Game Changer by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Author:Margaret Peterson Haddix [Haddix, Margaret Peterson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2012-10-16T06:00:00+00:00

Chαpter Eighteen

“You remember!” KT cried, springing up from the dirt. She wiped the mud and snot from her face onto her sleeve and grabbed her brother in a gigantic hug. “You remember the real world!”

“Won’t . . . do you any good . . . if you squeeze me to death,” Max struggled to say.

KT laughed. She let go for a minute, then hugged him again. She kept hugging him.

“I thought I was the only one who remembered,” she babbled. “I thought I was going crazy!”

“This alternate world is crazy,” Max agreed.

“Yeah, it’s even worse than something out of one of your video ga—” KT stopped herself. She pulled back from hugging Max. “Wait a minute—you did this, didn’t you? You zapped us into some sort of video game!” She began hitting Max, slapping him on the arm, punching him in the shoulder. The hits got harder and harder. “Get me out of here!”

Max shoved her away.

“If I was creating some sort of alternate world to make myself happy, do you think I’d make it so I spend five hours every school day exercising?” he snarled. “Do you think I’d make it so I have Mom and Dad breathing down my neck every minute at home, Coach Horace breathing down my neck every spare minute at school—‘Practice your math! Make sure your grades are high enough to play! Practice your math some more!’? Do you think I like this world any more than you do?”

KT stared at her brother. He had a streak of mud across his cheek—mud that had smeared from her face onto his. He didn’t bother rubbing it off. He was still lazy. And he was still pudgy and pasty and everything else that had always disgusted and annoyed her about Max.

But he was the real Max, the one she’d known his entire life. He was exactly who he’d always been. She didn’t have to go guessing about how he’d become a different person, growing up in this different world.

She knew him. And . . . she believed him.

“No,” she whispered. “No, I don’t think this is the alternate world you’d make, if you could make things the way you wanted.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “So—did you just make some sort of mistake? Can you fix it and send me back?”

“KT, I’m not the one who set up this horrible world!” Max protested. “I don’t know any more than you do about why it exists or how we got here!”

“Oh,” KT said. She sagged against the side of the red wagon. “But . . . we’re a team now. We both want the same thing. We can work together figuring out how to get out of here.”

It was weird how much better this made her feel. This was just her no-good slug of a brother, Max. And he’d already said he didn’t know anything.

But he remembered the real world, and the real KT. And he didn’t hate her so much that he wasn’t willing to help get all of that back.

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