The Winners

Do you know what always runs out first in my supermarket whenever there’s a crisis? Toilet paper! Do you know why? Because it gives us a feeling of being in control of the chaos. When the world doesn’t feel safe, people go and do a big shop, because it makes them feel like they’re DOING something. But they don’t know what they should buy. Milk? You can’t buy a hundred gallons of milk, it’ll just go bad. Cans? Pasta? People rush around like headless chickens buying thousands of different things, but do you know what every single one of them buys? Toilet paper! Because that’s the sort of thing you buy every time you go shopping, and the whole family uses it every day. Can we live without it? Of course we can! But it has been imprinted on us as an everyday item, as normality, so when we get scared we drag great bundles of the stuff home with us, not because we need it but because it feels like we’re taking control of the situation. Do you get what I mean? People need normality in a crisis.

Bang bang bang. He left Amat’s bag outside the rink a good while ago, and made fun of him for being so nervous, but now, of course, it was Benji’s turn to stand outside in the cold, shaking so much that it took half the training session before he could bring himself to open the door and step over all the ghosts of his past. One of them gets up now and walks slowly around the ice and sits down next to him without asking for permission, then tucks her arm under his and rests her cheek on his shoulder.
“Maya Andersson at hockey training? That new guy Bobo was talking about must be seriously hot!” Benji exclaims and she hits his arm as hard as she can and laughs.
“You’re such a muppet, the whole lot of you are such muppets!”
Benji just grins and nods toward the ice.
“Is that him there?”
Maya snaps:
“Yes. His name’s Aleksandr but Zackell just calls him ‘Big City’ because they’re such stupid muppets that I can’t stand it!”
Benji frowns.
“He IS pretty damn hot, Maya…”
“I knooooow…,” she sighs resignedly.
He bursts out laughing. She has chocolate balls in her pocket and he’s been smoking weed all day so he devours them, one bite per ball.
“Good to see that you haven’t changed entirely, at least.” She smiles.
Benji closes his eyes quickly and opens them slowly. He looks up at the roof as if he’s trying to see right through it.
“Is it weird for you, coming home? It’s been seriously weird for me. Just this rink, it feels cramped now, but when we were young it was… enormous.”
“Yes. It’s all weird. I don’t even feel at home in my own house anymore. I don’t even say ‘going home’ when I come here…,” she admits.
He says nothing for a long time. Then he asks:
“Do you ever think about what your life would have been like if Kevin hadn’t existed?”
She whispers, as shocked by the question as she is by the speed of her reply:
“All the time. Do you?”
His chin moves in the world’s smallest nod.
“Do you think you’d still have been living here then?”
After an eternity of reflection she replies:
“Yes. I’d probably have gone on being a naive and happy little girl. I’d have gone to parties and drunk disgusting shots and gossiped at school about who had slept with who. I’d have sat up all night listening to Ana bang on about how sexy that Benji was…”
“I’m still sexy!” Benji interrupts firmly.
“Yeah, yeah, you bastard, you are. But you knowing it makes you a bit uglier.” She smiles.
He appears to hesitate before he asks:
“Then what? Once you graduated from high school in Beartown? Would you have stayed then? If it hadn’t been for Kevin?”
She considers this carefully.
“Yes… maybe? Maybe I’d have gotten together with some crazy hockey guy and had a little house with a little yard and two children and a cat called Simba and a dog called Molly…”
“I love that you’ve given names to your future pets but not your future children,” Benji grins.
“For the time being I’m far more keen on pets,” she grins back.
“Are you happy, then? In that little house?”
“Yes. Yes, I probably am. But I write really bad songs.”
He laughs.
“I’d have lived there with you if your husband left you.”
“If my husband left me it would probably have been because you’d slept with him, you bastard.”
“True,” he concedes.
“I’m proud of you,” she whispers into his sweater.
“I’m proud of you too,” he replies into her hair.