Dissonance (5 page)

Gratitude rushed through me. Monty understood.

“She wouldn't have needed a trick if she'd followed the rules,” Mom replied. “Addie made it through five years of training and we never once saw this kind of behavior.”

No, of course not. I'd figured out a long time ago that I couldn't beat Addie at her own game, so I stopped trying.

My father added, “Cleaving can't be handled by one person. The protocol mandates three Cleavers to manage it safely.”

“Hogwash,” said Monty. “They send three Cleavers so no one knows who cut the last string. Keeps 'em from feeling too guilty.”

“Why would someone feel guilty?” asked Addie. “They're only Echoes.”

Monty shook his head in disgust.

“A faulty cleaving causes more harm than good,” my father said. “It leaves the Key World weak.”

There was no greater crime than damaging the Key World. My voice sounded very small when I said, “We can fix it, right? We don't have to report it?”

I thought about the stories I'd heard, Walkers stripped of their licenses, forced to live like ordinary people, never again venturing outside the Key World. Walkers who vanished altogether, sent to an oubliette.

Oubliettes were prisons, hidden behind rumor and speculation. The story was, to contain the worst of our criminals, the Consort had played with the fabric of the multiverse. They'd created worlds no bigger than a jail cell, severing them from the Key World and Echoes except for a single thread. A world with all possibilities eliminated, impossible to escape. No one had ever come back from an oubliette, so no one knew the truth.

But I'd been reckless, not malicious. I wasn't even seventeen—surely the Consort wouldn't want to sentence a teenage girl to life
in a prison world. Even so, I wasn't eager to test the theory. “Dad, please. We can't tell the Consort.”

Regret tempered the firmness in his voice. “We already have.”

“You're supposed to be on my side!” I'd expected that kind of betrayal from Addie. But not my parents. Not my dad.

“We are. A cleaving that big can't be covered up, and it's better to admit what you've done. Take responsibility for your actions,” he said.

“It was an accident!”

“The Consort has rules, Del. If you want to be a Walker, you have to prove you can follow them.” My mom's frown made it clear she wasn't willing to bend the rules for me. Addie's penchant for the straight and narrow was as genetic as our ability to Walk.

I wanted to remind her it wasn't rules that had saved our lives today, but the breaking of them. And that I wasn't going to be an Echo of my sister, no matter where we Walked. I didn't say any of those things, though, because my mom would never truly hear them.

Monty had dozed off, crumbs scattered across his cardigan. Addie toyed with her necklace, pretending not to listen. My dad's hand laced with my mom's in a silent gesture of support.

I was on my own.

Counterpoint is the combination of two independent melodic lines into a single harmonious relationship.

—Chapter Five, “Composition,”

An Introduction to Music Theory

G
O BACK TO
the part about the balloon,” Eliot said the next morning.

“Really? I cleave a world, barely make it out alive, my parents narc on me to the Consort, and the freaking
balloon
is the part that interests you?” I threw my physics book into my locker and slammed the door. “My parents couldn't even tell me what happens next. We have to wait for the Consort to decide. What if they put me in an oubliette?”

“They won't,” he said. “There has to be an explanation for why the world cleaved so easily. And the only weird thing was the balloon, right? The rest of the Walk was by the book. So we're missing something.” Behind his glasses, his brown eyes took on a familiar, faraway look. Deep in the supercomputer that was Eliot's brain, he was sifting through everything I'd told him, searching for a clue, a pattern, a reason. “We're definitely missing something.”

“Nothing important,” I said, thinking of Simon's fingers curving around my thigh.

“Everything's important, Del.”

I shifted my books from one arm to the other. Walkers kept their abilities secret from the rest of the world. I kept all sorts of things secret from my family. But Eliot and I had
never
kept secrets from each other. I'd explained Echo Simon and Iggy and the fake ID easily enough. But when it came to our encounter at the bench, I wasn't ready to share.

Despite the crowded hallways, we reached the music classroom with time to spare. Eliot pulled at my sleeve to prevent me from going in. “If we can prove there was something wrong with the world, and that's why it cleaved, they'll have to go easier on you.”

“It's the Consort. They can do whatever they want.”

“They can't rewrite your DNA.”

He had a point. The Consort couldn't take away my
ability
to Walk, but they could make it illegal. I'd be monitored for the rest of my life, unable to Walk without an accompanist. “What if they never grant me a license? I'd be stuck here.”

I'd be like an Original, only worse, because I'd know what I was missing.

“I'll take you anywhere you want. All you have to do is ask,” Eliot said.

His eyes were oddly serious, despite the smile, and I had the distinct feeling that now I was the one missing something. Before I could ask, our teacher, Ms. Powell, appeared in the doorway.

“Am I interrupting, you two?” Smiling, she motioned us inside.

“Nope,” I mumbled.

If school was a wasteland, orchestra and music theory were my oasis—a break from the monotony of my day, a place where people spoke my native tongue. Ms. Powell was the only teacher who didn't treat me like a delinquent.

Eliot and I slid into our seats at the back of the room. Simon sat at the desk in front of me, his dark hair starting to curl along the nape of his neck. As usual, it looked slightly unkempt, like he'd just rolled out of bed. Rumor had it that he'd rolled out of a
lot
of beds.

Park World Simon's hair had been shaggier, falling past his collar, nearly hiding his eyes. The memory sent a stab of guilt through me. Simon must have felt me staring, because he twisted in his chair, flashed me a smile.

My own smile rose in answer—and disappeared as the girl sitting next to him noticed me too. Bree Carlson, star of the drama department, lead of nearly every musical and school play since the sixth grade. Pretty but not so gorgeous that the other girls hated her, popular but not so cutthroat that she had to watch her back, Bree was a chameleon; she acted whatever part would put her in the spotlight.

She and Simon had been together at the start of the year, but they'd split up about a month ago. The relationship had followed his typical pattern—a slow, easygoing shift from flirtation to coupledom to friends. Being dumped by Simon Lane
was practically a badge of honor. I was surprised his exes didn't have an official club, with a page in the yearbook.

Judging from the way she trailed her fingers over his shoulder, I could see she'd decided to reprise her role as Simon's girlfriend. But in all the time I'd been watching him, he'd never gone out with the same girl twice. She had a better chance of nabbing a Broadway lead.

Which didn't ease the sting when he turned back to her as if I wasn't there.

“Since when do you smile at that guy?” Eliot grumbled.

I elbowed him. “Jealous much?”

Ms. Powell hit the lights and launched into her lecture on counterpoint, complete with slides. I tuned out Eliot's sputtering and tried to focus. Even so, my thoughts kept drifting to Park World Simon versus real Simon. Bedhead wasn't the only difference between the two. The leather cuff on his wrist was gone, replaced by a sporty, complicated-looking digital watch. This Simon had shadows under his eyes, the kind that took longer than a single late night to acquire. I wondered what—or who—had put them there. Eliot had always been better than me at pinpointing the changes between realities, but asking for his take on it would have meant admitting how close I'd gotten to Simon during the Great Balloon Rescue.

Forty minutes later the lights came back up, and Ms. Powell slapped her hands together with undisguised glee. She looked like a cross between a mad scientist and a 1950s housewife, wiry blond hair piled on her head and secured with pencils, a shirtdress
printed with bluebirds, and a pair of orange patent-leather heels.

“So, your next project, to be done with a partner, is to develop and perform your own example of counterpoint, sixteen measures long. Fun, right?”

“This was supposed to be my blow-off class,” Bree hissed to Simon, who shrugged. Despite being my parents age, Ms. Powell was new this year and naive enough to believe everyone was here because they loved music as much as she did. It was kind of endearing.

Ms. Powell continued. “This time around I decided it would be good to shake things up.”

Nothing good had ever come from a teacher's desire to shake things up, and I braced myself.

“Rather than pick your own partners for this composition, I'm going to assign them.” She chuckled at the groans that rose up. “You know what they say—familiarity breeds contempt.”

There was plenty of contempt in the room, but it was all aimed at her. I might have felt sorry for her, if I hadn't felt like she was pitching her little speech directly to me. Walker training or school projects, Eliot and I were a team, and she was about to split us up. I slouched down as she yanked on the screen. It rolled up, displaying neat columns of names.

Eliot made a choking noise, but I couldn't tell if it was because he was partnered with Bree—who didn't look any more thrilled than he did—or because I was paired up with Simon.

“We can switch partners, can't we?” Bree asked, tossing her hair back. “If both groups agree?”

“If I wanted you to pick your own partners, I would have said so from the beginning,” Ms. Powell replied, unfazed by Bree's venomous look.

Bree huffed and flounced without leaving her seat, then bent over to whisper something to Simon.

“You okay?” Eliot murmured. “You look weird.”

“Thanks,” I said through gritted teeth. “I'm fine.”

He spun a mechanical pencil between his fingers, an over-under pattern I knew he'd spent hours practicing. “Watch him, okay? He's . . .”

“I know what he is.” Trouble. My area of expertise. “Better than being stuck with Bree.”

“She's not terrible,” Eliot said, and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Not terrible to look at, anyway.”

It wasn't jealousy, exactly, that zinged through me. More like annoyance that he'd fallen under her spell so quickly, like he was any other guy. Worry, too. I knew how much experience he had with girls, and none of it was enough for him to deal with Bree. She'd have him for a midmorning snack and forget about him by lunch.

“Longest sixteen measures of your life,” I said, and froze as Simon twisted around to face me again.

“Hey,” he said, friendly despite the tension swirling around the four of us.

“Hey,” I said, feeling stupid and obvious. I stared at the scar at the corner of his mouth, the one I'd seen in another world.

Ms. Powell spoke. “Now that you have your partners, take a
few minutes to get acquainted, and we'll—” The bell rang, off-key enough that Eliot and I both winced. “Never mind. We'll pick this up tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, partner,” Simon said, and turned to gather up his books.

“Today,” I said, and he swiveled back, looking confused. “We have history together? Last period?”

He nodded slowly, but it was clear he'd never noticed. Heat rose in my cheeks.

“Can you
believe
Powell?” Bree said, tugging him toward the door. “This class is such a waste.” He didn't give me a second glance. As usual.

I shoved everything into my backpack and followed Eliot into the hallway. “She actually split us up.”

Eliot looked up from his phone and blinked. “Huh? Yeah, it sucks. Why'd your mom send you and Addie to that Echo?”

“She didn't. The assignment was to pick the Echo ourselves, remember? And it wasn't supposed to be Addie. My dad bailed at the last minute.”

“But why did she approve it? I've been looking at the data you brought back, and those breaks were way outside acceptable stability parameters. She should have noticed when she ran the map.”

“The map was fine when she ran it.” My training Walks had to be analyzed by a licensed Walker before I could go out. Years ago that meant a navigator had to check each Echo in person. These days they ran the proposed route through a computer, and
an algorithm would determine if it was safe to visit. My mom was one of the best navigators around; if she said a world was stable enough for a homework assignment, it was. “Echoes go bad all the time.”

“A branch that big should take weeks to degrade. Yours changed in hours.” He shook his head. “Maybe your mom screwed up. If the world was damaged before you arrived, you're not to blame. She is.”

The Consort would be a lot tougher on a full-fledged Walker. She could lose her position—or worse. “My mom doesn't make those kinds of mistakes.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “This wasn't your fault, Del.”

I remembered the sensation of the strings, knotted and straining against my fingertips, and wondered if, for once, Eliot was wrong.

The day did not improve. “Delaney,” Bree called out with forced cheer on my way to ninth hour. I kept walking.

“Delaney.” She tapped my shoulder sharply. “I was calling you.”

“Delancey,” I said. “Not Delaney.”

Bree waved a hand. “Whatever. Can you believe Powell?”