There are probably mules who call each other as stubborn as an Ovich, so when Benji decided to fake his own death, there was nobody in the world who could possibly stop him. Adri, Katia, and Gaby all told him that it was terrible idea - Adri perhaps a little bit more forcefully than the other two sisters - but in the end, even they can't talk Benji out of it, no matter how hard they try. Benji doesn't know where he's going yet, but he knows that this is the only chance that he'll ever have to get out of this town and find out who he is if he's not a hockey player.

Benji is deep within the forest now, carrying a green jersey in one hand and a knife in the other. He walks further into the woods, suddenly realizing that this might be the last time that he will ever get the chance to wander through the forest. How many hours had he spent out here in his boyhood, only to leave it all now?

Benji walks off of the path, and once he's far enough away, he tears into the jersey with the knife until it is nothing more than a pile of scraps. He leaves the scraps strewn across the forest floor, as if a wolf, or better yet, a bear, had eaten him, and this was all that was left. The "16" on Benji's jersey faces up, like a red flag for anyone who happens to walk by. Benji, satisfied with his handiwork, walks back toward the path and heads into town. He looks sadly toward the ice rink, but he passes it by and goes straight to the train station. By the time anyone figures out what happened, Benji will be gone, on a train to somewhere far away. Anywhere that isn't Beartown will do.

Ana trudges through the forest, already missing her best friend. She's just come back from a martial arts training session, but that's not what's on her mind. Maya has already told her the news: she's moving so that she can attend her new music school. Ana is happy for her - truly, she is - but she won't be able to spend every night at the Anderssons' house if they're leaving town, and nothing will be quite the same without Ana and Maya spending every waking hour together. With Vidar dead and Maya leaving soon, Ana doesn't know how she'll go on, but she'll have to find a way. She got a tattoo of a guitar and a rifle for a reason. For now, she just needs a walk through the woods to clear her mind.

Ana strays from the path, and that's when she spots it. There's a scrap of green fabric lying against a tree, and when she looks down, she sees another one. It doesn't take Ana long to realize that it's a hockey jersey that has been ripped to shreds, and when she sees the number "16," she immediately figures out who that jersey belongs to.

"Benji?!" she shouts. "Benji, are you out there?" There is no answer. She tries again, but all Ana hears is the echo of her own voice.

Ana sprints out of the forest as quickly as she can, searching for anyone who might be able to help her. It's Jeanette, her martial arts instructor, that she finds first. "I found Benji's jersey in the woods," she says, and she doesn't need to say any more. Jeanette immediately calls Adri, and before long, there are dozens of Beartown residents gathered in the forest, circled around the torn jersey.

"Who was the last person to see Benji?" Ramona asks.

"I saw him walk into the woods, but I never saw him leave," Gaby says, sobbing. Out of all of Benji's family members, she is by far the most distraught. Benji's other two sisters are making Ana wonder if they know something that she doesn't.

"We all knew that something like this would happen one of these days," someone says. "That boy has always been a ticking time bomb."

"He was a good hockey player though," someone else adds. "It's a shame that he turned out like his father."

"Don't talk like that!" Katia interjects. "We don't know if he's dead yet."

"Just look at that jersey," another Beartown resident says. "Nobody could have survived that. Benji Ovich is as good as dead."

Ana has to agree with her, and she fights back tears as she considers that this might have been her fault. Maybe if she hadn't posted that picture, Benji might not have disappeared into the forest in the first place. Maybe he would have been able to come out of the closet on his own terms, maybe he would have played in the game against Hed, and maybe he would be here now.

There's a sinking feeling in Ana's stomach as she wonders if she might have been the one who killed Benji.

The residents of Beartown organize a search party, but after several days and no sign of Benji, they give up and presume that the talented young hockey player is dead. They can't find a body, so they bury Benji's torn jersey. Ana attends the funeral, and it breaks her heart when she sees father and son, buried side by side. When the funeral ends, she thinks that none of this would have happened, if not for her moment of weakness. Ana weeps as she thinks of everything that she could have done to stop this tragedy. She's failed both of them - Vidar and Benji.

Ana finds Jeanette after the funeral, and Jeanette immediately gives her a hug. Then, they walk to Jeanette's martial arts club together, and Ana will never fight harder than she does that day.

Benji is on a train heading toward the capital, sandwiched between a grizzled old man and a woman in her twenties cradling a crying infant. Already, his escape hasn't quite gone as planned. Adri, Katia, and Gaby had apparently told Maya that he would be at the train station, and now she knows that Benji isn't dead. It had been good to see her one last time, but he would have to trust that she wouldn't tell anyone. He holds the scrap of paper that Maya gave him and reads the words on it one more time, hoping that she's right. He hopes that he's the kind of person who gets a happy ending too. That's what everyone wants, after all.

The man next to Benji tries to look over his shoulder, so he folds the paper in half and stuffs it into his pocket. The train lurches to a stop, and he stays in his seat. Thankfully, the mother and child get off of the train, giving Benji some personal space. He moves away from the old man and looks out the window, pretending to be interested in the mountains in the distance.

When the train stops again, Benji still doesn't move. Passing through the countryside is starting to give him second thoughts about leaving. Benji needed to get out of Beartown. He's certain about that, but if the only alternative is starting over again in an unfamiliar city, far away from the small town that he grew up in, without his friends, teammates, or family, he's no longer sure that he made the right choice.

But it's too late to turn back now.

Benji closes his eyes, and the motion of the train rocks him to sleep. He only wakes up when the conductor says, "We are now approaching Stockholm, our final destination. All passengers still on the train need to disembark here."

This time, when the train stops, Benji stands up and gets off of the train with the other passengers. He's surprised as to how easily he can blend into a crowd here: back home, he knew everyone in town, and everyone knew him. Here, he's just another cog in the machine, and already, he doesn't like it. He mimics the dull, bored facial expression of the businesswoman next to him in line as he walks into the train station. Benji is terrified, but he doesn't let anyone else see it.

He doesn't let the bastards see him cry.

News travels fast, and it isn't long at all before the residents of Hed hear about Benji's death. David will never forget the moment when Filip comes into practice one day and asks, "David, did you hear about Benji?" David shakes his head, and Filip tells the whole story while David listens in horror.

He doesn't know what to say afterwards, but he knows Benji, and he thinks that everyone in Beartown has made a terrible mistake. A ripped jersey in the forest does not mean that Benji Ovich is dead. He remembers all of the times that Benji went missing back when David coached the Beartown hockey team, only for David to find him trying to start a fight somewhere.

He doesn't tell Filip any of this, however. Instead, he simply nods along, and when Filip is done telling the story, he teaches the Hed Hockey A-team a new drill. Perhaps he's a little harder on them than he needs to be, but perhaps that's because not one of David's players is playing as hard as Benji might have if he was there.

David will never let any play on any of his teams wear the number "16," but it's not because he thinks that Benji is dead. It's because David still clings onto a wild hope that Benji might turn up one day and want his jersey back, and David's terrified of what might happen if he can't give it to him.

It's the silence that nearly kills Benji as he walks through the streets of Stockholm. Someone had once asked him what he liked about hockey, and he had answered that he liked the sounds. In Beartown, those sounds are omnipresent. No matter where you go, you can hear the bang-bang-bang sound of players practicing or the shouts of fans cheering. In Stockholm, the whole city is dead silent, and it's driving Benji insane. He wants nothing more than to hear one single bang as he wanders around, but there's no sound except for his own footsteps. Hockey made Benji feel like he had wings, but the silence here is chaining him to the ground.

When Benji has had enough of the quietness, he stops walking, pulls out his phone, and texts someone that he hasn't contacted in almost a year. "Do you still live in the capital?" he types. Benji sends the message and then shoves his phone back into his pocket, along with the scrap of paper from Maya.

Within a few seconds, Benji's phone buzzes. He reads the response, but it isn't the one that he was hoping for. "Who is this?" the bass player replied.

"Benji Ovich," Benji writes. "I changed my number."

The bass player sends Benji his address, and he goes straight to his apartment. When Benji knocks on the door, the bass player immediately lets him in. When he woke up that morning, the last thing that the bass player had expected was for Benji to show up at his door, but here he is anyways. The bass player never forgot about the boy with sad eyes and a wild heart, and in some ways, nothing has changed at all, but Benji's eyes look far more sorrowful than the bass player remembers.

"I have a lot of questions," the bass player says as he watches Benji enter the apartment, the memories of all of the nights that they spent together in Hed drifting through his mind.

"I'll explain, Lukas, but could you get me a beer first?"

When Ana arrives at Maya's new house for the first time, Maya throws her arms around her best friend, glad to finally see her again. For those two girls, even a few days sometimes feels like a lifetime. Maya then backs away, and they do their secret handshake. As usual, Maya cracks up as Ana shouts, "And Ana is out, bitches!" Maya looks back at her friend, still giggling a little bit, but Ana suddenly has a serious look on her face. "There's something that I need to tell you," she says.

"What is it?" Maya asks as all of the possible things that Ana could say flicker through her mind. None of them are good.

"Benji died," Ana says.

Maya pauses for a minute to think. At first, she believes that it's impossible. She saw Benji alive and well at the train station. He can't be dead. "What happened?" Maya finally asks, the ruminative expression on her face suddenly disappearing.

"I found his hockey jersey in the forest on Thursday, and it was ripped into shreds," Ana explains, trying not to cry. "They couldn't find the body, but the jersey was so destroyed that there's no way that he could still be alive. Plenty of people say that he was mauled by a bear, but there are all kinds of rumors floating around. Anyways, his funeral was yesterday."

Maya puts the timeline together in her head. She saw Benji at the train station on Thursday, and yet Ana claims that he died on that day. Something isn't right. Maya thinks about it some more, and she soon realizes the truth. All of a sudden, she knows why the details don't quite fit together. Why Benji was so startled when she approached him that day. Why Ana found "16" in the forest.

Yet, Maya doesn't tell Ana, and it will haunt her for the rest of her life. She could have easily told Ana what she knew, but she stays quiet for a moment, not quite knowing why she doesn't have the courage to say something. Maybe she still has a grudge against Ana for taking that photo. Maybe she wants her to live with the pain of thinking that she killed Benji. No matter what her motivation is, she doesn't tell Ana that Benji is alive.

"I'm sorry, Ana," Maya finally says, because there's nothing else to say.

"What do you have to apologize for?" Ana asks. "You didn't kill Benji. I did."

"Ana, there's nothing that you could have done," Maya says in an attempt to comfort her friend, but it's in vain.

"You're wrong," Ana says. "I should have never taken that picture."

Maya places her hand on Ana's shoulder and says, "Listen, I know that these last few weeks have been hard on you, with Vidar and now this, but you can't live in the past. You have so much of your life ahead of you."

Ana stays silent for a few moments, but Maya can tell that she's still worrying about everything that's happened. She can't really blame her. Maya has been through more hardship than she ever deserved in her sixteen years, but she's never had to watch someone she loved die. She can't imagine what it must be like for her.

"How's your new school?" Ana asks, trying to prove that she didn't just come to Maya's new house to wallow in her own self-pity.

"It's incredible," Maya says. "My classes are interesting, the people are nice, the food's not great, but it's better than Beartown, and the best part is that I get to play the guitar every day."

"Do you get to listen to that junkie music that you like so much too?"

"Unfortunately no, but one of my teachers likes Nirvana, which is super cool."

"I bet the whole school sounds like this," Ana says. She pretends to play the guitar as she whines, "Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage..."

"That's The Smashing Pumpkins, not Nirvana."

"What's the difference?"

"Those are two completely different bands. If your school played your music all the time, it would probably sound like this." Maya pretends to play the synthesizer and sings, "Beep beep beep beep...YEAH! DRUGS!"

Maya and Ana both laugh. On the day that Ana saved Maya's life, Maya declared that she had found a new friend. Now, ten years later, they still mean the world to each other, and despite everything that they've both gone through over all of those years, they know that nothing can break their friendship.

Benji and Lukas are sitting at the kitchen table in Lukas' apartment, a can of beer in front of each of them. Lukas' bass rests against the wall - he hasn't practiced yet today, but he also hadn't planned for Benji to show up out of nowhere. He's pretty sure that Benji coming is a good enough excuse to skip practicing for today.

Both Lukas and Benji know that it's late, but they've stopped counting the hours and are instead measuring time by the number of beers that they've each had. Benji is on his sixth beer, and he's been telling the same story since he started his second. Lukas, on the other hand, is only on his third, but he's been listening intently to every word that Benji has to say.

Benji takes a sip of his drink and continues his story. "So I told William Lyt that I was in love with Kevin, which is definitely bullshit..."

"Who's Kevin again?" Lukas asks.

"It's not important," Benji insists. Lukas wants to press him further, but he can tell that he doesn't want to talk about it, so he sits there and listens to what he has to say next. "Anyways, I needed to get out of Beartown, so I faked my death."

"You WHAT?"

"I left my hockey jersey in the forest and then took a train here. I'm sure they've found the jersey by now."

Lukas finishes off his beer, gets up, and comes back with another can. "I need another fucking drink if I'm going to hear the rest of this," he says. "Why did you come here of all places?"

"I don't know," Benji says. "It's far enough away from Beartown."

"There are lots of places that are far away from Beartown. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere."

Benji takes a deep breath, takes another sip of his drink, and admits, "I think I kind of wanted to see you again."

"When I asked you about coming here last year, you said that you weren't like me," Lukas says. He still remembers that day as if it was yesterday.

"I'm not, but I'm not like them either," Benji replies. "It took me a while to realize that." He looks toward Lukas' bass and asks, "Have you gotten any better?"

"I've been practicing," Lukas says.

"Good," Benji says. "You always sounded like you were tuning through the whole show every time I saw you play back in Hed."

They both laugh, and when the room goes quiet again, Lukas says, "I haven't played for anyone else since I was in my cousin's band."

"That's a shame. I always liked watching you dance on stage." Benji pauses, considering whether or not to ask the question that's on his mind. "Will you play for me, Lukas?"

"Why not?" Lukas says. He gets up from the table, opens up his case, and takes out the instrument. He then sits down on the couch and strums a few chords. "What do you want me to play?"

Benji gets up from the table and sits next to Lukas. "Anything," he answers.

"Fine. Be like that," Lukas says as his fingers dance across the frets. "I'll pick something."

He chooses a gentle love song, and Benji closes his eyes, rests his head on Lukas' shoulder, and listens to him play. The song isn't quite what he might have chosen, but he loves it anyways. Finally, he's found something to break through the silence of the city. It's not quite the same as the sounds from back home. He'll never get used to hearing the low-pitched notes from Lukas' bass. Instead, every time he hears him play, he'll come back to this moment, and he'll feel like he's flying all over again.

When Lukas finishes playing, their faces are only inches from each other. It's Lukas who finally closes the distance between them. He kisses Benji, and when they pull apart, he says, "I missed you so much."

"Me too," Benji says, and he kisses him again.

Lukas doesn't want to let him go, but he knows that he has to. "It's getting late, and I can already tell that I'm going to have the worst hangover ever tomorrow morning," Lukas says. "Maybe we should get to bed." Benji reluctantly agrees, and they step away from each other, but neither of them will ever forget this night.

It's a small miracle when Lukas finds Benji lying next to him the following morning, snoring loudly with one arm still draped around him. At first, he can't figure out why Benji decided to stay, but he's glad that he did. Maybe it's because he's lonely or desperate. Maybe it's because he doesn't have anywhere else to go.

Or maybe he's falling in love too.