Game Changer (19 page)

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?”

“You want to debate the meaning of reality?” Evangeline said. She flipped one of her stupid too-high pigtails over her shoulder. “I know what’s real. And I know what
matters.
Can you make that same claim?”

“It doesn’t matter what your hair looks like,” KT said carefully. She looked at Evangeline’s plaid jumper. “It doesn’t matter what kind of clothes you want to wear. It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in things nobody else is interested in. I don’t care about any of that.”

“Well, thank you very much for giving me permission to be myself,” Evangeline said mockingly. “Er—wait. Were you trying to get me to make fun of
you
? You’re the different one. The things I like—mathletics, chemademics, poetry slam—those are the three top interests for middle-school-age kids
worldwide.
And I’m good at all of them. Makes me kind of . . . enviable, doesn’t it?”

She knows,
KT thought.
She knows everything.

Angrily she kicked out her foot, snagging the wagon handle on the end of her shoe. She pulled it toward her, right into Evangeline’s line of sight. KT didn’t bother watching the other girl’s face to see how she reacted. Instead KT reached down and cradled the bat and glove in her arms.

“KT!” Max exclaimed.

What’s his problem?
KT wondered.
Oh, does he really think I’d hit Evangeline with the bat?

KT ignored him.

“You did this to us, didn’t you?” KT asked, looking up at Evangeline, still behind the door. “To me. You shrank down everything that mattered to me in the whole world
until it all fits in a little-kid wagon.”

“It’s not my fault if you’re such a small person,” Evangeline said, smirking.

“You know what I mean!” KT snarled. “You did this!”

“Evangeline! KT! Stop arguing!” Max surprised her by interrupting. “You two are the
same.
Evangeline, you really did write an anti-sports e-mail to the school administration in the real world, didn’t you? And KT, you would have done the same thing if you were in Evangeline’s shoes. The alt-world version of you
did.
My sister’s acting like a total idiot, Evangeline, but if you really did manage to create this alternate reality yourself, both of us think you’re a genius. Honest, we don’t want to ruin anything for you. We both want you to be happy here—”

“But why do we have to be stuck here too?” KT interrupted, because Max was taking forever to get to the point.

Something shifted in Evangeline’s expression, and for a second KT actually could see beyond the goofy hair and the oddball clothes and the weirdest-kid-in-school—maybe-even-in-
any-
school image.

Max is right,
KT thought.
Evangeline and I really are alike. No matter what world either of us was in, no matter what anyone else thought of us, we’d still stay true to our real selves. But . . . we’d still want teammates. Both of us would.

KT felt her own expression soften.

“Look,” she said, and somehow all the anger had gone out of her now. She felt hope growing in its place. “I know what it felt like to be you, back in the real world. I’ve pretty much
been
you in this one. I’m really sorry if sports hurt you. I’m sorry if anything I ever did hurt you
in any way. You do whatever you want to, for yourself. But can’t you get Max and me back where we belong? Back to the real world?”

Evangeline stared out at KT and Max, the screen a mere shadow between them.

“You have a lot of confidence in me,” she said slowly.

“Of course!” Max said, beaming. KT reached up and grabbed his arm, silencing him before he laid on any more exaggerated praise and delayed everything.

“Then you’ll do it?” KT asked eagerly.

Evangeline kept gazing out the screen door. Strangely, it was KT she was peering at most intently.

“You aren’t looking at the big picture,” she said, shaking her head. She didn’t exactly seem to be saying no. Her eyes kept boring into KT’s. “Think about it. What makes you so sure you’d still be happy in the real world anyhow?
”

KT was having memory problems again.

She woke in the dark in the middle of the night, her heart pounding frantically, prickles of dread running across her skin. She couldn’t remember where she was.

Home,
she told herself, looking toward the familiar glow of the clock on the nightstand, her softball glove beside it illuminated in the glow.
I’m home. I just had a bad dream.

But she couldn’t remember any dream. What was the last thing she could remember?

Standing on the porch at Evangeline’s house, Evangeline saying, “What makes you so sure you’d still be happy in the real world anyhow?” And then . . . And then . . .

She found she could walk her memory forward from that moment. This wasn’t like the last part of the Rysdale Invitational, which was completely absent from her mind. This was just hard to remember, because she’d felt so jolted.

Didn’t Evangeline say after that, “Come back anytime, Maxwell, if you want to work on math with me”? And then didn’t she ease the door shut? And didn’t I hear the pins falling into place in the door’s lock, Evangeline locking out me and Max?