Dissonance (22 page)

“She has to learn eventually,” he said. “Now's as good a time as any.”

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Listen,” Addie said to me, but her tone was gentler than usual.

The pitch was sharp and regular—not pleasant, but not
dangerous. Even the minor breaks I'd noted earlier weren't a problem. But there was something else. Something new.

Silence.

It was as if a music box was winding down, the individual notes of the frequency losing strength, punctuated by drawn-out, aching silence. I followed the hush to a shoe store and spotted a middle-aged couple holding hands.

Addie waved a hand toward the door. “You can check it out. It's safe.”

I ducked inside. The clerk was crouched on the ground, helping a pigtailed kid slide on a pair of glittery pink ballet flats. I stopped next to the clearance rack and stared.

“Balloon girl?” It was the kid I'd helped in Park World, the one who'd given us a way out during the cleaving. The frequencies must be so similar that people and places were repeating. She'd been so miserable the last time I saw her, but now, as she peered down at her shoes and up at her dad, she sparkled with delight.

If I felt a surge of envy at the way her father looked at her, as delighted with her as she was with the world, it was tiny compared to the relief I felt at seeing her uncleaved and vibrant. From this distance she sounded fine, but the irregular patches of quiet were spreading through the room.

“Plenty of room to grow,” the salesman said, pressing a thumb against the toe of the shoe. “Can you walk in them, sweetie? Let us see how they fit?”

She skipped toward me, the glitter winking as she moved, a five-year-old's dream.

“I love them, Daddy!” she trilled, but the sound of her voice warped and wavered. The color began leaching from the room. “They're princess shoes!”

“And you're my—” The sound dropped away completely, his words breaking off.

Someone had cleaved this world.

I started to back away, my only thought to escape. But when I signaled Addie through the window, she held up both hands, mouthing, “Stay put.”

The man lay crumpled on the ground, clutching his arm. The woman was crouched over him—I could see her shouting to the clerk, but there was no sound, even as he ran to the phone and dialed, his lips moving frantically.

I whirled toward the little girl. Her mouth was wide open, her chest heaving, her pink shoes now gray. It was as if we were stuck in a vacuum as endless and silent as space. I took a step forward, hoping to comfort her, and froze.

What if I'd caused this? What if my interference in Park World had carried over to this Echo, with its similar signature? What if I'd inflicted some sort of damage on that little girl that showed up in branches across the multiverse? What if, in stopping to fix her balloon, I'd ruined
all
her lives?

Without warning, the frequency of the world began to filter back in, the same as it ever was, growing stronger and surer with every second—except for the man on the ground, who remained stubbornly silent. He'd been the source all along.

“Daddy,” the girl wailed, and then Addie was next to me,
her arm around my shoulder, urging me out the door as the girl's sobs increased.

People peered in the window of the shoe store as sirens approached.

“Come on, now.” Monty took my hand. “Nothing you can do but let it unfold.”

“You knew,” I said, my lips numb. “You knew he was going to die. We shouldn't know that. But you both did.”

“He was dead before we ever Walked here.” Addie's words were careful and kind. “He was a terminal Echo.”

She looked at me expectantly. A vague memory of the phrase filtered through the shock encasing me. Something I should have studied years ago, no doubt. “His Original died.”

“Yes. He's been unraveling ever since.”

“Why did the world go silent?”

“Terminal Echoes suppress the pitch of everything around them as they finish unraveling.”

Behind us paramedics rushed inside, equipment at the ready. They'd never revive him. In the Key World, the little girl's father was already dead. This Echo—and his family—had been living on borrowed time.

The numbness was burning away, leaving behind a sorrow I couldn't understand. It wasn't my fault. I hadn't caused this. I couldn't even change it. “It's not fair.”

“Who ever told you what we do is fair?” Monty asked. “There's plenty of fun to be had, Del, and I've done my best to
show it to you. But Walking isn't about fairness. It's the biggest cheat around, but no one outpaces death.”

“He wasn't real,” Addie said, as if that made it easier.

“And who are you to say what's real and what isn't?” Monty said, rounding on her.

“Everyone knows . . .”

“Because the Consort tells them? Bah. You can't reduce life to strings and science, Addie-girl.”

The weight of the day dragged at me. I couldn't change my parents' lousy opinion of me. I couldn't make Simon choose me. I couldn't save that little girl from heartbreak, and my own heart felt ragged and bruised.

We'd been taught Walking was a noble pursuit. The sacrifices we made and the rules we lived under were for a higher purpose, and this Echo's death was the same: a necessary cost of maintaining order. Somehow that only made it worse. There was no cause other than physics, no choice that had led to this moment. It was, literally, the way the world worked.

And it sucked.

I peered through the crowd, trying to spot the little girl. I didn't know her name. I acted like she mattered, but I'd never even bothered to ask her name.

Addie blocked my path. “You can't change this. There's no way to pivot away from what happened. That's why it's terminal.”

The paramedics were heading back to the ambulance, in no particular rush. He was an Echo, but he was also a person. When
had Addie become so cold that she could watch someone die—or unravel—and not be horrified? What if the nobility we claimed was simply another word for indifference?

Addie sighed. “Let's talk about this at home.”

“I'm sick of talking,” I said, and took off.

•  •  •

I moved blindly, turning down streets at random. When I finally looked up, I was across the street from a small cemetery, twin to one in the Key World. Cemeteries were quiet, even by Walker standards. The dead were beyond choosing. The pivots resulted from the living left behind, blunted by sorrow.

Quiet—not silence, but quiet—sounded perfect.

The gate was unlocked. I pushed it open, the rusted metal screeching in protest, and wandered inside. The angels overlooking the headstones had soft, blurry faces. The majority of the markers were worn, their engravings illegible or chipped. I knelt and touched one. An infant's grave, judging from the dates. I wondered if there was a matching one in the cemetery back home. If this, too, had been unchangeable.

I'd thought being a Walker meant freedom, but lately, it was beginning to feel like a cage. Elaborate, beautiful, and so large, the boundaries were barely visible. But still a cage.

I stood, brushing at the dampness on my knees, and realized I wasn't alone. Sitting on the stone wall along the back of the cemetery was Simon.

He'd appeared in tons of the Echoes I'd visited lately, and each time the sight jolted me. Despite what Addie said, I wasn't
looking for him—not actively, anyway. Most of the time there was a logical explanation for his presence. But the sheer number of encounters made me wonder if something in his frequency drew me to him, as if he was true north on the map of my life. It was a stupid, secret, self-indulgent thought, but it didn't stop me from wishing.

He was dressed in black—black jeans, black coat, the collar of a black T-shirt visible underneath. The skin of his throat was pale in contrast, and his hair hung down into his eyes under a black knit cap. His fingers curled around an oversize green sketchpad. “Hey.”

“Sorry,” I said, when I'd gotten over my shock. “I didn't think anyone else was here.”

I also didn't think he would see me. I must have inadvertently touched one of the Echoes outside the shoe store.

Simon shrugged. “This place doesn't get a lot of traffic.”

He looked thinner. His cheekbones stood out prominently; his lips were a straight, unsmiling line. The midnight of his eyes seemed flatter, giving nothing away. I'd seen so many versions of him that it was easy to pick up the differences, to extrapolate who he was from how he looked. But I looked the same, no matter what world we were in. Did his perception of me change because he did, or was his impression of me constant?

“You look sad.”

I touched my cheek, surprised to find it wet. “Ugh. I'm fine.”

He nodded, silent and watchful.

“I'll let you get back to . . . whatever you're doing.”

He lifted a shoulder and returned to his notebook, pencil flying over the page. Without looking up, he said, “It's not private property. You can stay.”

Behind him stood a row of trees, bare branches interlaced like spindly fingers, their trunks so thick around that my arms couldn't have spanned them.

I slid my hand in my pocket and touched the paper I'd brought with me. Addie had been watching me so closely, I hadn't had time to fold a star. I could stay a few minutes longer.

I wove between headstones and sat, leaving a decent-size gap between us. He kept working—drawing, I assumed, based on his frequent glances at the tree behind me and the way he squinted at the page. He didn't offer to show me his sketch, and I didn't ask. I closed my eyes and listened to the faint scratch of pencil on paper, the sound of his breathing, the frequency of this world. You could last longer in an Echo if you let the pitch roll through you, like thunder.

“You come here a lot?” I asked eventually, pulling my knees to my chest. As much as I wanted to simply enjoy this interlude, I couldn't help wondering how we'd both ended up here.

“When I need a break,” he said. “It's a good place to think.”

“Too much thinking isn't always a good idea.” Thinking diminished what I'd seen, transforming a man's death from tragedy to collateral damage.

“You want to talk instead?”

I shrugged. “Won't change anything.”

“It might change you.” He flipped to a fresh page, too quickly
for me to see what he'd drawn. “Show you a different perspective.”

My head felt crowded, as if the images and emotions of the day were about to spill over. I looked at the assortment of headstones and marble angels, and thought about the little girl who'd lost her father for no reason other than the laws of a universe she didn't know existed. Thought about how quickly my future had slipped away. I was tired. Tired of walking and getting nowhere, tired of choosing and never seeing a change. Tired enough to confide in a boy who wasn't real and wouldn't remember me.

“My family . . . ,” I began. “They're big into making good choices. Big decisions, small ones . . . They believe life is made up of every choice you've ever made, one leading into the next, like the notes in a song.”

Simon nodded, his pencil flying over the page, and the misery inside me ebbed.

“But that's crap. You can lead a perfectly good life. You can make great choices, and in the end, completely random events will undo everything.” I pointed to the tiny headstone. “That's a
baby's
grave. No one chooses that. No one wants that. People die not because of what they did or didn't do. It's not their choice. It just . . . happens. Why bother choosing if the world's going to do what it wants regardless? What's the point in trying to make a difference?”

He set the sketchpad down. “Because it matters.”

“It doesn't. I watched someone die today.” His pencil stilled. “There was no reason for it. He didn't do anything wrong. He
couldn't have chosen differently. It was ‘his time,' and now he's dead, and nothing he did mattered.”

“You're crying again,” Simon said. He leaned over to brush at my cheek, the canvas of his coat sleeve rasping against my skin.

“I couldn't stop it,” I said softly. “There was nothing I could do.”

He smoothed a lock of my hair. “That's the worst.”

I nodded and swiped at my nose.

“Del . . .” I looked up, surprised he knew my name. “I come here and sketch almost every day. These trees. These graves. Every day.

“It doesn't bring them back. But it matters that I come here. That they're remembered. Even when the outcome is the same, it matters. And it changes me.”

He spoke with such conviction, but I shook my head. Outcomes, not intentions. That's what the Consort taught. “It's easier to be philosophical when they've been dead for fifty years. The man I saw had a family. A little girl. And now she's alone.”

His expression hardened. “Would it be better if he'd never existed?”

I thought back to the silent unraveling I'd witnessed. “I don't know. Maybe? To spare people that kind of pain.”

“You're wrong.” His fingers tightened on the pencil.

“Del!” Addie's voice, distant but coming closer. I slid off the wall.

“I should go.” I gave him as much of a smile as I could
manage—which wasn't much, and swiveled away, stubbing my toe against a small headstone. Unlike the other graves, its surface was shiny, the engraving crisp. I looked closer.

AMELIA LANE

BELOVED MOTHER

Below that, her dates. She'd died last winter, a few months shy of forty.

“Amelia Lane,” I breathed, and turned to Simon, who quickly shifted his attention to his sketchbook. “Your . . . ?”

“My mom.” His words felt like a punch to the chest.