The windows of the Erdahl family house are rattling from overstrained loudspeakers, the ground floor fills with bodies at the same rate as if they were being thrown in through a hole in the ceiling. Most of the players are already hopelessly hammered, and the majority of the other guests aren’t far behind. They aren’t novices when it comes to parent-free houses. Everyone is drinking from disposable cups, all the pictures have been removed from the walls, fragile objects moved, the furniture covered in plastic. Two of the juniors take turns guarding the staircase all night to stop anyone going upstairs. Say what you like about Kevin, but just like his coach, he believes in preparation and planning, and doesn’t leave anything to coincidence. The cleaner is coming first thing tomorrow. She gets paid well not to say anything to his parents, and on a night like this one he knows the neighbors will go to bed with earplugs and pretend they weren’t home if anyone asks.

No longer does anyone question the fact that he seems to be the only person not enjoying his own party. In the living room teenagers are drinking and singing as they shed their clothing at an ever-increasing rate, but on the other side of the thick, heavily insulated walls, the garden is almost silent. The sweat is dripping from Kevin’s face as he goes on firing shot after shot after shot at the goal. He can never wind down after a match, but at least he’s not so violent if they’ve won. If they’ve lost, the terrace and little rink end up littered with broken sticks and shattered glass. As usual, Benji is sitting perfectly calm at a cast-iron table, rolling cigarettes nimbly between his fingers to get the tobacco out without breaking the paper. He fills the empty tube with weed, twists the end shut, carefully puts the filter between his teeth, removes it, and replaces it with a thinly rolled piece of cardboard. He has to do it this way because the woman who owns the tobacconist’s in Beartown is the sister of the school’s headmaster, so he can’t buy loads of cigarette papers but not an equivalent quantity of tobacco without questions being asked. Ordering online would be pointless; Benji’s mother checks all the mail that arrives at the house like a sniffer dog. So, even though no one has ever seen Kevin smoke, a few years ago he started to charge an admission fee of two cigarettes from everyone attending his parties, so that Benji has something to roll his joints with. Oddly enough Kevin finds it relaxing, watching his idiotic best friend focus so intently on his drugs.

Kevin grins and says, “I’m going to sell you into child labor in Asia—those agile fingers could stitch footballs faster than any other little kid’s.”

“Do you want me to sew a bigger net for you so you can actually hit the goal every now and then?” Benji wonders, then ducks down like a shot without even looking up to avoid the puck that Kevin fires over his head. It hits the fence behind him, making it sway for several minutes.

“Don’t forget to roll some for the housecleaner,” Kevin reminds him. Benji hasn’t forgotten. This isn’t the first party they’ve hosted.

*

Amat walks into the house and can’t help gawking.

“Okay, seriously? Just ONE family lives here?”

Bobo and Lyt laugh and push him toward the kitchen. Lyt is already so drunk that he couldn’t put a magnet on a fridge door. They’re drinking “knockshots.” Amat doesn’t know what’s in them, but they taste of moonshine and throat lozenges, and every time you down one you have to beat your fists on each other’s chests and roar “KNOCKSHOT!” It feels a lot more logical after five or six of them. Most of the kids are doing it.

“You can fuck any girl you like here tonight; they’re all hockey-whores when we win,” Lyt slurs, gesturing toward the throng of bodies inside the house, then, just a moment later, violently grabbing hold of Amat’s top and bellowing: “Unless Kevin or Benji or I want her. The first line has first pick!”

Amat will later remember Bobo looking as uncomfortable as him when Lyt says this. It’s the first time he’s ever seen Bobo look uncertain about anything. As Lyt lurches away, shouting, “I got an assist tonight! Who wants to fuck?” the other two boys are left forlornly facing each other in the kitchen. They drink more, beat each other’s chests, and yell, “KNOCKSHOTS!” to avoid having to talk, because they’re both convinced you can tell from a man’s voice if he’s a virgin.

*

Maya and Ana are among the last to arrive at the house, because Ana insisted on stopping to check her makeup a couple of dozen times during the walk over. Every month she becomes obsessed with a different part of her body, and right now it’s her cheekbones. Not long ago it was her hairline. That time she very solemnly asked Maya to help her find out if it was possible to have plastic surgery to make it lower.

Before they go inside the house Maya stops on the road to admire the view. From the street where the Erdahl family lives you can see right across the lake, all the way to the forest on the other side. It’s more of a wilderness there; the trees grow more densely and even the snow seems to gather in deeper drifts. Beyond it lie open white spaces so vast that you could stand there as a child convinced you were the last person on the planet. Kids in Beartown soon learn that that’s the place to go if you want to get up to no good out of sight of any adults. Maya knows that Ana came close to getting them both killed over there when they were little. When they were twelve she stole a snowmobile and drove Maya around all night. Maya has never admitted it, but she’s never felt more liberated than she did then.

A year later Ana stopped googling how to hot-wire snowmobiles and started googling diets instead. So Maya takes a moment now to mourn the girls who used to play on the other side of the lake before she goes into the party.

*

Kevin is standing on the terrace and sees Maya walk into the hall through the big windows. He’s looking right at her, and doesn’t notice Benji watching him, reading his reaction. As Kevin moves quickly toward the terrace door, Benji irritably packs his things in his backpack and follows him. They push their way through the living room without a word, toward different goals. Kevin stops in front of Maya and makes a real effort to stop the pounding of his heart being visible through his shirt, and she does her best not to show how happy she is, or how much she’s enjoying the fact that a whole gaggle of older girls in the kitchen are looking over and hating her.

“Madame,” Kevin smiles theatrically and gives a deep bow.

“Herr von Shitmagnet, how delightful to see you!” she laughs, bowing to him in return.

Kevin opens his mouth but stops himself when he sees Benji disappear through the front door. He looks almost as disappointed as the girls in the kitchen and Ana do.

Out in the street Benji pulls his backpack onto his shoulders, shields his lighter from the wind, and waits for the smoke to curl its way into his lungs. He hears Kevin call but doesn’t turn around.

“Come on, Benji, you freak! Don’t be stupid!”

“I don’t party with little girls, Kev, you know that. What are they? Fifteen?”

Kevin throws his arms out.

“Come off it, it wasn’t even me who invited them!”

Benji turns around and looks his best friend in the eye. It takes almost ten seconds before Kevin starts laughing. Nice try.

“You can’t lie to me, Kev.”

“Stay anyway?” Kevin asks with a grin.

Benji calmly shakes his head. Kevin blinks sadly.

“What are you going to do, then?”

“Have my own party.” Kevin looks at the backpack.

“Don’t smoke so much that you start seeing little pixies with knives and shit in the forest again, okay? I don’t want to have to come looking for you because you’re sitting huddled up in some fucking tree shouting and crying.”