Dissonance (32 page)

I thought about Simon's dad. I'd never met a version of Simon where his dad was in the picture, but surely, somewhere, he'd made the decision to stay with his wife and infant son. There had to be a world where Simon didn't have to carry the burden of his mother's illness on his own. “And you're really not going to tell him about your mom?”

“He doesn't deserve—I never told you that.”

“Sure you did.” My stomach dropped.

“No. I don't talk about him.” Uncertainty crept into his voice.

“You did,” I said, hoping my insistence would overcome his doubt. “You don't talk about your mom, either. But you told me.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe I did. . . . Do you ever get déjà vu?”

“Never,” I said, forcing a laugh. “Is that even a real thing?”

It definitely was. Synaptic Resonance Transfer—SRT—was the technical term for when the memory of an event transferred from an Echo to an Original, or vice versa.

But he'd used Doughnut Simon's song for our composition. Doughnut Simon remembered me each time I visited. Cemetery Simon had known my name. Usually SRT was a familiar feeling, not a concrete memory, but this was too similar to be anything else. I had my answer, and it was harmless.

I folded my napkin, the cloth forming a droopy star. Simon watched it without speaking. “Ready to go?”

Outside, the moon glowed orange and heavy. “Where to next?” I asked as he helped me into the Jeep.

“Anywhere I get to be with you,” he said, his hand lingering on my arm.

“Book Park,” I said. It wasn't really a park but a bunch of sports fields behind the library. At this time of night it would be deserted.

Perfect.

We sat on the football field's bleachers, near the end zone. A single halogen light gave everything the look of a vintage photograph.

The field was crammed with pivots, but they were old and faint, easily ignored. I focused on Simon, who was watching me with dark eyes and a shadowed face. “You're cold,” he said, noticing my shiver.

“I'm okay.”

“Liar.” He shook out the blanket he'd pulled from the back of the Jeep and draped it over my shoulders. “Better?”

“Almost.” The shape of his mouth was soft and inviting even in the half-light. It shouldn't have felt new, but it did, my nerves tingling, my palms damp. I was as nervous now as I'd been outside Grundy's, a world away and a lifetime ago.

Something rose up within me—a yearning so fierce it resonated through every cell I had, burning away fear and doubt, stealing my breath and blotting out everything but Simon in the moonlight.

I leaned forward, close enough that we were breathing each other's air, and he went perfectly still, eyes locked on mine, familiar and foreign. His hand skimmed over my shoulder, along my pulse, around the back of my neck.

“Del,” he said, the word more shape than sound, more question than anything else.

I waited. It seemed vitally important, this time, that it was Simon's choice. I'd made mine, over and over again. In the Key World, though . . . it needed to be his decision. Here, it mattered. Here, it was real.

His lips brushed over mine—once, twice, three times, more certain with each kiss, hungrier with each touch—and the pale cold moonlight disappeared as I shut my eyes and gave myself over to the heat of him.

He wasn't the same Simon. His skin felt softer under my fingertips, and he tasted like autumn sunlight, like almonds and honey. The relief I felt—
not the same, different,
better—was dizzying. The uncertainty dropped away, and in its place was the knowledge that, for once in my life, I was exactly where I belonged. His lips traveled across my cheek, and I nipped at his earlobe, laughing when his arm tightened around me, opening my mouth to his when he came back for another kiss.

The blanket fell away, and I never even noticed, too intent on the feel of Simon's hands, pulling me closer, the sound of his breathing, unsteady as it skated over my skin. “I dream about you,” he murmured. “About this. Us.”

I smiled against his neck, feeling hazy and languorous. “How's it stack up?”

“Better,” he said. “It's always raining when I kiss you.”

END OF SECOND MOVEMENT

I
DREW BACK.
“Raining? In your dream. In your kissing dream.”

“Too creepy?”

Not creepy. Potentially disastrous, but not creepy. I forced myself to breathe, kissed him again like his words hadn't upended everything between us. “Tell me about these dreams.”

“We're going there already? You seemed like such a nice girl.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

“They're not X-rated, if that's what you're asking. I'm not a perv.”

“Dreams. Raining. Talk.”

“It's jumpy. Like bad reception on TV,” he said. He leaned against the bleachers, gathering me in the circle of his arms, running his fingers through my hair and coaxing out the knots. “But it's you, and it's raining, and you're just . . . there. Like I've been waiting for you, even if I didn't know it. And suddenly you're there, and we're kissing, and when I wake up, I swear I can still taste you. But they were only dreams. This is better.”

“Because of the rain?”

“Because it's real.”

He tipped my face up to his and kissed me again, gentle and persuasive, and for a moment longer, I savored him. But when we came up for air, I pulled back, needing to see the truth.

“And it's always raining?”

“Not always,” he admitted. “The other day, in the library? I was daydreaming. And you were there, but Powell interrupted us. That's when I decided I was done with dreaming.”

The rain, at least, was a coincidence. Nothing else was. His dreams—and his weird fugue state—weren't dreams. He was tuning in to his Echoes. His SRT was stronger and more severe than anything I'd heard of.

I drew out an old English assignment from my coat pocket, trying to calm myself.

“What's the deal with those things?” he asked as I began folding.

“It's origami.”

“I know that,” he said. “Why do you do it?”

I looked at the paper, seeing the beginnings of a star through his eyes. “Habit. Some people crack their knuckles or twirl their hair. You like to tap your pencil when you're thinking,” I pointed out.

“And you fold origami?”

“My grandfather taught me. He used to say that each fold was a choice. That I could make whatever I wanted, if I chose carefully.”
Make a choice and make a world.

“Can I see it?”

I finished quickly, my fingers unsteady, and dropped it into his outstretched hand. It sat there, white with pale blue lines and smudged pencil marks, an entire reality's worth of choices in his palm.

“Why do you leave them behind?”

“I didn't think anyone noticed.” I only did that when I Walked.

“I don't know when I started noticing them.” He held the star between his thumb and forefinger, spinning it slowly. The gesture was so familiar I wanted to cry.

“Probably the same time you started noticing me,” I choked out as the pieces came together.

All the times his Echoes spotted me. The way he'd zoned out in the library. He started paying attention to me in the Key World
after
we'd hooked up in an Echo. The threads of his worlds weren't merely similar. They were interwoven. Like a duet, where the melody and harmony trade places, or the two lines merge.

Like counterpoint.

He touched his lips to my forehead, my eyelids, the tip of my nose. “It took me too long,” he said. “But I'm glad I did.”

He kissed me, sweetly, the sort of kiss that gave more than it took. Something prickled behind my eyelids, and I suddenly understood the biggest difference between this Simon and the others. He knew me. I knew him. Now I was falling for him—not his looks or his hands or the way he felt, but
him
.

I'd wanted to believe this moment was inevitable. That his
feelings for me were so right, so undeniable, he'd fallen for me in two worlds, because the universe wanted us together.

I'd been wrong. Whatever feelings he had for me weren't because of me, of us, the conversations we'd had and the time we'd spent together. They were residual. A memory of us hooking up in the Echo world. The fabric of the universe mimicking itself and mocking me.

This
Simon had never wanted me at all.

C
RYING IS USELESS.
Crying gets you nowhere, and nothing, and in the end, all you've done is waste time and energy when you should have been fixing whatever situation made you want to blubber in the first place.

So I didn't cry when Simon dropped me off at my house, kissing me without realizing his feelings belonged to someone else. I didn't cry when my dad came out of his bedroom to check on me. I didn't cry up in my room, alone with the knowledge that my Walking—my reckless, selfish, stubborn Walking—had turned out far worse than even Addie had predicted.

Instead I gritted my teeth so hard that by morning, my jaw was stiff, my head ached, and I still didn't have a solution. Talking hurt, thinking hurt, and I wasn't in the mood to do either anymore.

I'd stayed up past dawn, replaying every moment of my interactions with Simon. No matter how I looked at it, the evidence was clear: The Original Simon was being influenced—guided—by his Echoes. He wasn't the same person as they were. He hadn't made the same choices. Left to his own devices, he never would have noticed me. His feelings were grounded in someone else's
memories. He'd never be able to trust them 100 percent, and neither could I.

But Simon understood me in a way that no one else did, saw things in me that everyone else overlooked. I wasn't sure I was ready to give that up, even knowing the truth. Maybe eventually the self-doubt would ruin us, but for now . . . I couldn't leave.

If there was a way to separate Simon and his Echoes so he wasn't influenced by them, his true feelings would surface—and maybe they'd be strong enough that we could make it work.

I was willing to tell myself that, if it meant I could keep him.

But at the root of my fears was one undeniable fact. Simon was more tightly tied to the problems in the Key World than I'd ever guessed. If I was going to free him, I couldn't do it alone.

•  •  •

Eliot always woke up before me. But I'd never gone to sleep, so for once I had the jump on him. I showed up at his house, coffee in hand, a few minutes after seven in the morning.

“Del!” said Mrs. Mitchell, giving me a hug. “Is my clock wrong?”

“I'm early,” I said. “Is Eliot ready?”

She glanced uncertainly over her shoulder. “I'm not sure he's awake yet.”

“I'll get him.” I headed upstairs, throwing open his door. “Wake up, genius boy. We have a problem.”

The lump on the bed stirred briefly.

“Eliot.” I crossed the room and poked at the covers. “Get up.”

“Five more minutes,” he mumbled, and pulled the blanket more tightly over his head.

“I'm not your mom,” I said, setting my coffee down. “And I hope you're wearing pajamas.”

“Wha—”

Grabbing the covers in both hands, I yanked them straight off the bed and dropped them in a heap on the floor.

“Gah! Cold!”

“Glad to see you're not naked. I pictured you as a boxers type of guy.”

“Del!” He shot out of bed, no shirt, navy boxer briefs snug enough that I looked the other direction. “What are you doing?”

“Wishing you'd put on some pants.” I kept my eyes closed and listened to the squeak of his dresser drawer. “Can I turn around?”

“It's ten after seven. Why are you even awake?” He'd put on a pair of sweatpants, but he still wasn't wearing a shirt.

“We have a problem.”

He took the coffee from me and drank half. “What did you do this time? Hold on. Don't speak.” He shut the door and sat down at his desk. “Okay. Go.”

“How much do you know about SRT?”

“Synaptic Resonance Transfer?” He tipped his head back, studied the ceiling, and recited as if he had the page in front of him. “Common. Harmless. Confined to Originals and Echoes.”

“What about really extreme cases? Could an Original ever share consciousness with their Echo? Experience what their Echo is doing in real time?”

“SRT that strong would present as some kind of mental illness. Schizophrenia, maybe, or some sort of psychotic break. Trying to process the experiences of so many Echoes would burn out their synapses.”

Simon wasn't experiencing all of his Echoes' lives—only the ones who ran into me.

“Theoretically, it's an interesting problem, but I've never heard of it happening,” he said.

Eliot would hear about that kind of thing.

“You think you found someone with advanced SRT?” He scrambled out of the chair, thrilled at the prospect. “That's beyond awesome, Del. The Consort will love it!”

Somehow I doubted the Consort would look favorably on my actions. I picked up the battered old recorder Eliot kept on his desk, played the first few notes of “Greensleeves.”

“You're not acting like it's awesome.” He folded his arms across his bare chest. “What did you do?”

“Why do you assume it was me?”

“Because you're up at the crack of dawn, you look like death, and you're about to turn my recorder into kindling.” Gently he pried my fingers off the instrument. “Tell me.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, and he joined me, slinging an arm over my shoulders.

“Remember how I told you something was off with Simon?”

Eliot tensed. “I checked his frequency. There's nothing special about him.”