On the train ride there, both of them are looking out the window excitedly, pointing out landmarks as the train approaches Beartown. "I forgot how beautiful this part of the country is," Lukas says.

"Me too," Benji says. "I used to spend a lot of time on that island over there when I was growing up." He gestures toward the island as the train travels along the lakeshore, and he wonders whether or not he should go there with Lukas. He doubts that there will be time to show him all of the places that he loved when he was young. They only have two days here, and they'll spend most of the second day at the concert. Benji might still have time to give Lukas a tour of his hometown, although he would have to be careful to make sure that nobody realizes that he's not dead.

The train travels past the lake and into the town itself. Benji recognizes many of the buildings - the school looks the same, and Ramona must have rebuilt the Bearskin after the fire - but others seem new. When the train arrives at the train station and comes to a stop, Lukas and Benji grab their bags and get off of the train. They make their way through the crowd, and Benji notices that nearly everyone in the train station is wearing a green shirt that says "Beartown Against The Rest" on it. Benji looks around, searching for his sister, but he soon finds her. Gaby waves to him, and when Benji runs over to her, with Lukas following behind, she gives Benji a hug and tells him that she loves him. She's wearing a "Beartown Against The Rest" T-shirt too, and so are her children.

"What are the shirts for?" Benji asks after he's greeted his sister, nieces, and nephews.

"The girls' hockey team is playing in the national finals," Gaby explains. "The game is tonight."

Lukas still seems a little bit perplexed that a youth hockey game could get all of Beartown to wear the exact same T-shirt, but for Benji, it explains everything. Gaby, Benji, Lukas, and the children leave the train station, and Gaby drives all of them to her house. Lukas and Benji unpack their bags, and they spend most of the rest of the day trading stories with Gaby, playing games with her children, and going over to the dog kennel to see Adri. Katia is the only one of Benji's sisters that they don't get to see that day, but Gaby promises that she'll come to the concert the next day.

That evening, Gaby announces that she and the children are going to the hockey game. Benji's niece's best friend is playing in the game, but Gaby tells Lukas and Benji that they don't have to come if they don't want to. "You two must be tired from all of that traveling," she says as she and the children walk out the door. "Make sure you get some rest before the show tomorrow, Lukas."

Lukas nods, but as soon as they're gone, Benji says, "I'm going to the hockey game."

Benji goes into the garage and finds his old bike, but Lukas protests. "They'll know that you're not really dead if you do that," he says.

"Lukas, we already walked through the train station, and nobody except for my sister recognized me. I don't think they'll recognize me at the hockey game either."

Lukas is about to object again, so Benji climbs onto his bike and rides off into the night. Lukas tries to run after him, but he can't keep up. Benji clearly hasn't given him much of a choice. He runs back to the garage, finds an extra bike, and catches up with Benji.

Once he's caught up, Lukas says, "You really aren't like anyone else, Benji. You didn't want to go to Beartown in the first place, and now you want to go to this hockey game. I just don't get it." Benji doesn't respond, but in the end, that's what Lukas loves about him. He isn't like anyone else at all.

Lukas follows Benji until they arrive at the ice rink. It's been renovated recently, and even though he played here for years, Benji hardly recognizes it. However, it's more familiar when he walks inside. The stands are a little bigger, and there's a preschool attached to the rink, which most of the girls playing tonight attended, but the ice itself is the same. On his way into the rink, Benji sees a row of pictures. There's one from thirty years ago, and one from ten years ago. Benji spots himself in the back row of the more recent picture, standing between William and Filip. This was the last Beartown team that was as good as the one playing tonight.

However, nobody seems to notice that the young man who was once a star player here. Two middle-aged women walk past Benji, and they barely notice that he's there. Instead, they're chatting about one of his former teammates. "I heard that Amat might come tonight," one of the women says.

"I doubt it," the other responds. "The Blackhawks are in the Stanley Cup playoffs, so he's probably going to have to stay in Chicago." She pulls out her phone and checks the stats for a team six thousand miles away from here. The two women then walk into the stands, and after a few more people pass by, Benji goes there too.

Lukas has never been here before, and he has no idea where to go, so he follows his boyfriend as he goes straight into an area of the rink filled with men in black jackets. Lukas is wearing a black jacket too, but that's only a coincidence. Black has always been his favorite color. "Is this the Pack?" Lukas asks, remembering something that Benji mentioned to him before.

"What Pack?" Benji responds.

There's just enough space in the standing area for Lukas and Benji. The rest of the rink is completely filled with Beartown residents. Lukas has been touring with one of the most popular guitarists in the country for a few years now, and even he has never seen so many people in one place, cheering together for Beartown as if their minds had all fused into one. He finds it all to be a little unnerving.

Bang.

It's a sound that Benji hasn't heard in ten years. He's watching the ice intently, even though the hockey teams are still warming up. Lukas is already on his phone, paying no attention to the game. A girl who appears to be around fifteen years old is wearing the number "61." She takes the puck and swiftly sends it into the goal. The girl's helmet obscures her face, but Benji still recognizes her. "LET'S GO, ALICIA!" the entire standing area screams at once.

The commotion causes Lukas to look up from his phone. "Who's Alicia?" he asks.

"She's the greatest player that we've ever seen!" a man in the row above Lukas and Benji says. He then gives Lukas a suspicious look, silently telling him that he doesn't belong here.

The game begins, and Benji watches it all from the standing area. It's an incredible game. One of the Beartown players speeds across the ice, knocking her opponent out of the way and sending the puck flying to the other end of the rink. One of the girls from the other team skates toward the puck, but Alicia dashes in front of her, takes the puck, and passes it to one of her teammates. The other Beartown player passes it back to Alicia, and she shoots it right into the goal. The whole rink cheers for her.

"What just happened?" Lukas asks as Benji shouts Alicia's name.

"We scored a goal," Benji explains.

"Oh, okay," Lukas says. "Why was everyone cheering then?"

"Because we scored a goal."

"I don't understand hockey," Lukas proclaims. "Why do people care so much? It's just a game, isn't it?" Benji shakes his head and goes back to watching the game, awestruck by everything that's happening on the ice.

This isn't the first time that Benji and Lukas have watched a hockey game together. Sometimes, when he's in the mood for it, Benji watches professional games on TV, and Lukas always ends up curled up on the couch next to him. They've only watched one other game in person though, and it was nothing like this.

Shortly after Benji arrived in Stockholm, he and Lukas passed by their local ice rink, and Benji said that he wanted to watch their A-Team play. Lukas didn't have much interest in watching hockey, but he did want to spend more time with Benji, so he came with him. They found two seats in the rink, but all throughout first period, Benji wouldn't stop critiquing every aspect of the game. "Number 31 is clearly the weakest player on the team," he said. "The other team could easily take him down, but they don't have the guts. Also, why has nobody passed to number 42 yet? He's just sitting there in front of the goal!"

Lukas tuned him out after a few minutes, so he didn't even notice when Benji suddenly disappeared. He searched all over the ice rink, and when he didn't find him, he tried calling Benji, but he didn't pick up.

Eventually, Lukas found Benji just outside the back door of the ice rink, leaning against a wall and smoking weed. "Want some?" Benji asked. Lukas nodded. "I can't stand this town sometimes. Even hockey feels different."

They never went back to that ice rink, and they never attended another hockey game until now. As one of the Beartown girls skates across the ice and scores a second goal for her team, Benji cheers again, losing himself in the game. He's not sure what exactly makes this game so different from the one that he attended in Stockholm, but he soon realizes that it's because watching the game is making him forget that he once played hockey too.

Just as first period is about to end, one of the opposing players hits the puck toward the goal, and although the Beartown goalie tries to catch it, the puck sails past her and into the goal. The score is now 2-1, but Beartown is still winning.

In between the first and second period, Benji has time to see who else is in the stands. He spots his family, as well as a few other people he recognizes from when he lived on Beartown. There's a mother with a young child who looks a little bit like one of Benji's former teammates in the bottom row of the stands. When the child tries to run off, the mother shouts, "Ann-Katrin! Come back here right now!" The mother runs after her daughter and drags her back into the stands just as second period is about to start.

During second period, Lukas is far more interested in the clock than the game. "Benji, why does hockey have three periods?" he asks. Benji doesn't have time to respond before he asks, "Hey, why did the clock stop?"

"Number 22 is offside," Benji explains.

"What does that mean?"

"You're hopeless." Benji then goes back to watching the game and hoping for another goal from Beartown. Lukas goes back to watching the clock and hoping that it doesn't stop again.

Have you ever seen a ghost? Bobo has.

It's the end of second period, and just as the opposing team scores another goal, sending the puck flying into the net with a resounding bang, he looks up into the stands. The score is tied, and he knows that he needs to talk to the Beartown girls about strategy, but he wants Ann-Katrin to know that he's here. Bobo waves to his wife and their three year old daughter, and although his wife waves back, Ann-Katrin isn't paying much attention, desperately trying to entertain herself by running up and down the stairs. Bobo's wife runs over to Ann-Katrin, picks her up, and points to Bobo. "Dad!" Ann-Katrin screams. Her voice is so loud that Bobo can hear her from the other end of the rink. He laughs and grins, hoping that the Beartown team will win already so that he can go home and be with his family.

Bobo walks past the standing area, and one of the men in black jackets shouts, "Hey Bobo, keep up the good work!" He smiles, but he keeps walking.

When the Beartown girls' team wins, which it almost always does, and it almost always has since Bobo started coaching these girls ten years ago, people in this town say that Bobo is brilliant. He knows this isn't true: he still can't skate, and when someone makes a joke, Bobo is always the last one to get it. Amat, who plays hockey in Chicago now and sometimes calls Bobo in the middle of the night, is brilliant. Zacharias, the professional gamer, is brilliant. Elisabeth Zackell, the coach of the A-team, is brilliant. The girls on the Beartown team are definitely brilliant. Bobo is not, but somehow, the girls' team keeps on winning, and everyone in Beartown keeps telling him that he's the one who coached them to victory. Bobo eventually gives the Pack the same response that he usually gives people. "It's not me. It's the girls."

When Bobo looks up at the Pack, he recognizes almost every face in the standing area. However, there are two men that he has never seen here before. One of them has a thin frame and black hair, and he looks like he'd rather be boiled alive than have to watch the third period of this hockey game. He's wearing a black jacket, but Bobo's sure that it's entirely by accident. The other man is far more excited about the game, and he looks strangely familiar. His face has aged quite a bit since the last time Bobo saw him, but there's no other explanation. The man in the standing area has to be Benji Ovich.

Bobo still remembers the day when Alicia asked to wear Benji's number. He was still new to coaching back then, and Elisabeth Zackell had given him a group of girls to work with, most of whom were recent graduates from the ice rink preschool. It was the day of their first game, and Bobo asked Alicia which number she wanted on her jersey. "Sixteen," she responded.

"You can't have number sixteen," Bobo said.

"Why not?" Alicia asked.

How do you even begin to explain death to a child? Bobo froze, unable to say a word. "It's...no, it was...it was Benji's number," he said. He still struggled to use the past tense when he was talking about his teammates. His last memory with Benji was playing hockey on the lake with him, Zacharias, and Amat, and as long as he was still involved in hockey, that memory would always exist in the present.

"Who's Benji?" Alicia asked.

That was the hardest part: knowing that Alicia had forgotten Benji already. Hadn't he been there when she first learned to skate? It seemed impossible that Alicia could just forget about all of that, but children were magical in that way.

When Bobo didn't respond, Alicia asked, "Can I ask Zackell if I can wear '16?'"

"Go ahead, but she'll say the same thing that I did," Bobo said.

As it turned out, Alicia did ask Zackell, and she said the exact same thing that Bobo did, although much more bluntly. Alicia ran back to Bobo crying, and in a desperate attempt to comfort the little girl, he said, "You can have '61' if you want."

Now, "61" is the best player on the Beartown girls' team. She knows the whole story of what happened to Benji, even if she doesn't remember him. Bobo is on his way to tell her team why they should score another goal in the third period of the national finals, although it should be obvious to anyone who's made it this far, and Benji, strangely enough, is back from the dead.

Alicia pokes her head out from the locker room. "Bobo!" she yells. "What's taking you so long?"

"I'll be there soon," Bobo responds. He looks into the standing area one last time, and he realizes that the man in the standing area may look a lot like Benji, but it's not him. Benji Ovich has been dead for ten years. Maybe he's Benji's long-lost twin brother, or a cousin of the Ovich family. Or maybe Bobo just saw a ghost.

Sometimes, Bobo swears that he can feel the ghosts of his old teammates when he arrives at the rink each day. It's not just Benji: it's all of the boys that he once played with. Vidar is dead too, and there are others who have seriously messed up their lives in the ten years that have gone by since Bobo stopped playing hockey. There's a coach who had to move to Hed Hockey, a general manager who couldn't stand the politics, a mother who died too soon, and a girl who had her childhood cut short. No matter how many times they renovate the ice rink, the ghosts of Beartown Hockey will never leave.

Bobo goes into the locker room, and he tells the Beartown girls' team exactly what they need to do to win the game. When the game starts again, Bobo watches the girls on the ice. He doesn't realize that Benji is on the other side of the rink, doing the exact same thing.

Third period seems to go on forever without either team scoring. The two teams skate around the ice, and they each make several shots on goal, but the score doesn't change. It's still tied, 2-2. In the last few minutes of third period, there's some talk in the standing area of the game going into overtime. "Why does this game need to go on even longer?" Lukas complains.

"If the teams are tied at the end of third period, the game goes into overtime," Benji says. "That's just how it works."

Just as third period is about to end, Alicia takes the puck and skates to the other end of the rink, pushing past several players from the opposing team. She slaps the puck toward the goal, and it flies past the goalie and lands in the net.

The buzzer goes off, and everyone in the stands cheers while the Beartown girls' team celebrates on the ice. They've finally done what no Beartown team ever has: win a national tournament.

The standing area starts up a cheer, and Benji joins in. "WE ARE THE BEARS, WE ARE THE BEARS, WE ARE THE BEARS! THE BEARS FROM BEARTOWN!"

The excitement doesn't stop as the fans begin to exit the rink. The Pack keeps chanting, and nothing can stop them. A group of Beartown residents has surrounded Bobo, asking him questions that he doesn't know how to answer. The kids from the ice rink preschool are asking for pictures with Alicia and her teammates. Benji and Lukas make their way through the crowd, find their bicycles, and leave the ice rink. When they're far away enough from the noise and the chaos, Lukas laughs and says, "I always knew you were a small town guy at heart."

They ride back to Gaby's house, but Benji can't get those words out of his mind. Lukas is right: coming to the hockey game proved that. His heart is still racing from the rush of being in an ice rink again. Was leaving Beartown a mistake? He's not sure. There are so many things that he misses about living here.

When they arrive at Gaby's house, her car isn't in the driveway. She's still at the hockey game. Lukas and Benji leave their bikes in the garage, and they go into the house. Lukas takes Benji's hand. Benji's knuckles are scarred from all of those years of fighting back when he played hockey, and tonight has brought back some of those memories, but if he had to choose between Lukas and Beartown, he would make the same choice every time. When he looks into Lukas' eyes, he knows that he feels the same way.

Benji returns to the ice rink the next day, but this time, it's not for a hockey game. He's in the middle of a crowd, most of whom are still talking about the game last night. There's a poster in front of the ice rink advertising a concert. Maya Andersson, the famous guitarist, is performing here tonight. Lukas isn't here with Benji, because he's performing too.

Benji stands in line for hours before he finally makes it into the ice rink. A security guard asks him for his ticket, and he hands it over. He then enters the rink, which has now been transformed into a stage for the concert. Instead of going into the stands, however, he walks toward the locker room, where some of Maya's devoted fans are waiting outside, trying to get a glimpse of the artist.

A woman in her twenties with a tattoo of a guitar and a rifle pushes past the fans. Her eyes meet Benji's for a moment, but she doesn't seem to recognize him. A security guard tries to stop the woman, but Maya says, "That's my best friend. Let her in."

The security guard lets Ana through, and she and Maya do some crazy handshake and then laugh hysterically. "It's so good to see you!" Ana exclaims. "How have you been?"

"Touring has been wild," Maya says. She lowers her voice and then says, "I saw Kevin in a parking lot last week."

"You saw Kevin?" Ana says incredulously. "What happened?"

"Nothing, really," Maya says. "I could have done something..."

"You should have done something," Ana says.

"...but I didn't. I just went and played the show. It was probably for the best."

All of a sudden, Ana notices the guitar that Maya is tuning. "That's the guitar I gave you, isn't it?" she asks with a smile.

Maya nods. "It's the only guitar that I ever play."

"It still sounds good after all these years," Ana says. "Did you see the hockey game last night?"

"I heard about it," Maya says. "Were you there?"

"I was," Ana says. "It was a fun game to watch. Alicia scored a goal in the last minute of the game."

"Maya Andersson, sign my guitar pick!" a budding young guitarist shouts as she throws her guitar pick into the locker room.

A security guard tries to keep the girl away, but Maya takes the pick, signs it, and politely hands it back to the young guitarist. "I think this is a sign that you've made it, Maya," Ana says.

All of the chaos gives Benji an opportunity to get closer to the locker room. He looks inside and finds Lukas tuning in a corner. He waves to him, and Lukas beams. Just knowing that Benji is here gives Lukas the strength that he needs to play in front of all of these people.

Benji walks away and finds a seat in the stands in between two girls wearing identical Maya Andersson T-shirts. He waits through the opening act, an undertalented group that Lukas has complained about before. In between the two acts, the crowd seems lukewarm about seeing Maya Andersson perform, but they are still excited about the hockey game. The group of people in the row above Benji are talking about the final goal of the game yet again.

Beartown is a hockey town. Not even Maya Andersson can change that.

The lights go down in the ice rink, and Maya takes the stage by storm. She sings her heart out, and when she hits the chorus, the whole ice rink sings along with her. There isn't a single person in the stands who doesn't know every lyric to this song. Her guitar solo is extraordinary, but when the rest of the audience is watching her, Benji is watching the bass player. Lukas is dancing like nobody's watching, and Benji still remembers the day when he taught him to dance like that, all of those years ago.

The last chord of the song rings throughout the ice rink. When the echoes have died down, Maya shouts, "How are you doing tonight, Beartown?" The crowd cheers in response. "That song was called 'The Island,' and I wrote it for my best friend."

Benji is one of the few people who isn't onstage who knows about the island. He was the one who showed it to Maya and Ana, after all. He's glad that something good has come out of that place.

Maya starts to play a riff on her guitar as she continues to banter. "I heard you guys won a hockey game last night," she says, and the crowd roars. "You know, I'm from Beartown too, and so is my bass player, Lukas."

"I've literally never been here before," Lukas says. Maya rolls her eyes, and the crowd laughs.

"Whatever," Maya finally says. "Beartown against the rest!" Everyone screams, and once the noise has died down again, Maya introduces her next song. She begins to play, and Lukas joins in, swaying back and forth to the beat.

As the band plays, Benji thinks of the words that Maya wrote for him ten years ago. As far as he knows, that scrap of paper is still in the pocket of his jacket, back in Stockholm. I hope you're the kind of person who gets a happy ending. Benji still wasn't sure if he was that kind of person, or if he ever would be, but he's only twenty eight. He still has all the time in the world.

Flashing lights and walls of guitar sounds fill the ice rink tonight. Before long, Benji gets up and joins the rest of the crowd. Beartown is and always will be a hockey town, but that doesn't mean that they won't dance and sing along when the music starts playing.

Everyone in Beartown thinks that Benji is dead, but he has never felt so alive.