My dad loved talking to Cheryl and me about soccer. He was enthusiastic—he called Cheryl “Bulldog” for her play on the field. And Cheryl learned to love him. “He makes me feel like a champion,” she told me. I understood what she meant. My dad was charismatic, especially with young people. He made you believe you were capable of anything. My brother’s Little League teammates always spoke fondly of him. The Richland adults were suspicious of my dad, but not the Richland kids. It made my mother crazy; seeing my father trying to impress us and act as though he had money. Any time he was around, we were ecstatic. Still, she didn’t try to stop us from seeing him.
The source of my father’s money remained a mystery. He was no longer in a tent or on the streets but seemed to be living with the same woman we had seen in the hotel in Seattle when he kidnapped us. She was well-off and appeared to be supporting him. One Christmas Marcus and I went to Seattle to see him at that lady’s fancy house. The visit was awkward. The woman had a daughter who wanted to play board games with us. She called my father Dad, which made me furious. She didn’t look like us: she had red hair and wasn’t athletic, and I refused to believe she could possibly be related to us. I just wanted her to leave and let us be alone with our dad.
Eventually that woman must have kicked my father out, because one day he showed up at Terry’s door in Kirkland. He was clearly living back on the streets and in need of a shower. Terry, who was married by then to her husband, Jeff, let Dad in, gave him something to eat, and allowed him to stay a few days. Then one morning he was gone.
From then on, he appeared at Terry’s door sporadically, staying for a week or two, leaving his duffel bag of belongings at her house. Sometimes I visited him there. But we never knew when he’d show up or where he was the rest of the time.
IV.
By the time I got to Richland High, I already had a target on my back. I was a standout soccer player. I was a Solo. I wasn’t going to blend in. As a freshman starter on the varsity soccer team, I scored seventeen goals and got attention from reporters who loved making puns out of my name: I was trying to win games “solo” or was giving my team “hope.”
One afternoon, we were playing Eisenhower High. It was a nasty, physical game, and our opponents were double- and triple-teaming me, pushing and elbowing. A girl punched me, I pushed back, and a brawl erupted. I was on the ground being pummeled, and no one—not the referee or the coaches—did anything to stop it. My mother ran onto the field, screaming, “Stop it, stop it.”
Our athletic director, Mr. Potter, stepped in front of her. “Judy, get off the field,” he demanded.
“If you were doing your goddamn job, I wouldn’t have to do it for you,” my mother screamed at him.
“Get off,” Potter shouted.
“Hey,” shouted Marcus, coming up behind them, “don’t you talk to my mother like that.”
The athletic director kicked them off the field. I was ejected from the game, along with the girls who were hitting me. Marcus had to go to the principal’s office for shouting at the athletic director.
The Solos had a reputation.
Marcus was a senior when I was a freshman. He’d been in trouble a lot through high school—fighting, drinking, driving under the influence. His coaches and some of the teachers at Richland loved him, but others hated and feared him. The same was true for the students—there was no middle ground with Marcus. When I got to Richland High, I sensed teachers and administrators eyeing me, thinking, Oh no, here comes another Solo. I, too, split people into camps: they either loved me or hated me, even though I wasn’t a troublemaker. I got good grades. I made the honor roll every semester of high school and kept my grade point average at 3.8 for four years.
But Marcus’s reputation was unavoidable. Guys wouldn’t ask me to dance at school dances because they were afraid of my brother. One night, I tried to sneak out of my house to meet an older boy. Marcus found out, and he and Glenn ambushed the boy with baseball bats, trying to intimidate him. It was a bonding moment. Another time, down by the boat dock, Marcus beat the shit out of an older boy who was calling my grandparents’ house in the middle of the night, looking for me.
Marcus was my protector, but we still battled. As I got older, his insults got worse. He used my soccer prowess as a weapon against me, calling me a “golden child,” a selfish bitch who thought I was better than everyone else. Our fighting didn’t let up. Still, we were a team. At the homecoming dance in my freshman year, my brother asked me to dance. I was so proud, a little freshman dancing with my cool senior brother.
V.
My mother’s drinking was getting worse. I suspected she was drunk when she showed up at my basketball and soccer games. Once,
