* * *

Maya is over at Ana’s. These are the few minutes of peace and quiet before the text message arrives, the last moments between Kevin leaving town and all hell breaking loose again. They had three weeks when people almost seemed to forget that Maya existed. It was wonderful. And it will soon be over.

Ana checks that the gun cabinet is locked, then fetches the key and makes sure the weapons inside aren’t loaded. She lies to Maya and says she’s going to “clean them,” but Maya knows she does that only when her dad has started to drink again. The final sign that a hunter’s alcoholism has crossed the line is when he forgets to lock the cabinet or leaves a loaded weapon inside. That’s happened only once, when Ana was little and her mom had just moved out, but Ana has never quite stopped worrying.

Maya is lying on the floor with her guitar on her chest, pretending not to understand. Ana carries the burden of being the child of an alcoholic, and it’s a lonely struggle.

“Hey, idiot?” Ana eventually says.

“Yeah, what, you moron?” Maya smiles.

“Play something,” Ana demands.

Maya giggles. “Don’t give me orders, I’m not your musical slave.”

Ana grins. You can’t cultivate that sort of friendship, it only grows in the wild. “Please?”

“Learn to play yourself, you lazy cow.”

“I don’t need to, you idiot, I’m holding a rifle. Play or I’ll shoot!”

Maya roars with laughter. They had promised each other that. That when summer came, the men in this stupid town weren’t going to take their laughter away from them.

“Nothing miserable, though!” Ana adds.

“Shut it! If you want to listen to your stupid, bouncy blippety blip music you can get a computer,” Maya says, giggling.

Ana rolls her eyes.

“Okay, I’m still holding a gun! If you play your junkie music and I shoot myself in the head, it’ll actually be your fault!”

They both roar with laughter. And Maya plays the happiest songs she knows, even if in Ana’s opinion they’re really not that happy at all. But this summer she takes what she can get.

* * *

They’re interrupted by two short buzzing sounds from their phones. Then two more, followed by another two.

* * *

Being the general manager of a hockey club isn’t a full-time job. It’s three. When Peter’s wife, Kira, can’t be bothered to hide her irritation, she usually says, “You’ve got two marriages, one with hockey and one with me.” She doesn’t add that half of all marriages end in divorce. She doesn’t have to.

The local politicians in the conference room will downplay this meeting, say it was “only about sports.” The biggest lie Peter has ever managed to make himself believe is that hockey and politics aren’t linked. They always are, but when politics work in our favor we call it “cooperation,” and when it favors others we call it “corruption.” Peter looks out of the window. There are always flags raised in front of the council building so the bastards inside can see which way the wind is blowing.

“The council . . . we . . . it has been decided that we should apply to host the World Skiing Championships. Beartown and Hed together,” one of the councillors says.

He’s trying to look authoritative now, which is hard when you’re simultaneously picking muffin crumbs from your jacket pocket. Everyone knows that he’s been trying to get funding for a conference hotel for years, and the World Championships would give him the chance. As luck would have it, this particular councillor’s brother-in-law works at the Ski Federation, and his wife runs a business that arranges hunting trips and “survival courses” in the forest for wealthy businessmen from the big cities who evidently can’t survive without a minibar and spa center. Another councillor adds, “We need to think about the region’s image, Peter. The taxpayers are worried. All this negative publicity has created insecurity . . .”

He says it as if insecurity is the problem. As if it isn’t THE PROBLEM that’s the problem. He pours Peter some coffee; a different sort of man might have thrown the cup at the wall, but Peter has no violence in him. He never even fought on the ice when he was a player. These men used to sneer at him for that behind his back, but they really can’t be bothered to do it out of sight anymore.

They know that Peter’s weakness is loyalty, that he feels he owes his town. Hockey here has given him everything, and it’s good at reminding him about that. A poster in the changing room at the rink says, “A great deal is expected of anyone who’s been given a lot.”

Another councillor, who prides himself on being the sort of man who “tells it like it is,” says, “Beartown has no junior team, and not much of an A-team! You’ve already lost all your best players and almost all your sponsors to Hed. We have to think of the taxpayers!”

One year ago the same councillor was asked a critical question by the local paper about the council’s plans to finance an expensive new arena. He answered without a trace of hesitation, “You know what Beartown’s taxpayers want? They want to watch hockey!” They’re so easy to blame, no matter what your opinion might be: taxpayers.

The same money will end up in the same pockets, the pockets are just moving town to Hed. Peter wants to protest but can’t bring himself to. There’s always been graft involved in council funding of sports, not just as straightforward “grants” but also tucked away as “loans” and “subsidies.” Like when the council “rented” the parking spaces outside the rink, even though the council already owned the land. Or when the council paid to “rent the ice rink for the use of the general public” for all the members of the “general public” who were desperate to skate between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. every Wednesday. At one point, one of the hockey club’s board members was simultaneously on the board of the council’s property company and got the company to buy expensive “sponsorship packages” for hockey games that were never played. Peter knew all about it. The former management of the hockey club was always corrupt. Peter had argued about it at first but eventually had to accept that those were just “the rules of the game.” In a small town, sports doesn’t survive without the support of the regional council. He can’t start shouting about corruption now, because the politicians know exactly how much he knows.

* * *

They’re going to liquidate his club. They just want to make sure he’s going to keep his mouth shut.

* * *

The red hats of the well-built eighteen-year-olds carry the emblem of a charging bull. They’re taking up more and more space on the beach, stretching the boundaries to see if anyone dare try to stop them. Leo’s hatred for them knows no limits.

When Kevin left town, the story changed, but his old friends quickly adapted to new truths. All they needed was a new leader. And William Lyt, a forward on the first line and Kevin’s former neighbor, put himself up and gave them the version of history they were longing for. He’d heard his parents repeat it at the kitchen table for several months: “We’re the victims here, we had victory in the final stolen from us. We would have won if Kevin had played! But Peter Andersson insisted on bringing politics into it! And then he tried to blame US for the fact that that psychopath raped that girl, even though we haven’t done a damn thing! And you know why? Because Peter Andersson has always hated us. Everyone listens to him just because he was once a pro in the NHL, as if that makes him so morally superior. But do you think Kevin would have been prevented from playing in the final if it hadn’t been Peter’s daughter? If any of our sisters had been raped, do you think Peter would have called the cops to pick Kevin up the same day as the final? Peter’s a hypocrite! Kevin’s just an excuse, Peter never wanted boys from the Heights in Beartown Hockey, and you know why? Because some of us happened to be born into families with money, and that doesn’t suit the myth of Peter Andersson as the great savior!”

William’s parents’ words echo from his lips. Every season his mom, Maggan Lyt, gets annoyed that the club promotes kids from the poor parts of town as figureheads but when it’s time for the bills to be paid it’s always the parents from the Heights who are expected to open their wallets. “When are people going to get tired of paying for Peter Andersson’s social experiments?” she complained to anyone who would listen back in the spring, when news spread that the club was starting a hockey school for four-and five-year-old girls.

“They want a girls’ club!” William bellows on the beach.

The words work because they’re easy to understand. Everyone in his team has felt under attack and misunderstood since the rape. So it’s a relief to hear that Peter Andersson hates them, because the easiest reason to hate him back is the conviction that he started it.

* * *