Game Changer (22 page)

She tossed her head, enjoying the thump of her sweaty ponytail against her back.

“How dare you—,” the lead girl said, advancing toward KT.

“Is there a problem here?” a man asked, stepping between them.

“That girl threatened us!” the two sidekick girls complained in unison.

The man glanced at KT, then turned his back on
her.

“Sabrina,” he said. “Alexis. Katasha. Focus on the
math.
Don’t get caught up in any tryout-day drama. Remember what happened the last time?”

KT walked away from all of them. She was surprised to find that her knees were shaking. She tried to flip around the whole scenario in her head.

If someone like Evangeline showed up at softball club-team tryouts in the real world, nobody would be mean to her,
she thought.
Softball girls aren’t nasty like that. Are we?

It was yet another question she didn’t want to think about.

KT walked toward a table with a huge sign taped to it proclaiming
REGISTER HERE
.

“Name?” the woman behind the table asked automatically without looking up.

“I’m not trying out,” KT said. “I just want to know which room my, uh, friend is in so I can, uh, cheer her on. Can you look up Evangeline Rangel?”

Now the woman glanced at KT. She seemed to decide instantly that KT wasn’t some whacked-out opponent of Evangeline’s, like that one Olympic skater who’d arranged to have her top competitor’s leg broken.

There are some definite advantages to looking like a straight-A student,
KT thought.

“How nice that you support your friends in their acs!” the woman said in an overly sweet voice. She looked at a laptop screen. “Evangeline isn’t in a tryout session right now, but she’s already checked in, and she’ll start in room 109 in twenty minutes. She’s probably back there waiting. It’s down that way, all right?”

She pointed, but the undertone in her voice seemed
to be saying,
I’m really not sure you’re bright enough to follow that simple instruction. Not the way you look.

“Thanks,” KT said. She resisted the urge to tell this woman,
I hope your kid washes out at these tryouts. I hope your kid flunks out of high school. I hope your kid never gets to play acs in college.
KT already had enough problems as it was.

She headed down the hallway. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to run into Mom or Dad or Max, so she ducked her head down and turned her face to the side every time she passed a classroom. Still, she could hear the voices spilling out of each room, confident or trembling, filled with fear or hope: “4x over 3 . . .” “Cosine—er, no, I mean tangent . . .” “The area of that rhombus would be . . .”

Not my scene,
KT thought, with a little pang in her heart.
Not my people. Not my tribe.

Such a loud burst of applause came from one room as she passed that KT couldn’t resist peeking in. She almost fell over in surprise at the sight of the kids lined up in the front of the room. KT stood there gaping for a moment, then tugged on the sleeve of an official-looking man standing with a clipboard by the door.

“That . . . that girl with ‘sixty-four’ pinned to her shirt . . . is that girl named Chelisha?” she asked.

The man laughed.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’ve heard of her, have you? She’s the most amazing mathlete I’ve ever seen. But don’t worry—nobody here’s actually competing with her today. They just brought her in to let everyone see what the kids from this region might eventually be up against, if anyone gets that far. The play in this room is strictly for exhibition
purposes.”

This Chelisha was wearing horn-rimmed glasses and the same kind of “Nerds ‘R’ Us” combination of plaid and argyle as the other mathletes around her. But KT knew it had to be the same amazing batter she’d faced across home plate at the Rysdale Invitational back in the real world. As KT watched, Chelisha bowed her head slightly, accepting the applause. Obviously it was all for her.

“She . . . she . . . ,” KT stammered.

“Hey, don’t let it get to you,” the man with the clipboard. “Personally, I think it was a mistake bringing her in today—nerves are already running high enough—but, really, she’s in a class by herself, so you can’t take it personally.” He glanced again at KT. “I hear she’s a really good student, too, so her college scholarship is guaranteed!”

KT backed away from the man, out of Chelisha’s room. Her head spun. It felt like worlds were colliding.

It’s not fair for Chelisha to be great at math
and
softball,
KT thought.
It means she can be happy in both worlds. And if Evangeline is right, I can’t be happy in either.

KT didn’t want to think about that. She stumbled to the left, as if physically trying to dodge the thought. But this just made her slam into the hallway wall. She was so dizzy. She let herself slide down the wall into a crouch.

“Not fair,” she murmured. “Not fair for her to have so many talents! Not when I only have one!”

“How can you be so sure?” a voice said above her, echoing oddly in KT’s ringing ears. “When have you ever given anything but softball a chance?”

Softball!
KT thought.
Somebody here in this crazy, sports-forsaken alt world actually said
the word ‘softball’!

She looked up eagerly, sending herself into another spiral of dizziness. It took a long moment for the face looking down on her to swing into focus. And when it did, disappointment slammed through KT.

It was only Evangeline.

Behind Evangeline, other people were starting to crowd in, asking, “Did she faint?” “Do we need to call an ambulance?” “Have you sent someone for orange juice? If her blood sugar’s low, orange juice will help” and “Can’t she handle the pressure?”

Evangeline waved them all away.

“She’s fine! Just give her some air—and some privacy! What are you, a bunch of vultures?”

She spoke so authoritatively that in seconds the crowd melted away, and KT and Evangeline were left alone in the hall.

KT blinked up at the other girl.

“You are . . . on my team,” KT said. “We’re on the same side.”

“Well, duh,” Evangeline said, shaking her
twin pigtails back away from her face. “Couldn’t you tell that yesterday?”

KT sat up a little straighter, outrage winning out over the dizziness.

“No, Evangeline, I couldn’t tell that yesterday,” she said. “All you did yesterday was make bizarro comments and tell me I couldn’t be happy. And then you shut the door in my face.”

“I didn’t tell you you couldn’t be happy,” Evangeline said, sitting down beside her. “I said—”

“I know what you said!” KT exclaimed. She didn’t want to hear it again. “I was—what’s it called?—paraphrasing.”

“Well, you really should paraphrase accurately,” Evangeline said prissily. “Sloppy thinking can lead to all sorts of disasters and tragedies.”

“Like me getting sent here?” KT asked.

Evangeline fixed her with a steady look.

“When you step back and look at the big picture,” she said slowly, “you may have a totally different
view of your own particular tragedy.”

My own tragedy?
KT wanted to say.
Are you saying that there’s more to it than this?

But she couldn’t ask that, because what if Evangeline answered?

“It’s really hard to follow what you’re saying,” KT complained instead.

“I get that a lot,” Evangeline admitted. “Even in this world.” She bit her lip. “I really would have thought it’d be different here.”

Is Evangeline admitting that she did create this world?
KT wondered.
And that she made mistakes? Is it her fault that I’m here? Am I feeling guilty for nothing?

Somehow KT couldn’t bring herself to ask any of these questions either.

She swiped her hand across her forehead, wiping away clamminess this time, not sweat.

“There’s a girl in there,” she began, pointing toward the room she’d just left. “Chelisha. In the real world she’s an awesome batter, and she was the last batter I faced before blacking out and waking up in this wacko world. Should I go say something to her? Ask her to send me back? Is she the key to me getting home?”

Evangeline frowned and shook her head.

“You don’t listen very well, do you?” she asked. “Are you even paying attention? This isn’t about Chelisha.”

Paying attention,
KT thought.
Max talked about paying attention . . . .

She remembered that she’d originally come here to tell Evangeline about Max.

“Max found his way home,” she said. “Back to the real
world. At least—I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. He’s all right, don’t you think?”

She hadn’t realized she was going to ask that.

“I think Max had the best chance of any of us for getting back safely,” Evangeline said. “I think he had the least to overcome.”

This wasn’t what KT would have expected Evangeline to say.

“Well, if you want to follow after him, I saw him make the change, and I think I know what happened,” KT said. “He figured out how he got here in the first place, and, boom! Just like that he switched back.”

“ENNH,”
Evangeline said, making a sound like a buzzer in mathletics. “Your hypothesis is incorrect.”

“It’s not a hypothesis!” KT insisted. “It’s fact! It’s observation! It’s . . .” She sighed. “Why do you think I’m wrong?”

“Think, KT,” Evangeline said.

That was the last thing KT wanted to do.

Now it was Evangeline’s turn to sigh. She leaned back against the wall.

“I know you’re wrong,” she began, “because I also figured out how I got here in the first place. But did
I
change back? No. Two test subjects, same variable, different results—ergo—”

“Don’t turn this into a science problem!” KT complained. “This is real life I’m talking about!”

“Hmm. That may not be the first ‘given’ you want to start with,” Evangeline said. “In science you need to test every assumption—”

“Stop it! Speak English!” KT commanded. “If I’m so wrong, how do
you
think Max got out of here?”

“Okay, okay!” Evangeline said, waving her hands defensively in front of her. “Here’s what I think: It’s not enough to
remember
what got you here. You must also
accept
what got you here.”

KT opened her mouth to argue. Then she shut it. She remembered the expression on Max’s face that morning when he’d cried out,
I remember it all now! That
is
what happened!

“He got hit in the head with a softball at one of my games,” KT said.

“See? Not such a terrible thing to have to accept,” Evangeline said gently. “As long as the ball wasn’t moving too fast.”

KT squirmed uncomfortably, suddenly aware of how hard the floor was beneath her.

What if . . .

She didn’t let herself finish the thought.

“I think mostly Max just felt stupid that he let the ball hit him,” KT said, filling in the silence. “Because he was zoning out, playing some idiotic handheld game . . .”

“I see,” Evangeline said. “Stupid, yeah, but hopefully not tragic.”

KT didn’t like that word echoing between them:
tragic, tragic . . .

“So if you know so much, what’d you do to get here?” KT asked. “Let me guess, what’s tragic for someone like you? Oh, I know—did you get a ninety-nine instead of one hundred on some test? Or, wait, coming here must have been a reward for you, a prize, so—”

“No,” Evangeline said, her voice slashing across KT’s rush of words. “This is pretty much torture for me. Because I know it isn’t real. Because it reminds me again and again what I’ll probably never have, because of what
I did.”

“Which was?” KT asked.

Evangeline looked down. After a moment she let out a soft sigh.

“I did write an e-mail to the principal and the athletic director and all the teachers and coaches,” she began slowly. “And after that, it wasn’t just kids who acted mean to me. It was, like, some of the adults turned on me, too, you know?”

“I know,” KT said grimly. “The same thing happened to me in this world.”

Evangeline dipped her head farther down and then back up, accepting this.

“I was desperate,” Evangeline said. “I started using faulty logic. I thought, if my problem is that I’m too smart for everyone, I just . . . won’t be that smart. So I flunked this big math test on purpose, something that’s going to go on my high school record—”

“Because you’re taking classes years ahead of everyone else,” KT said. “Right?”

Evangeline nodded again. Her shoulders slumped, as if bowed by shame.

“As soon as I walked out of that test, I knew I’d made a big mistake. The kind of colleges I’d want to go to—MIT, Caltech, Harvard, places like that—it’s not enough to be a genius. You have to be a genius
and
perfect!” Evangeline said.