Game Changer

  But how could bonehead Anthony Seitz know anything about chemistry? KT wondered. Unless . . . maybe he was just faking his boneheadedness in the real world? Acting like he thought jocks were supposed to act?

  It was too confusing. Who was the real Anthony? Who around her had showed their real self in the real world, and who was more their real self here?

  KT had a lot of time to think about this during lunch that day. It was just her and her iPod and phone. She pretended not to care, and hunched over the iPod and phone acting like she had dozens of massively important texts and messages to send out.

  “It would be great if you let me know if you’re going to be able to come or not on Saturday,” she messaged her entire list during lunch. “Let me know what position you’d like to play, too. That way I can start planning team rosters ahead of time.”

  But she didn’t really expect everyone to answer. That was, like, RSVPing. Kids just didn’t do that.

  At least the bat arrived from UPS on Wednesday afternoon. KT immediately took the package up to her room, tore off the wrapping, and stood there in the middle of the floor in batting stance. She swung.

  A little too heavy at the end, she decided, swinging again to double-check. Not as good as my bat in the real world. But it’ll do.

  It felt great just holding a bat, just crouching with it in batting position. She didn’t think she could wait all the way to Saturday to actually use it. As soon as dinner was over that night, she turned to Dad.

  “Would you help me with some . . . homework?” she asked.

  Dad frowned.

  “Does it have to be tonight?” he asked. “I was going to review some math strategies with Max after dinner.”

  Max had already had two hours of math practice right after school. He’d already had Mom and Dad fussing over him during the meal: “Are you getting enough protein to have enough energy to prep for Friday’s game?” “You’ll make sure to go to bed early tonight, won’t you? You have to make sure you’re rested up and your brain is sharp. I bet that was your problem Monday. You just aren’t getting enough sleep.”

  “I guess I could help you, KT,” Mom said reluctantly.

  Mom was a terrible pitcher. Even in the real world.

  “Okay,” KT said, equally reluctant.

  Having Mom pitch to her was better than having no one at all pitch to her until Saturday.

  They went out in the backyard, KT lugging the bat and the basket of balls from the garage.

  “You want me to throw to you?” Mom asked suspiciously. “And then . . . you’ll catch the ball on the tip of that club thing?”

  “It’s called a bat, Mom,” KT corrected. “And I’ll hit the ball, not catch it. Throw the ball to me in about this area.” She moved her hand around, showing Mom a rough version of a strike zone.

  Mom frowned doubtfully, but tossed the ball. Like all Mom’s throws, it was fit mostly for a kindergartner newly moving up from hitting off a tee. But KT swung at it anyway. The ball dribbled off into the grass at the bottom of the yard.

  “You have to do this for pitching class?” Mom asked skeptically. “I don’t remember this being in the curriculum.”

  “It’s kind of . . . extra credit,” KT said. “For a game called softball. I read about it online.”

  Mom shrugged, and threw another pitch.

  This time KT swung so the bat and ball collided right at the bat’s sweet spot. The ball went soaring up into the air, sailing across four neighbors’ backyards.

  “Home run,” KT whispered to herself.

  “KT!” Mom exclaimed. “You could have broken a window doing that!”

  “No, no, I can control where I hit it,” KT explained.

  “That was control?” Mom asked. “KT, I don’t think—”

  “We can go to the park,” KT offered quickly. “No windows will be in danger.”

  Mom shook her head.

  “I’ve got three loads of laundry left to do tonight,” she said. “This is just extra credit, right? I thought it was going to be something you had to do. I’m sure you’ve already got an A in this class. Probably even an A-plus.”

  “But—”

  “KT, no,” Mom said impatiently. She dropped the next ball back into the basket. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Mom was already walking back toward the house. She slid open the patio door and disappeared inside.

  KT did not like this world’s version of Mom.

  In the real world Mom was a terrible athlete too, but she was proud that I was so good at sports, KT thought. Here, it’s like she resents me getting good grades. Like she thinks I think I’m better than her.

  KT knew plenty of girls who fought constantly with their mothers. But she’d never been one of them.

  She tried tossing the balls up in the air herself and batting them away.

  “This one’ll go into the Millers’ yard, right by their patio,” she whispered to herself, and hit it away. “This one will go over top of the Lurias’ swing set.”

  But batting alone just made KT feel lonely. After a little while she gathered up all the balls and went back into the house. She pointedly avoided walking past the dining-room table, where she could hear Dad saying to Max, “Now, if you take the square root, it could be positive or negative, right?”

  She went straight up to her room and sent another message to her entire potential softball league: “You know, if you have any friends you think would want to play softball, you’re welcome to bring them on Saturday too. They’ll thank you for it, I just know it. You’re going to love softball as much as I do! Your friends will too!”

  On Friday afternoon Mom and Dad made KT go to Max’s mathletics game once again.

  “Mom, why?” KT asked, as Mom and Dad arrived home from work and began shouting out orders about getting ready. “I’ve got my own stuff to do.”

  Mom fixed KT with a stern glare.

  “You’re supposed to be supportive, remember?” Mom said.

  “I kept my promise! I haven’t said anything bad to Max all week about math!” KT protested.

  Of course, she hadn’t said anything to Max since Monday. She’d done a perfect job of avoiding him. It hadn’t been too hard, since he was almost always away at math practices or coaching sessions. But she’d also avoided meeting his eye the one night they’d all had dinner together; she’d avoided going out for the bus at the same time as him; she’d even skipped brushing her teeth one night because she didn’t want to cross paths with him walking to or from the bathroom.

  “This is what we do as a family—we support each individual member of the family in every important endeavor,” Mom said. “And that means you’re coming to Max’s game and you’re going to cheer him on. Besides, I can tell you’re just making excuses. I know you don’t actually have anything else to do this afternoon.”

  KT really, really, really hated this world’s version of Mom.

  Don’t say or do anything to get yourself grounded again, she told herself. Remember, you get to have softball tomorrow.

  She repeated that to herself again and again to get through the national anthem. When the last notes, “of the brave,” died out, she whispered to herself, “Play ball tomorrow. You’ll get to play ball tomorrow.”

  Her words were drowned out by the roaring of the crowd. They stamped their feet and wolf-whistled and cheered. A line of cheerleaders came backflipping through the library doors, chanting, “Go, Scholars! Go, Scholars! Gooooooo, Scholars!” They finished with a string of cartwheels.

  As far as KT could tell, cheerleaders in this world were almost identical to cheerleaders in the real world, except that their uniforms incorporated a bit more argyle and they all wore fake horn-rimmed glasses.

  Great, that would be the one thing that stays the same, she thought. Stupid old cheerleaders. They’re like cockroaches—they could probably even survive nuclear war.

  “One, two, three, five, eight,” the cheerleaders chanted. “Fibonacci freaks are
great!”

  Okay, maybe the cheers were a tiny bit different now.

  They launched into another string of chanted numbers, and KT realized this was what Mom had as her ring tone.

  Crazy, KT thought. Totally nuts.

  But it turned out that the numbers were just a lead-in to a cheer that KT actually recognized: “Whyyyyy are you so blue? Is it because you are number two? We’re number one!”

  KT had to blink hard.

  Of course her softball team was much too serious to do cheers now, but way back when she’d played in the Ponytail League in third grade, her coach had encouraged all the girls sitting on the bench to cheer their teammates on. KT had loved hearing her friends chanting that, louder and louder and louder, even as KT pitched strike after strike after strike. It was before KT had learned to focus properly, to block out everything but pitching. The cheers had made her pitch better back then. They had made her love her teammates even more.

  Now she pulled out her iPod.

  “I miss you guys so much,” she wrote in a message to everyone she’d invited to play softball with her. “I can’t wait to see you all tomorrow!”

  “Put that away!” Mom said through clenched teeth, batting away the iPod with her hand. “Pay attention to the game!”

  Don’t get grounded, KT reminded herself. Don’t do anything to let anyone stop you from playing softball tomorrow.

  The mathletics game was starting now, and fortunately that made the cheerleaders shut up.

  Max looked slightly less like he was on the verge of vomiting than he had before the last game. KT was still almost embarrassed for him when he buzzed in on the first question, even before he’d written anything down.

  “Brecksville North, Maxwell,” the announcer said.

  “Um,” Max said. He gulped. “Is it f-f-four?”

  “It is indeed!” the announcer cried. “Excellent!”

  Max just gulped again and smiled weakly, maybe like someone who’d been told he was going to be eaten alive by a pack of vicious lions but the death sentence had been delayed by a minute or two.

  KT couldn’t watch Max. She couldn’t.

  She discovered she couldn’t watch her former friends Molly and Lex either, because they did so many things in mathletics the same way they played softball: Molly gripped her pencil way too tightly, just like she did with her bat; Lex tossed her hair over her shoulder before giving an answer the same way she always tossed her head after every pitch on the softball diamond.

  Max’s friend Ben was kind of funny to watch, because he stated every answer with absolute, perfect assurance—even when he was wrong.

  But none of that really mattered, because the person who buzzed in almost every time was wacky little Evangeline Rangel. KT realized she’d never really seen Evangeline grin before, and it turned out that Evangeline had the type of grin that made you feel like you should be grinning just as much. She was fierce, too, slamming her pencil down and hitting the buzzer twice as hard as she needed to. After one particularly convoluted question that made KT’s head hurt, Evangeline swatted the buzzer triumphantly and, grinning full-blast, cried out, “Forty-freaking-four!”

  Evangeline is as feisty playing mathletics as I used to be playing softball, KT thought, and that “used to be” was like a dagger through her heart.

  No! No! It’s not “used to be”! I’m playing softball tomorrow! she told herself. I’m getting softball back! I’m playing tomorrow and then, somehow, that will show this world who’s boss, and everything will change back the right way!

  But that thought was enough to make it impossible for KT to watch Evangeline either. And when the cheerleaders jumped up for a time-out cheer in Evangeline’s honor—“E [clap], E-V [clap], E-V-A-N-G-E-L and I-N-E [clap, clap]! She’s our C-H-A-M-P and I-O-N [clap, clap, clap, clap]! Champion!”—that was like a dagger through KT’s heart, too.

  Why does she get her own cheer and her own game, and my game barely even exists in this world? KT wondered. It’s not fair!

  KT slipped into something like the zone she entered when she pitched—or maybe it was the flip side of that zone, because she just blurred out everything around her and did nothing. She stopped thinking; she let her hands fall loosely in her lap. She could have believed that she almost stopped existing. She was somewhat aware that the coach had put the second-string players in for the second round, and that Max’s team fell far, far behind. In the third round, KT kind of noticed that the first string was back in, and Evangeline was answering a lot, but now every triumphant Evangeline grin just made KT feel more and more miserable, more and more adrift, more and more alone in the crowd.

  And then Mom was clutching KT’s arm.

  “It’s sudden death!” she hissed. “They’re tied! I can’t stand it! Everything comes down to this last question!”

  The library was absolutely quiet, as if no one even dared to breathe.

  “If Bob pays a quarter for an apple and a banana,” the announcer began, in the same serious, hushed voice that golf announcers used in the real world, “and twenty cents for a banana and a pear, and twenty-one cents for an apple and a pear, how much would it cost Bob to buy just one of each fruit?”

  Max buzzed in immediately.

  Idiot! KT thought. His coach and Mom and Dad are going to kill him for hitting the buzzer by mistake at a time like this!

  Max didn’t even look like he’d realized he’d made a mistake.

  “Oh,” he said dreamily, like there weren’t hundreds of people hanging onto his every word. “That’s not as tricky as it sounds. You just add up all the numbers to get two of each fruit, and divide that in half. So it’s . . .” He blinked, almost sleepily. “Thirty-three. Thirty-three cents.”

  “Yes,” the announcer said.

  The library exploded with screams and clapping and—from the opposing team—disappointed wails. People shot off streamers around KT; they cupped their hands into imitation bullhorns and made sounds like vuvuzelas. The cheerleaders jumped up and down and started the whole home side of the stands chanting, “Max! Max! Max! Max! Max!”

  KT sat silently in the midst of all the hubbub and celebration. She slipped her iPod out of her pocket and sent another message out to her entire message list: “I can’t wait to be around people who like the same things I like! People who know what’s really important! It’s only another fifteen hours! See you all tomorrow!”

  Chαpter Seventeεn

  Saturday morning dawned bright and crisp and clear. KT was up with the sun, doing stretches and sending out final reminder messages: “Today’s the day! Don’t forget to come to Ridgestone Park in Brecksville at ten a.m. for the great sport of softball!”

  She packed up the old pillows she’d decided would be the best she could do for bases. She put those, the basket of balls, her two gloves, her cleats, and the bat in an old red wagon she’d found still in the garage from when she and Max were little. She went back upstairs and tried to decide what to wear.

  It’s not like I expect anyone to actually have uniforms, but it’d be nice if everyone on the same team wore the same color, she thought.

  She sent out another message to everyone: “Bring a couple different colors of T-shirts as spares, so you can match your teammates.”

  In the real world KT had a great collection of softball-themed T-shirts: a pink one saying (SOFTBALL) DIAMONDS ARE A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND, a black one saying, YEAH, I THROW LIKE A GIRL. SCARED YET? and drawers full of commemorative T-shirts from every team she’d been on, every softball camp she’d been to, every big tournament she’d played.

  In this world KT had mostly plain T-shirts—red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple—and a smattering of T-shirts that said meaningless things like JOE’S COFFEE SHOP or I GO TO BRECKSVILLE NORTH. (If any writing-related ac team had been involved in coming up with that one, KT was pretty sure they were having a losing season.) This whole past week those shirts had made KT feel dull and dreary and deserving of no notice whatsoever. Bu
t at least today a couple of the colored ones would do as decent stand-ins for uniforms. She could loan some out if she needed to.

  KT went downstairs to the kitchen and pulled out water bottles she’d stashed in both the refrigerator and the freezer overnight. Sure, it was cool outside right now, but if they played into the late afternoon, things might get a little steamy. She added the water bottles to the wagon in the garage, then tucked a twenty-dollar bill under the bottles. There were a few fast-food restaurants within walking distance of the park. Maybe everyone who showed up would want to go out for a late lunch afterward.

  KT went back into the kitchen and forced herself to choke down a quick breakfast, even though she was almost too excited to eat. Dad was just stumbling into the kitchen as KT put her dishes in the sink. He had his head down, studying the Academics section of the newspaper.

  “Guess what, Dad?” KT said. She hadn’t mentioned her planned softball game to Mom or Dad all week long. Superstitiously, she’d almost been afraid that if she told them, somehow this, too, would disappear from her world. Or Mom and Dad would take it away.

  But she felt too hyped up to keep secrets any longer. It was finally Saturday. What could go wrong now?

  And—wouldn’t Dad want to come and watch?

  “Hey, wasn’t that a great game Max had last night?” Dad asked, barely bothering to glance up at KT.

  “Yeah, but—,” KT tried again.

  Max appeared at the kitchen doorway, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He yawned. Dad dropped the newspaper, grabbed Max around the shoulders, and gave him a noogie on the head. Then Dad faked a couple of punches at Max’s chest.

  “There’s my boy!” Dad cheered. “My champion! What do you say the two of us hit the math books together today?”

  Max darted his eyes quickly at KT, then back to Dad.

  “Uh, maybe this afternoon?” Max said.

  “What’s wrong with right after breakfast?” Dad asked.

  Max glanced at the clock on the microwave.

  “Nothing, I guess,” Max said.