Dissonance (11 page)

“I'll take that as a no?”

I finished the last fold and set it on the windowsill. I didn't need a breadcrumb to find this world again. It was proof of this moment, something that wouldn't disappear when I did.

“Another time,” I said, only half-believing it, and went up on tiptoe to kiss him again. His hands tightened on my hips, holding me fast as his lips traveled along my jaw.

“You don't want to leave.”

“Never said I did.” I pushed away, legs and resolve both shaky. “See you around.”

“I'll drive you,” he said, catching my hand.

I disentangled my fingers from his. “Thanks, but I'll walk.”

As I rounded the corner, I looked back through the pouring rain. I wanted to see his face one more time, while he remembered I existed.

He'd picked up the star. He stood under the awning, spinning it between his thumb and forefinger, his eyes never leaving me.

While a Walker's decisions create pivots, our inability to form Echoes means the pivot is unable to sustain itself; almost immediately, the newly formed world is reabsorbed by the parent branch. This phenomenon is called “transposition.”

Transposition may also occur when Originals or Echoes make a choice that does manifest in a significant frequency change.

—Chapter One, “Structure and Formation,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

“WHERE WERE YOU
last night?” Eliot asked as we trudged toward the cafeteria. “Didn't you get my texts?”

“Sorry. I crashed early.” Guilt nibbled at me. First a secret, now a lie. I hadn't seen Eliot's messages until I'd returned from Doughnut World, too late to reply. And he would not be thrilled to hear I'd already violated my probation to make out with Simon's Echo.

I changed the subject. “What happened after I left last night?”

“Left” wasn't quite accurate, but it sounded better than “After the Consort guards escorted me to my doom.”

Eliot looked away, and I wondered how much he was holding back to spare my feelings. “Just regular class. Boring without you.”

“What are you working on next? More break analysis?” The answer would only make me feel worse, but I couldn't help asking.

“For another week or so. Shaw said we'll start inversions soon.”

I ground my teeth. “It's so unfair. I'm stuck with Addie for the next six months while you'll be off having adventures and kicking ass.”

“I'm only the navigator,” he said. “Asskickery is your department.”

I jammed my hands in the pockets of my sweater. “Do you think I can pass the test? I'm going to miss out on all the fieldwork.”

“Addie's good at fieldwork,” he said. “She was ranked first in her class, wasn't she?”

“Naturally. You know how she is. It'll be all textbooks and essays. I'm screwed.”

He didn't contradict me. “We need to figure out why the Echo deteriorated so quickly.”

“The Consort doesn't care. They thought I did it on purpose.” My impulse in that moment hadn't been to cleave, but something else both foreign and familiar, a new verse to a song you knew by heart. “The only reason I'm not expelled is because Addie told them I was too dumb to know what I was doing.”

“They listened to her?”

“Who wouldn't?” I said bitterly. “Now she's in charge of my training. She has to submit progress reports each week. Isn't that
a conflict of interest? She turns me in
and
gets to grade me?”

“Hold up.” He shoved his glasses farther up his nose and sat down at one of the couches clustered around the student commons. “I need to think.”

While I waited for his latest flash of brilliance, I studied the trophy case on the far wall, crowded with evidence of Simon's basketball prowess. State championships and tournament wins, nets draped over the tops of their first-place trophies. Hanging behind them were team pictures, groups of tall, broad-shouldered boys wearing royal blue and matching scowls. It might be a game, but basketball was serious business around here. Even Simon looked solemn and determined . . . until you saw the faint curve at the corner of his mouth.

I thought back to the way Echo Simon had smiled at me last night. That had been a game too, in a way.

Eliot coughed, and I jumped like he'd caught me doing something wrong. “We need to prove you're not at fault. If we can do that, they'll have to review your sentencing. They'd reinstate you.”

A loosening in my chest, the faintest stirrings of hope. But hope was a dangerous, fragile thing, easily shattered. I couldn't afford it.

“Nice plan, but the entire Echo's gone. If there was any proof, I destroyed it.” I shuddered, remembering the melting sky and flickering children.

“Records,” he said, with the same patient tone he used when explaining my trig homework. “Your mom's map. Frequency samples from previous Walks. Even similar branches might have
relevant information. The Consort adds terabytes of data to the Archives every day. I'll bet you anything the answer's in there.”

I didn't know how much a terabyte was, but it sounded big. And time-consuming. And like a very, very long shot. Hope fluttered again and I tamped down on it. “Addie's not going to let me spend my suspension going through records. She's got half the lessons planned already.”

“I'll take care of the research,” he said, holding open the cafeteria doors.

“What am I going to do while you're off scouring the Archives?” The noise and bustle of the cafeteria was overwhelming, the smell of steamed hamburgers and canned green beans turning my stomach.

“Funny you should ask,” he said. “I have a theory I want you to test.”

The tension left my shoulders. Eliot had theories about everything, and he was forever asking me to test them. Sometimes this turned out well, like when we figured out how to give people earworms by amplifying the Key World frequency in Top 40 hits. Sometimes it resulted in a sprained ankle and dislocated shoulder, like when we were eight, and I conclusively disproved his idea that you could fall
through
a pivot if you jumped from a high enough distance. Taking a seat at our usual table, I said, “I'm listening.”

“Watch.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and sketched the floor plan of the cafeteria. “Three pivots since we walked in.” He circled three separate places—one just outside the doors, another at a table
full of sophomore girls, and a third near the cash register—and hummed their frequencies.

I closed my eyes, letting the chatter of the room recede. “More than that. I've got at least a dozen.”

“Half of those are diminished,” he said confidently. “They'll blend back in any minute. The other three are off-key but stable. Forget them.”

“How can you tell?” I stared at him. Most Walkers had to be standing in an Echo to judge its stability. Even I couldn't do it from this distance.

“Because I have a map.” With a flourish he produced his phone, a prototype with a screen bigger than my hand. “And I need to test it.”

“Gimme.”

He handed it over. Tiny lights dotted the screen, like the stars on a clear night. “How does it work?”

“It's like a GPS. Instead of reading satellite information, it uses the microphone to plot nearby frequencies. Stronger frequencies are displayed as bigger circles, unstable ones flash, and pitch correlates to brightness.”

“Big, bright, flashing circles are bad? Small, dim, steady ones are good?”

He ducked his head. “I know it's not subtle. . . .”

“Since when have I cared about subtle? You're a genius!” I threw my arms around his neck. “A map that updates in real time? You're going to be famous.”

He hugged me back for a second, then pulled away, almost
bashful. “I don't need to be famous. I haven't even shown it to Shaw yet.”

“Why not? Once he sees it, you'll own the class rankings.”

“There are a few bugs in the software I'm trying to work out. If I install it on your phone, do you promise you'll use it?”

His tone was urgent, and I frowned. “Sure, if it helps you test it out. What are you so worried about?”

He shrugged. “That Echo deteriorated way too fast. It could happen again.”

“Park World was a fluke.”

“A fluke that almost killed you. I've been checking Echoes in the same frequency range, and they seem fine. But this will tell you if a world is too dangerous before you cross.” He stared at his sketch of the cafeteria and tapped the biggest of the pivots. “Use the map, Del. Promise.”

A burst of laughter from across the room distracted me—Simon, holding court at one of the big round tables near the windows, his chair tipped back on two legs, completely unaware of my presence.

Why would he notice me? He hadn't been the one to kiss me breathless in the rain. Last night was a secret known only to me and a boy who wasn't real.

Bree snuck up behind him, covering his eyes with her hands, and the chair dropped down with a thud. She let go, giggling as he reached back and caught her hand. It was the kind of casual gesture I was terrible at reading: Were they flirting? A couple? An
actual
couple?

Simon always had a girl on his arm. Frequently blond, typically
adorable, and almost never serious. Probably Bree was no different. Until I saw the way her free hand toyed with the collar of his shirt—playful on the surface and possessive at the core.

“No time like the present,” I said to Eliot, pushing away from our table. “Let's take your new toy for a test run.”

“It's not a toy,” he grumbled. “It's a serious piece of scientific equipment.”

“It's so shiny!” I trilled, bumping my hip into his. Turning away from Simon, I headed toward a group of drama kids abuzz about tryouts for the winter play. A dozen pinpricks of light sprang up on the screen.

“There,” he said, pointing to one of the circles. “Something's different.”

“Somebody changed their mind about auditioning?” I murmured.

“Probably. Tryouts spawn a lot of pivots—so many possible choices.” He gestured to the twinkling display.

“It's like a cheat sheet.” Only I wasn't breaking any rules, for once in my life.

He zoomed out on the map and pointed. “Over there, see? This circle's getting bigger.” I followed him out the doors to the water fountain. The rent in the air was easy to see, if you squinted. Without thinking, I brushed my fingers over the edge. The vibration felt as though it was calling to me.

“What triggered it?”

He peered at the map, then around the hall, nudging his glasses up again. “Not sure.”

“Let's go look.”

Eliot groaned. “No way. What if we get caught?”

“Who would catch us?” The hallway was practically deserted, and it was such a strange sight—a person disappearing into thin air—most Originals assumed they hadn't been looking close enough.

“We have class in five minutes.”

“Five minutes,” I said. “Add three more for passing period, that's eight. Bet I could find the source in eight minutes.”

“Del . . .” He stopped fiddling with the phone.

“See you in eight,” I said, and slipped through the gap.

•  •  •

The Echo looked identical, and the frequency warbled, gradually shifting away from the Key World like a violin part played by a cello. As events here diverged from the Key World, the threads of this reality would settle into place, taking on their final resonance.

I scanned the room, looking for clues to explain why this world had branched off ours.

Finally I spotted it: Beneath the water fountain was a stack of note cards, right where Eliot had been standing. They must have fallen out when their owner stopped for a drink. I picked them up, and the key change traveled up my arm.

Notes for a test, I figured, looking at the neat lines of chemical equations in a round, cheerful hand. If there'd been words instead of symbols on the cards, little hearts would have dotted the
I
s.

I'd never tracked the source of a pivot before. Would it sound different from the rest of the Echo? Louder? Would it be unstable, like a break? Easy enough to find out, and I set off for the science wing, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Del!” Eliot called behind me.

“Glad you could make it.”

“It's dangerous to Walk by yourself,” he said when he'd caught up. “What if something goes wrong?”

“You worry too much.” Eliot's preference for navigation over Walking wasn't only because his brain was wired like a supercomputer. His mom ran one of the Consort homes for elderly Walkers, the kind my mom wanted to send Monty to. Eliot had grown up witnessing the toll our abilities took. I looped my arm through his. “Besides, you're looking out for me. Safest Walk in the world.”

“Why do I let you talk me into this?” he asked as we set off. He twisted to avoid the streams of people filling the hallway.

“Because I am irresistible. Who's giving a chem test today?”

“Doc Reese,” he said. “I heard someone talking about it in lit this morning.”

“Time to see Doc Reese.” The bell rang, and we flinched.

“We'll be late for music. Again. I hate being late.”

“Then we'd better hurry.” We dashed through the halls, until he pulled on my elbow so hard I staggered.

“Here. This is longer than eight minutes.”

People filed past us, and I wove around them, trying to avoid the contact that would draw their attention. Inside the
classroom kids were settling into place, pulling out pencils, calculators, and . . . yep. Note cards.

Doc Reese stood behind the table at the head of the room, sporting his usual lab coat and bow tie. His bony hands clutched a thick sheaf of papers. “The sooner you're seated, the sooner we'll start,” he said, his voice doleful.