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

to do, another staged act. I would have liked a real conversation with Julie, but that didn’t seem possible.

On the day of the final World Cup games, I went for breakfast at the family hotel. In the lobby, I ran into Sunil Gulati, president of U.S. Soccer. He asked me to come up to his room to chat.

My heart sank. Sunil was the head of the federation. Was I going to be kicked off the team? Was I in for another lecture?

No, Sunil was friendly. He introduced me to his wife, Marcela. He didn’t scold me. He just wanted to check how I was doing.

I told him I was okay, but eager to get home.

“You know,” Sunil said, “if this had happened on a men’s team, I think it would be quite a different situation.” He pretended to throw a punch, implying that’s how men would deal with it. “If you need anything, let me know,” he said with a friendly smile.

The head of U.S. Soccer wasn’t ostracizing me. That was one small bit of good news.

During the matches, I was confined to my hotel. My mother and Adrian stayed with me. “If my daughter’s not allowed to be there, I won’t be there either,” my mom said. But the rest of my supporters went. My grandma wore her big billboard pin that she could program to flash different names. It usually flashed HOPE NO. 18, but now she made it read BRI NO. 1. My family wanted to show their support for Bri, to make it clear that what I said wasn’t directed at Bri.

Back at the hotel, Adrian and Mom and I watched the games on a tiny television, listening to the commentary in Chinese. My teammates easily beat Norway and then celebrated as though they had won the World Cup. Abby scored two goals and ran to the bench for team high-fives, which looked to me like a staged moment to prove that all twenty were a team. When Lilly came out in the eighty-ninth minute, there was a big show of giving Bri the captain’s armband. It all seemed like an act for the cameras; it was the sentimental send-off party they’d been planning all along.

In the final, Germany shut down Marta and easily handled Brazil.

The next morning, my team packed up and left China while I sat in my room. My family left while I stayed alone in the hotel for hours, waiting for my late-night flight. The hotel staff came around to say good-bye and were very kind. When I left for the airport, it was the first time I had been out of either the team or family hotel since arriving in Shanghai, almost ninety-six hours earlier. I had been isolated and had no idea what anyone thought about what had happened.

When I got in line to check in, I saw that I was on a flight with many U.S. team supporters and friends and boyfriends. I wanted to hide from them. But I couldn’t. “I can’t believe what happened to you,” one man said. “I don’t know how Ryan could bench one of the best goalkeepers in the world.”

I was surprised. “Thank you,” I said.

“Hang in there, Hope,” another stranger said. “It’s such a shame.”

“We’re rooting for you,” his wife said.

I boarded the plane, sank into my seat, and left China behind.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Don’t Let the Devil Steal Your Joy”

Hotter.

Hotter.

Hotter.

The plumes of steam billowed up, softening the periphery of my vision. The water scalded my foot as I stepped into the tub, but I slipped under the surface, my body burning, and drifted away.

Too hot!

I woke up sweating. I climbed out of the tub, wrapped myself in a towel and curled on the floor in a fetal position, where I fell back asleep.

Too cold!

I was shivering. I turned on the hot water tap of the bathtub, as hot as I could make it. I stepped back into the tub and sunk down again into the steaming water. Everything ached. It hurt to stand. To lie in my bed. The only comfort came in the bathtub or on the tile floor. I went from one to the other and back again, alternating between temperature extremes, trying to purge the pain from my body.

I had been home for days, isolated in my little cabin in Kirkland. I barely ate. In the bathtub, I could see my hipbones jutting up beneath my skin. I ignored my ringing phone. I didn’t want to turn on my computer. The one person I wanted to talk to was gone. My father was dead, and his absence—uncoupled now from the pressure of the World Cup—overwhelmed me. I was paralyzed in a black hole of loss: Dad, Liz, the World Cup, my dreams, three years of striving toward a single goal, a lifetime of sport. I couldn’t contemplate what was next. I couldn’t envision playing soccer again. I couldn’t move any farther than the bathtub. The only sensation that registered was heat.

I lay in the hot water and thought about my grandmother and her deep abiding faith and her capacity for forgiveness. I remembered the words she had said to me over the years: snippets of scripture, Christian sayings, encouraging phrases. She often spoke of forgiveness. Of having compassion for one’s enemies. Of self-belief and remaining steadfast in your convictions. She said anger and hate were poison to the soul: “Don’t let the devil steal your joy.”

I hadn’t always paid much attention, but her words had apparently soaked into my pores.

I thought of my mother’s ability to forgive, how she smuggled cookies and cocoa to my father and painted my house with him and celebrated his life with Marcus and me, putting aside all the pain and hurt he had caused her.

I thought of how far down my father had been and how resilient he had been, not only to survive on the streets but to finally find joy in his life. I thought of how much he