Little Ping Pong Queen

Sasha Holmes is ten years old and has never shown any interest in table tennis, let alone talent for it. Her older sister trains for the sport every day and gets what attention the family has to spare, while Sasha is mostly ignored. That balance holds until her sister injures her hand right before a match the family cannot back out of, and the household turns to Sasha only because there is no one else left to send to the table. Nancy Dean, an eight-time world table tennis champion who never lost a title match, dies in a fire at a shopping mall. Sasha, caught in the same fire, dies as well, and somehow Nancy's soul ends up in Sasha's body. The skills come with it. When Sasha picks up a paddle for the first time in front of relatives who expect her to embarrass the family, she plays like a champion instead, and the room goes quiet. Family elders who spent years mocking Sasha and her sister start showing up to test her, one after another, and she beats them. Word gets around, and outside challengers start coming to the house too, confident men and women who have never lost to anyone, and she beats them as well. At Nancy Dean's funeral, a rival from another country makes a comment implying the family, and the country, should be ashamed. Sasha takes up a paddle again and beats him in front of everyone. Later she faces the reigning figure of an underground table tennis circuit, a match with more riding on it than pride, and by winning it she gets her family out of whatever trouble that world had put them in.