Game Changer

  “KT?” a voice called behind her. “Is everything okay?”

  KT hesitated. She squinted at the walls around her, willing the doorways and cut-throughs and classrooms to unscramble and reassemble and look familiar again. She’d been going to Brecksville North for three years. How could she have done what sixth graders always feared on their very first day?

  She’d gotten completely lost in her own school.

  Chαpter F0ur

  “KT?” the voice behind her said again.

  KT whirled around. This nightmare of a morning instantly got worse: It was Mr. Huck, her social-studies teacher. The one whose class she was skipping.

  She tried putting on her game face.

  “Uh, hey, Mr. Huck,” she said brightly, with what she hoped was an innocent-looking smile. “I know I’m late to first period, but—”

  Mr. Huck gave her a light, conspiratorial punch on the arm.

  “Well, no, technically you’re not late yet,” he said. The bell rang in the emptying hallway around them. Doors slammed; the hallway fell silent. Now it was just Mr. Huck, KT, and the cinder-block walls.

  “Now you’re late,” Mr. Huck said. “But I am too, so I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  Mr. Huck had never been quite this . . . friendly before. He was an okay guy, but most of the time in his class KT had the sense that he was just waiting for the school day to end so he could get to what he really loved: coaching the boys’ lacrosse team.

  KT could respect that. She felt the same way about getting through school to get to softball.

  But it didn’t make social-studies class very interesting.

  “I wanted to talk to you anyhow,” Mr. Huck said. He leaned against the wall, as if trying to make their conversation even more private.

  They were already standing close together in a deserted hallway.

  Is he hitting on me? KT thought with a mix of amazement and disgust. She knew several girls who had crushes on Mr. Huck, because he was kind of good-looking, and it hadn’t been that long since he’d been a student at Brecksville North himself. But he was probably twice her age.

  KT thought the girls who got crushes on teachers were stupid.

  “Are you okay?” Mr. Huck asked, his eyebrows wrinkling into worried-looking wedges.

  KT forgot her suspicions about him hitting on her. This was more like . . . like he really respected her.

  “Nobody’s giving you a hard time about that e-mail, are they?” Mr. Huck asked.

  E-mail? KT thought. What e-mail?

  “Um,” KT said.

  Mr. Huck lowered his voice.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Mr. Arnold showed it to me in confidence.”

  Mr. Arnold was the principal.

  “He did?” KT said, because she had to say something.

  “Yes,” Mr. Huck said. He clenched his hand and turned his wrist like someone swinging a pretend lacrosse stick. KT thought she understood the motion, because she always flicked her wrist like she was throwing a pretend softball any time she got stuck in an awkward conversation.

  In fact she was doing that right now.

  “Why?” KT asked. The word came out more forcefully than she meant it to. She wished Mr. Huck could tell her why Maria had called her a show-off, why Mrs. Whitbourne had been so mean, why they’d done stretches in homeroom, why Facebook and her cell phone and the Rysdale website were messed up, why Mom had acted so weird—and most of all why KT couldn’t remember anything after the start of the fifth inning of the championship game yesterday.

  And, of course, how the game had ended.

  “Let’s just say, I am very sympathetic to your viewpoint,” Mr. Huck said. “But you came on kind of strong in your accusations, and Mr. Arnold was a little offended—he was quite the chemistry standout, in his day.”

  Chemistry? KT thought. What’s that got to do with anything?

  “I told Mr. Arnold I remember feeling just like you do when I was in middle school,” Mr. Huck said. He gave a sad chuckle. “Not that I was ever brave enough to call anyone out, like you did. Certainly not the school administration and all the coaches!”

  Administration? Coaches? What was he talking about?

  KT couldn’t ask. Asking would be like admitting she’d suddenly forgotten how to find the library in the school she’d been attending the past three years. Or like admitting that she’d forgotten an entire chunk of her life yesterday.

  Or—if he’s talking about some e-mail I supposedly sent Mr. Arnold, did I maybe forget more than the last half of yesterday? Did I forget something that happened last week, too?

  KT remembered last week. She’d had intense softball practice every day.

  “Mr. Huck,” KT said firmly. “I think you have me mixed up with somebody else.”

  Mr. Huck frowned and shook his head.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “We can be honest here. This school does have its priorities mixed up sometimes, and it’s the talented students like you who get hurt. It’s a crying shame we eliminated the gifted program in those budget cuts a few years back. We do have to gear the education system to the most basic level, to try to make sure everyone passes the state tests at the end of the year. I know that makes everything boring for students like you, who want to soar above the crowd, and . . .”

  Now KT knew Mr. Huck had her confused with someone else. Nobody had ever accused her of being a talented student before, or of belonging in a gifted program. She was usually on the honor roll, but that was mostly just because they made it easy for anyone to be on the honor roll. If you did badly on a test, there was always a chance to retake it, or do extra credit, or find some other way to get your grades up.

  KT zoned out a little, because Mr. Huck was going on and on about how “the school really doesn’t mean to clip your wings” and “part of it’s just the nature of middle school and middle school students” and “I promise you, it’ll get better in high school. Or at least by college. You’ll find your peer group eventually, people who care as much as you do about schoolwork . . .”

  He’s whacked, KT thought. A total nut job.

  She’d heard teachers complain, “You guys are going to send me into a nervous breakdown!” But she never thought she’d actually witness it.

  She started inching away from him.

  “Uh, Mr. Huck, don’t you think we should go to class?” she asked. “Everybody’s going to be wondering where you are.”

  “It’s okay—I told them to get started without me,” Mr. Huck said. He put his hand on KT’s arm. “Look, I know this is an uncomfortable conversation, but I promised Mr. Arnold I would talk to you. Because I do understand. And I’m on your side. But there are some things you could do to help yourself. To, well, not stand out so much. Like, for example . . . what’s your real name?”

  “KT,” KT said.

  “No, I mean your full name. What’s ‘KT’ stand for?”

  “Kaitlin,” KT said. “Kaitlin Therese.”

  She had actually gone by “Katie” up until fifth grade. Then one Sunday night, coming back from a softball tournament five hours away, she’d been sitting in the back of the family SUV with the entire weekend’s worth of homework spread across her lap. (As she remembered it, the teachers in fifth grade always acted like homework was Very Important. And they gave a lot.) It had occurred to her that she could get everything done that much faster if she eliminated the three unnecessary letters from her name.

  The other girls on her team had been so impressed with her stroke of genius—and jealous that KT was the only one who could pare her name down so easily.

  Besides, “KT” looked more like a softball player’s name than “Katie.”

  “Kaitlin Therese,” Mr. Huck said speculatively. He smiled. “See? There you go. Just start telling people to call you Kaitlin Therese. They’ll start thinking of you differently. They’ll—”

  “You want me to change who I am?” KT asked. Her voice came out as an indignant squawk. Even if
Mr. Huck was crazy, she shouldn’t have to put up with this. “Change my whole identity?”

  “No, no, not that,” Mr. Huck said soothingly. “You’d still be KT underneath. This is just temporary, just to help you get along. Just to survive middle school.”

  “I am surviving middle school,” KT snarled. “I’m surviving it fine. Just last night at the Rysdale Invitational—”

  She broke off, partly because she didn’t know what to say about the Rysdale Invitational. Had her team won or lost?

  But, also—Mr. Huck’s face stayed so blank.

  Yeah, he’s a lacrosse person, not a softball person, but he knows I was playing a big tournament this weekend, KT thought. We talked about it in class on Friday.

  Mr. Huck always started his Friday classes by asking if anyone had big plans for the weekend. Last Friday KT had mentioned the Rysdale tournament, and how hard her team had worked just to qualify to play in it. She’d said it was the biggest tournament of the winter season for girls her age anywhere in the entire country. Mr. Huck had looked right at her the whole time she was talking. He’d asked questions. He’d seemed impressed. It wasn’t like when Kona Briggs talked about her piano recital and Mr. Huck half listened while taking attendance or checking his e-mail. And when KT had finished talking, Mr. Huck had said, “Well, class, don’t you think we should congratulate KT—and wish her team luck—by giving her a round of applause?”

  It had been a nice moment. One of the best things that had ever happened to KT in a social-studies class.

  How could Mr. Huck have forgotten all of that now?

  Somehow KT was afraid to ask.

  “I’m going to class,” she said, pulling her arm back and whirling away from him.

  She’d barely gone two steps before Mr. Huck said in an embarrassed way, “Uh, KT? This way.”

  She turned around and saw that he was holding open the door of the nearest classroom.

  She looked at the door, looked at the hallway beyond them—yeah, that is Mr. Huck’s room. But have there always been archways and another hall across from it? Why did I get so confused before?

  She stepped into the classroom and headed toward the back. All year long she’d sat beneath a poster that said GEOGRAPHY: IT’S WHERE YOU’RE AT!

  But the poster wasn’t there anymore.

  Neither was her desk, or any other.

  Instead the entire room was filled with treadmills.

  Chαpter fiνe

  Keep your head down and pitch.

  That was the Coach Mike advice that ran through KT’s mind now. It dated back to a game KT’s team had played during a violent windstorm last summer. Rain never fell, and the lightning sirens never went off, so the two teams kept playing and playing and playing, even though some of the girls were struggling just to stay upright in the extreme gusts. Later one of the team dads found a news story online saying that the winds in the area had actually measured at tornado-force speeds, so at the end-of-season party there’d been huge signs posted: Our Girls Can Outplay a Tornado—What’s Next? A Hurricane? And Our Girls 14; Tornado 0.

  Now the words “Keep your head down and pitch” propelled KT to step onto the only empty treadmill in the classroom. It was situated roughly in the same area of the room where her desk had been on Friday. She glanced around and saw that everyone else in the class seemed to be running at the exact same pace. She set her treadmill to level 5, the same numeral glowing on the panel of the treadmill beside hers.

  “Not going for ten today?” the boy beside her—Sammy something—muttered. “Not gonna act like you’re twice as good as everyone else?”

  “Uh, no,” KT said uncertainly.

  Why did he sound so hostile? What had KT ever done to him? Sammy had sat on the other side of the room until last week. She didn’t even know him. He didn’t know her.

  Keep your head down and pitch, KT told herself. Keep your head down and pitch.

  Or, in this case, run.

  KT’s treadmill jerked to life slowly at first and then . . . well, it stayed slow. Level five was barely more than a stroll. For KT’s long legs it was an uncomfortable speed, just a tad too fast to walk, but not quite fast enough to run. Without thinking, she punched the speed control up to six, then seven. Then eight.

  “So, not twice as good, just sixty percent better?” Sammy sneered beside her.

  Was he still talking about her treadmill speed? Why would he care?

  “This is going to be great conditioning for softball,” KT said, trying to sound a little apologetic even though she didn’t know what she had to apologize for. “Did . . . did the school start some new fitness program? Is that what’s going on today?”

  Maybe there’d been some announcement last Friday about today being Fitness Day. As well as Dress Like a Nerd Day. Last Friday KT had been so focused on thinking about the Rysdale Invitational, she could have missed any number of announcements.

  Sammy just gave her a weird look and punched up the speed controls on his own treadmill. Level six, seven, eight, nine . . . Sammy was a lot shorter and stockier than KT, and nine was too fast for him. He was huffing and puffing inside of a minute.

  “Samuel,” Mr. Huck said from the front of the room. “Remember to think about stamina. Are you going to be able to maintain that speed all period long?”

  “KT sped up too,” Sammy said.

  “You worry about your own speed,” Mr. Huck said. He walked back to Sammy’s treadmill and punched it back to five. “Let KT worry about KT.”

  He left KT alone.

  But “Let KT worry about KT” threatened to crowd out “Keep your head down and pitch” as the words that played themselves again and again in KT’s mind, flowing to the rhythm of her feet pounding on the treadmill.

  KT was worried.

  There’s got to be a logical explanation for everything, KT told herself. Like, I just didn’t hear the announcement about Fitness Day. And Sammy’s just a jerk. And so was Maria in homeroom. And Mrs. Whitbourne. Anyhow, at least I must have convinced Mr. Huck not to call me Kaitlin Therese.

  KT set a new goal for herself. She would get through the rest of her morning classes however she could. Then at lunch she’d figure everything out. She always sat with her friends Molly and Lex, and Lex had an iPhone. She’d let KT borrow it, and KT could look up the results to the Rysdale Invitational. That was really all that mattered. Everything else would fall into place once she knew if her team had won or lost.

  Just to make sure she didn’t get lost again, KT followed kids from her first-period class who were also in her second-period class, kids from her second-period class who were also in her third-period class, and kids from her third-period class who were also in fourth period.

  KT didn’t talk to any of them, even though some of them were friends. KT didn’t trust herself to sound or act normal, not when things were so strange.

  But why aren’t any of them talking to me? KT wondered. Then she made herself stop wondering, reminding herself, Keep your head down and pitch. Keep your head down and pitch. Just make it to lunch and everything will be okay.

  In second period, which was supposed to be math, the desks were all replaced with exercise bikes.

  During third period, which was usually English, they did stretches again. KT guessed it was supposed to be something like yoga.

  Fourth period would have been KT’s favorite on a normal day, since she walked in to find bushel baskets full of balls on one side of the room and targets painted on the opposite wall. Clearly, science class had been turned into pitching practice.

  But the questions she’d been trying to ignore broke past her careful resolve in fourth period.

  Why isn’t anyone else saying anything like, “Wow, this is a lot better than science”? Why aren’t the brainiacs moaning, “We’re not going to get a grade on this, are we?”

  KT stepped up to take her first pitch. Bull’s-eye! She hit the target dead-on. A red digital number lit up above the target: 52 MPH.

/>   Oh, sweet! KT thought. They’ve got a monitor set up measuring our pitching speed. I know I can do better than fifty-two.

  She grabbed her next ball and hurled it. The number went up: fifty-nine, which was good even for KT.

  She reached for a third ball—and felt a hand on her arm stopping her.

  “KT, you’ve got to give someone else a turn,” the teacher, Mrs. Sanchez, said.

  “That’s okay. She can pitch for me,” the kid behind her said.

  “I’ve got a better idea—why doesn’t she pitch for all of us?” someone else suggested. KT saw it was Rob Mozier, who was kind of the class clown.

  KT expected Mrs. Sanchez to laugh, because Rob could make anything sound funny. But Mrs. Sanchez just fixed him with a stern gaze.

  “Because you all need to know how to pitch,” Mrs. Sanchez said, pulling KT back. “Sorry, KT.”

  “That’s okay. I guess there wasn’t money enough to bring in thirty targets and monitors so everyone in the class could use them all at once, not when . . .” KT was ready to say, not when we’re just doing one day of fitness training. But that made her think, How was there money to bring in even ten targets and monitors for one day of fitness training? And all those treadmills and exercise bikes and floor mats . . .

  “It’s true, there’s never enough money in education,” Mrs. Sanchez said with a sad shrug.

  Exactly, KT thought. So why would they put on such an elaborate fitness day?

  Maybe they’d gotten some grant, something related to childhood obesity or something like that. But one day of exercising wasn’t going to make any difference. And if they wanted to get kids interested in exercising, why weren’t they playing games and having fun with it, instead of just doing drills and practice?

  Don’t worry about it, KT told herself. Just get through this class and get to lunch.

  Even when she broke into the sixties on her next turn to pitch, she couldn’t quite enjoy it.

  The bell rang at the end of fourth period, sending everyone to lunch. KT was very careful to follow the crowd, just in case the cafeteria had become as difficult to find as the library. And that bothered her—she wasn’t a follower. She was a leader. She was a star pitcher, after all.