Game Changer

  KT tried to run faster, but everything around her had taken on the slow-motion quality of a dream. And, just like in dreams, the people around her weren’t acting normal. Here she was, racing down the sidewalk, dripping blood—maybe even gasping and screaming a little too—and not a single person tried to stop or help her: not dog walkers, not moms pushing strollers, not dads carrying bags of groceries, not teenagers holding up signs about car-wash fund-raisers . . . Everyone just stepped aside, letting her pass. It was like they all knew she was already headed wherever she needed to go.

  KT didn’t have the slightest idea where she was going. She didn’t know this street; she was just running blindly. She glanced around as she turned a corner, entering a section of the city that wasn’t set up well for a solitary runner. The buildings were too big; the streets were too wide; the traffic moved too fast. And some of the vehicles that zoomed past were topped with red lights that flashed distractingly . . .

  Ambulances, KT thought.

  She was running toward the hospital.

  The Brecksville Memorial Hospital complex sprawled at the top of a hill, looking urgent and scary and more real than anything else around her.

  KT stopped, staring up at the glowing EMERGENCY sign. Blurry shapes moved around her—hospital workers arriving for a shift change, maybe? Because she didn’t want to look at the hospital, she tried to look at these people instead, but they were ghostly, wavering, barely there.

  Of course, KT thought. More proof that this world isn’t real. How could the hospital function if 99.9 percent of grown-ups in this world work at nothing but exercise? How could any business work? How could people have food and clothes and houses?

  She realized that very little about this alternate world made sense past the middle-school scene. The e-mail that she—and/or Evangeline—had written was right: School really was supposed to get kids ready to be adults, with adult jobs. What kids learned in school needed to be more important than the games they played outside of it.

  As soon as she thought that, the blurry shapes around her fell away. Everything started falling away except the hospital in front of her.

  KT began running toward it.

  Evangeline knew what she was talking about, she thought. She felt a pang, because she wasn’t going to be able to go back and talk to Evangeline about this. Or maybe that was just her heart and lungs threatening to burst, because she was trying so hard to run fast enough to escape the wreckage caving in on her. This world was never anything but temporary. Just a place to hide while we avoided facing the real world.

  The sliding glass doors of the hospital lobby slid open before KT.

  Almost there, almost there . . .

  At the last minute, right at the edge of the threshold, KT dug her heels in, leaned back, drew herself to an abrupt stop.

  Immediately everything stopped falling around her. Everything stopped, period.

  KT stood there panting.

  “So I still have some control?” she whispered. “I still have some choice in the matter?”

  She stood on a single concrete square of sidewalk—the only square that hadn’t fallen away into nothingness. In fact it was the only thing outside of the hospital that was still intact.

  I don’t have to go into that hospital, KT thought defiantly. I could just stay here.

  She glanced back at the collapsed world behind her. The blur of broken scenery seemed to be making a feeble attempt to reassemble—if she squinted hard enough, she could almost make herself see the street, the cars, the trees, the grass. She might be able to bring the whole fake world back. She might be able to make herself believe in it.

  But what good would that do? she asked herself. What good is any of it, if it’s all just a lie? And—how could I go on like this, never knowing the truth? Never knowing how everything turned out in the real world for Max? Or . . . me?

  She turned her back on the fake world. She stared down at the metal strip at the base of the hospital doorway. The glass doors still hung open, waiting.

  “I don’t know how much control I’ll have over anything else,” she said aloud. “But I get to decide about this. And this is my choice: I want to know.”

  She squared her shoulders and stepped across the threshold. The hospital doors slid shut behind her.

  Chαpter twenty-seven

  Darkness engulfed her.

  At first KT thought all her senses had given out on her, overwhelmed by the strain of running toward the hospital, of making her decision. But dimly, distantly, she could actually hear a steady noise.

  Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .

  She struggled to open her eyes.

  Eyelids . . . so heavy, she thought, barely managing an eyelash flutter.

  “She’s coming to!” someone cried. “She’s waking up!”

  Dad’s voice, KT thought. Dad.

  With what seemed like superhuman effort, KT lifted her eyelids just enough that Dad’s face swam into focus.

  Real Dad, KT thought, just from the one brief glimpse she got before her eyes slid shut again. There was something in his face—pride? Wonder?—that had been mostly absent every time he’d looked at her in the other world. But it was mixed with worry and exhaustion and something she’d seen on his face a lot in alt world.

  Is it . . . pity? KT thought. For me? Not because I’m a misfit in an ac-obsessed world but because . . . because of what happened at the Rysdale Invitational?

  “KT, honey, take it easy,” Mom’s voice came from nearby. She must be sitting right beside Dad. “Don’t push yourself too hard. You can wake up slowly.”

  KT shook her head, feeling some sort of rough pillowcase against her cheeks, her hair flailing against her left shoulder.

  “Have to know . . . Max . . . Is Max okay?” she murmured.

  “See, I told you she didn’t hear what we tried to tell her.” Mom’s voice sounded muffled. Evidently she’d turned her head to talk to Dad.

  “Max . . . hurt,” KT whispered. “My fault . . . I hurt him . . .”

  “Oh, bless her heart, the first thing she’s worried about is Max,” Mom said.

  “But is he—,” KT began.

  “Max is fine, honey,” Dad said in a booming voice, as if he knew he had to talk loudly to get through to KT. She felt like her ears and her brain had been stuffed with cotton. “They were afraid he might have a mild concussion, and they kept him in the hospital for observation overnight, but it was just a precaution. He doesn’t even have a headache anymore.”

  “I . . . hit him,” KT whispered. “My throw . . .”

  “Nobody blames you for that, KT, not even Max,” Mom said. “It was such a fluke, the way that ball bounced off the railing . . . Believe me, you don’t have to worry about Max.”

  “Oh. Okay,” KT said, relaxing back into the darkness, back into the scratchy sheets and pillow beneath her.

  Relief flowed through her.

  I got all upset for nothing, she thought, snuggling deeper into the blankets and sheets. Everything’s fine. Isn’t that what Mom and Dad just said?

  She could still hear the steady beeping, like some sort of monitor measuring somebody’s heartbeat. Why would the hospital still have a monitor running if Max didn’t even have a headache?

  Mom and Dad didn’t say that everything was fine, KT realized. They said that Max was fine.

  KT went back to struggling to open her eyes. She was still trying to make sense of how she’d gotten from stepping into the hospital lobby in the alternate world to here, wherever here was.

  I must have been zapped back to wherever I’m supposed to be in the real world right now, she thought. Wherever I ended up after blacking out at the Rysdale Invitational . . .

  The electronic beeping seemed to get louder, more urgent: Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .

  “KT, honey, don’t get agitated,” Mom said. “You need to stay calm.”

  Why? KT wondered.

  She managed a blink, and got another quick glimpse of
Dad—and Mom—hovering over her. Beyond them she could see a fluorescent panel of light, the top of an IV pole, and a remote control with a call light labeled NURSE.

  Hospital room, KT thought. And—am I the one lying in the hospital bed?

  She tried to push her way up—maybe her eyelids would work better if she was in an upright position. But her right arm seemed to be immobilized. And trying to move it sent out little shivers of almost pain. It was like her arm wanted to scream out, DON’T DO THAT! IT’LL REALLY HURT! but there was some blessed numbness blocking the sensation.

  “KT, honey, just lie still,” Mom begged. She pushed down on KT’s left shoulder, holding her in place.

  KT got her eyes completely open. She looked down at her right arm, her pitching arm. It was encased in an unwieldy brace. Someone had evidently decided that it had to be kept absolutely still.

  KT squinted at the brace, completely baffled.

  “What? Why—?” she began.

  “Oh, Bill, she doesn’t remember that, either,” Mom moaned.

  “You tore your rotator cuff,” Dad said, still with the same overly loud, overly careful voice he’d used before. “The muscles and tendons in your shoulder. The doctors said you must have had some serious overuse problems before the Rysdale championship game, and then—”

  “Torn rotator cuff? Is that all?” KT interrupted. It wasn’t just relief that flowed through her this time—it was practically glee. This was bad, and a week ago she would have considered it the greatest tragedy of her life. But it was nothing like the unbearable possibilities that she’d been imagining; it was nothing like being stuck in a world without softball. Rotator-cuff injuries weren’t all that uncommon for pitchers. She could handle this. She could even be noble about it.

  “How long will it take to heal?” she asked, trying to sound patient. “How many games will I have to sit out?”

  Mom and Dad exchanged glances.

  “Well . . . ,” Dad said.

  “KT, honey, wouldn’t you rather rest some more before we talk about all of this?” Mom said in a choked voice. “You’ve already been through a lot.”

  KT looked back and forth between her parents. Her mother had tears in her eyes.

  If I close my eyes, could I go back to the other world? KT wondered. Is it too late to change my mind?

  She thought it probably was.

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” KT asked quietly. “Something you’re not telling me.”

  Dad clutched KT’s left hand.

  “Oh, KT,” he said, his voice breaking.

  “You have to tell me,” KT said. “Was it the rotator-cuff surgery—have I had surgery yet? Did something go wrong?”

  Dad pressed KT’s left hand against his cheek.

  “Not wrong, but . . . ,” he began.

  “There was a complication,” Mom said. “The way you passed out during the game . . . They wanted to check you out a little more thoroughly.”

  “Did I hit my head?” KT asked. She almost giggled, because there would have been a certain justice to that, her getting a concussion at the same time that she gave Max one. “You told them I need my shoulder back in shape as soon as possible, didn’t you? They know I’m a pitcher, right?”

  Another look passed between Mom and Dad, which KT could read only as This is bad. This is really bad.

  “Right?” KT said, panic started to edge into her voice. “They know?”

  KT wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but Mom and Dad’s faces hardened even further into grimness.

  “We really don’t have to talk about this right now,” Mom said, making an attempt at briskness. Her voice broke. “Just—”

  “Tell me!” KT commanded. “Tell me, or I will get agitated, I won’t rest, I’ll make my shoulder even worse . . .”

  She started to squirm out of bed—not because she wanted to hurt her shoulder, but because she wanted to show them what she was still capable of. Even with her arm in a brace, she was still KT Sutton, pitcher. She could still control the game.

  Couldn’t she?

  Mom and Dad both grabbed her left arm, pulling her back into place.

  “We have to tell her,” Dad said. “We have to, or else she’ll be out trying to run laps around the hospital corridors at night.”

  Why did he sound so sad about that? This was the real world again, wasn’t it? This was Real Dad, who was supposed to be bursting with pride over his athletic daughter.

  What was wrong with him?

  Dad began staring fixedly down at his own hands, holding KT down.

  “They did some tests,” he began. “They found some . . . problems with your heart . . . problems we’d never known about. Problems you must have had all your life, but . . .”

  “Sometimes they get worse in adolescence,” Mom whispered.

  “Oh, but who cares, if it never bothered me?” KT said, doing her best to shrug in spite of the brace on her right shoulder. Whatever numbing agent she had working on her shoulder seemed to be working on her mind, too. She felt perfectly calm. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but it really hurt when I was throwing that ball at the Rysdale Championship. I’m sure it was just the pain that made me pass out. Who won, anyway?”

  “KT, they stopped the game because everyone was so worried about you,” Dad said. “You and Max, both . . .”

  “People have died because of the heart problems you have,” Mom said. “You could have died!”

  “But I didn’t,” KT said, still fighting to sound calm. She felt a chill swimming out from her heart, but she did her best to ignore it. “Now that they know about this heart thing, they’ll take care of it, and I’ll be fine, right?”

  “Right,” Mom said. “It absolutely can be controlled with medication and monitoring and . . . lifestyle changes.”

  She sounded like a medical manual.

  “So, see,” KT said, “I can so run laps—”

  “No!” Mom and Dad exclaimed together.

  There was such panic in their voices. Panic and fear and sorrow and regret . . . It was like someone had died, like they’d lost their home, like everything they’d always believed in and counted on and hoped for had turned into dust.

  KT thought she could feel her heart beating in the silence that fell over the room just then.

  “Why not?” she whispered.

  “It’s not safe for you to do any . . . extreme exercise,” Dad said, and his voice sounded like it was him falling apart, him fighting against devastating pain. “Anything much more than a brisk walk . . . it’s too dangerous.”

  “How long will that last?” KT asked. She was trying so, so hard to keep from wailing. “How long until I can get back to softball?”

  Neither of her parents answered her. Neither of them would look her in the eye. Tears streamed down both of their faces.

  KT had never seen her father cry before.

  “Will I ever get to play softball again?” KT whimpered.

  “You—,” Dad began.

  “They can’t guarantee—,” Mom began.

  And then, almost as if they were mirror images of the same person, Mom and Dad bounded up and fled the room. KT could hear her mother’s racking sobs echoing down the hall.

  They can’t take it, KT thought. They can’t bear to say the words. They ran away instead of telling me.

  And KT couldn’t even get up and run after them. She couldn’t run away from anything anymore. She lay completely still, as if her heart would stop if she so much as moved. She’d been wrong: There was no painkiller working on her brain. Or if there was, it was worthless, the equivalent of a baby aspirin trying to fight a massive tumor.

  This is what I was trying to hide from in the alternate world, KT thought. This is what sent me there.

  Mom and Dad had probably tried to tell her before. Tried and failed. She had no idea how much time had passed in the real world since the Rysdale Invitational championship. She felt like things were once again falling apart, but
it was everything ahead of her that was collapsing now, not just scenery she’d already passed.

  There’d be no Brecksville North eighth-grade season of perfect shutout games. No KT Sutton commemorative jersey in the school trophy case. No eighth-grade season at all. Not for KT.

  There’d be no glorious high-school triumphs on some amazing club team including the best softball players from a four- or five-hour radius.

  There’d be no national championship games, no college recruiters offering scholarships. No University of Arizona. No Olympics, no World Cup, no gold medals. No medals at all.

  No softball at all.

  No running.

  Nothing.

  KT had nothing left anymore.

  Will I even live? KT wondered. Could I drop dead just from the strain of lying here trying to breathe?

  How could Mom and Dad have left her to deal with all of this alone?

  She heard a sniffle across the room. She whipped her head to the right: It was Max. He was sitting in one of the hospital chairs, his head bowed—the same posture he always had, hunched over some video game.

  I came back for you! KT wanted to yell at him. I came back because I wanted to make sure you were okay, and I just got the worst news of my life—and you’re just sitting there playing a video game?

  Then KT realized he wasn’t actually playing a video game. His hands were empty. It was more like he had his head bowed to give her privacy, to give her space. Maybe he was even praying for her.

  While KT was staring at Max, he suddenly raised his head. Their eyes met, and it was incredibly weird. She wasn’t used to looking into her brother’s eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done it—not for real, not outside the alternate world.

  “At least . . . ,” Max began faintly. “At least you still have your team.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m sure all the girls will rally around me,” KT said. But there was already a bitter edge to her voice.

  It won’t last long, she thought. She could picture her friends—Vanessa and Bree, Molly and Lex—all visiting the hospital, making strained chitchat, then running out with the cruel excuse, “Sorry! Gotta go! Big game today!”