Girls of Summer

by Kate Christie

  Her eyes caught on the final line of the ruling: “It is so ordered.”

  It is so ordered.

  She released a breath, feeling the weight of years and years of hatred and persecution falling away as she exhaled. If she and Emma were to get married, it would be legal right from the start. They wouldn’t have to fight for the right to be treated equally because all of the amazing couples who had stepped up in Obergefell v. Hodges had taken the fight for recognition of their marriages to the highest court in the land. And before them, there was Edie Windsor, who took the fight for her 40-year relationship with Thea Spyer all the way to the Supreme Court. And before them were the couples in Massachusetts who had won the landmark 2004 decision that had first signaled the turning of the tide. And so on and so forth, the wave continuing back farther and farther, all the way to the 1969 Stonewall uprisings when a bunch of New York queers rebelled against police brutality and started the modern gay liberation movement.

  As much as Stonewall was a flashpoint in history, this day was too, and Jamie was thankful to have Emma and Britt and Angie and their teammates beside her at the moment when LGBTQ history in America changed.

  Voices sounded in the hallway, and then Meg and Todd were pushing the unlocked door open and Jamie’s older sister was standing there in the entryway, her arms upraised in triumph over her messy bun, eyes bleary from the weeks of travel but elated behind her chunky glasses.

  “Gay marriage is legal, bitches!” she announced, and the room dissolved into cheers once again.

  Jamie had a feeling Emma was right. Today was going to be a good day, after all.

  #

  The wave of exhilaration carried her all the way to warm-ups that evening before petering out in the face of her World Cup suspension. She and Gabe were allowed to be in the locker room and on the bench before the game, but they would have to be in the stands before the playing of the national anthems.

  “This sucks,” Jamie said glumly as she and Gabe sat on the red cushioned seats of the US bench at TD Place Stadium.

  “I know,” Gabe agreed. She watched their teammates practicing small-sided keep-away games, her shoulders and head dipping slightly as if she were trying to control the ball’s movement through mental telepathy.

  The rest of the team was dressed in cleats and the black and neon green warm-up uniforms that fans seemed to either love or hate, but Jamie and Gabe weren’t allowed to dress like their teammates. Instead, they were clad in sneakers, jeans, and matching blue collared US Soccer shirts, an outfit that clearly marked them as separate. Jamie had like the shirts when Nike delivered them. Now, she was pretty sure she never wanted to wear it again.

  “But at least we get to be here at all,” Gabe added.

  Jamie only shrugged. At that moment, she almost wished she were sitting alone in her hotel room. Every once in a while she caught a journo with their telephoto lens focused on the bench, and she was pretty sure they weren’t taking pictures of the comfortable individual seats or the scratch-resistant glass arch that protected the players from potentially unruly fans. You really had to look out for those soccer moms and dads, as Angie and Lisa liked to joke. Never knew what a toddler in a USWNT jersey might throw. A used popsicle stick in the wrong hands could be—well, super sticky.

  Why exactly did the teams need to be protected by the kind of chemically strengthened glass used to make smart phone screens? Jamie had yet to hear a reasonable answer. It wasn’t like the women’s game caused riots. More than likely, someone at FIFA had a cousin or brother whose company had won the contract to provide player benches at the World Cup, and with cash cow FIFA footing the bill, only the finest would do.

  So many assumptions governing the administration of women’s World Cups derived from lessons learned at men’s World Cups, but personally, Jamie thought that comparing the two was like comparing apples and oranges. But the business of soccer was not something she wanted to think about right now. Although, maybe dwelling on FIFA’s idiocy was exactly what she needed to distract herself from her current situation. Certainly there was a nearly endless supply of source material to draw on.

  “Good thing Ellie didn’t get suspended, too,” Gabe said, her eyes on her ex-girlfriend chasing down an errant pass from the center of one of the warm-up groups.

  “No kidding.”

  She had come close, though, and not on the field of play. Ellie’s post-Colombia commentary hadn’t remained restricted to the team’s progress toward peaking. The team had learned later that she had shared her opinion that the referee seemed to target Gabe and Jamie, going after players the ref knew were already sitting on yellow cards. Criticizing a match official was just as risky after a match as during one, given FIFA’s well-known touchiness when it came to suggestions of match-fixing. While Jamie had secretly appreciated being defended by her captain, she’d also worried that Ellie could be censured, possibly even suspended by the tournament’s highly reactive governing body.

  When Jamie told Ellie of her fears, the team captain had only shaken her head and said confidently, “Isn’t going to happen. Even Beth Scott was allowed to play in the bronze medal match in London. I was significantly cagier than she was.”

  Beth Scott should have been suspended, as far as Jamie was concerned. The Canadian captain had gone on the record accusing the referee of the US-Canada game in the semis of the 2012 Olympics of giving the game to the American side, stating that “the ref had already decided the outcome before she blew the starting whistle.” Meanwhile, Scott’s teammate had gotten away with a red-cardable foul—nay, assault—on Emily Shorter. Catherine Beaumont was already carrying a yellow card for one of the seven fouls the referee hadn’t missed when she purposely stomped on Shorter’s head. If the official had truly been intent on giving the game to the US, red-carding Beaumont ten minutes into the second half—or, really, at any point in her deluge of fouls—would have been easy enough. Jamie was sure the Canadians would have whined about that too, though, intent as they had been on blaming everyone but themselves for their loss in that epic match.

  The day after the US downed Colombia, federation reps informed Ellie she would need to make a formal apology, so she did. A day after that, FIFA officially gave her a warning rather than a suspension, but Ellie appeared to shrug it off. The coaches didn’t seem bothered, and neither were the players. Ellie had only said what everyone was thinking—and by doing so, Jamie couldn’t help noticing, she had taken the heat off Jamie and Gabe for fucking up so royally. That was just the kind of teammate she was.

  “You know, Ellie wasn’t wrong about that freaking ref,” Gabe said now, her eyes on their teammates pacing themselves through warm-ups.

  “I know,” Jamie agreed. “After the disaster at the Algarve, what were they thinking letting her officiate a match in the knockout round?”

  They bitched about the previous game, bandying about statistics like it was their job. Which, Jamie had to admit, it pretty much was. The US had been called for 22 fouls while Colombia had only been tagged for 12, which didn’t make any sense seeing as the US had dominated possession. More than one person at team breakfast the morning after Colombia had wondered aloud who had paid off the ref. Cheating wasn’t unheard of at the World Cup. The final group stage matches were played at the same time so that teams wouldn’t change their tactics to achieve a particular result. FIFA had adopted this practice after the 1982 Men’s World Cup, when West Germany and Austria had appeared to conspire to ensure they both advanced while Algeria was eliminated.

  “Can you imagine Jo asking us to tie or lose on purpose?” Jenny had asked as she’d polished off a giant omelet. “Better yet, can you picture our reaction if she did?”

  Jamie had been amazed by the number of stories they’d come up with that morning about scandals in international (men’s) football. The most famous incident had taken place in 1989 during a Men’s World Cup qualifier in Brazil, when the Chilean keeper Roberto Rojas had hidden a razor blade inside his glove. Near
the end of the game, with Chile losing 1-0, Rojas pretended to be struck by fireworks that landed on the field. Head bloodied, he was carried off, and his teammates refused to return due to the “unsafe” conditions. When video revealed that Rojas had intentionally cut his own forehead with the razor blade, Chile was not only disqualified from the 1990 Men’s World Cup, they were banned from the 1994 Men’s World Cup, too. Rojas, meanwhile, was banned for life.

  Match-fixing wasn’t only restricted to the World Cup. Various plots had been discovered and prosecuted in men’s professional leagues around the world, from Serie A and B in Italy to Australia’s Premier League. In Germany, a Bundesliga referee had coordinated with players, coaches, and other officials to fix matches, while in Brazil, two referees known as “The Whistle Mafia” had been paid by outside investors to throw games. Ellie’s mistrust of the Romanian official—and even Beth Scott’s over-the-top accusations around the sketchy Olympics calls—weren’t entirely unjustified, that much was clear.

  When warm-ups ended, Jamie and Gabe stood up to join their team for the final pre-game locker room talk. Jamie tried not to think about how it could be the last team meeting of its kind for this World Cup, and she wouldn’t even be dressed in her USWNT kit.

  Freaking ref. Jamie hoped never to meet her again, but she figured FIFA probably wouldn’t let that happen. Some drama was good for the game, she’d heard more than one federation official opine.

  “Don’t worry,” Ellie said, ruffling her hair as they neared the locker room. “You’ll get another chance to play.”

  God, Jamie hoped so. She’d tried telling herself it was okay if she didn’t. Tried forcing herself to feel grateful just to be here in Canada as part of the team. But gratitude wasn’t something you could force. Or, at least, she didn’t seem able to do so. At Emma’s mother’s house in Minnesota six months earlier, she had assured everyone she would be here in Canada, even if it meant sitting in the stands. But once she’d made the roster, it had never occurred to her that she might end up doing that, anyway.

  Her mind refused to focus during Jo’s pep talk and again during the captains’ speeches. Then she was participating in the unmelodic singing of the birthday song to Jenny, who was turning 29 that day, and the less inharmonious final cheer—“Oosa-oosa-oosa-ah!” A moment later, she was filing out of the locker room with the other non-starters. Except instead of returning to the comfy seats on the American sideline, she and Gabe left the team in the tunnel and retreated into the stadium, accompanying a team rep and a FIFA intern to the US Soccer box midway up the stadium, where player agents, federation staff, and other team insiders could watch the game in relative privacy.

  A handful of other people were already seated, but Jamie didn’t recognize them. She followed Gabe to the front row and slouched into an empty seat, resting her feet on the metal railing that almost but not quite compromised her view of the field. Her knees jumped throughout the playing of the national anthems as a sense of unreality washed over her. She was supposed to be down there on that field right this second, her throat thick as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played and she stood shoulder to shoulder with her teammates ready to give everything she had to keep their World Cup dreams alive. But no. She’d screwed up—again—and here she was in street clothes reduced to watching from afar.

  The federation hadn’t let her wear Emma’s jersey, nor had they allowed her to pick her own seating. She’d wanted to sit with Meg and Todd, down in the lower deck in the seats Jamie had gotten for them. But they would be surrounded by non-US Soccer approved fans, and the federation—and FIFA—couldn’t risk an incident of any kind, she’d been told.

  An incident? What did they think, that she would get drunk and go off the rails? Then again, professional athletes weren’t always reliable on that front.

  “Why would you even ask that?” Gabe had muttered as they’d walked away from the final pre-game meeting with their FIFA and US Soccer reps.

  “Sorry,” Jamie muttered back. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to sit with you.”

  “My feelings aren’t hurt,” Gabe had said, shoving her sideways with her shoulder. “At least, not much. I meant why would you think they would let you watch the game without an official babysitter?”

  “Um, hello, have you met my sister?” Jamie had asked. “She’s pretty much the definition of babysitter. Besides, Emma says you don’t get—”

  “—what you don’t ask for,” Gabe finished. “Yes, Max, I may have heard that once or twice. Really drinking the Blakeley Kool-Aid, huh?” As Jamie cocked an eyebrow at her, Gabe had winced. “Gross. Clearly I did not think that sentence through.”

  Now Gabe touched her jiggling knee. “Dude, chillax. Pulling a quad isn’t going to help anyone.”

  “Ha, ha,” Jamie said. But the lame joke somehow helped ease the tight knot in her midsection of—jealousy? Anger? Self-recrimination? Whatever it was, the tightness didn’t ease much, but even a slight abatement allowed her to take a breath and hold it while the US team—her team—got together on the sideline for one final pre-game cheer before jogging onto the field.

  The only good thing about this whole fiasco was that the coaches had finally been forced to tweak the line-up. Instead of a 4-4-2 with Ellie and Jenny up front, they lined up in a 4-5-1 formation, the same as China—not to mention Colombia, Germany, Brazil, and Australia. Angie had earned the start in Gabe’s left midfield slot, flanking Maddie with VB in her usual spot on the right. Rebecca had been added to the line-up as the right attacking midfielder while Jenny played the same position on the left. This formation, Jamie genuinely felt, had the potential to be a far better use of their individual talents. Of course, there wasn’t a place for her on the field currently, but she was a team player. What was best for the team was what mattered.

  She heard her sister’s voice in the back of her head: “Sure, Jan.”

  What was best for the team was what mattered, god damn it.

  The starting whistle blew, interrupting Jamie’s internal battle, and she glanced down at the field. This was going to be the longest game she’d ever watched, she was pretty sure.

  Go USA.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Actually, Jamie realized shortly after the game started, their bird’s-eye view allowed her and Gabe to watch Jo’s game plan unfolding from above: Press, press, and press some more. In the second minute of the match, Maddie sent a beautiful through ball between two Chinese defenders into the path of an onrushing Rebecca. Gabe half-rose in her seat as Rebecca struck the ball from inside the 18—only to shank it wide.

  Nerves, Jamie thought as Gabe dropped back into her seat and Rebecca sent an apologetic thumbs-up to Maddie. That had long been Rebecca’s challenge, Jamie knew: to silence the stubborn doubts at the back of her head long enough to finish in the offensive third.

  “I swear,” Gabe said, “you give a striker too much time to think and they screw it up nine times out of ten.”

  “Why is it then you seem to have a thing for strikers?” Jamie asked, smiling sideways at her teammate.

  “I mean, it’s not like they’re bad people,” Gabe clarified. “They may not be the sharpest tactically, but they’re usually fast and strong and they always have a nose for goals.”

  “Or maybe a ‘head’ for goals is more accurate,” Jamie offered.

  “So maybe off the field they tend to speak in overly simplistic soccer metaphors like ‘The game of life isn’t over until the final whistle blows.”

  Jamie laughed. “Or ‘We’re taking it one step at a time, one game at a time.’”

  “Or ‘We just need to give one hundred and ten percent.’”

  The conversation paused when Taylor sent another through ball into the box, this time for Jenny to run onto. But the sideline official’s flag went up. Less than a minute later, Ellie’s shot from the top of the box went wide. Maddie launched a rocket over the crossbar a couple of minutes later, and Jamie and Gabe groaned at all the near misses. Still, it was
only ten minutes in and already the US had created more chances than they’d managed in the first half of their other games.

  Apparently subbing Jamie (and Gabe) had been the key to success.

  Sighing inwardly, Jamie pushed the self-pitying thought away and said, “My favorite soccer cliché is ‘Life is like football: You need goals.’”

  “But it is,” Gabe said. “You really do!”

  That was the thing, they agreed as the game continued at the same breakneck speed: Strikers genuinely believed their soccer metaphors. Jamie had to admit that she loved their unshakable faith in the beautiful game.

  “Same,” Gabe said. “But even so, sometimes I can’t help cringing at some of the interview clips.”

  “And yet the media eats that crap up.”

  “Right? Sometimes,” Gabe confided, “I’m tempted to get real with reporters. Like, ‘Our shit stinks just as much as the next person’s.’ In fact, it probably stinks even more given those protein shakes Lacey pushes on us like our federation-provided dealer.”

  Jamie hid her laughter behind her hand. Somehow such a crude statement emerging from the mouth of one of the team’s more uptight players struck her as particularly hilarious. But if a resourceful journo caught her guffawing during a game from which she’d been suspended, the reaction would not be good.

  Down on the field, China was finally seeming to adjust to the onslaught and had managed a few offensive breaks of their own. But the US defense, who hadn’t allowed a single goal since Australia—345 minutes and counting—handled the attacks with seeming ease. Jamie watched Emma slide-tackle a Chinese striker and lifted her fist in solidarity. Yes! Her girlfriend was amazing.