Game Changer

KT Sutton is a star eighth-grade softball pitcher whose entire identity revolves around the sport. Her life goals, written on a list above her bed since she was eight, center on earning a full-ride scholarship to pitch for the University of Arizona and winning an Olympic gold medal. On the way to the championship game of the Rysdale Invitational, a nationally prestigious tournament, KT secretly takes Advil for lingering shoulder pain from a brutal semifinal the day before. Her father, Bill, tries to pump her up by mentioning scouts, while her younger brother, Max, a twelve-year-old devoted to video games, mutters that it is just a game. KT channels her fury at him into adrenaline.

During the fifth inning, with her team trailing three to two, KT strikes out two batters on six pitches despite mounting pain. Chelisha, the opposing team's legendary star batter, steps to the plate. KT gets two strikes on her, but Chelisha makes contact and hits a ground ball back toward the pitcher's circle. KT leaps sideways, snags the ball, and fires it toward first base. An overwhelming wave of pain crashes through her body. She collapses on the field and blacks out.

KT wakes in her own bed on what appears to be a school day, feeling no pain for the first time she can remember. She cannot find the Rysdale Invitational website online. Downstairs, her trophy shrine, a bookshelf normally filled with dozens of softball trophies, is empty. Her mother, Brenda, claims to be dusting but then takes a phone call entirely about Max. The newspaper contains no sports section, replaced by a thick "Academics" section. On Facebook, KT is not friends with any of her teammates, and her phone is missing every teammate's number. When she hears Brenda wake Max with the exact words she used for KT the day before, KT knows something is deeply wrong.

At school, every classroom has been converted for physical activity: foam mats for stretching in homeroom, treadmills in social studies, exercise bikes in math, pitching targets in science. KT gets lost in hallways she has walked for three years. Her social-studies teacher, Mr. Huck, mentions an e-mail KT supposedly sent to the principal criticizing the school's emphasis on academic competitions and suggests she go by "Kaitlin Therese" to blend in. At lunch, her friends Molly and Lex are distant and cold. They invite Evangeline Rangel, a pigtailed seventh grader known for dominating academics, to sit in the seat KT assumed was hers. When KT tries to attend the school pep rally, Mr. Horace, a math teacher who behaves like a fierce head coach, bars her entry and threatens suspension. Mr. Huck advises KT to hide in the bathroom for the entire rally. Nobody comes looking for her.

After school, KT discovers that every outdoor sports facility has vanished, replaced by open grass. She races home to find the trophy shrine filled with golden calculators and pencils engraved with Max's name. That evening, her parents force her to attend Max's mathletics competition, an academic contest staged with all the fanfare of a championship sporting event. Cheerleaders chant math cheers, and the national anthem plays before the match. Evangeline dominates for their school, Brecksville North, while Max looks terrified. KT grasps the full scope of the reversal: In this world, adults work at physical exercise all day, academic competitions fill the role of sports, and top competitors are called "Spocks" rather than jocks. Unable to bear it, she flees.

Desperate for softball, KT sends Facebook messages to 200 girls she remembers playing with or against, embedding coded real-world references in hopes of finding anyone else who remembers. Over the following week, she receives only three replies, all from strangers. She endures daily isolation at school and watches Max win a second mathletics game by instantly solving a sudden-death question. In the car afterward, Max announces he wants to quit. His parents react with horror, mirroring how they pushed KT about sports in the real world.

On Saturday, KT sets up a makeshift diamond at a local park, but not one of the invited girls appears. She collapses in the dirt, sobbing, until Max arrives and reveals that he also remembers the real world. He has known since Monday, having hacked her Facebook account, but hesitated because he was unsure she would accept him given how she had always treated him. KT hugs him, and they begin working together. Max reasons that a third person must be involved: someone who cares deeply about academics, because the alternate world elevated school, not video games. KT identifies Evangeline. They walk to Evangeline's eccentric purple house, but Evangeline deflects their questions and asks a disturbing one before locking the door: What makes KT so sure she would still be happy in the real world?

That night KT wakes from a dream in which her father murmurs something about KT never playing softball again. She fears she may have conjured this world herself, a place where, if she could not play, nobody else could either. At dawn, she pitches furiously in the backyard. Max joins her and begins remembering the real-world incident that brought him here: He was playing a handheld game at KT's Rysdale match when a ball hit him in the head because their parents had stepped away. As he accepts this memory, his demeanor transforms. He berates KT for waking him and stomps inside, behaving like the alternate-world Max who has always lived here. KT realizes the real Max has returned to the real world by remembering and accepting how he arrived, leaving her alone.

KT runs to Brecksville South, the school hosting mathletics tryouts, and finds Evangeline still present. Evangeline explains that knowing how you arrived is not enough; you must also accept it. She reveals that in the real world, after facing hostility for sending an anti-sports e-mail, she deliberately flunked a crucial math test, then carelessly started a chemistry experiment that exploded and buried her under her garage roof. Her deepest fear is that she may no longer be smart. She warns KT that the alternate world cannot last much longer.

KT runs through the alternate world as it literally begins collapsing, scenery turning blurry and falling away. She arrives at a hospital and pauses on the last remaining square of sidewalk. She could try to rebuild the fake world or face the truth. She steps across the threshold, and the doors close behind her.

KT wakes in a real hospital bed. Her parents tell her Max suffered only a mild concussion and has already recovered. The harder news follows: KT tore her rotator cuff from serious overuse, and tests revealed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that makes intense exercise dangerous. Brenda warns her, "People have died because of the heart problems you have. You could have died!" (200). Her parents break down sobbing and cannot finish telling her whether she will ever play again. Max, sitting quietly across the room, confirms that he too remembers the alternate world. Together they visit Evangeline, who lies unconscious in the same hospital. KT whispers to her, sharing her own diagnosis and the surprising discovery that she can bear it. She declares they are a team and begs Evangeline to come back. KT thinks she sees Evangeline's eyelids flutter, though she cannot be sure.

An epilogue set three and a half years later finds KT, now a high-school senior, addressing sixth graders at Brecksville Middle School North. She explains how losing softball forced her to discover other talents: service clubs, arts, coaching Special Olympics, and challenging academic classes. Max and his friend Ben Bashkov are co-captains of the bowling team and members of the math team, confident and well-liked. Evangeline steps out from behind a curtain, recovered except for a slight limp, effortlessly cool where she was once mocked. Together they run the "Evangeline club," a group where students can share who they really are without being labeled. KT presses her hand over her steadily beating heart, hugs Evangeline, and reflects that sometimes winning and losing are not what matters most.