Game Changer (28 page)

KT’s voice had taken on a huskiness that flowed out into the quiet room, seeming to affect the new, unformed sixth graders more than she’d expected. Somehow it was different kids she picked out in the crowd now. Amid the jocks and the nerds and the brainiacs and the queen-bee wannabes, certain faces were wrinkled up in concern, as if the kids behind the faces were thinking,
I would have been her friend. I would have talked to her, no matter what other people thought of me.

And, just as she had the past two years, giving this same speech, KT reminded herself,
See? Even in middle school there are some kids who are truly kind.

She really needed to get some of those kids into this year’s Evangeline club, or it would never work.

But a wave of whispers was also starting to cross the room, gossipy mutterings that KT caught in bits and pieces:

“Was there some girl three or four years ago who actually committed
suicide
?”

“How is it our fault if some girl offed herself because she didn’t have any friends?”

“What are we supposed to do about something that happened so long ago?”

KT let the whispers reach their crest, then she leaned
back toward the microphone.

“But you don’t just have to take my word for all of this,” KT said. “Why don’t we let Evangeline tell her own story?”

The sixth graders let out a collective gasp. The curtains at the side of the auditorium began to sway, and all the kids in the room snapped their attention in that direction.

Slowly, dramatically, Evangeline stepped out from behind the curtain.

“Yep, that’s me!” she announced, her voice loud enough to carry through the room without amplification. She posed, a hand on her hip. “Ta-da!”

All the sixth graders burst out laughing—laughing with Evangeline, not at her. KT almost expected them to break out chanting like the cheerleaders back in weirdo world: “E, E-V, E-V-A-N-G-E-L, and I-N-E!”

For Evangeline had changed just as much as Max and Ben in the past three years. It wasn’t that she’d turned beautiful—
well,
KT thought, studying the other girl’s face,
maybe she could be beautiful if she wanted to, but she’d think that was way too boring and ordinary.
Instead she’d become cool. Where her odd clothes had seemed pathetic and weird in middle school, now they gave her an air of being more stylish than anyone else, in a funky, hippie-chick kind of way. The thrift-store paisley skirt she was wearing now made all the Abercrombie and Hollister clones in the audience look cookie-cutter dull.

Evangeline flipped back her two long pigtails—worn stylishly low now, not little-girl high, which could almost count as a concession to fashion. Or maybe it was just easier, and the style was a sign that she had more important things to
think about than hair.

She turned and began walking toward the podium.

Step-slide, step-slide, step-slide . . .

Evangeline still had a slight limp left over from the explosion three years ago. She always insisted it didn’t actually matter: “I was never going to be a great athlete, anyhow. It was my brain I was worried about, remember? And that’s still working fine.”

That was always the cue for KT or Max to say, “Or at least no more scrambled and weird than usual.”

Evangeline was maybe exaggerating the limp a little today, for effect. The laughing sixth graders settled down, and the compassionate-faced ones started looking worried again.

Evangeline got to the microphone at the podium, and KT, Max, and Ben took a few steps back to give her room.

“KT always likes to make my story sound extreme, and it could have gotten truly awful if I hadn’t eventually found her and Max as friends,” Evangeline said. “But the only bad thing I really did on purpose was flunk a math test. Blowing up my parents’ garage—that was completely accidental! Honest!”

The sixth graders burst into laughter once again, and under the cover of the crowd noise KT muttered, “That wasn’t what I was talking about and you know it.”

And, while the laughter continued, Evangeline muttered back, “Yeah, but how could we explain what really happened? Oh wait, I know . . .”

As the laughter subsided, Evangeline leaned back into the microphone and proclaimed, “For me, middle school was a lot like being zapped into an alternate world!”

The sixth graders laughed again. It was like this was the most fun they’d had all day. KT moved farther away from the
spotlight, offstage, because Evangeline was going to be talking for a while now.

KT realized she’d ended up standing right beside Principal Arnold. Oh, well. She’d just have to keep him distracted.

“Why is it,” she whispered, “that when Evangeline was in middle school, all the kids hated her for being so quirky and offbeat and weird? And now that’s what middle-school kids love about her?”

“She’s not their age,” Mr. Arnold whispered back. “So she’s not as threatening. And—she’s not desperate for friends anymore. She’s not desperate for anything. She gives them hope for what they could become if they want to be quirky and offbeat and weird themselves.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” KT muttered.

“While we’re talking . . . ,” Mr. Arnold began.

Uh-oh. So much for KT’s distraction techniques.

“You’re graduating this year, right?” Mr. Arnold continued. “Have you figured out what you want to study in college? Not that you have to decide everything right now, but—please tell me middle-school guidance counselor is on your list of possible careers.”

“What?” KT was floored. “Me? A
guidance counselor
?”

“Sure,” Mr. Arnold said. “You’ve done so well with the Evangeline club, and—”

“Oh, no,” KT shook her head fiercely. “That’s been all of us working together, and, well, you know. We only had three kids in the club the first year. And seven last year. And . . .”

“And for those three and seven kids, didn’t it make a huge difference?” Mr. Arnold asked. “And don’t you think there’s a ripple effect with the attitudes in the school
as a whole?”

“But—I was just nasty to one of the girls in the crowd. I couldn’t work very well with kids like that,” KT complained. “And I talked about keeling over dead! And you
glared
at me!”

“Don’t you think principals can play things for effect sometimes too?” Mr. Arnold asked, with a wink.

Was he just messing with her mind?

KT decided she had to tell him the truth, regardless.

“Actually,” she said, “I was thinking I’d go to med school someday. To figure out how kids like me can be cured.”

“Ah,” Mr. Arnold said, with a shrug. “That’s a good goal too. Just think about what I said, because you’ve got a lot of different talents you might want to develop.”

A lot of different talents . . .
How could that be when KT had once thought she wasn’t good at anything but softball?

“I’m not just thinking about my own problems,” KT said, a little defensively. “It’s just that I still think like an athlete, even if I can’t play anymore. I need to have an opponent. This heart thing—I want to be able to fight it.”

“Fair enough,” Mr. Arnold said. “But don’t you like fighting ignorance and cruelty, too?”

She did. KT had loved every minute of organizing the Evangeline clubs.

“Well,” she said grudgingly, “let me see how I do in AP chemistry this year. It may be that I’m not even good enough at science to ever be a doctor.”

“Chemistry?” Mr. Arnold said. “I
loved
chemistry when I was in school. You need any help, come talk to me.”

As had happened so often over the past three years, KT had a sudden flash of connection with the alternate world.

Mr. Arnold was a former chemademics star there,
she remembered.

Was it possible that the alternate world had not been quite as far-fetched as it had seemed? Was it possible that the real world contained all sorts of hidden alternate worlds within its boundaries—and that real people did too?

In the past three years Evangeline had come up with all sorts of theories and hypotheses to explain the alternate world and exactly how she, KT, and Max could possibly have all imagined the same thing at once. She’d even had a paper published in an obscure psychology journal that probably only ten people in the whole world bothered to read. KT had barely been able to make it through the title—something about “shared consciousnesses in an altered fugue state.” But then, KT didn’t actually care about explanations. It was enough for her to know that when the real world had become too painful to face, they’d all been able to escape to another world.

And, with one another’s help, they’d all managed to return safely, in time, with new ways to cope.

“Listen to that,” Mr. Arnold said, clapping KT on the back. “Evangeline’s getting even more applause than she did last year.”

KT realized that Evangeline was done talking now. KT hadn’t been listening, but she knew that Evangeline would have given a somewhat fictionalized account of being in a coma for three days and coming out of it only when she heard Max and KT begging for her return.

Now Evangeline was dipping down into an exaggerated curtsy that somehow made fun of curtsies and looked incredibly graceful, all at once. Mr. Arnold moved past her, clapping along with the students.

“Isn’t it great to see how Brecksville North students grow up?” Mr. Arnold said into the microphone.

And he’s playing that for effect too,
KT realized.
He’s
trying
to sound nerdy and uncool! Because . . . he doesn’t actually want to sound too proud of us?

Evangeline stepped back and stood between KT and Max. She draped her arms over both their shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said, so softly that only they could hear.

“For what?” KT said.

“You know,” Evangeline said. “Saving me. If I hadn’t heard you two calling for me, I would have stayed in the alternate world too long. It would have collapsed on me, and I would have died.”

“That’s only a theory,” KT said, then added jokingly, “It’s not very scientific of you to treat it as fact.”

“I know what I know,” Evangeline said. “You did save me.”

KT nodded, accepting this. She gave Evangeline a very jocklike punch on the arm.

“Works both ways,” she said. “I don’t think I would have gotten out safely either, if you hadn’t told me what was going to happen.”

“Teams work together,” Evangeline said, shrugging.

“And sometimes they actually do win,” Max said.

“And sometimes they can’t help but lose,” Evangeline said.

KT pressed her hand over her chest, where her infuriatingly defective heart thumped on—broken, but somehow still beating steadily and well. She hugged her best friend close.

“And sometimes,” KT countered, “that’s not even what matters most.”

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the condition that ended KT’s softball career, is a disorder involving an abnormally thick heart muscle. Usually hereditary, it can go undetected for years. Although it can cause symptoms such as chest pains, dizziness, and fainting, in some cases the first sign of the condition is a sudden, seemingly inexplicable collapse and death. Some doctors have called for all young athletes to be screened for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and other potentially deadly heart issues. Others who are concerned about the problem have focused on trying to ensure that automatic external defibrillators are available at schools and near sports complexes.

With treatment, most hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients can lead normal lives. But typically, like KT, they are told to avoid intense competitive sports.

Some books arrive so confident and sure of themselves that even I as the author hardly feel right taking much credit for them. Other books seem to require numerous helpers to spark, shape, inspire, influence, and encourage them into being.
Game Changer
was definitely one of those “It takes a village” books.

First of all, I need to thank my family and many friends, librarians, and teachers for cheering on this book even when I wasn’t sure how it would work. My agent, Tracey Adams, showed great patience in listening to me rant about the issues I wanted to explore, even when she would have had a good excuse not to. She definitely went above and beyond, helping with this book. I owe my editor, David Gale, for his comments and questions about various drafts of this book—they absolutely made this a much better book. Several friends also read portions of the book in various stages, and I was grateful to get their opinions about both what worked and what didn’t: Thanks to Linda Gerber, Erin MacLellan, Jenny Patton, Nancy Roe Pimm, and Linda Stanek.

My neighbors, Dan, Lori, and Mackenzie Nelsen were very generous in sharing information with me about their own softball experiences, and the way they’ve managed to keep their sanity through it all. They are great neighbors for a multitude of reasons. My daughter, Meredith, was working as my assistant during part of the time I was writing the book, and so she helped with some research as well. I was also quite fortunate in getting expert help with the medical information needed for this book: Both Dr. William T. Abraham, Director of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at The Ohio State University, and Dr. Aaron L. Baggish, Associate Director of the Cardiovascular Performance Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center, were kind enough to take time to answer my questions about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.