Benji’s three sisters have always communicated in different ways. His youngest sister, Gaby, talks, and his middle sister, Katia, listens. His eldest sister, Adri, shouts.

"Don't you ever tell me I've given up again! All I ever do is not give up!"

She misses them both, her mother and home. At least the way she remembers them, both of them. Things are different now.

She misses them both, her mother and home. At least the way she remembers them, both of them. Things are different now.

Their mom always says that she doesn’t know what would have happened to the boy if he hadn’t found hockey, but his sisters know all too well what would have happened.

The violence that is coming becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

He was four years old that first time, but hockey told him straightaway that it was going to demand complete devotion from him. He loved it for that. And still does.

His voice isn't angry. More playful. If anyone had seen Benji climb down from the roof, they'd have understood why: Teemu understands him, they're the same sort.

She’s thought so much about him. The wildest, loneliest person she knows.

'My baby, my baby,' his mom sings happily to herself over the stove.

They may accept him on the ice, as long as he's the best, but he's always going to have to give them much more than everyone else now.

None of them asks Peter about his. He has no scars, he never lost any teeth, never got into any fights. He has never been a violent man.

The comment section does what the comment section always does: smells blood and catches fire.

The majority of teenagers don’t know that their lives are determined by that one small word, but it echoes inside Amat the whole way home. “Almost almost almost.”

“You and I don’t judge each other, Teemu. We never have. But children are the only people who don’t have to take responsibility for anyone but themselves. The rest of us have to take responsibility for the things we cause to happen.”

So the Pack chooses its response, for its own survival.

If you want something from a person, you need to understand what motivates him, and Teemu is a protector.

Benji smokes his cigarette, and for a few moments he hates himself for coming back to the forest where this is all he is. Someone capable of violence. Someone to fear.

To them the Pack is a small group of people who refuse to take any crap, who don’t change to suit the demands of power and money and politics.

You want to understand this place? Then you need to understand its connections, the way everything and everyone is tied to everything and everyone else by invisible threads of relationships and loyalties and debts.

Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. This is the story of how we got there.

“Love that gets out of control / The most intense adventures / I hope you find your way out / I hope you’re the kind of person / Who gets a happy ending”

The violence that is coming becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s not a march, it’s not a noisy demonstration, and if Peter had asked, they would have pretended not to understand. “What do you mean? No, no, it’s just a coincidence!”

The comment section does what the comment section always does: smells blood and catches fire.

You want to understand this place? Then you need to understand its connections, the way everything and everyone is tied to everything and everyone else by invisible threads of relationships and loyalties and debts.

'My baby, my baby,' his mom sings happily to herself over the stove.

The people we were in July, those summer people, will rest on a bed of wood deep below the snow for so many months that we will almost have forgotten them by next spring.

Success demands that we see beyond ourselves.

Many years have passed since then, and she still hasn’t gotten used to the cold in Beartown, but she has learned to love the town for what it is.