For years David’s deepest shame was the fact that he could never get over the jealousy he felt whenever Sune and Peter would go into Peter’s office without inviting him along. His love of the camaraderie of the sport was grounded in a fear of exclusion. So eventually he did what all ambitious pupils do to their teachers: he rebelled.

He was twenty-two when he began coaching this group of seven-year-old boys, Kevin, Benji, and Bobo among them. He has been coaching them for ten years now, melding them into one of the best junior teams in the whole country, and he has finally realized that he can no longer stay loyal to Sune. The players are more important; the club is bigger than that.

David knows what people in the town are going to say when he gets Sune’s job. He knows a lot of them aren’t going to be happy. But they’re going to like the results.

Lars blows his whistle to signal the end of the practice so close to Zacharias’s ear that the boy trips over his own stick. Lars grins unkindly.

“And worst in training today was, as usual, little Miss Zach. So you get the honor of collecting the pucks and cones!”

Lars leaves the ice with the rest of the boys’ team trailing behind him. A few of them laugh at Zacharias and he tries to give them the finger, but it’s surprisingly hard to do that when you’re wearing hockey gloves. Amat has already started circling the ice to gather the pucks. Their friendship has always been like that: as long as Zacharias is left on the ice, Amat doesn’t leave.

Once Lars is out of sight, Zacharias gets angrily to his feet and mimics the coach’s exaggeratedly forward-leaning style of skating as he scratches himself hard between the buttocks:

“COLLECT THE PUCKS! DEFEND THE FORTRESS! DON’T GET FUCKED UP THE ASS! NO ASS-FUCKING ON MY ICE! HOLD ON . . . WHAT THE . . . ? WHAT’S THIS? IN MY ASS?! IS IT A FUCK? IS IT A LITTLE FUCK? THERE’S A LITTLE FUCK IN MY ASS, AMAT! I ORDER YOU TO GET IT OUT AT ONCE!”

He tries to reverse into Amat, who slips nimbly out of the way, laughing, leaving Zach to back straight into the open team bench and land in a heap.

“Do you want to stay and watch the juniors practice?” Amat wonders, even though he knows Zach would never do that of his own accord.

“Stop saying ‘juniors’ when you mean ‘watch Kevin.’ I know he’s your idol, Amat, but I have actually got a life. Carpe diem! Laughter and love!”

Amat sighs.

“Fine, forget it . . .”

“IS THAT KEVIN ERDAHL IN YOUR ASS, AMAT?” Zacharias cries.

Amat taps his stick restlessly on the ice.

“Do you want to do something this weekend, then?”

He really does try to make the question sound nonchalant. As if he hadn’t actually been thinking about it all day. Zacharias gets up from the bench with the body language of a baby elephant that’s been shot with a tranquilizer dart.

“I’ve got two new games! But you’ll have to bring your own handset, seeing as you broke my other one last time.”

Amat looks offended by his friend’s recollection of events, given that he had broken the handset with his forehead when Zacharias threw it at him in a fit of temper because he was losing. He clears his throat and collects the last of the pucks.

“I just thought we could go . . . out.”

Zacharias looks as if his friend has suggested pouring poison in each other’s ears.

“Go out where?”

“Just . . . out. People go . . . out. That’s what they do.”

“You mean Maya does?”

“I mean PEOPLE.”

Zacharias gets up on his skates and starts dancing on tiptoe and singing:

“Amat and Maya, sitting in a treeee, Amat squirts her with his seeeed . . .”

Amat slaps a puck hard into the boards beside him, but can’t help laughing.

*

David is standing with Lars in the corridor outside the locker room. “It’s a mistake!” Lars insists.

“However unlikely it might sound, I heard you the first twelve times. Go and get the juniors ready for practice,” David replies coldly.

Lars lumbers off. David massages his temples. Lars isn’t an entirely useless assistant coach. David can put up with the shouting and swearing because that’s part of locker-room culture, and, dear God, some of the guys on the team do need a tyrant at practice to make sure they actually put the pads on the right parts of their body. But sometimes David can’t help wondering how the junior team will function if Lars is going to take charge of it. The man knows no more about hockey than the average noisy fan in the stands, and David could go out into the street, throw a stone, and whatever he hit that had a pulse would know as much as them.

Amat and Zach are laughing as they approach but fall silent abruptly when they catch sight of David. The boys squeeze against the wall so as not to get in his way. Amat visibly starts when David holds up his hand.

“Amat, isn’t it?”

Amat nods.

“We . . . we were just collecting the pucks . . . we were only messing about . . . I mean, I know Zach was imitating Lars but it was only a j . . .”

David looks baffled. Amat gulps.

“Actually, well, if you didn’t see anything, then . . . it was . . . nothing.”

David smiles. “I’ve seen you sitting in the stands during the junior team’s training sessions. You’ve been there more often than some of the players.”

Amat nods nervously. “I . . . Sorry . . . I just want to learn.”

“That’s good. I know you’ve been studying Kevin’s moves; he’s a good example. You ought to check out how he always looks at the defenseman’s skates in any one-on-one situation: as soon as they angle their skates and shift their center of gravity, Kevin taps the puck and makes his move.”

Amat nods dumbly. David is looking him right in the eye, and the boy isn’t used to adult men doing that.

“Anyone can see that you’re fast, but you need to practice your shooting. Practice waiting for the goalie to move, shoot against the flow. Can you learn that, do you think?”

Amat nods. David slaps him hard on the shoulder.

“Good. Learn it fast, because you’re training with the juniors in a quarter of an hour. Go into the locker room and get a jersey.”

Amat’s hand moves instinctively toward one ear, as if he needs to clean it out to make sure he hasn’t misheard. David has already walked off.

*

Zacharias waits until the coach has swung around the corner before wrapping his arms around his friend’s neck. Amat is hyperventilating. Zacharias clears his throat:

“Seriously, though, Amat . . . if you had to choose between sleeping with Maya and sleeping with Kevin, you’d pick . . . ?”

“Shut up,” Amat says, laughing.

“I’m just checking!” Zacharias grins, then pats him on his helmet and growls: “Kill them, my friend. Kill them!”

Amat takes a breath as deep as the lake behind the rink, then for the first time walks past the boys’ team’s locker room and steps across the threshold into the juniors’. He is met instantly by a hurricane of booing and swearing and a chorus of “GET OUT OF HERE, YOU FUCKING MAGGOT!” from the older players, but when David emerges from the hallway a silence so complete settles that you could hear a jockstrap drop. David nods to Lars and Lars reluctantly tosses a jersey at Amat. It stinks. Amat has never been happier.

*