‘I can and I will,’ had been the motto I held closest to my heart at all times. I didn’t like people telling me I couldn’t do something, even if I didn’t want to do it. This was how Coach Gardner had gotten me to say I’d do the interview.
I could do it. I could be in the same room as Reiner Kulti. Sit a couple seats down from him for the first time ever in front of several television networks. No biggie.
On the inside, I crumpled into a ball like a dead spider and asked myself to please dissolve into dust sooner than later. This terror, this phobia of mine, was that unreasonable. No one ever says that fear is logical, because it isn’t. It’s stupid and irrational and on a scale of one to ten it sucked about a fifty.
“You ready?” Coach Gardner asked as we waited for the beginning of the press conference. The journalists and reporters were so loud in the other room it was making me sick. How the hell had this even happened? I was usually third down the chain of players that got requested for these publicity events, and that was for a reason.
I could play in front of thousands of people, but the instant cameras got within ten feet of me, I just shut down. I was like the Ricky Bobby of the WPL. I was sure there was a video of me making awful hand gestures throughout an interview somewhere. The three S’s came down to make me look like an idiot—stuttering, sweating and shaking. All at once.
My hands felt like I’d just rubbed them all over my lower back after a long run, my armpits were sweaty… and my leg was shaking. Both my legs were shaking. I knew shit was about to get real when my leg shook.
But instead of admitting that I was nervous, I stuck my hands in my pockets, thanked the lord above that the sweat pants I’d put on that morning were baggy enough so that no one could tell my legs had a mind of their own, and forced a smile on my face. “Ready,” I lied through my teeth.
And unfortunately, he knew me well enough to recognize the fact I was lying out of my ass because Gardner laughed loud. A hand came down on my shoulder and he gave me a shake. “You’re a wreck. It’ll be fine.”
One of the public relations people for the organization peeped around the corner of the hallway and frowned for a second before disappearing again.
I couldn’t do this.
I could do this.
One hacking cough later, I told myself: I could do this. I really could.
My leg only shook harder as someone came over a microphone in the other room, “We need a minute, please.”
Oh God.
“I think I just threw up in my mouth a little,” I muttered more to myself than to Gardner.
“It’ll be fine,” he assured me with a sympathetic smile.
I cleared my throat and nodded at him, begging myself to calm down. I took a couple of quick inhales and exhales before sucking in one deep breath and holding it, like I did when I was too amped up before a game.
Yeah, it didn’t help.
My stomach swelled with nausea and I had to swallow back bile.
“Where is he, anyway?” I asked.
Gardner actually looked around like the question surprised him. “You know, I have no clue. I guess they put him in a different room?”
We got our answer a second later when the same PR rep who had just made an appearance was back, the corners of her mouth twisted downward. “We have a problem.”
Chapter Two
“Sal, no.”
“Yes.”
“Sal, I’m not kidding. Not even a little bit. Please. Please. Tell me you’re joking.”
I laid my head back against the headboard and closed my eyes, giving myself a grim smile of defeat. All was lost. This afternoon had been real, and there was no escaping it. So I told Jenny the truth, “Oh, it happened.”
She groaned.
Jenny was a true friend, like one that felt the worst of your pain for you, suffering right along with you; she let out a groan that I could feel from over a thousand miles away. My humiliation was her humiliation. Jenny Milton and I had been friends from the moment we met each other at camp for the United States national team—the ‘best’ players in the country—five years ago. “No,” she groaned, she choked. “No.”
Oh, yes.
I sighed and relived the twenty minutes in front of the cameras that afternoon. I wanted to die. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, but it was definitely one of those few moments that I wished I could go back and redo differently. Or at least go all Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and pretend they never happened. “I’m going to dye my hair, change my name and go live in Brazil,” I told her evenly.
What did she do? She laughed. She laughed and then snorted, and then laughed a little more.
The fact that she didn’t try to tell me everything was okay meant that I wasn’t overreacting to the events that had transpired hours before.
“What do you think my chances are that no one ever sees the entire thing?”
Jenny made a noise that gave the impression she was actually putting some thought behind the question. “I would say you’re out of luck. I’m sorry.”
My head hung and my chest puffed out in a suffering laugh-slash-dry cry. “On a scale of one to ten, how screwed?”
There wasn’t a response until there was, and it was sharp and tight. A high laugh that let me know Jenny was feeling it down to her toes. She was laughing like she did every other time I’d done something incredibly embarrassing. Like waving back at a stranger that I thought had been waving at me—he wasn’t, there’d been someone behind me. Or the time I skid across a freshly mopped floor and busted my ass.
I shouldn’t expect any different.
“Sal, did you really…?’
“Yes.”
“In front of everyone?”
I grunted. I could barely think about it without tossing my cookies and wanting to find myself a cave and hibernate forever. It was over and life would go on. Ten years from now no one would remember, but…
I would. I’d remember.
And Jenny, Jenny would remember especially if she ever found the footage. And she would, I knew she would. She was probably already trolling websites looking for Sal Casillas’s entry into those video compilations people did for Fail of the Week.
“Would you stop laughing?” I snapped into the receiver when she couldn’t stop cracking up.
She laughed even harder. “One day!”
“I’m hanging up on you now, bitch.”
There was a loud snicker, followed by another, and then one more piercing gut-laugh. “Give… me… a… minute,” she wheezed.
“You know, I called you because you’re the nicest person I know. I thought who isn’t going to give me shit? Jenny, Jenny won’t. Thanks a lot.”
She gasped, and then she laughed even more. There was no doubt in my mind she was reliving the events of my day in her head and finally enjoying the humor in them—the humor anyone could have when it wasn’t them that had embarrassed themselves in front of the media.
I pulled my phone away from my face and held my finger over the red button, imagining myself hanging up the call.
“Okay, okay. I’m fine now.” She did these weird breathing exercises to calm down before finally getting it together. “Okay, okay.” A weird wheezing noise came out of her nose, but it only lasted a split second. “Okay. So, he didn’t show up? Did they say why?”
Kulti. The entire afternoon had been his fault. All right, that was a lie. It’d been my fault. “No. They said he had some travelling issues or something. That’s why they made Gardner and I do the conference by ourselves.”
Cue my imaginary sob.
“That sounds pretty fishy,” Jenny noted, almost sounding normal. Almost. I could already envision her pinching her nose and holding the phone away from her face as she cracked up. Asshole. “I bet he was eating brunch and looking at ads of himself online.”
“Or looking up old footage and criticizing himself.”
“Counting his collectio
n of watches—“ He’d had a watch endorsement for as long as I could remember.
“He was probably sitting in a hyperbaric chamber reading about himself.”
“That’s a good one,” I laughed, stopping only when the phone clicked twice. A long digit number with fifty-two at the beginning flashed across the display and it only took a second for me to realize who was calling. “Hey, I need to let you go, but I’ll see you at practice on Monday; your best friend is calling.”
Jenny laughed. “Okay, tell him I said hi.”
“I will.”
“Bye, Sal.”
I rolled my eyes and smiled. “See ya. Have a safe trip,” I said, right before clicking over to answer the incoming call.
I didn’t even get a chance to say a word before the male voice on the other line said “Salomé.”
Oh God. He was being serious. It was the way he said it, more choked rather than enunciated, all Salo-meh, instead of his usual “Sal!” that burst out of his mouth like I’d broken something irreplaceable. No one ever called me by my first name, much less my dad. I think the only times he ever had were when he meant business… as in the business of him trying to kick my ass when my mom thought I did something spectacularly dumb and wanted him to do something about it. There was the time I got into a fight during a game when I was fifteen and got thrown out. He never actually went through with any sort of real punishment. His idea of discipline was chores—lots and lots of chores as he secretly praised my jab when my mom wasn’t around.
So when Dad continued by saying, “Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?” I couldn’t help but laugh.
I pulled the covers down and away from my face to speak with him. The first thing I said to him was, “No. You’re just crazy.”
He was crazy. Crazy in love, Mom joked. As a total soccer snob, my dad was like most foreigners—he wasn’t a fan of U.S. soccer if it didn’t have me or my brother in the equation. Or Reiner Kulti, also branded as ‘The King’ by his fans and ‘the Führer’ by those that hated his guts. Dad liked to say he couldn’t help liking him. Kulti was too good, too talented, and he’d played on my dad’s favorite team for most of his career, with the exception of a two-year stint he had with the Chicago Tigers at one point. So there was that, too. The man owned four different types of jerseys: the Mexican national team jersey, each club or team Eric had played for, mine, and Kulti’s. It went without saying he wore Kulti’s way more often than someone with two kids who played professional soccer should, but I didn’t take it too personally.
The three of us—my mom and little sister excluded—had spent hours on top of hours watching all of Kulti’s games. We’d record the ones we couldn’t watch in person on the VCR and later on, through DVR. I’d been young enough for the six-foot-two German national to make the biggest impact possible on my life. Sure, Eric had been playing soccer for as long as I could remember, but Kulti’s influence had been different. It had been this magnetic force that drew me to the field day after day, making me tag along with Eric every chance I got because he was the best player I knew.
It just happened that Dad had gone along on the ride with me, fueling my hero worship.
“I was sitting here eating, when your cousin runs into the house,” my parents were visiting my aunt in Mexico, “and tells me to turn on the news.”
It was coming…
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t! We couldn’t tell anyone until it was official, and I found out right before they made me do the press conference.”
There was a pause, a choke on his end. He said something that sounded like Dios mio under his breath. In a low whisper he asked, “You did a press conference?” He couldn’t believe it.
He hadn’t seen it. Thank you, Jesus. “It went just as bad as you’re imagining it did,” I warned him.
Dad paused again, absorbing and analyzing what I was telling him. Apparently he decided to let the news of my stupidity in front of the camera go for the time being before asking, “It’s true? He’s your new coach?” He asked the question so hesitantly, so slow, if it was possible for me to love my dad even more—it wasn’t, that was a fact—I would have.
For some strange reason I had the mental flashback of having Kulti’s late-twenties face on my sophomore math binder. Bah. “Yeah, it’s true. He’s going to be our new assistant since Marcy left.”
In a weird rattling exhale, my dad muttered, “I’m going to faint.”
I burst out laughing even harder at the same time a yawn tried to climb out of me. I’d stayed up watching a Netflix marathon of British comedies until I found the mental strength to call Jenny with my story. I knew it was close to midnight, which was way past my usual old-lady bedtime of ten, or eleven if I was feeling really crazy. But I knew she was still in Iowa for two more days and she’d be up. “You’re such a drama queen.”
“Your sister’s the drama queen,” he griped.
He had me there.
“You’re not lying?” He kept speaking in Spanish, and by speaking, I really meant he was more like panting at that point.
I groaned, shoving the sheets further down my waist. “No, Dad. Jeez. It’s true. Mr. Cordero—our general manager, that idiot I told you about—sent out an email to the team right afterward,” I explained.
Dad was quiet for a moment; the only sound coming through the speaker was his breathing. I was dying a little bit inside at his reaction. I mean, I wasn’t surprised he was having his own version of a shit attack. I’d think there was something wrong with him if he wasn’t acting like this might be one of the single greatest moments of his life. “I feel light-headed—“
This man was ridiculous.
There was a pause, and in a tiny voice that was so at odds with the man that could usually be heard screaming GGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLL down the block, my dad croaked, “My hands—my hands are shaking—“ he switched back to English, his voice choppy.
My entire body was shaking with laughter. “Quit it.”
“Sal.“ His tone turned thin, too thin for a man whose voice only had two volumes: loud and louder. “Voy a llorar. You’re going to be on the same field as him.”
I had to let it go. My stomach started cramping from how hard my dad was making me laugh. I didn’t bring up Eric, it wasn’t like any of us would forget his experience, but that was true love for you—blind and unconditional. “Dad, stop.” I couldn’t quit laughing because knowing him, he was being totally honest.
He wasn’t much of a crier. He’d cried when I’d been called to the U-17 team, the national team for girls under seventeen, and again when I moved up to the U-20 team. The only other time I could remember seeing him with tears in his eyes was the day his father died. By the time I got drafted into the professional league, he’d just beamed, more comfortable in my position than I was. I’m pretty sure I was so nervous I had sweat stains on my butt.
“He’s going to be your coach,” he squeaked, and I mean really squeaked.
“I know.” I laughed that time. “I’ve gotten like ten emails from people I know asking me to confirm. You’re all insane.”
Dad simply repeated himself, “He’s going to be your coach.”
That time, I pinched the bridge of my nose to keep from making a sound. “I’ll tell you when the open practice will be so you can meet him.”
Then he did it, he crossed the line again. “Sal—Sal, don’t tell anyone, but you’re my favorite.”
Oh my God. “Dad—“
There was a shout in the background that sounded suspiciously like my younger sister and was followed by what I could only assume was Dad holding the phone away from his face as he yelled back, “I was joking!...You told me you hated me yesterday, te acuerdas? Why are you going to be my favorite when you say you wish I wasn’t your dad?” Then he started yelling some more. Eventually he came back on the line with a resigned sigh. “That girl, mija. I don’t know what to do with her.”
“I’m sorry.” I was, at least
partially. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for my little sister to be so different from Eric and I. She didn’t like the same things we did—sports—but mostly, she didn’t seem to really like anything. My parents had tried putting her in different activities, but she never lasted and never put in any effort. Like I’d told my parents, she needed to figure things out for herself.
“Ay. I guess I can’t complain too much. Hold on a second—Ceci, que quieres?” And then he was off, yelling at my sister a little more.
I just sat there with the phone still to my face, lying in my bed two hundred miles away from where I’d grown up, soaking in the idea that Reiner Kulti—the Reiner Kulti—
was going to be my coach. I swallowed the nerves and anticipation down.
No big deal.
Right.
What I needed to do was get it together and focus on making it through preseason training to ensure my spot as a starter. I’d have to fuck up royally to not start the season, but sometimes the unexpected was known to happen. I didn’t like to play around with chance anyway.
And with that thought, I finished up my conversation with my dad, lay in bed, and talked myself out of going for a late, last-minute, five-mile run. My body needed the rest. It only took me ten minutes of staring off blankly at the wall, to really decide I could save a run for the morning and it would be fine.
One of my favorite coaches when I was younger would always say when motivating us to practice: To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
There’d be no peace in my life if I didn’t do well when practices began, with or without The King being there.
Chapter Three
“The meeting is on the fifth floor today, Sal, conference room 3C.” The guard winked at me as he slid my visitor’s pass across the granite desk.
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