Authors: Margaret Peterson Haddix
Game Changer
Epilogue: Three and a half years later
About Margaret Peterson Haddix
For the 1982 Miami Trace High School “In the Know” team,
The 2010 and 2011 Dublin Scioto “In the Know” teams,
The Bishop Hall gang,
The New Year’s Eve gang (both those who love the Name Game and those who hate it)
And, of course, the other two-thirds of the Triumvirate of Knowledge.
The answer is still “Up.”
rolo
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KT Sutton swung her arm in a phantom arc. Her hand released a phantom ball.
The perfect pitch.
In reality KT was sitting in the backseat of her family’s SUV. But in her mind she was on the field in the championship game of the Rysdale Invitational, hurling perfect pitch after perfect pitch over the plate, striking out one stunned batter after another.
If you can see it, you can do it.
Her pitching coach’s words echoed in her mind, filling her mind. The whole world shrank to those words and KT’s imagined perfect pitches.
See it; do it. See it; do it. See it—
“You’re not nervous, are you?” her father’s voice came from the front seat. “There’s no reason to be nervous. You’re the best pitcher out there. The scouts will see that.”
KT clenched her fists. The imaginary pitcher she was visualizing in her mind dropped the imaginary ball. Pain shot through her very real muscles. The semifinal game yesterday had been hard-fought and brutal, and KT just hadn’t bounced back like she usually did.
“Dad,” she said, her voice as cutting as one of her perfect pitches. “Stop it.”
“Don’t jinx her,” Mom advised from the passenger seat.
“Mom,” KT said. She gritted her teeth to fight the pain still throbbing in her right shoulder. “Don’t talk about jinxes.”
“It’s just—” Dad shifted in his seat. KT could tell he was trying to catch her eye in the rearview mirror. “This is a really important game. Maybe the most important game of your softball career so far.”
KT bent her neck, avoiding Dad’s gaze. Even that movement hurt. She stared at the mitt cradled in her lap, letting her eyes draw comfort from the familiar pattern of the lacings.
“Why don’t you let us help you get psyched up?” Dad asked. “Like you used to.”
“I’m not eight anymore,” KT said.
She remembered how Dad had prepared her for games back then. He’d have her stand at the top of the stairs in their house and yell, “I’m the best pitcher in the world! I’m the best pitcher in the world!” over and over again—“until you believe it,” he always said.
At eight she’d believed easily. She’d torn through the Ponytail League so dramatically that three ten-and-under travel teams came recruiting her. She’d heard her father brag once that “My daughter could throw strikes with her eyes closed,” so she’d tried it in the next game.
And succeeded.
She’d been eight when she’d written out her goals for life, in lurching little-kid writing:
The University of Arizona will beg me to pitch for them
I will win a gold medal in the Olympics
That list was still tacked up on the bulletin board over her bed at home, right in the center where she could see it every day. Her goals hadn’t changed in the least since then, but just so other people understood, she’d added a few clarifications over the years. She could close her eyes and picture the list as it had looked when she’d stared at it that very morning:
The University of Arizona will beg me to pitch for them. They will give me a full-ride scholarship. I will be their starting pitcher.
I will win a gold medal in the Olympics. I’ll start for TEAM USA, too. After I (and 9 million other players) convince the Olympic Committee to bring softball back! Or, if that doesn’t work, at least I’ll get a gold in the World Cup!
High-school and college scouts always watched the Rysdale Invitational. Maybe the people who would be Olympic coaches someday did too. KT was only in eighth grade, but everyone said this was when the really important people started paying attention. When they started filling slots on the best high-school teams, the ones that brought together girls from hundreds of miles apart. When they began planning who would get which college scholarship. When they mentally began filling lineups for games that wouldn’t be played for years.
This was when KT could start making her dreams come true.
A shiver passed through her that could have been fear, could have been nerves, or could have been another jolt of pain.
KT decided it was just adrenaline. The pure, raw adrenaline that was going to propel her to pitch a perfect game.
In the front seat Mom put a warning hand on Dad’s arm.
“Bill,” she said soothingly. “KT has a professional psych-up routine now. We paid her pitching coach and her visualization coach a lot of money to work up the best approach for her.”
KT heard mumbling beside her—something like, “Should have spent that money on video games.”
KT whipped her head to the side and held back a wince at the pain that flowed from that motion. Somehow
she’d managed to forget that her younger brother, Max, was in the car too.
Forgetting him, she’d discovered, was the best strategy with Max. But she couldn’t stop herself from snarling, “What’d you say?”
Max barely bothered to glance up from his Nintendo DS. He darted his eyes nervously toward Mom and Dad in the front seat and mumbled, “Nothing.”
Just looking at Max annoyed KT. How could two kids from the same family be so different? He’d been a cute enough little kid, with wavy blond hair and ears that stuck out in a way that made strangers stop them in the grocery store and gush, “What an adorable little boy!” But now that he was twelve, he’d turned into a pudgy, pasty blob who might as well have had his hands surgically attached to various video and computer games. A human slug, as far as KT was concerned.
Pathetic. Despicable. Disgusting.
“Max, honey, don’t bother your sister,” Mom said, turning around to fix him with one of her stares. Just from her tone, KT could tell this was probably a continuation of some earlier scolding. The “honey” sounded like a threat. “KT is under enough pressure as it is. We all need to support her as a family.”
Thanks a lot, Mom,
KT thought.
You’re not helping either.
Max waited until Mom turned back around to face the front. Then he muttered, barely loud enough for even KT to hear, “It’s just a
game.
Who cares?”
KT felt the anger blast through her body.
How dare he . . .
She actually welcomed the anger, because it washed over the pain, over the fear, over the nerves.
Use it
, she told herself.
She’d done that in plenty of games, drawing on fury over bad plays, bad calls, or bad sportsmanship to make her own game that much sharper. But somehow today she couldn’t get quite . . . centered. Without exactly realizing it, she’d gone from cradling her mitt in her lap to cradling her right arm.
It doesn’t hurt that much,
she told herself.
I’ll be fine once I warm up. But . . . there’s nothing wrong with buying myself a little insurance.
Surreptitiously, she sneaked her left hand down into the bag at her feet. She came up with a bottle of Advil. Working one-handed, she popped off the lid and slid two tablets into her mouth, washing them down with a swig from her water bottle.
There,
KT thought.
Mom and Dad didn’t see, so they won’t be asking annoying questions like, “What’s wrong? Are you going to be okay to pitch? Are you still going to be in top form? You have to be in top form!” And of course Max wouldn’t notice. For once it’s good he’s a video-game-addicted slug!
Moments later they pulled into the parking lot of the sports complex. Maybe it was the Advil kicking in; maybe it was just the excitement finally hitting. But KT didn’t feel like she needed her psych-up exercises anymore. This was it—the big game. She forgot anger, annoyance, pain, fear, nerves. The green grass of the field spread out before her. In the parking lot the bright gold and blue of her teammates’ uniforms glowed as if the sun shone only for them.
My tribe,
KT thought.
My home.
The field was flat enough that she could
see straight out to the pitching circle.
Where I belong,
KT thought.
Kerri and Bree, two of her teammates, began pumping their fists at KT as soon as they saw her.
“Woo-hoo!” they screamed. “KT’s here! Time to dominate!”
They slapped their palms against the side of the SUV, letting the sound accelerate and crescendo. Two other teammates, Makenna and Liz, ran over to join in.
“Dad, stop! Let me out here!” KT demanded.
“Um, okay. Good lu—”
KT was out of the car and slamming the door before he finished the last word. But KT knew what it was, and she didn’t need it.
Luck? That’s not what wins games. It’s talent. Training. Hard work. Skill. It’s wanting to win so bad you can taste it.