*

All kinds of things, big and small, can make you love being part of a team. When Kevin was at primary school he went with his dad to the Christmas market in Hed. His dad had a meeting, so Kevin went around on his own looking at the displays and stalls. He got lost and was five minutes late getting back to the car, and his dad had already left. Kevin had to walk all the way back to Beartown on his own in the dark. The snowdrifts by the sides of the road reached his thighs and it took him half the night to get home. He staggered, wet and exhausted, into the silent house. His parents were already asleep. His dad wanted to teach him the importance of being punctual.

Six months later the hockey team was playing in a tournament in another town. The rink was the biggest the boys had seen, and on the way to the bus Kevin got lost. The older brothers of three of the players in a team Kevin had humiliated a couple of hours earlier found him, dragged him into a washroom, and beat him up. Kevin will never forget the look of astonishment on their faces when another primary-school kid showed up and took on all three of them in a storm of kicks and punches. Benji and Kevin were both covered with blood and bruises when they arrived at the bus more than forty-five minutes late. David was standing there waiting. He had told the rest of the team to leave without him; he’d catch the train with Benji and Kevin when they showed up. But every player on the team had refused to get on the bus. They weren’t old enough to know their multiplication tables, but they knew that a team didn’t mean anything if you couldn’t depend on each other. That’s both a big and a small thing. Knowing that there are people who will never abandon you.

Kevin and Benji are alone when they enter the school, but exert a magnetic pull as they move along the corridor. Bobo and the other juniors flock around them instantly, and within ten paces they have become a group of twelve people. Kevin and Benji don’t think it odd, the way you don’t if something’s been going on your whole life. It’s impossible to say what it is that catches Kevin’s attention, because the day before a game there’s usually nothing on the planet that can distract him, but as he passes a row of lockers his eyes meet hers. He stumbles into Benji, Benji swears at him, Kevin doesn’t hear.

*

Maya has just put her bag in her locker, and when she turns around and Kevin’s eyes meet hers she closes the locker door so quickly she nips her hand. It’s over in a moment—the corridor fills with bodies, and Kevin disappears in the crowd. But the friends you have when you’re fifteen years old obviously aren’t going to miss a thing like that.

“Sooo . . . are you interested in hockey all of a sudden now?” Ana teases.

Embarrassed, Maya rubs her hand.

“Shut up. What the . . . ?”

Then her face breaks into a brief smile:

“Just because you don’t like peanut butter doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t like . . . peanuts.”

Ana laughs so hard she ends up spraying the inside of her locker with smoothie.

“Okay, fine! But if you do talk to Kevin, the least you can do is introduce me to Benji, yeah? He’s . . . mmm . . . I could eat him all up. Like . . . butter.”

Maya’s brow furrows with disgust, then she pulls the key from her locker and starts to walk off. Ana watches her and throws her arms out.

“What? So YOU’RE allowed to say things like that, but not me?”

*

“You know he doesn’t come up with those jokes himself, don’t you? He’s not smart enough. He nicks them from the Internet,” Zacharias mutters, humiliated, as he shakes the snow from his clothes.

Lifa picks up his cap and brushes the snow off it. Amat holds his hand out in an attempt to calm his friend down.

“I know you hate Bobo, but next year we’ll be juniors . . . It’ll be better then.”

Zacharias doesn’t reply. Lifa flashes him a look, somewhere between anger and resignation. Lifa stopped playing hockey when they were younger. He kept being told he had to be able to handle the “banter” in the locker room, which turned out to be a very useful argument, because when Lifa gave up, everyone could blame that. It was his problem, not hockey’s. If Zacharias’s parents hadn’t loved the game as much as they did, he wouldn’t have carried on playing either, and if Amat hadn’t been so good, even he might not have been able to summon up the enthusiasm to keep playing.

“It’ll be better when we’re juniors,” Amat repeats.

Zacharias says nothing. He knows very well that he won’t get a place on the junior team, and that this is his last year playing hockey. Amat is the only person who hasn’t yet realized that he’s about to leave his best friend behind.

The silence doesn’t bother Amat, who opens the door and turns a corner in the corridor, after which he can only hear a muffled rumble in his ears. She gives him tunnel vision.

“Hi, Maya!” he exclaims, a little too loudly.

She turns around fleetingly, notes his presence, but nothing more than that. When you’re fifteen years old, no look can hurt you more.

“Hi, Amat,” she replies distractedly, and is gone before she even gets to the end of his name.

Amat stands there, trying not to look at Zacharias and Lifa, knowing they won’t be making much effort not to laugh.

“Hiiii, Maayaaa . . . ,” Zacharias mimics, as Lifa giggles.

“Fuck off, Zach,” Amat mutters.

“Sorry, sorry, but you’ve been doing this since primary school and I was nice to you for the first eight years you were in love with her, so now I think I’ve earned the right to make fun of you.”

Amat walks toward his locker, his heart sinking in his chest like a lead weight. He loves that girl more than he loves skating.

8

It’s only a game. It only resolves tiny, insignificant things. Such as who gets validation. Who gets listened to. It allocates power and draws boundaries and turns some people into stars and others into spectators. That’s all.

*