Game Changer

Keep your head down and pitch, she told herself. Walk. Plan your softball league. Use it to get back to the real world. Back to the real world where . . .

  She almost didn’t let herself finish the thought. But KT Sutton, pitcher, was no coward. There was no room in softball for cowards.

  Back to the real world where your parents actually love you.

  Chαpter Foυrte3n

  KT was busy that evening. After assembling and eating a dry, tasteless peanut-butter sandwich, she put all of Max’s stupid trophies back in the shrine—her first step toward getting back into Mom and Dad’s good graces so that maybe they’d cut back her grounding sentence. She took a shower, then sent Facebook messages to every single person within a fifty-mile radius she could remember playing softball with or against in the past six years: “Want to have the most fun in your life? Want to use the skills you learn in school for something that’s actually worthwhile? Join my softball league! If you’re interested, let me know!”

  She sat back in her chair and watched the screen. She hit the refresh symbol.

  Nothing.

  Silly, it’s hasn’t even been a full minute, she chided herself. Give them some time to let the idea sink in. It’s not like they know about the real world.

  Wait—what if some of them did know about the real world? For all KT could tell, maybe her whole club softball team had been zapped into this bizarre land at once, all of them suddenly living alternate lives. Or maybe some of her friends from school knew about the real world, just not the friends she’d talked to today. How could KT find out if they knew? How would they know that KT knew too?

  KT stared at her computer screen for a moment. Then she began to type out a second message to her whole club team: “I’m thinking of calling my softball league the Rysdale Invitational, Part Two. What do you think of that? Does it remind you of anything?”

  That should do it.

  She came up with similar coded messages for girls from school, girls from previous teams, girls she’d met at softball camps or played against. “Maybe we’ll all eat a dozen hot dogs afterward!” she wrote to Letty Rodriguez, a tiny girl who’d astonished the rest of KT’s fourth-grade team by polishing off that many hot dogs at the end-of-season cookout.

  “Maybe we can all use glitter-covered gloves!” she wrote to Hanna Ding, who’d had an unfortunate accident involving her catcher’s mitt and her little sister’s craft project right before a big game in sixth grade.

  “We’ll only hire bald umpires,” she wrote to Keshia Washington, a girl she’d hung out with at softball camps three years in a row. They’d shared a running joke about how none of the umpires in the school leagues had any hair.

  KT lifted her hands from the keyboard. So many memories. So many inside jokes, so many disasters, so many triumphs. Were they all still true if nobody but KT remembered? She rubbed her eyes, and put her fingers back on the keys. She typed: “Please tell me you remember too. Please.”

  She didn’t send that message. She left it on the screen, the cursor still blinking. She clicked back to her Facebook news feed and hit the refresh button.

  Nothing.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  She heard the garage door, then Mom and Dad and Max talking downstairs. She should go down, watch some ESPN with Dad, wait until his team was winning, and then, during a commercial break, suggest that maybe it really wasn’t necessary to ground KT for two whole weeks.

  She heard the TV coming on, an overly loud announcer’s voice calling out breathlessly, “Which of these poets will make it to the semifinals?” before someone—probably Dad—set it back to a normal volume.

  Poets? KT thought. Oh, yeah, there’s probably no ESPN anymore, either.

  Of course. Something else she loved that had vanished from this world.

  She heard someone climbing the stairs, and quickly reached over and turned out her light. She couldn’t face talking to Dad or Mom or Max anymore tonight. She sat perfectly still in the dark, barely daring to breathe. The footsteps paused outside KT’s door, then moved on.

  KT let out her held breath, and tiptoed over to her bed and lay down. She would go to sleep. Maybe that was all she needed to do to escape this world. Maybe she’d made things more complicated than they needed to be. She would go to sleep, and when she woke up, she’d have her real world back. She’d have softball back. She’d even know the outcome of the Rysdale Invitational.

  She closed her eyes, and some of her fears from the morning came back to her.

  Hospital, beeping monitors, concerned voices . . .

  She fought back with her visualization coach’s best strategies.

  I’m on the field. I’m pitching a no-hitter. I’m back in the world where everyone loves softball. Mom and Dad are proud of me again. This whole day is barely even a memory. I have softball back. I have softball back. I have softball back . . . .

  She fell asleep whispering those words.

  Chαpter Fifteen

  KT woke to Mom standing over her bed, the early-morning sunlight glowing around her.

  Yes! KT thought. It must be the regular world, back again! Why else would Mom bother coming in to talk to me?

  “About last night . . . ,” Mom said, sitting down on the edge of KT’s bed.

  “Yes?” KT said, springing up eagerly. This must be the way yesterday was supposed to go. All that weirdo-world stuff must have been a dream. Mom was going to say, We were so proud of you at the Rysdale Invitational, or maybe, We’ve already heard from the first scout from a top-tier high school club team, or maybe . . .

  “Dad and I were talking after you went to bed,” Mom continued. “We really need you to be more supportive of Max.”

  “What?” KT exclaimed. Behind Mom, KT could see the blank space on her wall where the Olympic softball pictures were supposed to be. Pretending to stretch, she craned her neck and looked at the bulletin board over her bed.

  It held report cards, not softball goals.

  KT sank back into her pillows.

  “You heard me,” Mom said grimly. “Though you may not realize it, Max looks up to you. You’re his older sister. This new attitude of his, not wanting to play mathletics—he must be paying too much attention to your opinions. You’ve put doubts in his mind, sent him into crisis.”

  Are you nuts? KT wanted to scream at her mother. Max messes up, Max is too lazy to work hard—and it’s my fault? How is that fair?

  She pressed her lips together.

  You can’t say what you really think, she reminded herself. Not unless you want Mom to ground you even longer.

  She swallowed hard.

  “I won’t say anything bad to Max about math,” KT said. “If you un-ground me.”

  Mom frowned, deliberating.

  “Deal,” she said.

  KT gaped at her mother.

  Geez, Mom, I guess you never took debate class in school—er, I mean, you never did an ac teaching negotiating skills, she thought. You caved a million times faster than I expected.

  Unless—what if Mom cared only about keeping Max in mathletics? What if she didn’t care at all about teaching KT a lesson by grounding her?

  It was weird to feel so dejected about not being punished.

  Mom and Dad almost never punished me in the real world, KT thought. There was never time, because I was always playing softball.

  And it would be that way again.

  “Can you leave now so I can get dressed?” KT asked Mom, not bothering to keep the rudeness out of her voice.

  As soon as Mom was gone, KT went over to her laptop. She’d left it on overnight, almost as if she’d expected the answers to come in faster that way. She had three messages, one from Bree on her club team, one from Keshia Washington, and one from a sixth grader from school she’d seen playing softball once at the park.

  “Who are you?” said Bree’s message.

  “Do I know you?” asked Keshia’s.

  ??
?My big sister says hanging out with you will make me really, really unpopular in middle school,” the sixth grader’s said.

  KT sat staring at the sixth grader’s message for a long time.

  “Shake it off,” she whispered to herself.

  She deleted the sixth grader’s message, and deleted the sixth grader’s name from the group she’d assembled for sending out messages.

  I’m not grounded anymore, she reminded herself. We can start playing softball immediately.

  She remembered that some of the girls lived far away and would have to make arrangements for someone to drive them.

  Saturday, she told herself. I can survive until Saturday.

  She typed out a new message to send to the whole group:

  “You may or may not know me, but I heard that you are someone who does really well in school but might be a little bored by it. That’s how I am too. I know about a game called softball that I think you will love. Want to play? Come to Ridgestone Park in Brecksville at ten a.m., Saturday, February 13, for lots of fun!”

  She started to type, “Don’t forget to bring your own glove and bat,” but then she remembered, It’s weirdo world. What if no one has gloves and bats? She went down to the garage, to the expanded section at the back that her dad always jokingly referred to as “KT’s sporting-goods store.” In the real world she had a whole lineup of bats, dating back to her third-grade version. And she had racks of cleats, some almost destroyed, some in the “still being broken in” category. And she had baskets full of softballs, three separate customized sports bags, a spare backup glove along with a collection of outgrown gloves, a similar lineup of old and new batting helmets, and a lifesize pitching mate to practice with when Dad wasn’t available to catch her blistering throws.

  She turned the light on and peered around Mom’s car to see what lay there now.

  One pair of cleats.

  One old glove.

  One small basket of balls.

  And, incredibly enough, the pitching mate.

  No bats.

  Well, at least I have the cleats and balls and a spare glove, she told herself, trying to put a positive spin on things. If I still have my regular glove, probably other girls have gloves too. Maybe for that class at school where people throw balls all the time?

  She hugged the sturdy frame of the pitching mate like it was a long-lost friend. But weirdo world was getting into her brain. KT had probably gotten the pitching mate for her eleventh birthday, just like in the real world. But in this world, getting it wouldn’t have been like Mom and Dad saying to her, Yeah! We believe in your pitching talent! You’re going to be great, and we’re going to do everything we can to help you! It would have been like a little kid in the real world asking for a dictionary or a collected set of Shakespeare plays or a graphing calculator. It would have been something Mom and Dad kind of wondered at, maybe even laughed at with their friends: You’ll never guess what KT wanted for her birthday! But secretly maybe they’d worried: If we get her this, will she just become odder? Why doesn’t she like what all the other kids like? What’s wrong with her?

  “Stop it,” KT told herself aloud. The words echoed in the too-empty garage. “Focus on organizing your softball game for Saturday.”

  She ran back upstairs and clicked over to eBay on her laptop. It was true—you really could find anything on eBay. Even in this pathetic, practically softball-less world, she had her choice of a dozen softball bats. She clicked on the next-day-delivery shipping option, but that made the price go up by sixty dollars. She opened another screen to check how much money she had on her debit card. What if Mom and Dad were stingier with their money here than in the real world?

  She had roughly three hundred dollars more than she should have.

  Oh, right, she thought. I guess Mom and Dad still pay for As on report cards, even in bizarre world.

  At least there were some advantages.

  But it’s not worth losing softball, she told herself quickly, just in case her thoughts had any connection to getting out of this world. I still want softball back!

  “KT! Have you had breakfast yet?” Mom yelled from downstairs. “The bus is going to be here in five minutes!”

  “Coming!” KT yelled back.

  She hastily finished her order and sent out a quick message to everyone on her potential softball team: “I will have one bat and one spare glove for Saturday, but bring any softball equipment you can find, just in case.”

  She rushed down the stairs and grabbed an energy bar and chugged some milk in the kitchen.

  “KT! The bus is here now!” Mom yelled from near the front door. “Max is already on it!”

  “I’m there!” KT said, running out of the kitchen. She raced past Mom, out the door, across the yard.

  This is actually perfect, KT thought. I didn’t see Max all morning. I avoided him entirely.

  How else could she manage to avoid telling him mathletics was stupid? How else could she avoid getting grounded, and losing softball all over again?

  Chαpter Sixteen

  The days passed slowly.

  Every morning KT woke up thinking, Maybe it was all a dream! Maybe this will be the day the real world’s back! But each morning she was less and less surprised to open her eyes to blank walls where Olympic pictures should have been, to report cards on her bulletin board in place of her list of softball goals.

  Every night, falling asleep, she had the same flash of imagining some awful outcome to the Rysdale Invitational. Sometimes it was a sense of being in another place, in another condition: hospital, traction, full-body cast, in a wheelchair, on crutches . . . Other times it was more of a listing of injuries she didn’t want to have: Broken bone? Dislocated shoulder? ACL tear? Concussion?

  She countered those fears with the same thought every night: The last thing I remember at the Rysdale Invitational, I was throwing a ball. How could something go that wrong, throwing a ball?

  Her mind dodged searching for answers. She always shifted to planning for her softball game or league on Saturday instead.

  How many girls will show up? she wondered. Will we have enough for just two teams, or enough for more of a tournament? She knew she’d have to organize things quickly—softball girls didn’t like standing around waiting to play. She made up imaginary rosters in her head, based on which girls she thought would show up.

  At school, she stuck to her policy of “Keep your head down and pitch.” She savored stretching her legs in the treadmill class, throwing balls in the pitching class, feeling the pull of her muscles in weight lifting. Really, the classes would have been great—certainly better than the usual boring worksheets and homework and droning lectures—if only she’d had friends around her instead of kids who gave her sideways glances and whispered about her behind her back. And if all that working out had been leading to something, not just exercise for the sake of exercise.

  It will, KT thought. I’ll get to play softball on Saturday.

  The only class she didn’t like was ac ed, which was indeed academic—every subject from regular eighth grade crammed into one class. The teacher, Mr. Stone, who was a science teacher in the real world, seemed to assume that everyone played an ac, so he didn’t teach anything. He just asked a bunch of hard questions about topics KT had never heard of.

  KT avoided talking to Mr. Stone. She avoided talking to any of the other teachers too, even the ones who seemed to be trying to be friendly.

  I’m already a pariah, KT thought, when Ms. Alvarez, the weight-lifting teacher, seemed to want to engage KT in a long one-on-one conversation about the best gripping technique. Does she think I want to make things worse by acting like a teacher is my best friend?

  She especially avoided all the teachers who’d had strange conversations with her the first day: Mr. Huck and Mr. Horace and Mrs. Whitbourne.

  She didn’t have to work very hard at avoiding the other kids, because they mostly avoided her. In fact the only time anyone her own age talked to her
was Wednesday afternoon after they’d had a pop quiz in throwing class. “Pop quiz” in this world evidently meant standing on a line and firing ten balls in a row at the target. Mrs. Sanchez called out a type of pitch with every one: “Fastball!” Curveball!” “Changeup!”

  KT had to admit, this was a lot more fun than true-or-false.

  So why don’t they have batters standing there instead of a stupid old target? she wondered. That would be even better!

  But as soon as the quiz was over, two kids came rushing over to KT. One of them, Anthony Seitz, had been the starting quarterback of the eighth-grade football team in the real world. The other, Celia Waters, had been big into volleyball.

  “What’d you get?” Anthony asked.

  “Bet she got a higher score than you,” Celia teased.

  KT shrugged.

  “A hundred,” she said, and resisted adding, Are you kidding? That was easy! I could have aced that test when I was nine!

  Celia punched Anthony’s bulging bicep.

  “Told you so!” she cried.

  “Ah, man, couldn’t you just get a ninety-nine once, give the rest of us a chance to catch up?” Anthony complained. “I would have had a hundred too, if Mrs. Sanchez hadn’t stuttered on that last changeup. I thought sure she was going to say curveball!”

  “Poor baby,” Celia mocked him. “Did your average in this class actually fall to ninety-nine-point-eight?”

  Great, KT thought. The jocks in this world are the ones who are grade-obsessed. And they can’t even do math!

  Celia seemed to be counting up her own score on her fingers.

  But the way Celia and Anthony were joking around together . . . it was like they were friends. With each other, at least. Being good at school hadn’t made them into outcasts.

  “Hey, how about if I sit with you at lunch and tell you my secret strategy?” KT asked.

  Celia and Anthony exchanged glances.

  “Sorry,” Anthony said. “We’re sitting with our chemademics team. I don’t think you’d be interested in what we’re talking about.”

  Chemademics. Of course. Anthony had to point out that he wasn’t just some grade-obsessed jock. He played an ac, too. He was cool.