Vidar Rinnius is in his last year as a teenager. His psychologist’s report suggests that he has “a lack of impulse control,” but most people would probably expand that to say “a complete lack.” He’s always gotten into fights; sometimes he and his big brother Teemu tried to defend their mother, and sometimes they defended each other. And if there wasn’t anyone to defend, they would fight with each other. The bit about impulse control is true, Vidar has never been able to stop himself. About the time that other people get an idea into their heads along the lines of “I wonder what would happen if . . .” Vidar would already have done it. When Vidar was a boy, his coach once said that was what made him such a good goalie. “You just don’t know how to not stop those pucks!” Everyone says that Vidar’s problem is that he “doesn’t think,” but the opposite is actually the case. He can’t stop thinking.

He was twelve years old when he realized that he was alone. He went to another town with his brother and his brother’s friends when the Beartown A-team was playing an away game there. After the game, Teemu told Vidar to go to McDonald’s and wait there, because he had a feeling there was going to be trouble. Vidar was sitting there eating when a group of opposing fans burst in through the doors. Teemu and the Pack had been stopped by the police, and Vidar was sitting alone in a corner dressed in the wrong colors, and the opposing fans knew who he was. During the game they had seen the twelve-year-old yelling insults about their club and giving them the finger. “You’re not so tough without your brother, are you?” they cried as they attacked him.

That was when Vidar realized he was on his own. Everyone is. We are born alone, die alone, and fight alone. So Vidar fought. He thought he was going to die, he watched adults leave the fast-food restaurant, he might have been a child but no one tried to help him. The staff ran to the kitchen, he didn’t know how many enemies there were, all he knew was that he didn’t stand a chance. He lashed out anyway. Then Spider appeared out of nowhere, Vidar’s memory has him jumping through a window, but who knows? Spider defended him as if they were family, and after that they were. That was when Vidar realized that you don’t have to be alone. Not all the time. Not if you have a pack.

When Vidar was sixteen, they were at another away game. Spider had been found guilty of a number of minor offenses and was on probation. He and Vidar waited in a park while the rest of the Pack moved on, because Spider also had a head that was never quiet, and just like Vidar he had realized that everything slowed down sometimes if you took the right drugs. The police came around the corner on horseback, saw the two suspected hooligans, and Spider panicked and ran. He had drugs on him, as did Vidar. Vidar could have outrun Spider, but Spider was on probation and Vidar lacked impulse control. He couldn’t help himself from protecting someone he loved.

* * *

So while Spider ran off in one direction, Vidar ran in the other—toward the police. The charges filed against him afterward were numerous and varied, Vidar can’t even remember them all. Possession of narcotics was one, he knows that much. Violently resisting a public official was another, he thinks. Then there was something about his hitting a police horse. Vidar has never really liked horses. Violence against a horse on official service? How long do they lock you up for that?

That was how he ended up in the clinic, and that was where he met Baloo. He worked there and was called that because he was the same size and had the same posture as the bear in The Jungle Book. When they became friends, it was fairly natural that the sinewy, dark-haired Vidar would be given the nickname Mowgli. Perhaps that helped him, getting a different name. Perhaps he was able to pretend to be a different person then.

Baloo didn’t say much, but he realized that Vidar had a lot of energy that needed a positive outlet if it wasn’t to explode in a negative way. When he found out that the boy played hockey, he borrowed some goalie’s gear, and every time the fuses in Vidar’s head were threatening to explode in impulsive outbursts of rage about anything at all, Baloo would suggest calmly, “Okay, Mowgli, let’s go to the basement.” There was a storeroom in the basement, large enough for Baloo to stand by one wall throwing tennis balls as hard as he could toward Vidar at the other end. After a month or so Baloo laid a new floor, smooth enough to feel like ice, so he could fire real hockey pucks.

They played as often as they could; sometimes Baloo even broke the rules and played with Vidar at night. He did it because he hoped it would help Vidar to learn not to break all the other rules. Definitions of “care” and “punishment” are always changing, and Baloo did what he could to give them a defined shape. He rarely said much, but he was the one who protested loudest when Vidar was released. “He’s not ready!” Baloo declared. No one cared. Vidar had a powerful friend somewhere, someone who had made sure that all the documentation that was required suddenly materialized. So when Vidar left the unit Baloo just whispered sadly to him, “Stay on the ice, Mowgli. Concentrate on hockey.”

* * *

Maya and Leo are sitting at the computer, and in her memory it will feel as though they spent several days playing. She holds the words inside her for as long as she can, but in the end she can’t help saying, “Don’t fight for my sake again. I know you love me, but don’t fight for my sake. Fight for other things if you must. But not for me.”

“Okay,” her little brother promises.

They don’t say much after that. But sometimes Leo gets something wrong and is so angry that he hits himself in the thigh and yells “Idiot!” and then Maya laughs so loudly that her throat starts to hurt. A bit like old times for a short while. Simple.

But then Maya gets something right in the game and even Leo is impressed, so he turns to give her a high five. She doesn’t react in time, and his hand hits her shoulder instead.

Maya jumps so hard that she knocks her chair over, as if he’d burned her. She stands there gasping, eyes wide open, and curses herself and tries to pretend it was nothing. But Leo has already understood. Sometimes little brothers do that. Hardly anyone has touched Maya since the rape. It doesn’t matter that Leo is her brother; fear isn’t logical, the body reacts independently of the brain.

Leo switches the computer off. “Get your jacket,” he says sternly.

“Why?” Maya wonders sheepishly.

“I’m going to show you something.”

* * *

When Vidar walks out from the unit, Teemu, Woody, and Spider are waiting outside in a car. Teemu has to give Spider a shove to get him to stop hugging Vidar. But he will never set foot in the apartment he has been given by the council’s housing association.

“I have to live at home. I have to help you count,” he tells his brother.

Teemu kisses him on the head.

* * *

The first thing Vidar wants to talk about? Beartown Ice Hockey! What does the team look like? What players have we got this year? Are we going to beat Hed? He’s the team’s keenest fan and—after his mom’s kitchen—the place he’s missed most is the standing area in the rink. Teemu can’t stop patting his younger brother on the shoulder and doesn’t even tell Vidar that he won’t need his place in the stand this year, that he’s going to get a chance to play instead. Teemu doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t want to make his brother nervous, and for a few short minutes his own happiness is pure and uncomplicated. He doesn’t want to spoil that.

Then Vidar asks about Benji Ovich. The last time the guys talked to Vidar, they told him that the new coach had made Ovich team captain, and they had been ecstatic at the time, because they regarded Benji as one of them. A Beartown kid who stood tall, took one hit, and meted out three in response. But when Vidar mentions his name both Spider and Woody fall silent. Their eyes harden, their words are worse.

“We’ve found out something about him . . .”

Vidar listens. The guys can’t bring themselves to use Benji’s name; they talk as if he’d died. Perhaps he has, at least in part, the person they thought he was. He’s no longer one of them.

Vidar may be unlike most of the members of the Pack because he doesn’t care who the hell anyone sleeps with, he never has. But the men in the black jackets aren’t talking about sexuality, Vidar knows that, they’re talking about trust and loyalty. Benji has pretended to be something he isn’t. He’s a fake, he can’t be trusted, and Spider and Woody think he’s shamed the Pack.

“We had his back, and all the time he wanted to screw us up the ass!” Spider snaps.

Vidar says nothing. When he was twelve or thirteen, just after Spider had fought for him in McDonald’s, Vidar asked, “Are we hooligans?” Spider shook his head seriously and replied, “No. We’re soldiers. I stand up for you, and you stand up for me. We haven’t got anything if we can’t trust each other a thousand percent. Get it?” Vidar got it. The members of the Pack have held together all their lives, and you don’t build up that sort of friendship without complex sacrifices.

They have different reasons to hate Benji. Some are disgusted, and some feel betrayed; some are just worried about what opposing fans are going to sing about them now. Some have the bear tattooed on their necks, and how much do you have to love something to do that? So Vidar says nothing. He’s just glad to be going home, that everything will be going back to normal.

And when Teemu leans forward and whispers, “The new coach is holding an open A-team tryout for you. If you’re good enough, you’ll be allowed to play!” Vidar’s joy sings so loudly inside his head that there’s no room for him to think about anything else.

* * *