Benji picks the stocky hunter up from the ground, draping one of his arms around his own neck. “Better than nothing, I suppose . . .”
Then he half carries, half drags Ana’s dad home, while she walks alongside and eventually plucks up the courage to ask, “Do you hate Maya?”
“No,” Benji replies.
He doesn’t play stupid, he understands the question, and Ana falls in love with him for that. She clarifies: “I don’t mean, do you hate her for being raped. I mean . . . do you hate her for existing? If she hadn’t been there that night . . . you’d still have everything, your best friend, your team . . . your life was perfect. You had everything. And now—”
Benji replies in a neutral tone of voice, “I ought to hate Kevin if I was going to hate anyone.”
“So do you?”
“No.”
“Who do you hate, then?” Ana asks, but she knows.
Benji hates his own reflection. So does Ana. Because they should have been there. They should have stopped it. Things shouldn’t have gone completely to hell for their friends. It should always have been Ana and Benji. Because they aren’t the kind of people who get happy endings.
* * *
It’s hard to blame Ana, precisely for that reason. Everyone has moments when her skin’s longing for someone else’s touch becomes unbearable.
* * *
They’re at her home. Benji has just laid her dad on his bed and has helped her empty the kitchen of bottles, and it’s impossible to get angry with a sixteen-year-old girl for the fact that her feelings get too much for her brain to be able to deal with.
Benji touches her shoulder, very briefly, and says, almost inaudibly, “We mustn’t end up like our dads.”
He walks toward the door, and Ana runs after him, grabs his arms, and presses her body against his. Her tongue touches his lips, she takes his hand and leads it under her shirt. She doesn’t know what she’ll hate him for most afterward: the fact that he didn’t want her or that he was so gentle when he let her know.
Benji doesn’t push her away; he could have thrown a grown man across the kitchen, but he barely touches her as he slips away. The look in his eyes isn’t angry, it’s sympathetic, and, oh, how she’s going to hate him for that. That he didn’t even let her feel that she was being rejected, only that he felt sorry for her.
“Sorry. But you don’t want . . . this isn’t what you want, Ana . . . ,” Benji whispers.
He closes the front door silently behind him when he leaves. Ana sits on the floor, racked with tears. She calls Maya. Her friend answers on the tenth ring.
“Aaaaana? What the hell? Go to hell your stupid wine is finished just so you know! You didn’t come! You said you were coming to the island, and you didn’t come!”
Ana drops everything when she realizes that Maya is drunk. She ends the call and rushes out of the house.
* * *
It’s incredibly hard to blame her for what is about to happen. But also very, very easy.
* * *
Politics is difficult to understand. Perhaps no one does, not completely. We rarely know why a society’s bureaucracy works the way it does, because it’s impossible to charge anyone with corruption when everything could just as easily be blamed on incompetence. A telephone call is made to a police station, a police officer and a woman from an official body go into another room. Kira is furious and up for a fight, but when the police officer comes back, she is informed that Leo is free to go home. “Considering the boy’s age.” Kira yells that that’s precisely what she’s been shouting for more than an hour, but then she realizes that that’s exactly what they want. They’re going to make out that it was her, the lawyer, who managed to persuade them. But she can hear that it isn’t true. Someone made a phone call.
When Kira, Peter, and Leo leave the police station, Peter sees a car he recognizes. He tells Kira to go on ahead of him with Leo. Kira tries to understand what that means but plays dumb. Peter waits until his wife and son are out of sight before he walks over to the black car. He taps on the window, and the man dressed in a black suit opens the door.
“Hello, Peter. What a surprise to bump into you,” the politician says.
Peter is taken aback that someone could lie so naturally. “My son has been questioned by the police about a load of hooligans fighting, but suddenly they ran out of questions. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, I suppose?” Peter snaps.
He can’t hide his feelings, not the anger or the worry or his shortcomings as a parent. Richard Theo silently despises him for that. “Of course not,” he says amiably.
“Let me guess: you’ve got a lot of friends?” Peter demands angrily.
Richard Theo wipes his saliva from the sleeve of his jacket. “You’ve got friends, too, Peter. You’ll soon be told the time and location of the press conference at which the factory’s new owner will be presented. There’ll be politicians there, representatives of the local business community, important people from around the district. As your friend, I’d appreciate it if you were there, too.”
“And that’s where I have to speak out against the Pack?”
Richard Theo pretends to be horrified. “You’re going to speak out against violence, Peter. Violence that your own son seems to be getting dragged into!”
Peter feels as though he’s suffocating. “Why are you so keen to take on the Pack?”
Theo replies, “Because they rule with the help of violence. A democracy can’t allow that. Anyone who becomes powerful because they’ve physically fought their way to the top needs to be opposed. You can always be absolutely certain of one thing when it comes to power, Peter: no one who gets their hands on it ever lets go of it voluntarily.”
Peter hates the sound of his own voice when he asks, “And what do I gain from that?”
“You? You get control of the club. You get to spend the sponsor’s money how you like. They’ll even let you handpick a board member!”
“A board member?”
“Whoever you like.”
Peter glances down at his shoes. Then after a while he whispers, “Okay.”
He will soon be standing there at that press conference. Saying everything that needs to be said. No way back. It’s him against the Pack now.
* * *
Richard Theo drives away without feeling evil, merely pragmatic. A man like Teemu Rinnius can affect the way people vote in elections. Theo needs to give him something in exchange. The only thing Teemu cares about is his standing area in the rink. Richard Theo can’t give that back to him unless it’s been taken away from him first.
* * *
Ana doesn’t set out through the door with the intention of hurting anyone, she just can’t bear to stay in the house. She doesn’t even mean to follow Benji through the forest, she just happens to catch sight of his white top ahead of her through the trees; he’s walking slowly, as if his feet hadn’t quite reached agreement with the rest of his body. Ana is good at tracking animals, it’s an instinct, so she follows him. Perhaps she just wants to know where Benji’s going, if he’s on his way to see a girlfriend. She manages to tell herself that it might feel easier then, if she sees him with someone ten divisions more attractive than her. The forest soon becomes dark, but she follows the red glow of his cigarette and the sweet smoke he leaves behind him.
Halfway between Beartown and Hed he turns off and follows a track down to the campsite. He stops at one of the cabins, knocks on the door. Ana recognizes the man who opens it. He’s a teacher at school. Afterward Ana won’t remember what she thought or felt when she watches Benji wrap his body around the man’s and kiss him.
* * *
It’s easy to blame Ana for everything she does now. She’s in pain, but perhaps everyone is. She’s never felt more alone, and loneliness drives everyone to make bad decisions, but perhaps none more than sixteen-year-olds. She pulls out her phone and takes pictures of Benji and the teacher. Then she posts the photographs online.
&nbs
p; * * *
And all hell breaks loose.
31
Darkness
BANG!
* * *
We always speak of secrets as if they’re personal possessions. “My” secret. But they’re that only for as long as they remain out of other people’s reach. We can’t almost lose them—just altogether or not at all. As soon as they slip out into the world, they become an earthquake, an avalanche, a tsunami. It may take only a single rash comment, a fleeting thought, or some photographs posted online by someone with a wounded heart, but that sets the stones rolling and the snow loses its grip and the wall of water becomes insurmountable before we realize how it happened, and from then on it’s impossible to hold everything back. Like capturing the scent of July and trying to hold it in your cupped hands. Everyone knows now. Everyone knows what no one was supposed to know.
* * *
Benji is woken up by it.
* * *
BANG! One single bang, but so hard that the walls of the cabin shake. Then silence. The teacher rolls over sleepily in bed, but Benji is already out of the bedroom, crouching down as he heads toward the door. He doesn’t know why, but afterward he will remember that he was already filled with dread. He knew this was idiotic when he first arrived, when they kissed in the doorway.
One day he’ll figure out that it was because he was in love. That’s why he wasn’t more cautious. He opens the door of the cabin, peers out, but whoever is waiting in the darkness doesn’t make him or herself known. He’s on the point of turning and going back inside when he sees where the noise came from.
* * *
Bang.
* * *
Like the sound of a puck hitting a wall or a heart thudding against a rib cage or a knife being embedded in the wood of a cabin door on a campsite. A plain piece of paper; three letters; the one in the middle is “A,” and the triangle at the top of the letter is where the knife has been driven through into the wood.
FAG
* * *
Ana wanders around in the forest as if she were in a fever. The snow is falling fast, early, and deep this year even for this part of the country: an autumn storm is on its way in. It’s so easy to underestimate the power of the cold, how quickly it can kill you. It’s a soft-spoken murderer whispering that you can sit down and rest for a while if you’re tired. Tricking you into thinking you’re sweating, encouraging you to take your clothes off. Snow and freezing temperatures can summon up the same hallucinations as blazing sun in a desert.
Ana knows all that because she’s more at home in the forest than the town. More squirrel than human, as Maya usually teases her. When Ana is among trees, she leaves reality behind, time stops, and what happens here could never affect life in town. That’s what she’s always liked to imagine, and that’s why the full impact of what the hell she’s just done doesn’t hit her until she’s almost home. Only when she reaches the door of her dad’s house does the panic hit her, hard and brutal, and her chest hurts so much that she’s left short of breath. It’s so easy to think that what we post online is like raising your voice in a living room when it’s actually more like shouting from the rooftops. Our fantasy worlds always have consequences for other people’s realities.
Ana pulls out her phone and deletes the pictures of Benji and the teacher, but it’s too late. She’s already spread their secret like ash across the sea, and it can never be taken back.
* * *
Our spontaneous reactions are rarely our proudest moments. It’s said that a person’s first thought is the most honest, but that often isn’t true. It’s often just the most stupid. Why else would we have afterthoughts?
* * *
Peter bangs on the door of the Bearskin early in the morning. Ramona opens a window in the apartment upstairs, wrapped in a dressing gown and a lot of anger.
“You’d better hope the bar’s on fire, lad! Waking decent folk at this time of day!”
But she relents because Peter was a boy, too, once upon a time. She called him so many times to come and take his drunk father home that Peter himself has hardly touched a drop since. His whole life has been shaped by the fact that he tries to mend everything. Make everyone happy. Hide other people’s mistakes. Take responsibility. He confesses, “There’s going to be a press conference, Ramona. The factory’s getting new owners, foreigners, they’re the club’s ‘mysterious sponsor’ that everyone’s been talking about. And I’m going to have to stand there and tell the reporters I’m going to get rid of the standing area and . . . get rid of the hooligans.”
It’s possible that Ramona is shocked, but if she is she doesn’t let it show. She lights a cigarette. “What’s that got to do with me?”
Peter clears his throat. “They’re going to let me handpick one board member. Anyone I like.”
“I’m sure Tails will be excellent,” Ramona snorts.
“Tails would rather it was you. So would I,” Peter replies.
A little puff of smoke emerges from one of Ramona’s nostrils, the only indication that she’s surprised.
“Have you been hit in the head, lad? You know I . . . given what you want to do to Teemu and the boys? They’re my boys! That standing area is—it’s their damn club, too!”
Peter stands there straight-backed, even if his voice gives up. “I’m doing everything I can for the good of the club. But I’ve been told that no one surrenders power voluntarily. So if I’m really going to try to convince myself that I’m doing this for unselfish motives, I need to put someone on the board who won’t always agree with me. Someone who’ll fight me.”
Ramona goes on smoking quietly. “If we both fight for what we believe in, then one of us will be out of a job at the end of it.”
Peter nods. “But if we both fight for the club’s best, the club will win.”
Ramona ties her dressing gown tighter. Thinks for a long time. Then she frowns. “Are you having breakfast?”
“What sort?” Peter asks.
Ramona grunts. “I’ve probably got some coffee somewhere. Or whatever it is you teetotal types drink.”
* * *
That’s how Ramona gets a seat on the board of Beartown Ice Hockey, but the two are interrupted before they have time to finish the discussion. Peter’s phone rings first. It’s Tails, asking “Have you heard about Benjamin?” That’s how Ramona finds out. She will bear the shame of her reaction for the rest of her life, as will Peter, because their very first thought is, “Not this, too!”
* * *
Our spontaneous reaction is often our most stupid.
* * *
Finding out the truth about people is like a fire, destructive and indiscriminate. The truth about Benji burns through Beartown and Hed, and everyone who has ever had the slightest reason to be jealous of him or dislike him can see a crack in his armor now. They stick their knives in as hard as they can, every last one of them.
Few people would have dared to say anything to Benji face-to-face, so they do what people always do: talk about him, not with him. He needs to be dehumanized, turned into an object. There are a thousand ways of doing that, but there’s none simpler than the one we almost always use: taking his name away from him.
So when “the truth” spreads, people don’t write “Benjamin” or “Benji” on their phones or computers. They write “the hockey player.” Or “the school pupil.” Or “the young man.” Or “the queer.”
Some will later claim that they don’t hate homosexuals, they just hate Benji. Many of them will claim that “We were just surprised that he, of all people . . .” Some will suggest that, “If there’d been any sort of . . . sign . . . it might have been handled better.”
Some will offer complex cultural analysis suggesting that the world of sports, and the hockey world in particular, symbolizes such deeply engrained masculine ideals that the shock is greater there. Others will claim that the reactions were nowhere near as strong as “the media” would like to think. That it’s all been exaggerated.
One voice might say, “Obviously, no one has anything against them”; another will add, “You just don’t want the town to . . . be full of them.” A few more will mutter, “Maybe it would be best if he moved, for his own sake, because there isn’t much for him here, is there? Better for him to go to a big city. For his sake, obviously. Not that I’ve got anything against them. Not at all. But . . . you know.”
Some of the jokes online are probably just that, jokes—that will be the excuse. “I always knew, my mom made me a meringue birthday cake when I was at primary school, and Benji only ate the bananas!” Others are more insinuating: “Wonder what he and Kevin got up to in the locker room when the others had all gone home?”
Everything that pours in after that is just more in the same vein. Text messages from pay-as-you-go cell phones and anonymous comments online: “Fag.” “Queer.” “Homo.” “Poof.” “Disgusting!” “Its not natural your sick!” “We always knew!” “No homos in Beartown!” “We’re going to find you and slice off your tattoo! The bear isn’t some gay symbol!” “No rapists or queers in Beartown!” “You’re sick, just like Kevin!” “Hope you get AIDS!” “Hope you die!” “Move away from here if you want to live!” “Next time the knife will end up in you, not the door!”
* * *
Maya is sitting at home in front of her computer. She’s reading everything the bastards are writing about Benji and remembers everything they’ve written about her. Nothing changes, everything just starts again. Maya’s dad used to listen to an old record where a guy sang about everything having cracks in it, because that’s how the light gets in. Maya looks at the pictures of Benji and the teacher over and over again, but it’s not Benji and the teacher she’s looking at. Back in the summer, when she was on the island with Ana, Maya played music on Ana’s phone, something with guitars and sad singing, and Ana yelled, “No junkie music on my island!” and Maya giggled as she held the phone out of reach and yelled, “No bleep-bleep music in the forest, it’s environmental pollution!” Ana tried to snatch her phone back. Maya jumped out of the way but ended up dropping it and it hit a rock. The glass of the camera lens cracked, not much but just enough so that all of Ana’s pictures from then on have a little line up in one corner.
Us Against You Page 27
