This Is A Joke Right?
[Same day as CH 1]
Jill needed a minute, could any one blame her, she just witnessed one of her strongest players reduced to an vacant shell of a body. Never has she seen Ali Krieger, the warrior princess, this broken. She had just been blindsided by Ashlyn signing with a different national team. (How am I going to tell the rest team. Damn it Ashlyn!) Jill's mind is running amok as she has to tell the rest of the girls that their teammate (well former teammate now) just left with out a word, with out a trace. (I need to get this out before they find out some other way) Taking a few even breathes to ground herself, Jill puts her hand on the doorknob (here goes nothing).
Tick … tick... tick …
The silence in the conference room is deafening. In the past week they had been here, no one even noticed there was a clock in the room until it became the only noise. The entire team is in their own minds, afraid that a single noise or movement could be the end of life as they know it. The main questions running through everyone's heads: What the hell is going on? Where is Ashlyn?
Whitney had been trying to get a hold of Ashlyn since Ali was called out by Jill. Her emotions went from being worried about her best friend (pick up, pick up, please be ok.) to being furious that she wasn't answering her phone or text. (Fuck Ashlyn just answer me)
ASH: hey call me ASAP Please!
ASH: seriously Ash you need to call me.
ASH: Ashlyn Michelle Harris
ASH: answer your damn phone!!
ASH: I need to make sure you're ok please Ash just answer me.
Delivered
20 minutes, multiple texts, and 53 calls to Ashlyn's voicemail, Whitney gives up. She slams her phone on the table, making everyone jump at the sound. She looks up apologetically, "Sorry," she runs her fingers through her hair putting both elbows on the table. The noise had broken everyone out of their trance and they began to whisper among themselves.
"No luck with Ash?" Syd ask as she rubs Whit's back. Whit just shakes her head.
"Where could she be?" Kelley says.
Whit's head shoots straight up, once again making everyone jump. She grabs her phone and frantically searches through it, "you're a geniuses Kell". Her teammates are looking at her questioningly when she looks up from her phone. "Tobin remember junior year after the game in Nebraska when we went to that bar." Tobin thought about it, but nothing was ringing a bell, she looked backed at Whit confused. "I thought I lost my phone and Ashlyn got separated from the group... when we called my phone Ash answered but she was too drunk to know where she was.. soo I used the find my iPhone app from your phone and we found her."
Tobin nods, "ok but what does that have to do with this now?"
"After that I convinced her to get an iPhone and we exchanged apple ID's and passwords as a just in-case scenario... all I have to do is log into her account from my phone and I'll know where she's at." Whit explains, watching as some of the girls seem to relax a little bit knowing one question may be answered. "Ok …. its loading...”
The sound of the door opening grabs everyone's attention but Whitney's, “what the….” She says in complete disbelief. The girls at the table are now looking at Whit. Tobin speaks first, “what is it Whit?”
Whitney picks her head up, “How's that possible…” her team all scrunch their faces in confusion. Just as someone is about to speak they hear Jill's voice, “can I have everybody's attention please…”
Feeling all eyes on her, Jill suddenly feels speechless, she swallows the lump in her throat. Her lack of words at this moment is making everyone uncomfortable, Jill is never at a loss for words.
“This is going to be hard on everyone… And I'm not quite sure on how to tell you girls…” just then the door opens pulling everyone's attention again when Heather walks in.
Jill looks at HAO, “I thought I told you to stay with Ali?” “Hope stayed with her..” The room breaks out in hushed questions. HAO walks over the Jill, lowers her voice, to speak to her coach, "Ali grabbed onto Hope's shirt when she was putting her down and asked her to stay.” Jill nods and signals for HAO to take her seat.
The team was getting restless, they really wanted to know what was going on. Between the baffled look on Whit's face, Jill telling HAO to stay with Ali in the first place, to why the hell Ali was with Hope right now, and the main, where the fuck was Ashlyn?
All eyes were on Jill again, she let out a deep breathe, run her hand through her hair and looked at her team. The looks of confusion and worry plagued each one.
“I was just informed a few minutes ago that Ashlyn… She… She signed with the German National Team. Took a red eye this morning, that's why she's not here.” Gasp filled the room, there's no way Ashlyn would do this. “No one knew… Not even Ali.” the room erupted in questions.
“This is a joke right?"
"There's no way our Ashlyn would do this… she wouldn't just leave”
"That's not even possible... is it?"
"Seriously where's Ash."
"This isn't funny"
Whitney just sat there, a vacant expression on her face. She looked at the app again, Ash's battery life was at 50%, the Wifi was connected with the little Airplane symbol next to it. She refreshed the location and sure enough it moved farther into the Atlantic Ocean toward Germany. Her best friend was on a plane over the Atlantic.
"Whit?" someone called out to her she, she couldn’t concentrate on the voice. She was lost in thought, suddenly all the little things Ashlyn had said to her the past month made sense. How she knew no one would see her full potential, her best friend felt trap in the shadow of the worlds greatest goalkeeper.
"I want to matter Whit, I want to be on the pitch with a team, not sitting on the bench. I don’t want anything to happen to Hope, she's been though so much you know, but I want to matter" at the time Whit did her best to console the blonde, remind her that she did matter. but there's only so much you can say or do.
It hits Whit like a meteor, "with a team", Ashlyn never said our team she said a team. Why didn’t she catch that before?
"It's true" Whitney's voice is low as she exhales, looking down at her phone still. She's not sure why the screen looks so blurry at the moment, that is until she sees a drop of water hit it. Confused at first, she wipes it away when another one hits it, she slowly reach up to her cheek where she feels the wetness that has escaped her eyes with out her knowledge. She tosses her phone on the table, "It's true" she says louder, "I tracked her phone… she's somewhere over the Atlantic right now..."
As everyone begins to take in her words someone asks, "How is that even possible? to sign with a different National Team?"
"It was announced about six months ago... FIFA said since there isn't many professional Women athletes, that a National Team can choose to sign someone who isn't a citizen... fucking Sepp Blatter" Abby chimed in, recalling the news that surprisingly didn’t get that much attention.
"As long as the player is not in contract with their current NT, they can be contacted by a different country. Ashlyn's contract was up last month, we were going to renew it at the end of camp, but we hadn't had a chance to discuss it with her... FIFA made it so if the country and player were in agreement that signing a minimum of two year contract They would help to grant citizenship to the player. Most of the country, including us, were against it but I guess FIFA decided to do their own thing. We figured no one would actually consider doing it, so we ignored it. It's unknown if Ashlyn reached out to them or if they contacted her. I'm sorry ladies but this is real, Ashlyn’s gone..." Silence engulfed the room, "Since today is a day off you're all free to go.” With that Jill left the room unable to keep herself composed in front of her team. ( how could we be so careless and not get her contract taken care of. Then again how could we have see this coming)
No one else got up, were do they go from here, their teammate betrayed them and their country. Whitney and the rest of the UNC alumni were still in shock, some of them in tears. Tobin had gotten up and sat next to Whitney, who was the worst of them all, and just held on as tight as she could.
"I know none of us saw this coming, I sure as hell didn't, but we're going to get through this. I know you are all hurting, or feel angry right, cause I feel it too. What we need to understand is that Ashlyn made her decision and we have to respect that. we don’t have to like it, but we have to respect it... We've said before how we feel like a family. Well we are a family and we have to be strong right now, especially for Ali. I'm not saying cast your own feelings aside right now, I'm saying lets be the family I know we are and just be there for each other. Let's help each other and grow together. I'm here if any one wants to talk so please don't hold this in guys. let it out so we can start to heal, I know it's not going to happen over night, It's going to hurt for awhile but we have each other to fall back on... we have our family." the wise words of a veteran, a captain, with the soothing tone of a mother. Christie Rampone gave her heartfelt speech to her fellow teammates, to her friends, to her family.
No one knew what the new future without their funny, loving, blonde surfer, goalkeeper would be like, but they all new one thing. They had each other and together they could get through this, not matter what happened.