Chapter 1 #2
I drop into the corner chair, the one with one leg shorter than the others that rocks a little. The bartender sets the beer down without asking what kind, because I always order the same.
“Is it true?” Kayla says from across the table.
“Which part?”
“The part where you go to Seattle and leave us hanging.”
“Leave you hanging?” I ask, taking a long pull. “More like the part where they make me go to Seattle so the club doesn't disappear,” I correct her.
Liz sits down next to me and puts her hand on my knee, squeezes once.
“Is it final?”
“I haven't accepted yet.”
“But you're going to, right?”
“Yeah. I'm going to accept,” I admit, and the sigh that comes with it feels like surrender.
Nobody speaks for a few seconds that stretch out forever. Then Becca stands up, goes to the bar, and comes back with a bottle of tequila and enough glasses for everyone.
“If Mireya leaves, we get wasted,” she announces. “Club rules.”
“That's not a rule,” Kayla protests.
But the glasses get filled anyway, and a second bottle doesn't last long.
Liz wraps her arms around me and squeezes hard enough to crack my ribs.
She soaks my neck with her tears. I drink another shot and tell them the terms. The transfer fee, the investment deal, the five guaranteed years for our club, the charity match clause, and the fact that Diana Creed asked for me by name.
“God. Hades,” Kayla whistles low.
“You're in for it,” Becca says, pouring another round. “She's nothing like your mother on the sideline. That woman has no soul. All she cares about is winning, and she tears apart any player who doesn't fit her system.”
“Thanks, Becca. Exactly what I needed to hear right now,” I say.
“It's the truth. But she's also the best coach in the country. And the Emeralds have won three of the last five titles. And you'll fit, because you're the freaking Mireya Guerrero, the only player in this club's history to make the national team.”
“Or it could go badly.”
“Or it could go badly,” she agrees, knocking her glass against mine. “But if it does, we'll be right here waiting. And when we play against you guys, we'll throw a party; you're going to beat us anyway.”
“And we won't foul you on the field. I swear,” Liz adds.
We drink. Probably too much. We talk. We laugh at things that aren't funny, and at two in the morning Liz drives me home because I can't get behind the wheel and because someone has to make sure I don't fall asleep in the parking lot.
At my apartment door, she hugs me again.
“You're going to Seattle. You're going to play for the Emeralds. And you're going to be the best player on that team. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She hugs me one more time. Tight. Then she lets go and walks away down the hall without looking back. I know she doesn't want me to see her cry.
At six in the morning, I call my mother. I can't sleep anyway, so I'd rather rip it off fast, like a bandage. Maybe it'll hurt less.
Three rings. She picks up with a rough voice. I woke her up. I breathe in.
“I accept.”
“Good,” she says.
That's it. Good. One word that seals my future.
The announcement goes out at eight. By nine, my phone won't stop buzzing.
Messages from fans calling me a martyr, others saying I'm a sellout.
A thread on Twitter with my name trending.
Journalists asking for statements. Teammates from the national team sending broken-heart emojis.
Players from my own club leaving voice messages I don't want to listen to.
Social media blows up. Under every photo, words like sacrifice and betrayal. Someone even makes a meme comparing my transfer to the myth of Persephone, where Hades drags her down to the underworld.
I stare at the screen until the letters blur.
I'm not a martyr. And I'm sure as hell not a traitor. I'm a professional soccer player going where she's told so the girls from her neighborhood can keep kicking a ball around on Tuesday afternoons.
I turn off my phone. Shower. Get dressed, pack my whole life into two suitcases and a duffel bag, and head for the Seattle Emeralds' preseason camp in Florida.
**
That afternoon at the airport, my mother's chin trembles, and I've never seen that before.
She holds me tight, and I grip her the way I used to as a kid, terrified before games.
“Don't let them change you,” she whispers into my hair.
“They won't.”
She pulls back. Holds me by the shoulders. Looks me dead in the eye.
“I mean it, Mireya. Those people play a different kind of soccer. They have money, they have power, they have a system that will grind you down if you let it. You play the way your father taught you: with your whole heart. Don't let them kill your creativity. Keep enjoying the game.”
“I promise,” I tell her, even though I'm not sure I can keep it.
“Call me when you land.”
“Okay.”
“And eat something on the plane. I don't want you showing up to preseason camp on an empty stomach.”
“Mom, I'm not twelve.”
“You'll always be twelve to me,” she murmurs, and this time the tears come. “Now go. Get through security and go shine at your new club.”
On the plane, I try to distract myself by watching a few interviews with my new coach. Photos on the sideline, all of them with her arms crossed and a look that dares you to disappoint her.
“Creativity without structure is chaos. And chaos doesn't win championships,” she tells some reporter.
I close my phone.
Chaos. That's precisely what I am. What I've always been. What my father taught me to be on the dirt fields of Aura Valley when I was five years old, wearing secondhand cleats held together with electrical tape.
Diana Creed bought me to fit me into her system.
And I'm going to show her that her system has no idea what's about to walk through that door.