked, “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” The mountaineer replied in bemusement, as if the question was ridiculous and the answer obvious, “Because it’s there. ”
Kira understood then, because why had she wanted to go to university when no one else in her family had been? Why had she chosen law when everyone had told her it would be too hard? Why? To find out if she could do it. Because she wanted to climb that damn mountain. Because it was there.
So she knows what’s happening now, possibly before Peter understands it himself.
She stands behind the front door and hears enough of his conversation with Richard Theo.
Her husband is going to find a way to save his club and make himself indispensible again.
The way he always does. Kira sits in the hallway until she hears the Volvo start up and watches through the window as Peter drives off.
The bottle of wine remains unopened. She puts the glasses back into the cupboard, and the skin beneath her wedding ring is cold when she goes to bed.
A night will pass, and tomorrow she will wake up and try to pretend that everything is fine, even though she knows that each day that passes now means it will be even longer to next year.
Peter drives aimlessly for hours, alone. Constantly asking himself the same questions: “How much is a hockey club worth? Who is it for? How much is it allowed to cost?” And somewhere beneath those are other questions: “What can I do apart from hockey? What sort of man would I be without it?”
He’s never loved anyone but Kira, and he knows she’d be delighted if he gave up ice hockey, but deep down: Would she really? She fell in love with a man with dreams and ambitions, so how will she look at him if the years just keep passing and he never amounts to anything?
When dawn breaks, the light pours over Beartown in the way Peter’s mother always said about summer: “As if the Lord God Himself were pouring orange juice over the treetops.” Peter is sitting outside the supermarket with his eyes closed, asking himself the same questions, over and over and over again.
The first thing Richard Theo said to him last night was “You don’t like my politics, do you?
” Peter replied thoughtfully, “With all due respect, I don’t agree with what you stand for.
You’re an opportunist.” Theo nodded and seemed not to take offense: “You’re only an opportunist until you win, then you’re the establishment.
” When he saw Peter’s look of distaste, he added, “With all due respect, Peter, politics is about realizing that the world is complicated even though people like you would prefer it to be simple.”
Peter shook his head. “You thrive on discord. Your type of politics creates conflict. Exclusion.” The politician smiled understandingly.
“And hockey? What do you think that does to everyone who isn’t on the inside?
Do you even remember me from school?” Peter cleared his throat awkwardly and muttered, “You were a few years below me, weren’t you?
” Theo shook his head, not angrily, not accusingly, but almost sadly. “We were in the same class, Peter.”
Peter doesn’t know if Theo planned that, to get him off balance, but it worked.
When Peter looked down at the ground, shamefaced, the councillor smiled happily and then explained very plainly why he had come to see Peter: “I have certain contacts in London. I know which company is going to buy the factory in Beartown.”
“I didn’t even know it was being sold!” Peter exclaimed, but the politician merely shrugged his shoulders modestly. “It’s my job to know things that no one else knows, Peter. I know a lot of things about you, too. That’s why I’m here.”
Leo wakes up in an empty house the next morning.
His mom has left a note on the kitchen table: “I’m at work, your dad’s at the rink, call if you need to.
There’s some extra money on the counter.
We love you! Mom x.” Leo isn’t a child anymore.
He notices the word “your” as well. Your dad. Not Mom’s other half.
The boy goes into his big sister’s room, closes the door, and curls up on the floor.
Maya’s notebooks are under the bed, full of poems and song lyrics, and he reads them through different types of tears.
Sometimes hers, sometimes his own. Maya was never like other big sisters who yelled and threw their younger siblings out of their rooms. When Leo was younger, he was allowed to come in here.
Maya let him sleep in her bed when he was frightened, when they eavesdropped on their parents in the kitchen and heard them fall apart when they talked about Isak.
The floor next to Maya’s bed was always Leo’s safest place.
But he’s older now, and Maya is spending the whole summer out in the forest with Ana.
Leo used to ask Maya’s advice about everything, so he doesn’t know who to ask now, about what a little brother is supposed to do for his big sister when she gets raped.
Or what he can do for his parents when they let go of each other. Or what to do with all the hatred.
At the back of a notepad under Maya’s bed he finds a page entitled “The Matchstick.” He very carefully tears it out and puts it into his pocket. Then he goes down to the beach.
He keeps scratching himself the whole time, hard and deep. He tugs his sleeves farther down over his hands.
Those rainy days could have been a chance for emotions in Beartown and Hed to cool off, but William Lyt has sweated his way through them.
His coach once said to him that he had never seen anyone play with “such a immense need for validation.” Maybe he meant it as an attempt to get William to talk about his complexes, but William took it as a compliment.
Throughout his childhood, William had fought to become Kevin’s best friend again.
He used to be, when they were little, driving pedal cars outside Kevin’s house and playing hockey indoors in William’s basement.
Then they started playing hockey, and suddenly Benji appeared.
Kevin never stood next to William in team photographs after that.
William did what he could to break Benji, teased him about his cheap secondhand clothes and called him “Sledge.” Until Benji whacked him in the face with the sledge, costing William both his front teeth and the respect of the changing room.
William’s mother demanded that Benji be punished for the “assault,” but the club did nothing.
When they got older, William tried to outshine Benji by boasting about girls he claimed to have slept with, making himself out to be a better friend at parties than that tree-climbing pothead.
He was lying, of course: he was a virgin longer than most of the team.
But one day Kevin came into the locker room and shouted, “William! Your girlfriends are waiting for you out here!” Confused, William got up and went out.
The corridor was empty, but there was a pack of ten thick white socks on the floor.
Kevin was roaring with laughter: “That way your mom won’t have to do the washing every time you ‘sleep’ with one of your ‘girlfriends’!
” William never forgot the way the team laughed at him.
Especially the way Benji did. William has spent years playing with a desperate need for validation, so now what?
Hed Hockey is a fresh start for him, a chance to finally become a leader.
He’s never going to let himself be the guy with the socks again.
While it’s been raining this summer he has been weight training nonstop and watching the video online of his red Hed Hockey flags burning.
Over and over again. He was hoping to find a tiny clue as to the identity of the cowardly bastard who had posted it, and eventually he thought he had spotted something: the hand holding the lighter in the video was small, a junior school kid’s, and when his sleeve slipped back over his wrist his lower arm looked as though it was covered with scratch marks.
William calls the biggest guys in his team. They buy cigarettes and set off for the beach.
The Matchstick
If there is a darkened room and you lock up a child who is terrified of the dark
If they are left there with their blackest fears because life is a bastard
If it was you in that room and you found a single matchstick in your pocket
You would light the match, even if the room smelled of gas
Only a few degrees separate rain from snow
All houses are built up but burn down
You have shown me things I fear more than death
So I am prepared to burn in here if I can do it with you
When the sun returns to Beartown, the beach once more fills with teenagers pretending not to stare at each other’s bodies.
At first everything is cheerful and noisy, but soon a frightened silence creeps along the shoreline.
Two youths climb into a tree and hang up new Hed Hockey flags.
William Lyt is prowling between the towels, and he stops at every junior school kid and holds out a cigarette. “Have you got a light?”