She wore it because Carli Lloyd, the star player on the U.S. women’s soccer team that won the 2015 World Cup, the one who’d scored three goals in the final against Japan, wore ten. Em had a poster of Carli Lloyd up on the wall in her room and a huge replica of the Sports Illustrated cover with Carli on it. She’d kept a scrapbook with stories she’d found on the Internet written about her favorite player, and pictures that she liked, the pages of the book nearly full by the time the women’s team had won that final game against Japan, jumping out to a 4–0 lead. Before Em had pretty much stopped talking, before she’d become so sad, she used to talk all the time about how she was going to grow up to be Carli Lloyd and not just play in the World Cup, but the Olympics, too. One night at dinner, before their father died, with all four Gallaghers in the dining room, she’d talked about the parade in New York City for Carli Lloyd and her teammates she’d watched on TV that day.
