Game Changer

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “A Spock?” KT asked.

  “You know, that’s what they call kids in this world who do mathletics or chemademics or some other ac,” Max said. “I’m guessing it’s from that old TV show Star Trek—wasn’t Mr. Spock the really smart guy?”

  KT realized that Max must have been paying more attention to the oddities of this world than she had.

  “Wouldn’t you think it’d be the kids who are good at school who get the special treatment from teachers?” KT complained. “I had Mr. Horace yelling at me and Mr. Huck acting all weird about some e-mail I supposedly sent—it must have been something weird-world KT did before I got here, right?”

  Max squinted at KT.

  “What did the e-mail say?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I never checked,” KT said. “I was too busy planning for this softball tournament.” She gestured toward the empty bases once more, but her brain was already moving past that. “Wait a minute, this really doesn’t make sense, does it? Mr. Horace is like the football coach in the real world, and the football coach wouldn’t go out of his way to yell at some random kid who gets straight As. And some of the stuff Mr. Huck said, about how the school has its priorities messed up, and it’s students like me who get hurt . . .”

  She reached back into the wagon and pulled out her iPod.

  “Let’s see if I can get Wi-Fi out here, to look it up,” she said, scrolling through her choices.

  “You think Mr. Huck or Mr. Horace remembers the real world?” Max asked. “You think one of them is our mystery person?”

  “One of them, or . . .” KT got distracted logging on to the Internet. She quickly clicked into her e-mail account, and scrolled back through her sent file. Why would she—or rather weird-world KT—have bothered with e-mail instead of just sending a Facebook message?

  “This must be it,” KT said. “This e-mail went out a week ago Friday to Mr. Arnold, Mrs. Szymanski, Mr. Horace, and all these other teachers—er, coaches?”

  Max was looking over her shoulder.

  “So you hit the principal, the vice principal, the academic director, and it looks like coaches and assistant coaches for every single ac,” he muttered. “What did you say to all of them?”

  KT scrolled down to the text of the e-mail:

  To the administration, teachers, and coaches of Brecksville Middle School North:

  All my life I have been told that the point of school is to prepare students for adulthood and the world of work. The way everyone acts at our school, you would think that all of us are going to grow up to do professional acs. Oh, sure, the teachers make a halfhearted effort to teach us running, throwing, biking and lifting—the skills 99.9 percent of us will actually need in our adult lives. But very few teachers try to challenge us to work to our fullest potential. If a student on her own works really, really hard in class, other students—and sometimes even the teachers themselves—make fun of her.

  Instead, the students who consistently get held up as role models and praised and rewarded the most for their efforts are the ones who do acs. The greatest energy and enthusiasm in this school always goes toward mathletics, chemademics, etc. Why do we waste valuable classroom time going to pep rallies for acs? Why are the morning announcements always about which team won which game the night before? Why is the first thing anyone sees walking into the school the trophy case of academic trophies? Why does Principal Arnold on the first day of school each year tell all the sixth graders that the best way to take full advantage of a Brecksville North education is to be an athlete-scholar and make sure that they get involved in acs?

  I have a great idea. Why don’t we cancel all the acs, and have the teachers and coaches use all the energy they usually put into acs for making classes as fun and interesting and educational as possible? And for making students the best students they can be? Why don’t we make school important as school, not just as an excuse to play acs?

  Sincerely,

  KT Sutton

  KT blinked.

  “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of kids will need to do exercises on their jobs in this world?” she asked. “It’s not just Mom and Dad running on treadmills?”

  Max was reading the e-mail over her shoulder.

  “It’s almost like you have to translate this,” he said. “Substitute the word ‘sports’ for ‘acs’ everywhere, and that’s kind of how things were in the real world.”

  “The school never put too much emphasis on sports!” KT protested.

  “It felt that way for people who weren’t any good at sports,” Max muttered.

  KT wanted to keep protesting, but Max was already moving on to another point.

  “Do you think somebody sent an e-mail like this one—or the reverse of this one—in the real world?” he asked. “Someone who’s as crazy about math or chemistry or some other academic subject as you are about softball?”

  KT’s eyes blurred staring at the e-mail.

  “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Yeah, I’m sure of it.”

  “You’re sure?” Max asked doubtfully.

  “Last week,” KT said. “All the spring athletes got called down to the gym for a special meeting.” She put the words “special meeting” in air quotes. “None of us knew what it was about, but Mr. Neal, the athletic director, went on and on about how we of all people were supposed to be role models, and we must never, ever bully anybody who wasn’t as athletically gifted as we were . . . . We all just thought it was stupid, and that’s why I forgot about it until now.”

  “But you think that lecture was because someone sent an e-mail like this,” Max finished for her.

  “And I know who it was,” KT said.

  Someone who’s as crazy about math or chemistry or some other academic subject as you are about softball, Max had said. And KT herself had sat through the mathletics competition the day before, watching the star player—the team’s pitcher, as it were—and thought she was as fierce and feisty at math as KT was at softball. This girl had literally taken KT’s place in the cafeteria, taking KT’s seat with Molly and Lex.

  “You’re thinking of Evangeline, aren’t you?” Max asked.

  Chαpter Tωenty

  KT picked up the two softballs and the sweating water bottle and tossed them back into the wagon. She stood up and lifted the wagon’s handle.

  “Wait—what are you doing?” Max asked.

  “We’re going to go find Evangeline,” KT said, giving the handle a tug to pull it toward the first pillow “base.” “Do you know where she lives?”

  “No, but—are you sure—”

  KT tossed him the iPod.

  “You look up her address and I’ll pick up all the pillows. Hurry,” KT said.

  She jogged around the two makeshift softball diamonds, grabbing up the pillows as quickly as she could.

  When she got back to Max, he had his cell phone up to his ear.

  “You’re calling her?” KT asked, horrified. She swiped her hand at his cell phone and punched the button to hang up. “Don’t do that! Don’t give her any warning that we’re coming! We need every advantage we can get! She’s . . . well, you know, she’s a lot smarter than us!”

  “I wasn’t calling Evangeline,” Max protested. “I was calling home to get Mom or Dad to drive us over there. Evangeline lives on Apple Valley Drive—it’s a million miles away!”

  “Let me see that,” KT said, pulling the iPod out of Max’s other hand. She squinted at the map he’d called up. “You’re crazy! It’s just ten or eleven blocks. We get Mom and Dad involved in this, they’ll want to know why we’re going to Evangeline’s—you can use math as an excuse, but they know I’d never have anything to do with her!”

  Max didn’t argue, but he frowned as he stood up stiffly. KT jerked the wagon forward, then glanced back to make sure Max was following her. He was just now taking his first step, awkward and limping.

  “What’s wrong with you?” KT asked. “Leg cramp up or something?”

  “Sort of,” Max mutter
ed.

  He winced as he took his next step too. He was shuffling along like some hundred-year-old arthritic great-grandfather. It hurt just to watch.

  “Really, are you okay?” KT asked.

  “Of course I’m not okay!” Max exploded. “Every muscle in my body is in agony! Muscles I didn’t even know I had before are screaming out, ‘Don’t take another step! The pain’ll kill you!’”

  All that exercise, KT thought. Five or six hours a day, every day last week at school. After years of Max doing nothing but sitting in front of a computer or video game screen, being a blob. Of course he’s in pain.

  “Don’t say it!” Max warned, taking another halting step forward. “Don’t say, ‘Geez, Max, if only you were a finely tuned athlete like me, you could run to Evangeline’s house at top speed and not even start breathing hard!’ Don’t say, ‘This is what you get for being fat!’”

  He actually had tears glistening in his eyes. But the part of KT’s brain that automatically would have labeled him a pathetic loser had switched off somehow.

  “Poor Max,” she said.

  Max looked at her skeptically, as if he thought she was being sarcastic.

  “Really,” KT said. “Suddenly starting to exercise five or six hours a day is the totally wrong way to get into a fitness regime. You’re lucky you didn’t do any serious damage.”

  “How do you know I didn’t?” Max muttered.

  “You can still walk, can’t you?” KT asked. “And—it gets a little better with every step, right?”

  “I guess,” Max said, sounding a little surprised as he took the next step.

  “So, see, walking it off is the best thing you can do,” KT said. And then, just in case he thought she was being smug rather than sincere, she added, “And anyhow, just think if we’d been zapped into a world where we had to do video games five or six hours a day. I’m sure I’d be in agony with serious, uh, thumb strain.”

  Max laughed.

  “Thumb strain,” he repeated, rolling his eyes.

  And somehow, the way he said it was so hilarious that KT started laughing too. They lurched forward, KT pulling the wagon, Max limping unsteadily, both of them pitching side to side with gales of laughter.

  This is fun, KT thought in amazement. And even though KT had actually wanted to rush to Evangeline’s as quickly as possible—and get out of weirdo world as quickly as possible and get back to her beloved softball as quickly as possible—she found that she could slow down to Max’s pace without any problem at all.

  It was almost noon when they rounded the corner and turned onto Apple Valley Drive. Max squinted down the street.

  “I can’t make out the house number yet, but I bet I know which one is Evangeline’s,” Max said.

  “The purple one?” KT asked.

  In the row of ordinary brown and gray and tan and white houses, the eggplant-colored one with the fuchsia trim might as well have had a sign out front proclaiming, WEIRDEST KID IN SCHOOL LIVES HERE. Actually, as KT and Max walked closer, she realized there were signs out front, lined up above the garage: BRECKSVILLE MIDDLE SCHOOL NORTH CHEMADEMICS CHAMPION LIVES HERE and BRECKSVILLE MIDDLE SCHOOL NORTH MATHLETICS CHAMPION LIVES HERE and BRECKSVILLE MIDDLE SCHOOL NORTH POETRY SLAM CHAMPION LIVES HERE.

  “She’s a three-sport athlete?” Max muttered. “I mean—a three-ac Spock? I didn’t know she did poetry slam too.”

  “Of course the PTO sells ac signs instead of athletic signs in this messed-up world,” KT muttered back. “Of course.”

  She blinked hard, remembering a rare argument she’d had with her parents in the real world. They’d wanted so badly to buy one of the Brecksville North softball signs, but KT had thrown a fit, complaining, “No, I am not bragging about being on a middle-school team! Not when they let girls make it through tryouts who’ve never even played before!”

  Maybe I sounded a little bit bratty, she thought now. If I ever get back to the real world, maybe I will let Mom and Dad get the stupid sign, just to make them happy.

  When, I mean. When I get back to the real world . . .

  “So why don’t Mom and Dad have a mathletics sign nailed to our garage at home?” Max asked.

  “You’re a sixth grader,” KT said distractedly. “This is your first year. You earn the sign this season, and then you’ll have it.”

  She wondered why she hadn’t noticed any of the ac signs in her own neighborhood that very first day when she was jogging to school.

  I wasn’t paying attention, she thought. I wasn’t thinking about anything but finding out about the Rysdale Invitational. And then, every day since then, I’ve just been thinking about setting up my softball league.

  She forced herself to look past the ac signs in Evangeline’s yard. Wind chimes were lined up along the top of the front porch. Canning jars full of flowers leaned precariously around the base of every tree. Odd holes sprouted up at intervals across the grass, filled with what seemed to be carefully stacked pine cones.

  Is that supposed to be some kind of landscaping art? KT wondered. Or—a science experiment?

  KT glanced around at the nearby houses, all so boring and predictable.

  Yeah, Evangeline’s house is the weirdest in the neighborhood, KT thought. But . . . it’s also the most interesting.

  “Um, KT?” Max said. “Don’t you think we might look kind of like stalkers, just standing here staring at Evangeline’s house?”

  “Oh, right,” KT said. She walked over to the nearest driveway and pulled her wagonful of softball supplies out into the street, ready to cross over toward Evangeline’s.

  “And maybe you should hide that wagon somewhere,” Max suggested, trailing behind her. “Just so you don’t look too . . . too . . .”

  “Strange?” KT asked. “Is that what you’re trying to say? Because it’d be strange in this world to be seen with anything related to sports?”

  “Um . . . ,” Max began.

  KT gave an extra-hard tug on the wagon handle.

  “Well, for your information, I thought we could use this to flush out Evangeline, if she doesn’t want to help us,” KT said, even though she’d thought no such thing until now.

  “You’re going to beat Evangeline with a softball bat to get her to tell you what you want to know?” Max asked, sounding horrified.

  “No,” KT protested. “I’m going to let her see the softball supplies and see if she acts like she recognizes them.”

  “Oh,” Max said.

  He didn’t try again to suggest hiding the wagon, even though there was a bush right at the edge of Evangeline’s yard that would have been perfect for that. But their easy camaraderie had disappeared.

  “Go ring the doorbell,” KT instructed.

  Max hesitated at the bottom of the porch steps.

  “Do you actually have a plan, or are we just going to wing it?” he asked.

  “Look, you just get Evangeline to come out on the porch and talk to us,” KT said. “I’ll do the rest.”

  She didn’t have a plan. She remembered what she’d told Max before, that Evangeline was smarter than both of them. She dropped the handle of her wagon so she could wipe sweat from her palms. She tried to ignore the nervous churning in her stomach.

  Just think of this as pitching, she told herself. You’re going to pitch questions at Evangeline. And, yeah, she’s smarter than you, but at the Rysdale Invitational Chelisha was a better softball player than you and you still got two strikes on her. And then . . .

  It didn’t help to think about how great KT had been at the Rysdale Invitational when she didn’t know how the game had ended.

  Max was standing right in front of Evangeline’s door now. He reached one trembling finger up to press the doorbell—which KT saw now was in the open mouth of a grinning gargoyle. From the inside of the house KT heard a sudden torrent of some kind of bizarre, atonal music.

  Okay, so I guess Evangeline’s family personalized their doorbell sounds the way other people personalize their cell-phone
ring tones, KT thought.

  Max looked nervously back at KT. KT nodded reassuringly and stepped a little closer.

  The heavy wood door creaked open behind the screen door. KT saw Evangeline’s elfin features through the screen.

  “Maxwell!” she cried, her face lighting up. “Did you come over to work together on math prep for tomorrow?”

  Okay, this is going to be easy, KT thought. Does little Evangeline maybe have a little crush on my brother?

  KT saw that Evangeline was reaching for the handle of the screen door, either to push her way out to Max or to invite him in. But then Evangeline’s hand froze.

  “You brought your sister?” Evangeline asked.

  Maybe KT should have hidden herself and the wagon. But it was too late now to activate that plan. Max was gazing speechlessly back and forth between Evangeline and KT. KT decided the best thing to do was just step up behind him.

  “We just wanted to talk to you,” KT said, as soothingly as she could. “Both of us did.”

  Evangeline let her hand drop to her side, leaving the screen door still firmly latched between her and the two Suttons.

  “What about?” she asked guardedly.

  Just be glad she didn’t shut the wood door too, KT told herself. She’s willing to talk. This is like . . . like a foul ball after a full count. Things can go either way from here.

  “We think you remember things other people don’t,” KT said.

  Evangeline laughed, a totally fake sound.

  “Of course I remember things other people don’t,” Evangeline said. “Nobody could have my ac stats without an extraordinary memory.”

  She rolled her eyes at Max in a way that seemed to be trying to say, You know what that’s like, of course. Yeah, we’re friends, you and me. Sorry your sister’s such a loser.

  Don’t you go trying to steal my teammate! KT wanted to snap at Evangeline. But she forced herself to take a deep breath and counter with a fake laugh of her own.

  “I’m not talking about your memory for acs,” KT said. “I mean, for real things. Real life. The real world. Don’t you remember the real world?”