Game Changer (25 page)

“People have died because of the heart problems you have,” Mom said. “
You
could have died!”

“But I didn’t,” KT said, still fighting to sound calm. She felt a chill swimming out from her heart, but she did her best to ignore it. “Now that they know about this heart thing, they’ll take care of it, and I’ll be fine, right?”

“Right,” Mom said. “It absolutely can be controlled with medication and monitoring and . . . lifestyle changes.”

She sounded like a medical manual.

“So, see,” KT said, “I can so run laps—”

“No!” Mom and Dad exclaimed together.

There was such panic in their voices. Panic and fear and sorrow and regret . . . It was like someone had died, like they’d lost their home, like everything they’d always believed in and counted on and hoped for had turned into dust.

KT thought she could feel her heart beating in the silence that fell over the room just then.

“Why not?” she whispered.

“It’s not safe for you to do any . . . extreme exercise,” Dad said, and his voice sounded like it was him falling apart, him fighting against devastating pain. “Anything much more than a brisk walk . . . it’s too dangerous.”

“How long will that last?” KT asked. She was trying so, so hard to keep from wailing. “How long until I can get back to softball?”

Neither of her parents answered her. Neither of them would look her in the eye. Tears streamed down both of their faces.

KT had never seen her father cry before.

“Will I ever get to play softball again?” KT whimpered.

“You—,” Dad began.

“They can’t guarantee—,” Mom began.

And then, almost as if they were mirror images of the same person, Mom and Dad bounded up and fled the room. KT could hear her mother’s racking sobs echoing down the hall.

They can’t take it,
KT thought.
They can’t bear to say the words. They ran away instead of telling me.

And KT couldn’t even get up and run after them. She couldn’t run away from anything anymore. She lay completely still, as if her heart would stop if she so much as moved. She’d been wrong: There was no painkiller working on her brain. Or if there was, it was worthless, the equivalent of a baby aspirin trying to fight a massive tumor.

This is what I was trying to hide from in the alternate world,
KT thought.
This is what sent me there.

Mom and Dad had probably tried to tell her before. Tried and failed. She had no idea how much time had passed in the real world since the Rysdale Invitational championship. She felt like things were once again falling apart, but it was everything ahead of her that was collapsing now, not just scenery she’d already passed.

There’d be no Brecksville North eighth-grade season of perfect shutout games. No KT Sutton commemorative jersey in the school trophy case. No eighth-grade season at all.
Not for KT.

There’d be no glorious high-school triumphs on some amazing club team including the best softball players from a four- or five-hour radius.

There’d be no national championship games, no college recruiters offering scholarships. No University of Arizona. No Olympics, no World Cup, no gold medals. No medals at all.

No softball at all.

No running.

Nothing.

KT had nothing left anymore.

Will I even live?
KT wondered.
Could I drop dead just from the strain of lying here trying to breathe?

How could Mom and Dad have left her to deal with all of this alone?

She heard a sniffle across the room. She whipped her head to the right: It was Max. He was sitting in one of the hospital chairs, his head bowed—the same posture he always had, hunched over some video game.

I came back for you!
KT wanted to yell at him.
I came back because I wanted to make sure you were okay, and I just got the worst news of my life—and you’re just sitting there playing a video game?

Then KT realized he wasn’t actually playing a video game. His hands were empty. It was more like he had his head bowed to give her privacy, to give her space. Maybe he was even praying for her.

While KT was staring at Max, he suddenly raised his head. Their eyes met, and it was incredibly weird. She wasn’t used to looking into her brother’s eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done it—not for real, not outside the alternate world.

“At least . . . ,” Max began faintly. “At least you still have your team.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure all the girls will rally around me,” KT said. But there was already a bitter edge to her voice.

It won’t last long,
she thought. She could picture her friends—Vanessa and Bree, Molly and Lex—all visiting the hospital, making strained chitchat, then running out with the cruel excuse, “Sorry! Gotta go! Big game today!”

How many times would they even bother coming?

“Not that team,” Max said, wrinkling his nose. “I mean . . . you and me. And . . . Evangeline?”

KT gaped at him. She blinked hard.

“You remember?” she whispered.

“There was another world,” Max said cautiously.

“You were some great mathlete and I couldn’t get anybody to play softball,” KT agreed, just as cautiously.

“Then it wasn’t all just a dream?” Max asked.

KT realized what a risk he’d taken even mentioning it. If she
hadn’t remembered, she might have laughed at him, might have screamed at him, might have cursed him out of the room. Even now he was sitting on the edge of his chair, as if he was prepared to bolt if she got upset.

“Evangeline said that other world wasn’t real,” KT said. “After you . . . left . . . I talked to her again.”

“So, were all three of us just dreaming the same dream?” Max asked, squinting in confusion. “Is that even possible?”

“Evangeline would know,” KT said confidently. “Got your phone with you? We’ll call her.”

She meant,
I’ll call her.
This at least was something
she could take control of.

But Max didn’t dig into his pocket for his phone. He looked down at the floor.

“KT, I already tried to call her,” Max said. “I looked up her home number. Her dad answered. He was just there stopping by temporarily. I was lucky anyone answered.”

KT wondered why Max was telling her all those unnecessary details. Did he want her to congratulate him for showing some initiative on his own? For actually being brave enough to dial a phone and talk to some girl’s dad?

Max was still talking.

“Because . . . it turns out . . . Evangeline is a patient in this hospital too,” Max said. “She got hurt in an explosion.”

“Oh—I knew that!” KT crowed. “She told me in the other world. She said that was how she got there. It was because of a chemistry experiment in her garage, right? Doesn’t that prove, well,
something,
that I know that? And I hadn’t heard about it for real? How else would—”

“KT, Evangeline hasn’t been conscious since the explosion,” Max said. “Since last week.”

It felt like Max had grabbed her by the shoulders—even the injured one—and shoved her back down against the bed. Why was KT yammering on about proof, when Evangeline was hurt so badly? KT remembered what Evangeline had said she’d been afraid of:
All I ever was, was smart. What if it turns out that I’m not smart anymore, back in the real world?

What if Evangeline never got up the courage to come back? What would happen to her then?

How much longer could she survive in the fake world?

KT swung her legs over the side of the bed.

“What are you doing?” Max asked.

“We’re going to go talk to Evangeline. In person,” KT said.

“Weren’t you listening?” Max asked. “She’s unconscious. She can’t tell us anything.”

KT looked at her brother.

“But we can tell her what we know,” KT said. “Don’t you think sometimes smart kids need to be told things too?”

Going to talk to Evangeline turned out to be a little more complicated than KT had expected. There was the matter of the monitor, still hooked up to track KT’s every heartbeat. There was the matter of the nurses who ran into the room when KT tried to detach the monitor herself. And, of course, Mom and Dad, running back, still sobbing, and completely unable to understand why KT was insisting on visiting some injured girl they’d never heard her mention before.

“Sweetheart, we are not even allowed to tell you what room that other girl is in,” the head nurse said, shaking her beaded braids. “Patient privacy laws, you know? So you just lie still, take it easy.”

“Evangeline is in room 3215,” Max said. “Right down the hall and in the next corridor.”

All the adults turned and stared at him.

“What?” he said. “I’ve just been paying attention. Can I help it if you have patients’ names written in big letters on your charts over at the nurse’s station?”

His eyes met KT’s, and she knew he was thinking,
I’m paying attention now. Since I got back from weirdo world.

“I promise, I won’t disturb Evangeline,” KT said. “And I won’t do anything to . . . exert myself. But I
might
get all upset and stressed out if I can’t talk to Evangeline. And couldn’t that be dangerous?”

This was world-class manipulation. But the nurses looked at Mom and Dad, and Mom and Dad gave defeated shrugs.

Geez, how sick am I?
KT wondered.

She pushed that thought aside and concentrated on shifting into a wheelchair—“just as a precaution,” the nurse assured her.

Max pushed her down the hallway, leaving the collection of adults behind.

When they got to Evangeline’s room, KT realized she hadn’t thought about preparing for the next obstacle. As soon as Max pushed KT across the threshold, Evangeline’s parents stood up and moved protectively toward the door: two rumpled, anguished adults who looked like they’d slept in uncomfortable hospital chairs the past three or four nights.

Or maybe they hadn’t slept at all for the past three or four nights. Maybe they’d just spent three or four days and nights crying in uncomfortable hospital chairs beside their motionless daughter’s bed.

That just means they’re defenseless,
KT told herself.
Even in a wheelchair, even with a heart condition and a torn rotator cuff, I could brush them aside.

“Hi!” KT said, pulling a tone of artificial cheer into her voice.
“We’re Evangeline’s friends from school! We came as soon as we could!”

Evangeline’s parents moved in unison, blocking the path toward Evangeline’s bed.

“We don’t know you,” her father said. “We’ve never seen you before. And—Evangeline told us she didn’t have any friends at school.”

Not completely defenseless,
KT thought.
And . . . not stupid.

She dropped the fake cheer.

“You’re right,” she said quietly. “Sort of. At the time of the . . . explosion . . . I don’t think Evangeline had any friends at school. I’ll admit, I wasn’t her friend then. But . . . things have changed.”

KT saw Evangeline’s parents looking at the wheelchair, at the unwieldy brace on KT’s arm. Their gaze traveled to Max, and KT glanced back at him as well. For the first time she noticed that he had a bruise on his forehead, and a bandage partially hidden in his hair.

KT realized that Max had shoved his hair back on purpose. He wanted his injuries to show.

Evangeline’s father took a step back.

“She’s our only child,” he said. “She’s all we have.”

KT realized he was negotiating. Or—giving them a warning. He might as well have said,
You do anything to hurt our daughter, nothing would stop us from retaliating. We have nothing left to lose.

“The doctors say there is no reason for this,” Evangeline’s mother, gesturing sadly toward Evangeline’s unmoving figure. “They say none of her injuries should keep her from waking. They can’t understand.”