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theotherackerman · 3 years ago

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My Mind Turns Your Life Into Folklore

NOTES: Flashback: Mikasa:age 9, December 25thCurrent time: Sunday December 27th- Wednesday December 30th

CHAPTER ONE: the holidays linger like bad perfume

Mikasa had been nine years old.

It was snowy to the point that they could not see. A visit to her cousin’s as his days were becoming numbered. He wished to see them one more time before he died. One last Christmas together. Her mother and father couldn’t deny Kenny that.

She didn’t remember much of what happened.

The screams.

The bright lights.

The crunch of the metal.

Her father was gone instantly, her mother barely alive. She was reaching towards Mikasa, the sleeve of her mother’s shirt scrunched up so Mikasa could see her mother’s tattoo.

Bright lights were coming again.

She wanted to run but she couldn’t get free.

Her seatbelt was stuck.

“Mikasa, run!” She heard her mother scream.

Click.

She was free. She ran as fast as her legs to take her.

BAM!

A large truck hit the car a second time.

It wasn’t long until the police showed up.

The hospital was sterile, cold.

A piece of glass had embedded into her cheek. So the doctor used tweezers to remove it. He had already wrapped her arm up in a cast.

“There we go. Now you might have a scar from it but you’ll be okay. Don’t pick at the scab on your face. You’re very lucky, Miss Ackerman,” Grisha Jaeger said as he ruffled her hair. She simply looked up with him with tears in her eyes. She hadn’t stopped crying since she got here.

“I don’t care what your protocol is. I got a phone call saying my cousin is here. I’ve already talked to both the sheriff and child services. I’m her next of kin and I’m taking her!” The curtain was thrown back to reveal a very angry Levi Ackerman. “Oh, sorry Doctor Jaeger. Maybe you can tell your nurses that I am her cousin. I forgot my wallet...Kenny got the call.”

Grisha looked at the blonde nurse standing next to Levi and nodded.

“Well just because he has the same last name doesn’t mean they’re related,” the woman retorted.

“Are you fucking stupid? This is a small town, lady. How many Ackermans do you think we have running around here? Look, her father was my mother’s brother as I’ve told you twenty times now!”

Mikasa jumped down from the hospital bed and made her way over to Levi. She grabbed on his sleeve and pulled. When he looked down at her, his expression softened.

“Can we go home?” She asked as she started to cry.

Levi simply scooped Mikasa up and pushed past the nurse.

“Bill me. Make sure you put Captain Levi Ackerman on it. I don’t want that mister shit on there. I served for too many years for that.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Levi had been the one to teach her how to play the piano. He kept a grand baby piano in the sunroom. Kenny had bought it saying it made the place look classy. Mikasa couldn’t disagree.

It was in a desperate need of tuning. Every note seemed to be off. She wondered if Levi even played anymore.

“You know if you told me you were coming, I would have had it tuned,” Levi said as he leaned in the doorway.

“I have my keyboard if I need it. I guess since I found out mom used to play this piano, every time I come home, I want to play it. I didn’t tell you I was coming home because I didn’t know if I was. Besides, I didn’t want you to tell anyone.”

Levi rolled his eyes. “Just go punch him in the jaw and move on.”

“You didn’t hear the things he said! It’s not that simple this time. It’s not just us getting mad at one another. He said he always hated me. He sat there and tore me down, Levi. I was getting ready to propose and he said I was just a people pleaser. That he only dated me because he wanted to know what it would be like to fu...where are you going?”

“Think I’ll go pay Eren a little visit.”

Mikasa exited the sun room and went to the living room. A very angry Levi was about to exit the h ouse.

“Levi, no. Let it go. Armin already punched him when he said it. Then I yelled at Armin I didn’t need him to defend me and then that was it.”

“And now she makes shit coffee!” Ymir called from the kitchen. Mikasa wasn’t sure when the other girl had woken up.

“She hates my coffee,” Mikasa replied simply as she looked down at the floor. This had been only the second time she had talked to what happened. The first had been hours after it had happened, in Mikasa’s bedroom with her bandmates and best friends.

Ymir came into the living room with a mug full of coffee. “You need to add more coffee to it before you brew it. Historia also punched him in the face if that makes you feel better, Captain. I offered to take out his kneecaps but Mika here said no.” Ymir wrapped an arm around Mikasa’s s houlders.

“I would have bailed you out.”

“See! I told you!” Ymir squeezed Mikasa’s shoulders.

Mikasa wasn’t sure why that had made her cry or even when the tears in her eyes had started to build up. The anger on Levi’s face only grew.

Mikasa had been there when Levi had night terrors caused from his PTSD. He had been a soldier, a Captain even. Then a wrong explosion had made him lose his closest friends, not to mention the burns he had sustained on his torso. Mikasa would go into his room as a small child when she would hear the screaming and wake him up, only to ask what was wrong. It brought Levi back every time. With therapy, they slowly started to get better. That wasn’t the only change that helped him. His high school friends started to show up more often after Mikasa had come into his life.

One of those people was Hange Zoe, Levi’s partner. Mikasa adored them.

“When is Hange coming?” Mikasa asked to change the subject.

“They got stuck at Moblit’s house. Storms are real bad up north. Should be here before New Year’s though. Are you sticking around that long?”

Mikasa nodded.

“I’ll be here too. Because you know...no family. Orphaned. Just like you two. Well expect you two have each other.”

Levi just rolled his eyes as he walked away. “I’m going to salt the driveway before the storms hit. Ymir, don’t put your feet on my coffee table!”

Ymir removed her arm from around Mikasa and made her way back towards the kitchen. “Check your email. Historia sent out another bit of music. It looks like it’ll be keyboard heavy. Needs lyrics. Maybe you can take your angst and turn into something.”

Mikasa rolled her eyes. It wasn’t a bad idea actually. She had tried last night but she had failed.

Historia’s music always brought the best of her lyrics out.

“I’ll give it a listen.”

----------------------------------------------

Three days.

Mikasa wrote lyrics in the sun room with her keyboard for three days. Ymir regularly brought her food and too strong coffee. Levi would throw bottles of water at her which she would catch with one hand.

"Now I'm in..hell...seeing you pass...no. That sounds stupid," Mikasa muttered to herself as she marked out the lyrics in her notebook.

She returned to playing the music again.

It was three days of that.

By the end of it, Levi had grown numb to the sound of Mikasa's piano playing the same song over and over.

At least it wasn't that song she had written when her and Eren had broken up. He wasn't sure with what he knew now that he could listen to that song the same way.

“Go shower. You smell.” He nudged her with his foot. She had fallen asleep on the floor in the sunroom.

“It’s done,” she yawned as she stretched.

“Good. Go shower. Hange will be here in an hour.”

Mikasa simply nodded.

After a shower and a change of clothes, Mikasa came downstairs and into the kitchen to see Ymir, Levi, Hange, and someone she didn’t expect to see at all.

“Armin?” Her voice cracked.

She didn’t know how to feel.

“Mikasa! I’m sorry. I didn’t know you and Armin were still not speaking or what had happened. I didn’t want him spending Christmas alone and you know his grandfather worked with me at the university. Brilliant History professor. Then when he passed, I offered to take Armin with me to visit my friend Molbit,” Hange said they stood up.

“It’s okay, Hange,” Mikasa replied as she sat down at the table across from Armin.

“She shouldn’t be mad at Armin anyway. He was just trying to help,” Ymir muttered before taking a drink of coffee. “What? Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Maybe we leave these two alone for a minute,” Hange suggested.

Mikasa looked at Levi who simply raised an eyebrow.

Mikasa nodded.

Hange and Levi left the table.

“I’ll be right in the hallway, listening the whole time,” Ymir said before strolling away from the table with her coffee.

An awkward silence washed over the two of them.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call when your grandpa….” Mikasa started but Armin just waved his hand.

“It’s okay. I needed to be alone then. Just need to process everything. I heard you won the battle of the bands. Congratulations.”

“Annie?”

“Annie told me, yeah. She said she didn’t think you’d care if she told me. Just not to tell Eren. I haven’t talked to him since that day. Have you?”

Mikasa shook her head.

“He deleted all his social media too. Last I heard he was reconnecting with Zeke. Sorry, I shouldn’t bring this up,” Armin remarked before looking down.

“It’s okay, Armin. Really. I know Ymir is right. I don’t care that you and Annie are together….”

“Well, we’re not. I don’t know if she even feels that way about me anymore.”

“The hickey on her neck on her snapchat story says different.”

Armin turned bright red and a laugh came from the hallway right outside the kitchen.

“Maybe it was someone else,” he muttered.

“The hickey you’re trying to hide with the hood of your jacket...and there’s lipstick on it. It’s the shade of lipstick always wear. You should probably wash it,” she smiled.

“Ah, really? I thought I got it out. It’s stained then.” He pulled on the jacket trying to adjust where he could see the stain.

Mikasa laughed again. “I missed you, Armin.”

He stopped pulling at the jacket and returned her smile.

“I missed you too. I thought about messaging you but I thought if you saw me, it would remind you what happened. I just didn’t want to cause you anymore pain. We can just be M.A. now,” Armin said as he reached his hand out across the table.

E.M.A. was a stupid nickname that the three of them had come up with when they were kids. It stuck and followed them through high school since they were so inseparable.

“I’m okay with that,” she replied as she took his hand.

“Oh great, another orphaned brat is going to be at my house all the time again. I’m going to start charging you all rent. Ow! Hange, did you just swat me with a newspaper?”

“Technically, it’s the ads you got in the mail today.”

“Can you two save that for the bedroom? I’m trying to listen in on the conversation happening in the next room.”

Mikasa laughed.

Armin smiled at her. “How have you been?”

“Busy. Wrote thirty six songs...well now thirty seven. I just finished one this morning. Historia is stuck at the Reiss house until New Year’s Eve.”

Armin nodded.

They all knew how Rod Reiss was when it came to what he called a united front. The family needed to show no weakness or the local gossip columns would have another field day. It was part of the reason that Historia used another name for all of their music.

“That’s great, I’m glad to hear it.”

Mikasa smiled again. She knew that he truly was happy for her.

“Now they’re just making small talk. This is boring,” Ymir’s voice rang out again.

“I’m sorry that our conversation isn’t entertaining,” Mikasa replied as she rolled her eyes.

“You should be,” Ymir said as she came into the kitchen and took the seat next to Mikasa. “So you and Annie, huh? Took you two longer to get together than….you know…” she waved her hand.

“I..uhh…” Armin started to turn red again.

Levi walked into the kitchen with Hange.

“Stop tormenting Armin, Ymir,” Levi sighed as he returned to his spot.

“What? Can I not point out the obvious? Those two are made for each other. If they ever have kids, they’ll be geniuses. And from the marks they left on one another, looks like they’ve had plenty of practice.”

Armin proceeded to turn another shade of red.

“Concealer helps,” Hange offered their advice to Armin. “Also ice cubes or put them places people don’t normally see.”

“Can we not talk about them having sex at my kitchen table? I like to live in a world where they’re all still twelve,” Levi sighed as he pinched his nose.

“Even after that time you walked in on Mikasa and he who shall not be named?” Ymir smirked.

“Ymir!” Mikasa exclaimed.

“What? I was there too.”

“Oh really? What about when I walked in on you an.....”

“So you get that driveway salted? Does it need more?” Ymir changed the subject.

“It’s fine,” Levi replied as he rolled his eyes.

“Hey, Ymir. Are you still any good at video games? I’m stuck on a level and I’m trying to get to gold in pvp,” Armin helped change the subject.

“You’re looking at someone who has the most achievements out of our friends. Of course, I am. Mikasa, is the console still upstairs?” Ymir asked.

Mikasa nodded.

“Great, after breakfast, I’ll get you where you need to be,” Ymir beamed. “Speaking of which, what are we having?”

“Whatever you cook,” Levi replied.

“I’ll cook. Eggs and bacon sound good?” Hange asked as they stood up.

“They’re not children, Hange. They can make their own breakfast.”

“But they are our children, Levi,” Hange smiled as they walked over to the stove.

Levi just sighed again.

#mmtylif #my writing

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cometsweepandleonidsfly · 5 years ago

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Editor's note: Megan Rapinoe gave her brother, Brian, a birthday shout-out on national TV after winning the 2019 Women's World Cup, the Golden Boot as the tournament's top scorer and the Golden Ball as its top player. Here is the story behind their complicated relationship.

DAYS BEFORE THE first game of the 2019 Women's World Cup, Brian Rapinoe jokingly texted his sister, Megan Rapinoe -- co-captain and star midfielder for the U.S. women's national team: "Megs, breaks my heart that you couldn't fly me out for an all-expenses-paid trip to France." She shot back: "Oh yeah, so sad I couldn't pamper you for a month in France."

An hour before kickoff against Thailand on June 11, the rest of the Rapinoe family found their seats in the Stade Auguste-Delaune in Reims; Brian charged his ankle monitor and rounded up the other guys in the dormitory at San Diego's Male Community Reentry Program, a rehabilitative program that allows an inmate to finish the final 12 months of his sentence taking classes or working jobs outside of prison.

The MCRP common room might not be France, but it's a vast improvement over solitary confinement, where Brian has watched Megan play in the previous two World Cups. He sat on a couch in his red USA jersey, watching on a 60-inch flat-screen, and felt "f---ing great." He had accomplished a major goal for himself: to get out of prison in time to watch his kid sister play in her third World Cup.

Every time the U.S. scored, the room full of men cheered loudly. Nobody there thought the U.S.'s 13 goals against Thailand and exuberant celebrations after each were done in poor taste. "This is what soccer should always be like," one man said.

"It's the World Cup: There's no f---ing holding back," 38-year-old Brian says. "This is every four years."

And his sister didn't hold back. When Megan scored goal No. 9 for the U.S., she sprinted to the sideline, spun around twice and then slid to the ground for a foot-kicking celebration. As the camera zoomed in on her, one of the guys yelled, "Holy s---, it's Brian!"

He has the same face as his sister.

The face, the charisma, the wit, the tendency to burst into song: In so many ways, Brian and Megan are alike. But they are also a study in contrasts: At 15 years old, Brian brought meth to school and has been in and out of incarceration ever since. At 15, Megan played with her first youth U.S. national team and started traveling the world. As a young inmate and gang member, Brian was inked with swastika tattoos -- an allegiance to white supremacy that he now disavows; as a professional soccer player, Megan was the first prominent white athlete to kneel to protest racial inequality.

Despite their different paths, the brother and sister have stayed close through letters, phone calls and texts. "I have so much respect for her. And not just because she's the s--- at soccer. It's her utter conviction in the things that she believes in and the stances she takes against injustices in the world," he says.

"I was her hero, but now -- there's no question -- she is mine."

Megan, right, "worshipped" Brian when they were children. Brian, who is five years older, introduced her to soccer early on.

GROWING UP, MEGAN and her twin sister, Rachael, adored Brian. He was their hero, the charismatic jokester who did Jim Carrey and Steve Urkel impressions and danced ridiculous dances. The girls had three other siblings, but he could make them laugh harder than anyone else could. He taught them how to catch crawfish in the creek, walked them to the patch of field across from the church and taught them soccer until his mother called them in with a two-finger whistle. In the side yard, he set up cones and showed his 4-year-old sisters how to dribble the ball -- with the inside of the foot only, with the outside of the foot only, left and then right. "And it wasn't like he drilled them. He let them do it their own way," says his mother, Denise Rapinoe, her voice cracking. "It was just the cutest thing, and we remember it so clearly."

In elementary school, like her brother, Megan was rough and tumble, and spoke her mind. Her second-grade teacher's aide pulled Denise aside to relay the following scene: Megan came in from the playground, walked into the classroom, stood with her arms on her hips and announced, "Brian Rapinoe is my brother, and I am just like him!"

"I worshipped him," Megan says. "He played left wing, so I played left wing. He wore No. 7; I wore No. 7. He got a bowl cut, so I did too."

So when Brian first started smoking marijuana as a 12-year-old, a 7-year-old Megan was confounded. Why was he doing that? Brian still doesn't know for sure. "Right from the start, I was hooked," he says. "One drug always led to the next." He was also attracted to the "fast life," he says, to getting high, to driving nice cars and to the "hype around this lifestyle." She wanted him to stop, and she was still young enough to think there was something she could do. Three years later, when her parents sat her and Rachael down and told them the police had arrested Brian for bringing meth to school, she cried. He was going to juvenile detention. She did not understand: What had happened to her big brother?

"For many years, Megan and Rachael were pissed as hell," Brian says. "They still loved me, they still let me know they were there for me, but they were like, 'What the f--- are you doing?'"

"My mother is the queen of the family," Brian, left, says of Denise Rapinoe, right. "I just love her so much. I'm such a baby when it comes to her."

BY 18 YEARS OLD, Brian had moved on to harder drugs -- heroin, specifically -- and he became more reckless. He was charged with car theft, evading arrest and a hit-and-run while driving under the influence of drugs -- and now, as an adult, his juvenile detention days were over. He was sent to prison. Within months, he aligned himself with the white prison gang and was inked with Nazi tattoos. A swastika on his palm; lightning bolts on his fingers, sides and calves

These tattoos devastated his family. "The prejudice, the racism -- it was so against the way he'd been raised," Denise says. "He wasn't that kind of kid. He was kind, his nature was so loving."

To Brian, the swastikas weren't about prejudice and racism at that point -- they were about heroin and survival. To support his addiction, he needed to be, in his words, "an active participant in prison culture." The California prison system was segregated. That meant Brian lived strictly among the white population. "You come in as a kid, and there are these older dudes you think you respect, spouting ideas, and you kind of listen," Brian says. "I developed a protect-your-own mentality."

He tried to explain that to his mother. The gang was a family, he said; it was a place to belong. "I told him, 'This is not who we are,'" Denise says. "'This is not who you are.'"

Megan was as heartbroken as her mother. "I thought [the tattoos] were horrible," she says. "I still think they're horrible. I could rationalize them: I understood that when he first got in there, he was searching for identity, trying to survive."

But the big brother she had worshipped? It felt like she had lost him.

As a young player on the U19 U.S. women's national team, Megan wore the No. 7 jersey. It was the number Brian wore when he played soccer.

BRIAN BECAME HEAVILY involved in gang life and racked up charges while doing time: possession of drugs, possession of a deadly weapon, three assaults on other white inmates. He spent eight of his 16 years in prison in solitary confinement for this behavior. By 2007 -- as he was turning 27 years old -- he was transferred to Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California, the state's only super-max-security prison.

While general population is segregated, solitary confinement is not, and every inmate gets one hour out of his cell to walk the pod. Here, the protect-your-own thinking began to fall away for Brian. "You start relating to people beyond your hood, your area, your color," he says. "It doesn't take long before you start talking with each other, seeing how much you have in common. Back there, it's just you in the cell, and the man next to you is just a man himself."

There's no radio, no television in the individual cells in the hole. Sitting in a cement box, counting the number of holes in the perforated door is "hard; it's definitely hard," he says. "But you find a way to escape. You've got books, you've got writing, some guys draw. And you develop these relations with other people, these connections."

Three times a week, inmates also get three hours outside, albeit in his own cage. "In the yard, you start talking [to other guys] -- sports, music, my sister is always a big ice-breaking conversation. You say [to them], 'When we go back in from yard, you can look at my pictures,' or you say, 'Here's something I wrote.' Maybe you become good friends -- like me and Monster did."

Monster, also known as Sanyika Shakur, is a black nationalist and the author of the bestseller, Monster: Autobiography of an LA Gang Member. He and Brian were on the same pod for two years. Using a line and a weight, they'd send each other long letters from cell to cell, fishing for them beneath the doors. Brian shared the song lyrics he wrote; Monster let him read drafts of his articles and essays. For years, Brian had been a serious reader, consuming everything from the classics, to books about social issues. He'd read The New Jim Crow and learned about how police disproportionately search black men and arrest them for nonviolent drug offenses, and how the War on Drugs decimated communities of color.

"He taught me what it means to be racist," Brian says, "and he taught me what it means not to be racist."

By 2010, the now 30-year-old had a new understanding of what the white supremacist insignias represented. He had his face tattoos lasered off. The swastika on his palm became a spider web; the Nazi lightning bolts became skulls. He did not want any racial insignias on his skin. They did not reflect who he was. But he was still using heroin -- and the next year, he was arrested for selling it.

Brian was behind bars once again -- this time at Donovan State Prison in San Diego.

When Megan scored in the 2011 Women's World Cup against Colombia, she seized the moment and sang Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" -- something, people say, Brian would do.

IN JUNE 2011, Brian had something new to talk about during his hour walking the pod: His little sister was playing in her first World Cup -- and he was going to get everybody to watch.

The 15-inch television was at the other end of the hallway, some 50 yards away. He built a tower out of 60 books and tied them together with torn sheets. Sitting on top of it, he could just see the TV through the window in the door. In an early game against Colombia, Megan roped in a goal, then immediately sprinted to the corner flag, grabbed a cameraman's mic and sang Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." The guys got a kick out of this because Brian was the singer on the pod, and this flamboyant corner-flag serenade was so like him.

Days later, ahead of the quarterfinals against Brazil, all 30 cells on top and all 30 cells on bottom were watching, everybody perched at their doors. Megan -- young and audacious with her signature short blonde hair -- subbed in at the end of the game, and in extra time, sure enough -- boom! -- she sent a 50-yard cross-field ball to U.S. forward Abby Wambach, who headed it home to tie the game. "We were going wild," Brian says. "We were yelling and pounding on the doors."

Later that night, on the prison pay phone, Brian talked with his mom. She described the end of the game, how Megan, having just experienced the craziest, most awesome moment of her life, walked to the stands and stood there, searching through the some 20,000 faces for her mom's. Denise put her two index fingers in her mouth and let out her trademark whistle -- the same whistle she had used when they were kids. She had to do it a second and then a third time before Megan could hear her. Megan tapped her ear. "She was letting me know she heard me," Denise told Brian at the time, choking up -- which made Brian choke up a little, too. He could imagine it.

"Not being there -- it hurt," Brian says.

Another four years passed. This time he was in solitary confinement because of his violent record at the Vista Detention Facility, a lower-security prison, in San Diego County -- and Megan was headed to Canada for her second World Cup. The women would end up winning it all, the first time the team had done so since 1999.

"That was the hardest," Brian says. "I was super happy for Megs and super sad for myself. I fricking love my family so much. They were all there. It was like, f---, man, I'm like not really even a part of this. Yeah, I got a lot of support for her in prison, but when the game is over and the ruckus has died down, I'm sitting in my cell. I'm not there to give her a hug, I'm not there to witness it, I'm not there to be a part of it. It's just another thing in their lives that I'm missing out on. What the f--- am I doing with my life?"

Brian was almost 35 years old. He had spent more than half of his adult life incarcerated.

After Megan kneeled during the anthem in 2016, a former prisonmate called Brian to commend her actions. "What your sister is doing -- it means so much," said Sanyika Shakur, a black nationalist. "She is standing up for people who don't have a voice."

ON SEPT. 1, 2016, when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial profiling, Brian was briefly out of prison -- although he was still using heroin. Three days later, Megan kneeled in support while playing for her club team, the Seattle Reign. Then, while playing for the U.S., she did it again.

Brian saved the newspaper article with the picture of her solemn, angled-down face. He watched the YouTube videos of the coverage. He thought, Hell yeah. He also read the comments: "If she was on my team, I'd knock this idiot out. She should be banned from the national squad for life. Such disrespect." He understood that she would anger people, understood the impending fallout. He knew that enrollment in her summer camps and sales of her clothing brand, Be Your Best You, would go down. He thought, My sister is brave; my sister is bad ass.

Like every time before, Brian's freedom proved to be short-lived. By July 2017, he was back up north in Pelican Bay. Back to the regimented, day-to-day prison routine. Where tomorrow is the same as today. His whole life had been a habitual rut; Megan's anthem protest felt like the opposite of that. Her stance showed him there is a way to put a foot down on something in life, in spite of the fallout that will come.

Not long after, he had a breakthrough. His cellmate was helping him inject heroin into the back of his neck when the needle broke. "I freaked out on him, really lost it," Brian says. "And he said to me, 'Look at how you are acting right now.'" And for whatever reason, those words torpedoed into Brian and transformed into personal questions he asked himself. Your whole happiness and peace of mind is focused on this dirty-ass hypodermic needle: Is this what you want? Do you want this cell and this bulls--- powerful persona to be all you are?

He thought about the seven murders he'd witnessed out on the yard. He thought about his own knife fights -- about everything he'd done and been a part of -- just so he could continue to do heroin. He thought about Megan. Look at all she's done with her life -- look at what you've done with yours.

That's when he finally decided he was ready for change. He enrolled in the new self-improvement and rehabilitation classes the California prison system had begun to offer. Each completed class reduced time from his sentence.

Most importantly, after using and selling drugs for 24 years, Brian quit -- and he's been clean for 18 months.

"If I do drugs," he says, "I will go back to prison. I didn't believe that for a long time. Now, I believe that -- I don't ever want to go back."

Shortly before his first day of school at San Diego Community College, Brian met up with a friend from Pelican Bay, Cesar, who is also taking classes. "From the Bay to the books," Brian says. "I am so stoked to begin."

TODAY IS BRIAN'S first day at San Diego City College. As part of the Male Community Reentry Program, he's taking classes to finish up the final year of his sentence, and he has some butterflies. "It's been a long time since I've gone to school -- even when I was in school, it was juvenile hall -- I've never taken anything except regular math. I've never even taken algebra.

Plus, he says, it's a little unnerving to sit in a classroom with 18-year-olds whose experiences have been drastically different from his own. He's self-conscious about his tattoos -- particularly his neck tattoo, SHASTA, inscribed in large gothic letters, the name of the county in which he grew up. "These tattoos, I freaking hate them," Brian says.

But he also knows those tattoos could matter again in the future. He wants to get involved in the juvenile delinquency program, wants to talk to anybody who might be about to jump off the same ledge he did. "These tattoos, it's gonna get their attention," he says. "It's like, dude, you don't think I know what I'm talking about?

"I want to make a difference," he says. "I want to be like Megan."

He had "a really fricking deep conversation" with her about two months ago. They talked about racial profiling; they talked about police brutality; they talked about what Megan's kneeling meant to both of them. Megan saw that in spite of their very different paths, they'd arrived at similar conclusions.

"My brother is special," Megan says. "He has so much to offer. It would be such a shame if he left this world with nothing but prison sentences behind him. To be able to have him out, and to play for him, and to have him healthy, with this different perspective that he has now: This is like the best thing ever."

While Megan is in France, she and Brian text daily -- with game thoughts, encouragement and shared excitement.

"This is one of the most exciting things I can even remember ... just everything really, you, the school, the program," Brian texts.

She replies: "People always ask me what got me into soccer ... your wild ass of course."

"Luckily I played a cool sport. What if I'd been into arm-wrestling or something."

"Oh lawd, yea you really set me up."

"Get some sleep -- love you."

"Lovee you Bri! Let's f---ing go!"

-- Freelance writer Gwendolyn Oxenham is the author of Under the Lights and in the Dark: Untold Stories of Women's Soccer.

#megan rapinoe #espn #uswnt #us women’s soccer #women’s world cup

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