Game Changer

  “You want to debate the meaning of reality?” Evangeline said. She flipped one of her stupid too-high pigtails over her shoulder. “I know what’s real. And I know what matters. Can you make that same claim?”

  “It doesn’t matter what your hair looks like,” KT said carefully. She looked at Evangeline’s plaid jumper. “It doesn’t matter what kind of clothes you want to wear. It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in things nobody else is interested in. I don’t care about any of that.”

  “Well, thank you very much for giving me permission to be myself,” Evangeline said mockingly. “Er—wait. Were you trying to get me to make fun of you? You’re the different one. The things I like—mathletics, chemademics, poetry slam—those are the three top interests for middle-school-age kids worldwide. And I’m good at all of them. Makes me kind of . . . enviable, doesn’t it?”

  She knows, KT thought. She knows everything.

  Angrily she kicked out her foot, snagging the wagon handle on the end of her shoe. She pulled it toward her, right into Evangeline’s line of sight. KT didn’t bother watching the other girl’s face to see how she reacted. Instead KT reached down and cradled the bat and glove in her arms.

  “KT!” Max exclaimed.

  What’s his problem? KT wondered. Oh, does he really think I’d hit Evangeline with the bat?

  KT ignored him.

  “You did this to us, didn’t you?” KT asked, looking up at Evangeline, still behind the door. “To me. You shrank down everything that mattered to me in the whole world until it all fits in a little-kid wagon.”

  “It’s not my fault if you’re such a small person,” Evangeline said, smirking.

  “You know what I mean!” KT snarled. “You did this!”

  “Evangeline! KT! Stop arguing!” Max surprised her by interrupting. “You two are the same. Evangeline, you really did write an anti-sports e-mail to the school administration in the real world, didn’t you? And KT, you would have done the same thing if you were in Evangeline’s shoes. The alt-world version of you did. My sister’s acting like a total idiot, Evangeline, but if you really did manage to create this alternate reality yourself, both of us think you’re a genius. Honest, we don’t want to ruin anything for you. We both want you to be happy here—”

  “But why do we have to be stuck here too?” KT interrupted, because Max was taking forever to get to the point.

  Something shifted in Evangeline’s expression, and for a second KT actually could see beyond the goofy hair and the oddball clothes and the weirdest-kid-in-school—maybe-even-in-any-school image.

  Max is right, KT thought. Evangeline and I really are alike. No matter what world either of us was in, no matter what anyone else thought of us, we’d still stay true to our real selves. But . . . we’d still want teammates. Both of us would.

  KT felt her own expression soften.

  “Look,” she said, and somehow all the anger had gone out of her now. She felt hope growing in its place. “I know what it felt like to be you, back in the real world. I’ve pretty much been you in this one. I’m really sorry if sports hurt you. I’m sorry if anything I ever did hurt you in any way. You do whatever you want to, for yourself. But can’t you get Max and me back where we belong? Back to the real world?”

  Evangeline stared out at KT and Max, the screen a mere shadow between them.

  “You have a lot of confidence in me,” she said slowly.

  “Of course!” Max said, beaming. KT reached up and grabbed his arm, silencing him before he laid on any more exaggerated praise and delayed everything.

  “Then you’ll do it?” KT asked eagerly.

  Evangeline kept gazing out the screen door. Strangely, it was KT she was peering at most intently.

  “You aren’t looking at the big picture,” she said, shaking her head. She didn’t exactly seem to be saying no. Her eyes kept boring into KT’s. “Think about it. What makes you so sure you’d still be happy in the real world anyhow?”

  Chαpter twεnty-one

  KT was having memory problems again.

  She woke in the dark in the middle of the night, her heart pounding frantically, prickles of dread running across her skin. She couldn’t remember where she was.

  Home, she told herself, looking toward the familiar glow of the clock on the nightstand, her softball glove beside it illuminated in the glow. I’m home. I just had a bad dream.

  But she couldn’t remember any dream. What was the last thing she could remember?

  Standing on the porch at Evangeline’s house, Evangeline saying, “What makes you so sure you’d still be happy in the real world anyhow?” And then . . . And then . . .

  She found she could walk her memory forward from that moment. This wasn’t like the last part of the Rysdale Invitational, which was completely absent from her mind. This was just hard to remember, because she’d felt so jolted.

  Didn’t Evangeline say after that, “Come back anytime, Maxwell, if you want to work on math with me”? And then didn’t she ease the door shut? And didn’t I hear the pins falling into place in the door’s lock, Evangeline locking out me and Max?

  How could KT have heard that, when Evangeline’s other words had taken over KT’s brain?

  What makes you so sure you’d still be happy in the real world anyhow?

  What makes you so sure you’d still be happy in the real world anyhow?

  What makes you so sure . . .

  Max had looked back at KT, and through the din echoing in KT’s head she’d heard him say, “What do you want to do now?”

  And KT hadn’t been able to say anything but “I need to go for a jog. I need to think.”

  She had gone running, but she hadn’t let herself think. She’d been running away, trying not to think. She didn’t want to wonder at Evangeline’s words, didn’t want to think about why going back to the real world might not make her happy after all. She’d run endlessly, wearing herself out. She’d gone to bed early.

  And now she should just let herself sleep some more. It wasn’t even morning yet. She shouldn’t have to face anything until morning.

  She closed her eyes to the darkness, and decided to forget about her tricky memory, forget about alt world, forget about Evangeline and her cryptic question. Instead KT pictured a beautiful spring day, the sun high overhead, a softball firm in her hand, a worthy batter facing her at home plate . . .

  If you can see it, you can have it again, she told herself, revising her usual pre-game mantra only a little. See it, have it. See it, have it . . .

  She fell asleep repeating those words to herself.

  She woke up gasping. Gasping and gagging and sobbing . . . She rolled over and felt around on the nightstand for her softball glove, for comfort. She knocked over the alarm clock and a water bottle and her cell phone and iPod. She was clumsy because she wasn’t picturing the nightstand right, the familiar arrangement of familiar objects. She was picturing some other nightstand, some other place.

  She was picturing the nightstand from her bad dream. Or—was it still called a nightstand when it was a hospital’s rolling table?

  No! her mind screamed at her. No! Don’t think about that!

  But she couldn’t stop herself. She remembered the bad dream now. She’d seen the same dream all over again, or she’d fallen back into it and lived through even more of it.

  She’d been in a hospital bed, dim lights all around her except for the occasional pulsing glow of a monitor. Her parents were dark shapes beside her, and somehow she knew they were her real parents, the way they were supposed to be, not the horrible, crazy alt-world versions of them. They were talking in hushed tones, their voices mournful and low and only directed at each other, never KT. Did they think she was too sick or drugged to hear? Or was she too . . . damaged?

  “If KT can’t ever play softball again . . . ,” Dad murmured sorrowfully.

  And that was the moment when KT had gasped herself awake.

  She scuttled across the bed like a frighten
ed spider, drawing herself into the corner of the room, pressing her spine as hard as she could against the wall. She huddled there, arms wrapped around her legs, face buried against her knees. And still her thoughts rolled forward, completing her father’s words.

  If KT can’t ever play softball again . . .

  What if the rest of it was . . . she wouldn’t want anyone else to have it either?

  What if KT had conjured up this horrible world herself?

  Chαpter tωenty-two

  “No!” KT exploded.

  The hall light outside her room came on; KT could see a dim glow under her door. There was a hushed rap of knuckles against her door.

  “KT! Shh!” her mother’s voice hissed at her. “I know you like to get up early, but you have to be quiet! Max has those tryouts today—he needs his sleep!”

  Then KT heard Mom’s footsteps recede, back toward her own bedroom.

  Max! KT thought indignantly. Of course it was all about Max! Did she even ask me what was wrong? Did she even stay for a second to make sure I was okay?

  The fury slammed through KT’s body. But behind the anger was a wave of even more troubling questions.

  What if things truly are bad now in the real world? What if . . .

  No! KT wasn’t going to let herself think like that. She scrambled up, plucking her glove from the nightstand. She pulled a warm-up jacket and pants from the floor beside her bed, the motion sending the toppled alarm clock and iPod and cell phone tumbling across the rug. The alarm clock landed at a crazy angle, the numbers glowing upside down.

  Did I break the clock? KT wondered. Is that why it’s showing two a.m. as zero-zero-backward-two?

  She remembered what her mother had said about getting up early—Mom wouldn’t have said that if it was two a.m. KT’s mind flipped the numbers around. Five. It was five in the morning.

  That’s when people get up who have a lot to do, KT thought. But in this world I’ve got . . .

  She didn’t let herself think the word “nothing.” She was already moving, pulling on the pants and jacket, socks and shoes. Cradling her glove in her arms, she silently dashed out of her room, down the stairs, into the garage. She tugged the life-sized pitching mate and the basket of balls into the backyard. She positioned the pitching mate in the farthest corner of the yard. She stood there a moment too long, hugging the pitching mate.

  No, no! she told herself. Don’t stop! Don’t think! Don’t . . .

  The word she was avoiding was “cry.”

  Focus! her brain screamed at her. Practice! You’ve got to practice! Practice hard!

  She carried the basket of balls to the opposite corner of the yard and fired off the first throw, hard and quick. It landed perfectly in the netted center of the pitching mate.

  Bull’s-eye! She told herself. Do it again! Throw fifty perfect pitches and then . . .

  Then what? What would she earn? What would she deserve?

  Just focus on throwing the pitches.

  Wasn’t that what every coach she’d ever had would advise? Focus on the work before you started counting on the reward?

  KT fired off ball after ball toward the pitching mate. She didn’t have any way to measure it, but she told herself each throw had to be faster and faster and faster.

  Fifty miles per hour, sixty, sixty-five . . . Could that last throw have maybe even been seventy miles per hour?

  She made it to thirty perfect pitches, then had to start over because a ball went low and hit the rubberized base of the pitching mate before rolling off into the grass. She started her count back at the beginning.

  One, two, three . . .

  Perfect form, perfect arm, perfect throw. She was a machine.

  Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three . . .

  At forty she paused to wipe sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Then she went back to throwing, as hard and fast and perfect as ever.

  Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.

  She hesitated. The sun was creeping over the horizon, bringing morning with it.

  Fifty perfect throws was too easy, she told herself. My goal should be one hundred.

  She went back to throwing and throwing and throwing.

  Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three . . . Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy . . .

  She was starting her eighty-ninth pitch when she heard a voice behind her.

  “Stop! Please—just stop!”

  Chαpter Twen+y-Three

  KT’s throw went wild, the ball missing the pitching mate by a good three feet. It sailed off into the shadows of the next yard.

  KT whirled around to see who had ruined her perfect streak.

  Max.

  He stood at the edge of the patio, the toes of his bare feet dipping into the grass. Even in the dim light KT could see that he was wearing an old, stretched-out T-shirt that said MATH RULES! and shorts covered in large and small versions of the infinity symbol.

  “Look what you made me do!” KT complained.

  Max rubbed sleep out of his eyes.

  “I know you think you’re Superwoman,” he said, his voice little-kid groggy. “But don’t you ever worry that you might hurt yourself, doing all that?”

  “No,” KT said. “I never even get sore.”

  This was a lie, of course. Her legs ached from yesterday’s excessive running; every time she moved her arm it throbbed, as if to complain about this morning’s furious throwing.

  KT remembered that yesterday morning she and Max had agreed to work together, to be teammates. She couldn’t lie to him.

  “At least,” she corrected herself, “I never get so sore that I want to quit.”

  Max ambled forward and plopped down in the grass at KT’s feet.

  “Why is that, do you think?” he asked. “I mean, why are you so crazy, over-the-top obsessive about things, and I don’t even care?”

  KT sank down into the grass too.

  “It’d be easier not to care,” she said, trying to hold back the ache in her voice. “Nobody needs me to be like this, not in this world.”

  She had a brief flicker of wanting to tell Max about her dream, about her newest fears about the real world. But she couldn’t have gotten the words out; she couldn’t bear to think about any of that herself.

  “Maybe, if you just got that crazy obsessive about math . . . ,” Max began.

  KT tried to consider this seriously. KT Sutton, mathletics star? Queen of the quotients, diva of the decimals . . .

  She shook her head.

  “It’s not my thing,” she said. “I could work at it forever and never be as good as Evangeline. Or—you.”

  She’d seen this in softball—girls who tried and tried and tried but lacked that easy muscle genius that came so naturally to KT and her club-team friends. Most of those less-talented girls got the message after a time or two of being cut in tryouts. They faded away, moved on to other activities, found some other skill to develop.

  But that’s not what should happen to me! KT thought fiercely. I’ve got incredible softball talent! I should be allowed to use it! Not being able to—that’s just not fair!

  It was like she was trying to argue with her father’s words from her dream: If KT can’t ever play softball again . . .

  She couldn’t think about that dream. She couldn’t let herself hear those words again in her mind. Desperately, like a drowning swimmer flailing toward the only solid land in sight, she looked at Max.

  Max is normal, she told herself. Max is safe.

  But Max had such a stricken expression on his face. His jaw hung open. His eyes bugged out.

  “You think I’m that good?” he asked. “Like, not just Mom and Dad bragging about me, building me up, the coach wanting me to play well, but—really good? Evangeline good?”

  “Who got that last question in Friday’s game, the one that really mattered?” KT asked. “You or Evangeline? Of course you’re good! And”—she reached over and playfully punched his arm—“you know I wouldn’t just say t
hat to build you up. I wouldn’t try to make you feel better about yourself!”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Max said dazedly.

  KT laughed. She was okay as long as she kept her gaze on Max’s face. This was good, keeping her mind on Max’s problems, not her own.

  “But—,” Max said hesitantly. “Shouldn’t I actually like mathletics if I’m that good at it?”

  “Maybe you would like it if you’d grown up playing it all along,” KT said. “If you’d always thought math made you cool, not nerdy. But the way things were in the real world, well, I guess there your talent kind of got . . . overlooked.”

  Max picked up one of the softballs from the basket KT had been pitching from. He rolled it back and forth in his hand.

  “Whose fault was that?” he asked. “Mom and Dad’s? My teachers’? The school’s?”

  KT shrugged. Max was supposed to be her rescue, the only safe, normal person around. She couldn’t have him acting all weird and troubled too.

  “Calm down,” she said, trying for her most soothing voice. “Why does any of that matter now? You’re not in the real world anymore. You’re here, where everybody knows about your talent. Everybody but you, I guess.”

  Max began tossing the ball from hand to hand.

  “Everybody but me knows about my talent here; nobody but me knew in the real world,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” KT said. Now she was confused. “I thought you said yesterday that you always just got in trouble in math class in the real world. Did you know you were good at it or not?”

  Max made the ball fly faster and faster, traveling from hand to hand.

  “I should have known,” he said. “I kind of did, but I didn’t want to. I ignored it. What did it matter, if the only thing Mom and Dad wanted me to be good at was sports? I wasn’t paying attention to anything, really. A lot of times when I was playing video games I was just trying not to think about other things . . . hiding . . .” He snorted. “I was paying so little attention, you could have hit me in the head with a softball and I might not have even noticed!”