But in that fancy downtown Seattle department store, I liked what I saw in the mirror. I felt beautiful.
“Let me do your eyebrows, Hope,” Terry said.
We went to a skin-care salon where I got a facial. Terry shaped and tweezed my brows. Then, all dressed up and made over, we went to the Space Needle Restaurant for dinner. The Space Needle was like our Eiffel Tower. Being there meant you were someplace important and sophisticated, high above everything else. When my father took Marcus and me there in the summer of 1989, the visit signaled that our trip to Seattle was a special event. Dinner with my sister was also a memorable night.
From high atop the Space Needle, I looked out over the city and felt like a princess, like Dorothy in the Emerald City. I felt so lucky to have a big sister who was so kind. While the rest of the Solo children inherited our father’s hot temper and short fuse, Terry was a peacemaker and a caretaker. She knew that things were difficult for me at home, that I needed to feel safe and beautiful.
When I got back to Richland, I was teased because my eyebrows looked too perfect. Back then adolescent girls didn’t shape their brows. But I didn’t care.
And, besides, my best friend, Cheryl, told me I looked pretty.
VII.
When I was in third grade, just a few months after the kidnapping, I’d started playing on a new recreation-league soccer team. On the first day of practice, I’d met a little blond girl named Cheryl Gies. Pretty soon we were inseparable. Cheryl and Hope, Hope and Cheryl—for the next ten years.
Cheryl was one of the only people I let get close. She was allowed into my house, inside my crazy life, an eyewitness to the turmoil. She saw it all—the screaming fights with my mother, with Glenn, with Marcus. She didn’t pass judgment or criticize. I think she knew things were weird in my house, but she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. She remained my friend, no matter what she witnessed. When I didn’t feel like a normal kid, I took solace in having a normal best friend and in her normal life. So that was something, even if it was a step removed.
Cheryl lived on the other side of town, in a new development of large homes set back from streets with equestrian names that evoked rich leather saddles and patrician roots. Many of the homes had horse pastures and sweeping views out over the Columbia Plateau. At Cheryl’s house, on Appaloosa Way, no one was screaming or fighting. Cheryl’s older brothers didn’t torment her. There were framed pictures of her family on the walls, pleasant-smelling candles in the bathroom, no darts shooting out from behind bedroom doors, and there was no clutter in the hallway or on the stairs. Even their garage was neatly organized. Being at Cheryl’s was like traveling into an opposite universe. I started to spend almost as much time there as at my home.
Cheryl’s parents, Mary and Dick, were kind and generous. They invited me to spend the night all the time. They could see past my tough front. They could tell I was a good kid. Their biggest concern was my risk-taking: I was always the first one to jump off a cliff into the river, to try to swim out to an island, to leap between balconies at a motel where we were staying with our soccer team. I urged Cheryl to keep up with me, to try something new.
The truth, however, is that I’m not completely fearless. When I was a small child, I had dreams that my stomach was sliced open by pirates, and I would cry and crawl into my father’s arms upon waking. I’m scared of flying, a difficult fear to deal with, considering my job and lifestyle. And I’m terrified of sharks, so I get nervous in the ocean.
But in general, Mary and Dick were right. I took risks; I wasn’t intimidated by much. Why should I have been? I was coping with risk and threat on a daily basis at home.
VIII.
In middle school, I was assigned to write a paper about what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was then that I decided: I am going to be a professional soccer player.
I was dreaming for something that didn’t even exist. This was years before the 1996 Summer Olympics, when the U.S. women’s soccer team first entered the nation’s consciousness. This was long before any kind of professional women’s league had been established. I didn’t even know the names Mia Hamm or Michelle Akers. I didn’t have any role models. But I knew how soccer made me feel, and I knew I wanted to hold on to that feeling for the rest of my life.
Life was calm and ordered on the soccer field. I was special. My strength and aggression were a plus—I dominated as a forward. Back then, no coach would have ever dreamed of taking me off the field and sticking me in goal. I was a playmaker. Sure, if our team needed a goalkeeper, I was perfectly willing to fill in for a half—some kids didn’t have the stomach for it, but I didn’t care. I was fearless. But I was too good an athlete to be stuck in goal. That was where the slow, overweight girls played, the uncoordinated ones who couldn’t run or score. I was a goal-scoring machine, always leading the attack. I felt free and unburdened when I was on the soccer field.
In middle school, our soccer
