Solo by Hope Solo (best free ereader .TXT) 📕

leading to the World Cup. Our pregame meeting was in a few hours. I had been back training with the team for more than a month. After I returned from Liz’s funeral, I was reserved, with a singular focus on my training. I wanted to draw inspiration from my strong athletic friend and honor her memory with my effort. I stopped drinking any alcohol, even on off days. I was all business.

Things were getting weird around the team. Greg was back from scouting North Korea and seemed uptight and angry. All anyone was talking about at team meals or on the bus was “What’s wrong with Greg?” We still hadn’t lost a game, but the World Cup was bearing down on us, and the pressure was clearly getting to him. Our sports psychologist came in to work on team-building. We had to do relay races balancing an egg on a spoon, passing the egg to a teammate without dropping it. A lot of people dropped the eggs. “Did you feel like you let down your teammates when you dropped the egg?” she asked with a straight face.

I sat in the back and cringed. The exercise seemed absurd. I’d just lost one of my best friends, and we were talking about eggs. I wasn’t sure how passing eggs around on spoons was going to help us win soccer games in China.

I was going to be late for breakfast. I picked up my phone and saw I had a message. I had missed a call from a 206 area code. That wasn’t a good sign. Who would be calling me at five a.m. Seattle time?

“Hello, Miss Hope Solo?” a businesslike female voice said on the message. “Could you please call us back regarding Jeffrey John Solo?”

Oh God. What had happened? Had someone falsely accused my father again? I had talked to him just a few hours earlier, on Thursday evening, as I was walking back to our hotel from Game Four of the NBA Finals. My dad—who liked old-school athletes—was a huge Tim Duncan fan, so he was rooting for San Antonio; I was rooting for LeBron James and the Cavaliers. Dad was thrilled that I had a chance to go to the game and had bought him a championship hat, and he ribbed me after the Spurs completed the sweep of LeBron’s team. I told him that he would have to wear this hat instead of keeping it wrapped in plastic like the others that I bought for him. He was his usual self—happy and joking and delighted to talk to me.

Full of dread, I hit redial. The same abrupt voice answered the phone.

“Hi,” I said tentatively. “I’m calling about my dad? Jeffrey John Solo?”

“Oh, yes,” She sounded like she was asking for my takeout order. “What kind of arrangement do you want to make for the body?”

My knees buckled and I slipped to the bed. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you’d been informed. Your father passed away and you’re listed as next of kin.”

She kept talking but I couldn’t hear her anymore.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God . . .”

My roommate Cat came out of the bathroom and sat next to me. She figured out what must have happened through my moans. “Hope, you have to get home,” she said. “Can you call your family? Do that, and I’ll be right back.” She went downstairs to tell my team.

I kept telling myself this wasn’t real. My dad was supposed to be coming on a trip with me in just a few days. On June 23, our team would play Brazil in New York, and Marcus and my father would be there. We would take Dad on a trip to visit his boyhood haunts and maybe finally get some answers about his past. Best of all, my dad would be there in person to see me play with the national team for the first time. Every time I thought about our upcoming trip, I smiled. Dad couldn’t have made this journey years earlier: his knees were too bad, his life too chaotic. But now he was stable, happy, and healthy. Mentally prepared to revisit the past.

Oh my God, oh my God.

Shaking, I dialed Marcus’s number. I knew he was staying at Mom’s.

“Wha . . . hello?” Marcus said. I had woken him from a sound sleep.

“Marcus,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Dad didn’t make it through the night.”

My strange wording confused him. It was too hard for me to say that our father had died. When Marcus finally understood what I was trying to tell him, he didn’t respond with words, but a guttural animal-like wail. In the background, I heard my mother rush into his room and try to comfort him. She took the phone and I told her what I knew. But I didn’t have any answers for them. I didn’t feel equipped to deal with this. I felt like what I was. A little girl who had just lost her daddy.

Cat and Aly came back into my room. I couldn’t stop crying or shaking. I was unsure what to do. What happens next?

I lay curled in a ball while things happened around me in a blur. Someone booked me a flight home. Cat and Aly began to gather my things. My teammates came into the room, one by one, to check on me. Some were unsure how to act and stood awkwardly near the door, simply staring. They had never seen me so vulnerable and broken: I usually presented such a strong front. Marci Miller—older than many of my teammates—seemed to understand what was needed. She sat next to me on the bed and rubbed my leg, murmuring calming words. I latched onto her touch and voice and turned toward her for help. “I don’t know what to do,” I whimpered. “I can’t do this.”

I looked up and saw Bri sitting across from me, looking directly into my