Game Changer

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “KT, whatever it is, just hold on a minute,” Mom called from out in the hall. “I have to wake up Max.”

  Yeah, that lazy bum was probably up half the night playing video games, KT thought scornfully. Of course you have to wake him up.

  But the irritated tone in Mom’s voice stung. The way Mom sounded, you’d think KT was some annoying little brat calling out “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” over nothing. Not a star pitcher who’d maybe (probably?) won the Rysdale Invitational last night.

  KT sat perfectly still, straining her ears to listen.

  Mom’s footsteps went into Max’s room.

  “Good morning!” Mom exclaimed, and the hallway that joined KT’s and Max’s rooms grew brighter. Mom must have just opened Max’s curtains.

  Lazybones can’t even do that for himself, KT thought.

  “Rise and shine!” Mom was saying to Max. Her voice brimmed with excitement, with pride. “It’s your big day!”

  Big day? For Max? What? KT thought.

  Of all the strange things that had happened this morning, this was the strangest of all. Something was really, really wrong.

  Mom had said exactly those same words, in exactly that same way, to KT yesterday.

  So why was she saying them to Max today?

  Chαpter Tw0

  KT bolted.

  “Mom, I’m ready for school early,” she called in the direction of Max’s room, even as she grabbed shoes and socks and dashed for the door. “I’m not going to wait for the bus. I’m going to jog over there now.”

  It was instinct on KT’s part. Faced with a problem, any problem, she didn’t sit around thinking and deliberating and pondering and hemming and hawing and wondering about a possible solution. She moved.

  “Our daughter’s a girl of action,” she’d heard Dad brag about her once.

  It might have been after that game where the second baseman fell and broke her arm during an important play, so KT had had to carry the ball to base, rather than throwing it. She’d arrived a split second before the runner. She’d been the hero of the game.

  Remembering that moment always gave KT a little jolt of pride. But right now it wasn’t enough, not when she felt so jittery and off-kilter, not when everything that had happened this morning had been so strange and wrong. Not when she had such a huge, gaping hole in her memory of the Rysdale Invitational.

  To counter all that, KT had to run.

  KT was just escaping from her room when Mom cut her off in the hallway.

  “You’re jogging to school?” Mom asked. “Really? Oh, KT, do you have to?”

  Mom’s voice sagged under the weight of—was that disapproval? Disappointment? Dismay?

  KT was not used to Mom talking to her like that. KT had jogged to school before—it was only a mile and a half through the neighborhood. Jogging or running or even just walking to school was a good way to get some exercise before a dreary day of sitting through boring classes.

  KT had even heard Mom brag about it.

  “Our KT has so much self-discipline,” she told people. “She’s so motivated, she gets up early to jog to school!”

  She made it sound like KT climbed Mount Everest every day before breakfast.

  So why was Mom sighing now?

  “Mom,” KT protested. “I want to.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Mom said, letting out another sigh. She seemed to be trying to smile at KT. Since when did it take so much effort? She awkwardly patted KT’s shoulder. “You are who you are, I guess.”

  Weird, weird, weird.

  Those words sang in KT’s mind as she sprinted down the stairs. She wanted to dart into the family room to look for the Rysdale Invitational trophy once again. But Mom was still watching her from the top of the stairs.

  Just get out the door, KT told herself. Just get to school. You can go online during homeroom. The Internet has to be fixed by then. The Rysdale website will be back up. So will all your Facebook friends.

  As always, running soothed her. The rhythmic slap of her soles against the sidewalk was as reassuring as her own pulse. She was halfway to school before she realized that she’d forgotten her iPod, forgotten her phone, even forgotten her backpack.

  Never mind, she thought. Who needs the iPod and phone if they’re broken? And if there’s any homework due, I can copy somebody else’s or do it during class.

  The school had gone to some new system where homework didn’t count for much, so even the teachers didn’t take it very seriously anymore.

  Usually when KT ran to school, she saw plenty of other joggers or walkers in the neighborhood—adults trying to burn off a few calories before they sat at desk jobs all day. Even if she didn’t know them, they always gave a friendly wave or nod. Once two moms pushing strollers had yelled out, “You go, girl!” as KT ran past, and KT had heard them behind her explaining to a third mother, “That’s that Sutton girl. She’s some amazing pitcher. We’re going to be able to say we knew her when.”

  That was another memory KT savored.

  But today the whole rest of the neighborhood seemed to have been struck by an attack of Max-style laziness. KT didn’t see a single other person out on the sidewalk, just cars driving past and . . .

  Was that person pointing at me? KT wondered as yet another car flashed by. Pointing and—laughing? Why?

  It didn’t make sense. Her eyes must have been playing tricks on her.

  Still, she lost some of her running-induced calm as she got closer and closer to school. Brecksville Middle School North was a fairly new building, with sprawling wings and soaring rooflines. But somehow its angles seemed wrong today, like one of those LEGO kits Max put together backward when he was little.

  Now I know I’m just imagining things, KT told herself. How could the building have changed over the weekend?

  She stepped up to a clump of other students waiting outside the front door. None of them were her close friends, but she knew several of them: Cassandra from her language-arts class, Spencer from gym, a few sixth graders who’d told her way back during orientation in the fall how much they wanted to try out for softball. So she was surprised no one even said hi.

  “Hey,” KT said, kind of generally addressing the whole crowd.

  Nobody answered. Cassandra and Spencer both looked up and then, without quite meeting KT’s eyes, moved away from her. The rest of the crowd seemed to shift away from her too.

  What’s that all about? KT wondered.

  KT realized that she’d been so rattled leaving home that she’d forgotten to brush or comb her hair.

  Well, if that’s the problem, who needs any of these people? KT thought. Still, she stepped slightly away from the group, flipped her head down, and pulled all her hair into one handful. She circled it with a rubber band out of her pocket, and flipped the resulting ponytail back. It made a satisfying slap against her shoulders.

  “Does this look any better?” KT asked, aiming the question at the group as a whole. She shrugged. “Not that there’s a whole lot I can do with this hair.”

  It was true. KT’s hair was bushy and barely manageable even under the best of circumstances. And it was a boring color—light brown.

  KT distinctly saw Cassandra roll her eyes. Two of the sixth graders started whispering to each other.

  Probably doesn’t have anything to do with me, KT told herself.

  But she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it did.

  I didn’t run far enough or hard enough to actually sweat, so I know I don’t stink, KT thought. And, yeah, I forgot to change out of the T-shirt I slept in, but I’ve got a nice running suit on over it. Lots of kids wear sweats or running suits to school. It’s practically the school uniform. Even for kids who aren’t athletes.

  But now that she thought about it, there was something a little off about the clothes the other kids were wearing. Spencer had on what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary T-shirt, but instead of saying NIKE or REEBOK or CHIEFTAINS SOCCER, it was covered with math formulas and the wo
rds IT ALL ADDS UP. Cassandra was wearing an oversized T-shirt over what looked like yoga pants. But both were covered with huge pictures of William Shakespeare, including a particularly large view of him on her rear. And one of the sixth graders had on a T-shirt that said TEXAS INSTRUMENTS ROCKS.

  Texas Instruments? Didn’t they make calculators?

  Ooooh. KT finally figured it out. That Dress Like a Nerd thing wasn’t just on Facebook. Or the school got the idea from Facebook to do Dress Like a Nerd for Spirit Week.

  Probably the school had sent out some reminder that morning, and KT hadn’t seen it because her phone and Facebook were messed up.

  The bell rang inside the building, and the door clicked open. KT joined the crowd surging forward. She angled across the entryway toward the school’s trophy case. KT was pretty sure the school had put it there on purpose, so any visiting team would get the message right away: Don’t go thinking you could beat us! Normally, it annoyed KT that the boys’ trophies—football and basketball, even wrestling and soccer—were bigger and displayed more prominently than the girls’. But she still liked walking past the trophy case every morning.

  Like someone rubbing a lucky coin, she always looked first at the trophy that she herself had had a part in winning last year on the seventh-grade softball team. Then she always looked to the back of the case, where the sports jerseys of the most amazing athletes in Brecksville North history had been retired. Playing on the school team was kind of like going back to preschool after the level of play on her club team. Still, KT harbored a secret dream, one that was more immediate than her main goals of getting a full-ride scholarship to play for the University of Arizona and then winning gold in the Olympics. By the end of this school year, KT vowed that her own Brecksville North jersey—SUTTON 32—would hang right up there with Will Stern’s baseball jersey from 2004, Haley Blake’s volleyball jersey from 1999, and Roger Gonzalez’s football jersey from 1996. If she pitched no-hitters every single game of the Brecksville North regular season, that would do it, wouldn’t it?

  KT reached the front of the trophy case, and looked down toward the right corner. Just as she caught the first glimpse of gold, someone jostled against her, knocking her sideways.

  “Hey! Watch it!” KT protested, whipping her head around. She wanted to say, Valuable pitching arm here, you know? The softball team’s depending on me!

  But the words froze on her tongue. Because her head was angled just right to see Will Stern’s, Haley Blake’s, and Roger Gonzalez’s jerseys. And they weren’t there.

  Instead, wooden desks hung suspended above the trophies. They were odd, ancient-looking contraptions, with names engraved on them in gold: DORCAS IMOGENE SMITHERS, HERBERT STANLEY GOTTLIEB, VIRGIL WALDEMAR VARDEN, EDNA CORNELIA MEHTA . . .

  Who are those people? KT wondered. And who cares?

  Chαpter Thr3e

  KT fled to homeroom.

  Must find computer, KT thought. Must see Rysdale Invitational website. Must . . . must . . .

  She stopped and pressed herself against the wall for a moment. She seemed to be having trouble walking and thinking at the same time.

  Must make everything normal again.

  That was it. That was what she wanted.

  She didn’t understand how it all fit, but she just knew that if she found out how the Rysdale Invitational championship game had ended last night, everything else would fall into place. Even if the news on the Rysdale website was bad—even if KT’s team had lost—she was convinced that knowing would fix everything.

  She burst into homeroom with the words “Mrs. Whitbourne, can I use a computer, please?” poised on her lips. Then she stopped, right in the doorway, so abruptly that four other kids slammed into her back.

  There weren’t any computers in the homeroom classroom.

  There weren’t any desks.

  The room had been transformed into a vast, open space, its floor covered with the same kind of blue, foamy mats the phys ed teacher used for gymnastics units.

  “Come on, kids, enough with the standing around. You know the drill. Stretches, everyone,” the teacher, Mrs. Whitbourne, hollered from the front of the room.

  The other kids, grumbling, slid down to the floor. KT watched, confused. She told herself to go into the same kind of crisis management mode she used in risky moments on the softball diamond. Coach Mike had taught her the strategy:

  “You don’t need to process every piece of information around you. Does it matter that the sky is blue? No. Does it matter it that you didn’t get as much playing time in the last inning as you thought you deserved? No. Does it matter that your boyfriend came to watch you play for the very first time?” That one had drawn a laugh from all the girls, and made Coach Mike shake his head even more emphatically. “That doesn’t matter either—unless it makes you play better. In which case, yeah, remember that Loverboy Romeo is sitting in the stands. But don’t let him distract you. Don’t pay attention to anything that doesn’t matter. Be a softball-playing machine!”

  It didn’t matter that KT couldn’t figure out what was going on in homeroom. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t figure out any of the other oddities that had occurred this morning. All that mattered was finding out what had happened in the championship game yesterday.

  She walked toward Mrs. Whitbourne.

  “Mrs. Whitbourne, may I—,” she began.

  “No, KT,” the teacher interrupted. “You may not.”

  “But I haven’t even said what I—”

  Mrs. Whitbourne tucked her clipboard under her arm and ticked off possibilities on her fingers.

  “You may not do a more advanced stretching routine than the rest of the class. You may not demonstrate that you might be better at those particular stretching routines than moi, your teacher. You may not do anything except get down on that mat and stretch, exactly like I tell you to, exactly like every single other student in this class.” Mrs. Whitbourne was practically eyeball to eyeball with KT. “Got it?”

  Six years of dealing with high-strung, championship-seeking softball coaches had taught KT that there were certain times when it wasn’t wise to argue with grown-ups.

  Now appeared to be one of them.

  “Yes, ma’am,” KT said.

  She slid down to the mat and obediently stretched her arms toward her toes, just like all the other students.

  But Mrs. Whitbourne couldn’t control the thoughts stretching through KT’s mind. What if Mrs. Whitbourne’s hissy fit wasn’t just a fluke, just a teacher upset that it was Monday? What if it was something else? What if KT needed to pay attention to what Mrs. Whitbourne had said?

  Why does she act like those are all things that I’ve done before? KT wondered. We’ve never stretched in homeroom before! We always just sit at our desks and listen to boring morning announcements and then go to class. And—Mrs. Whitbourne likes me! At least—I thought she did. She used to play softball herself, so she always likes hearing about my games! She lets me come in late and doesn’t even count me tardy!

  The next time KT dipped toward the ground she dared to turn her head a little to the right and whisper to the girl beside her, “What was that all about? What’s wrong with Mrs. Whitbourne? And why are we doing stretches? What happened to all the computers and desks?”

  The girl, Maria, let out an exasperated snort. She didn’t answer KT, but the next time Maria dipped in the other direction, KT heard her tell the girl on the other side of her, “Don’t you love it when teachers see through those teacher’s-pet routines?”

  Teacher’s pet? KT thought indignantly. I’m not a teacher’s pet!

  “People! Your form is awful!” Mrs. Whitbourne called from the front of the room. She tapped a finger impatiently against her clipboard. “You do this wrong, you’re going to get hurt. Look at . . .” She sighed. “Look at KT. She’s the only one doing it entirely correctly. KT, would you demonstrate?”

  “Uh, sure,” KT said. She made sure her left foot was tucked against her rea
r, and stretched her arms toward her right shoe. She inched down slowly, just like she’d learned in softball. “Like this?”

  “Naturally,” Mrs. Whitbourne said, tossing her head scornfully. She was an older woman with short, gray hair—her hair didn’t even move. “Okay, people, every single one of you should be doing exactly what KT’s doing. Now get to it!”

  Maria, the girl beside KT, dipped down alongside her and hissed, “Show-off!”

  “But—she asked me to,” KT muttered back.

  “Hmph,” Maria snorted contemptuously.

  What’s her beef? KT wondered.

  Dimly she remembered that Maria had tried out for the school softball team last year, in seventh grade, and had been cut in the first round. She hadn’t even bothered trying out this year, so KT figured she didn’t really care.

  But was Maria still holding a grudge from last year? Was she jealous that KT was the star pitcher and Maria wasn’t even good enough to make a seventh-grade team?

  KT had been sitting next to Maria in homeroom all year. They didn’t usually say much to each other beyond “Hey” and “What’s up?” But Maria had never acted jealous before. Why was she so bitter now?

  And why were the other kids around them nodding and glaring at KT, like they all agreed with Maria?

  The bell rang, signaling that it was time for everyone to go to first period.

  Not me, KT thought. At least—not yet.

  She darted out of the classroom and around the corner. She wasn’t going to take the risk that her first-period teacher, Mr. Huck, wouldn’t let her use a computer either. She was taking matters into her own hand. She’d sneak into the library, check out the Rysdale Invitational website on the computer there, and then go to first period.

  She turned a second corner. Past the lockers and then . . .

  KT stopped.

  Wait—this isn’t the way to the library. It’s . . .

  She backtracked, almost completely back to homeroom. Start over. Left, then right, then . . .

  She’d ended up in the wrong hallway again.