Dissonance

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Time spent in Echoes cannot be regained in the Key World. Be aware that events will progress in your absence.

—Chapter Two, “Navigation,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

I WOKE SUNDAY morning with gritty eyes and nerves stretched to breaking. I’d spent half the night convinced my parents had caught me sneaking out, and the other half certain I was imagining things. There’d been no footprints in the hallway other than my own. The smear of dust could have been an animal, or a gust of air from the door opening and closing. Viewed through the lens of a guilty conscience, even the smallest details look damning.

Addie’s smile when I slunk into the kitchen, for example. She was never happy to see me, so there had to be another reason for her good mood. A small, panicked part of my brain worried she’d been the one who caught me, but a slow boil wasn’t her style. If she discovered I was sneaking out, she wouldn’t wait five minutes to bust me, let alone five hours.

“Why are you so happy?” I demanded, fumbling for a mug of coffee.

“Lattimer approved my lesson plans for this week. He said I was very efficient.”

“When did you see him?” I didn’t trust his sudden interest in my progress. Lattimer was definitely the sort who would spy on me and save the information for a time when it could do the most damage.

Addie looked at me strangely, gathering up a sheaf of papers and tucking them in her bag. “I e-mailed him. His reply came through about fifteen minutes ago.”

Not Lattimer, then.

“You two have big plans this morning?” asked my dad, coming in from his workshop. He hugged me with one arm and grabbed a muffin from the counter.

“We’re going to the train station,” Addie said, and he nodded approval.

“New or old?”

“New,” she said. “More for Del to work with.”

I groaned. “If I have to draw one more map, Addie, I’ll quit. I don’t care if the Consort never lets me Walk again.”

“This suspension isn’t a joke,” my dad said sternly.

“Who says I’m joking?” I slouched over the table, checking my phone. Nothing from Eliot, but I did have a text from Simon, confirming our study date at the library that afternoon.

“Chill out,” Addie said. “If you fail the exam, you’re going to make me look bad.”

“Can’t have that, can we?” I said, and my father gave me a quelling look.

“Lattimer agrees we should pick up where we left off before your suspension,” Addie said. “Try not to cleave anything this time.”

“Very funny.” My stomach rolled, and I decided to pass on the muffin. “I have plans after lunch, by the way. School stuff.”

My dad dropped a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure your sister can be flexible. It’s nice to see you paying attention to your schoolwork.”

Addie kept her voice deliberately casual. “What are you and Mom doing today?”

“Your mother’s already downtown. She needed the Consort’s computers. The team’s meeting me here in a few minutes, and then we’re heading out for the day.”

“They must be complicated cleavings,” Addie said, and my dad nodded before catching himself.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said, ruffling her hair on his way to the garage. “I’ll see you later.”

After he’d left, Addie turned to me. “Do you have any idea how much processing power the Consort computers use?”

“Lots?”

She sighed. “Yes, lots. They make NASA’s computers look like somebody’s science fair project.”

Clearly she’d never seen one of Eliot’s science fair projects. I missed him fiercely at the reminder. Usually we’d be together by now, on our way downtown for training. “I’m more interested in the fact that it’s a local Echo.”

“Local?”

“Dad’s team usually meets at the Consort building and walks from there. If they’re meeting here, whatever branch they’re dealing with is nearby.” I grinned. “Bet we could find it.”

She hesitated and shook her head. “Lattimer signed off on today’s lesson. We stick to the plan.”

“There’s a plan?” asked Monty, appearing in the doorway. “You look tired, Del. Late night?”

I jerked, sending a flood of coffee across the counter. Addie scooped up papers, shrieking, “Del, grab a towel!” while I stared at my grandfather.

I mopped up the coffee as best I could. When Addie’s back was turned, I whispered, “That was you?”

He winked, but before I could grill him further, Addie was hustling us out the door.

“Let’s review: You’re going to locate the vibrato fractums, test them, record the results, and move on,” Addie said after we crossed through one of the zillion pivots surrounding the train station.

“Got it,” I said. “Find the breaks, get a reading. Lather, rinse, repeat.”

Transportation hubs were typically crammed with pivots, and public transit was particularly prone. Flying took planning; by the time a person arrived at the airport, most of their decisions had been made. Trains, subways, and buses were more flexible and more populated, allowing for more interactions.

The Echo we’d stopped in was busier than home. People milled about on the platform, waiting for the next train, and a farmers’ market was set up in the parking lot, drawing a crowd. The pivots sounded like popcorn, irregular bursts of sound, and the pitch was a flat monotone that receded into the background. The breaks, on the other hand, stood out in sharp relief. I shook my head, trying to get my bearings.

“No cleaving,” Addie continued. “No touching the strings. No flirting with boys or interfering with stable Echoes or picking pockets.”

“No fun,” I grumbled. “Can I get started?”

“Yes. I’ll be right over—Grandpa, come back!” She chased after Monty, who had crossed the street and was peering in the window of a candy store.

I didn’t need Eliot’s map to help me. The tremors were perfectly audible. But I checked the screen anyway, noting a smattering of emerging breaks and several established spots. One on the platform of the station, one in the farmers’ market, and one centered at the ticket window of a dollar movie theater across the street.

If Eliot and I had gone to movie night as planned, we never would have fought.

On the other hand, if we’d gone to movie night, Simon wouldn’t have taught me how to make a free throw. He wouldn’t have left me standing on the floor while he went off to do God knows what with Bree. I wouldn’t have ended up in his Echo’s car, breathless and molten.

Every choice we make is both a sacrifice and an opportunity. I wondered if mine had been worth it.

I didn’t want to think about Eliot and movie night, so I headed into the farmers’ market, listening closely. The crowd worked to my advantage; I could take my readings and jot down a note before anyone noticed I was there. A stand selling honey, a bluegrass trio playing for spare change, a couple holding hands as they looked at bunches of kale: all vibrato fractums, none severe enough to justify a cleaving. The more I wandered the aisles, the more breaks I found, my head swimming. I turned, searching for Addie, but she was obscured by the crush of people.

I bought a steaming cup of apple cider from one of the booths, hoping it would settle me, and heard a familiar laugh.

Simon stood on the corner in a red anorak, hair cut military short, holding hands with a black-haired girl. He pulled her in for a kiss, their bodies fusing together.

Jealousy flared, then died away. Taken separately, the breaks here were insignificant. But cumulatively they might be enough to pose a threat. When I turned in my report, would this world be cleaved? Would I have caused another Simon to unravel? Dizzy and sick at heart, I sank onto the curb.

“It’s not lost yet,” said Monty from somewhere above me.

“Yet,” I said morosely. “How soon will they come to cleave it?”

“Depends.” He helped me up. “There’s always another way, Del.”

Through the crowd, I caught a flash of red. “He’s not real. None of this is.”

“If that’s true, what’s got you so upset?”

I didn’t have an answer, and he patted my arm. “We can tune the breaks, you know. Tune enough, and they’ll ignore this world. I can teach you.”

“Grandpa,” I said, shaking my head. “We have to cleave. It’s what we do.”

“What they do,” he said. “You’re better.”

Laughter scraped against my throat. “I’m not better. I’m suspended. Tuning breaks instead of reporting them would get me expelled. Addie would turn me over to Lattimer in a heartbeat.”

At the mention of Lattimer’s name, the fight went out of Monty. He seemed to curl in on himself. “Don’t tell,” he said, his reedy voice turning small. “Don’t tell.”

“I won’t.” I took his hand in mine. “You followed me last night, didn’t you?”

“I never left the house,” he said primly. “Wanted to know where you were, to make sure you came home safe. I won’t tell either.”

“Thanks,” I said, and gave him the rest of my cider. “Let’s find Addie and get out of here.”

He nodded, waiting as I nestled a star at the base of the tree.

Addie was sitting on a bench by the train station, watching the kale-loving couple I’d spotted earlier climb into a battered red pickup truck. “Did you get your readings?”

I handed her my notebook and she scanned the entries. “Nice. I’ll turn these in when we get home. Good work, Del.”

It didn’t feel good, but I managed a smile.

We hit three more Echoes. None had as many breaks as the first, which was a relief, and none contained an Echo Simon. Monty was quiet for the rest of the trip, singing to himself and methodically working his way through a bag of jelly beans. My dizziness faded, but a headache crept across my skull, clamping down with iron fingers.

“One more stop,” Addie said.

“Do they serve lunch?” Monty grumbled. “The least you could do is feed an old man.”

“Lunch?” My stomach dropped. “What time is it?”

Addie checked her watch. “Oh, wow. Nearly two.”

“I’m late!” I took off for the nearest pivot, Addie and Monty following behind.

“Late for what?” Addie called. “Del, wait up!”

Fixing the Key World frequency in my mind, I burst through the pivot back home and headed for the library, a few blocks away. My headache eased, but not my panic.

“I’m supposed to meet someone,” I said when Addie and Monty caught up to me at an intersection. I jammed my thumb against the walk button, but the light didn’t change any faster. “I was, anyway. An hour ago.”

“Your school project? Since when do you worry about school on the weekends?”

“I promised my partner.”

“Since when do you care about promises?”

I hit the library at a dead run, heading for the group study rooms. The woman at the reference desk shot me a dirty look.

The glass-windowed rooms stood empty. There was no sign of Simon. I cursed under my breath, earning a second glare.

“Is there another study area?” I asked the librarian.

“Just the desks,” she said stiffly, and pointed to a group of tables.

“Was there anyone here earlier? In the study rooms?”

“I saw a young man, closer to lunchtime,” she said. “He left.”

I checked my phone and groaned. We didn’t get cell service in Echoes, but judging from the string of texts Simon had sent, he’d assumed I was ignoring him.

Here.

Where u at?

Booooorrrrred.

U OK?

WTF?

Time is finite. Minutes spent in Echoes are lost in the Key World. It’s the cost of Walking, we’re taught, and it was a price I’d been happy to pay.

Until today.

On the way home I sent Simon a string of apologies, but my screen stayed dark. No messages from Eliot, either.

U mad? I texted Eliot, while curled up on the threadbare chaise in my room. There was no reply. Maybe he was out with our class. Maybe he was so focused on debugging his map software that he didn’t hear the chime. Maybe he was ignoring me.

Sorry. Really. Miss u. I picked up the violin, trying out a few melodies for the composition project. None of them were right—too mournful, too insipid, too clichéd—and I couldn’t keep my eyes off my phone.

Patience was never one of my strong suits. I took a deep breath and dialed.

“Hey,” I said when Eliot picked up. “Did you get my texts?”

“Yeah.” Definitely mad.

“I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

“I know.”

I began to pace. “I was pissy about Simon blowing me off, and I took it out on you.”

“I know.”

“And I was sick of Addie acting superior, and I have to put up with it until this stupid suspension is over, and I took that out on you too.”

“I know,” he said, not hiding his exasperation.

“You’re very smart. And probably right about Simon.” Before he could tell me he knew that, too, I rushed on. “How was class today?”

There was a pause. “Fine. Quiet.”

“I’ll bet. Did you show your map to Shaw?”

“Not yet. I want it to be perfect.”

“Nothing’s perfect,” I reminded him. “Not even me.”

“Definitely not you.” Warmth trickled back into his voice, the first signs of a thaw.

“But you love me anyway,” I said, giddy with relief.

Another pause. “It’s late. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“I’ll be here,” I said.

I couldn’t sleep, imagining the look on Simon’s face when he’d finally given up on me. I worked on our composition, but my fingering was clumsy, my pacing off, the melody hovering just out of reach. Maybe a trip to see Doughnut Simon would help. Without thinking, I moved toward the pivot—and then stopped. Another make-out session would be a distraction, not a solution. Eliot might be on the path to forgiving me, but Simon was another question entirely.

Tomorrow, I’d have my answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

JUDGING FROM THE stiff line of Simon’s back when I slunk into music the next day, forgiveness was a long way off.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as Powell started the day’s lecture. Simon stayed immobile, the chill coming off him practically visible. “I had a family thing.”

He leaned over to Bree and murmured inaudibly. She dipped her head toward him, giggling, and Powell frowned at us over her cat-eye glasses.

“Change of plans,” she said. “Take fifteen minutes to check in with your partner, make sure everyone’s on the same page.”

The class split up, but Simon continued to face front.

“Hey.” I tapped him on the shoulder. “I said I was sorry.”

“Everything okay, you two?” Powell asked, arms folded.

“Great,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Simon?”

He sank down farther in his chair. “Awesome.”

“Sounds like it,” she replied dryly, and circled the room.

“You can’t ignore me for the whole project,” I said.

“You blew me off!” he growled, spinning around. He looked more shocked than angry. For Simon, being stood up was probably as incomprehensible as gravity failing.

“Not intentionally. I was out with my family and I lost track of time. And I apologized.”

“So what? You’re as bad as everyone says,” he shot back.

Guilt shifted to temper. “Everyone? Or Bree? How was the party, by the way? Did you two have a nice ride?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “You blew me off because you were pissed about the party?”

“Please. Like I care.”

“Then why’d you bail?”

“I didn’t bail! I had to do something with my sister and it went longer than expected.” When his expression didn’t soften, I added, “Here. I worked on this last night.”

“It’s supposed to be a team project,” he said, taking the staff paper from me.

“Fine. You do the next part and I’ll take a nap,” I said. “It’s a peace offering, you jerk.”

He stared down at the notes. “I don’t know what any of this means. Does it sound decent?”

“Of course it does.” I moved to Powell’s piano. Grudgingly he joined me on the bench, and I played the opening measures.

“It’s nice,” he admitted. “It sounds like . . . I don’t know. Rainy nights.”

“A little bit, maybe.” I’d taken the music from the band at Grundy’s and improvised, adding and subtracting until the song was both familiar and new. Kind of like Simon.

“The party sucked,” he said.

“Bummer.” Impossible to keep the satisfaction from my voice.

“Would have been better if you’d come.” There was no gleam or charm to his words this time, only a quiet honesty that brushed away the remnants of my hurt.

I kept my eyes on the music and my voice light. “Wasn’t invited.”

He pressed a low C. “I’m sorry. I should have . . .”

I shrugged. “We’re even.”

“Guess so.” The dark blue of his eyes turned thoughtful. “Play it again.”

He traced the notes as I played, and I couldn’t help remembering the feel of his fingers against my cheek as we’d stood in the rain.

“How do you keep the notes straight?” he asked. “The minute the parts start going in different directions, I’m lost.”

“Perfect pitch, remember? I can hold the notes in my head more clearly. Plus, I’ve been playing violin since I was four.”

“Definitely a prodigy,” he said, shaking his head. “Your whole family is musical? Even your sister?”

“Addie’s good at everything.” I rolled my eyes. “Wait. Addie’s perfect at everything. Good isn’t good enough.”

I was accustomed to thinking of our abilities as genetic, but Simon’s question spurred one of my own. If Walking was my birthright, why did I feel like such an outsider in my own family?

“Could perfect write this? I don’t think so.” The words were teasing, but there was an undercurrent of sympathy to them. “Perfect is boring. No challenge to it. And you know how I love a challenge.”

Flustered, I turned the conversation back on him. “What about you? Brothers or sisters?”

“Neither. I was all the kid my mom could handle,” he said, a note of wistfulness creeping in. “It would be nice, though. Especially now.”

“Why now?” I asked.

He bumped his shoulder into mine, mouth curving. “I could make them do my homework.”

I glanced down at the half-filled score. “I can finish it at home. It’s no problem.”

“I told you, it’s a team project.” He scooped up the pages and held them out of reach. This Simon, it seemed, had a stubborn streak. “You don’t play well with others, do you?”

Eliot, sitting a few feet away, made a choking sound. I twisted in my seat and glared at him. He put his hands up and made a show of turning his attention to Bree.

“I play fine,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Glad to hear it. We’re never going to finish this here, you know. Let’s get together and”—he tapped the score and leered comically—“make beautiful music.”

I threw one of the crumpled papers at him. “Very funny.”

“Couldn’t resist,” he said, batting it back at me. “Look, Del. I need this grade.”

I scoffed. “You’re not failing the class. Everyone says you’re a lock for a basketball scholarship. Who’s going to care about your music grade?”

“My mom.” He looked genuinely worried. “How about Thursday? I’ve got three games this week, and my other nights are kind of shot.”

Spending time with him outside of school wasn’t a hardship. “My sister has taken over my weeknights. What about Saturday?”

“Away game,” he said apologetically. “Sunday?”

A full week before I could see him alone, away from school. I fought back disappointment. “Sure, as long as it’s in the afternoon. Library again?”

“We need a piano, don’t we? What about your house?”

The last thing I needed was Simon running into my family. “What about your place?”

“I don’t have a piano.” He tapped his pencil, a quick 7/8 rhythm. He might be tone-deaf, but he wasn’t totally hopeless when it came to music. “You don’t want me to come to your house. What are you hiding, Delancey Sullivan?”

“Nothing.” Everything. I wasn’t used to people seeing me—really seeing me. At home everything I did was eclipsed by Addie’s performance or my parents’ work. At school I kept to the fringes, the girl with the wild hair and the thrift-store clothes and the bad attitude, and I cultivated my isolation like a shield.

People see what they expect. Their minds are conditioned to smooth away the impossible until it’s transformed to the probable. Seeing the truth requires patience and attention, and seeing the truth of a person is even harder.

But Simon saw me. In the Key World, in Echoes, he saw me in a way that no one else did, and he didn’t look away. It was terrifying, and magnetic, and addictive. I couldn’t help worrying that one of these days he’d see too much. “You’re not exactly rolling out the welcome mat either. What are you hiding?”

His pencil skidded over the paper, a slash of black. “Nothing.”

Never try to con a con, Monty said. But I smiled as if I believed Simon. “Okay, then. Sunday afternoon at my place.”

“Sunday,” he agreed. Relief washed over his entire body, the tension ebbing from his shoulders and jaw, his lazy smile coming back. “It’s a date.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Isolating break threads is part of cleaving protocol. By determining which strings are responsible for an Echo’s instability, the cleaving can be rendered more efficiently. Be advised, however: Direct contact with a vibrato fractum increases sensitivity to frequency poisoning.

—Chapter Five, “Physics,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

YOU SAID YOU wanted something different,” Addie said, when we went out for a quick lesson later that afternoon.

“I spend eight hours a day here,” I said. “This isn’t different; it’s cruel.”

At the Original Washington, only the sports teams were still around, practicing. Here, the halls were crowded with kids in tan pants and maroon sweaters.

“Blame Grandpa,” she said. “It was his turn to pick.”

When I looked over at Monty, he was mumbling to himself, tugging at the buttons on his sweater. “Why this one, Grandpa?”

“Sounded right.”

It did, actually. Strident but stable, with no nearby breaks. It was as safe as an Echo could get.

Addie gestured to the students filing quietly past us. “This is different,” she said. “You wouldn’t last ten minutes in those uniforms.”

I looked down at my ripped jeans and “runs with scissors” T-shirt. She had a point. Around us the corridor was rapidly emptying.

“I want something new. Something exciting.”

“Exciting is another word for trouble. Which you have more than enough of.” Addie headed toward the cafeteria, calling over her shoulder, “We can go home and catch up on your reading, if you’d rather.”

Monty shot me a look of apology and followed her.

I trailed after them, twirling the dials of each locker I passed. They spun too freely under my hand, and on instinct I yanked on one. The door sprang open, revealing a tan canvas coat and neatly stacked books. I tried the next one and found the same thing. Four in a row, completely identical.

What kind of high school had no locks on its lockers?

One where theft wasn’t a problem.

And privacy wasn’t a concern, as evidenced by the surveillance cameras mounted at both ends of the hall. They shouldn’t pick me up, unless I touched an Echo—but their presence made me uneasy.

“Cafeteria,” Addie called back, and I hurried to catch up. The tables stood in perfectly straight rows. I ran a hand over one, the laminate pristine. At home the lunchroom tables were pitted and carved from years of student graffiti. Monty circled the room, poking at each brick as if he was reading their individual frequencies. Addie watched him for a moment and then turned back to me.

“We’re isolating break threads,” she said. “So tell me why I picked the cafeteria.”

“Not for the smell.” The universal scent of disinfectant and boiled vegetables permeated the air. I breathed through my mouth, adding, “Lots of repetitive choices. People choose the same meals and the same seats every day. The pivots sound monotonous, so the breaks stand out more clearly.”

She nodded in satisfaction. “Once the Consort authorizes a cleaving, the next step is to isolate the unstable strings. They’re the first ones you’ll cut, but you have to fix them beforehand.”

“Why?”

“If you start cutting while the threads are unstable, the cleaving won’t heal properly, and the damage will spread.” She gestured to a whiteboard with the day’s menu. “Try this one.”

I laid my palm flat against it, bracing myself for the tremor of the break. “Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Nope. We aren’t dealing with anything that would require cleaving. We’re finding the thread and letting go. I’ll help you through the first few. Curl your fingers and catch the break, like when you choose a frequency midpivot.”

I did, the movement natural and familiar. The break intensified, traveling over my skin. I twitched reflexively, and Addie smiled. “You get used to it. Now, keep your hand in contact with the break, and . . .” She broke off as I crooked my index finger, gathering up a group of threads. On instinct I slid my other hand along them and began sorting through them by touch, humming lightly. Nimble fingers, open mind . . .

Most of the strings felt smooth and taut, resonating in unison. But one vibrated out of sync with the rest, its surface kinked and rough, and I transferred it to my other hand, shuddering at the contact. Hum a tune both deft and kind . . .

“What next?”

Wordlessly Addie reached into the break, her hands covering mine and feeling for the threads. When her hand closed around the one I’d separated, she drew back as if burned. “Let go. Right now.”

I did, withdrawing my hands and dragging them down the sides of my jeans, trying to scrub off the feeling of the faulty string. “Did I screw up?”

“No. You did great.” She peered at me. “When did you learn that?”

“Um . . . three minutes ago.”

“That wasn’t your first time isolating a thread.” She turned her hands over. “It takes tons of practice. Have you been messing around on your own?”

I didn’t think my solo Walks were what she meant, but I picked my words carefully. “I’ve never tried that before. Ever. I swear.”

“How did you know what to do?”

“I don’t know! It was instinct, I guess. My hands kind of took over my brain.” Nimble fingers, open mind.

“You must have picked it up somewhere. From someone.” She straightened and looked around. “Where’s Monty?”

The cafeteria was empty.

“Perfect,” she muttered. “We’d better track him down.”

We headed out the double doors, into an eerie silence. Class was in session, but unlike home, there were no stragglers. No sign of Monty either. I asked, “Which way?”

“I’ll go left; you go right. Bring him back to the cafeteria.”

“What if he’s crossed a pivot?” I called.

“Then he can find his own way back,” she snapped. “No. Find me and we’ll track him down together.”

I headed toward what was the music wing back home. Here it looked like tech classes—industrial equipment and car parts were visible through the windows. I’d wring Monty’s neck when I found him. The first time Addie taught me something good, and he’d spoiled it. He was probably off looking for dessert.

Intent on listening for pivots, I hadn’t realized someone was rounding the corner until he slammed into me. I fell backward, swearing.

“Watch where you’re going!” Simon snapped.

“You?” I was losing track of how many Simons I’d found. Sometimes the strings making up an Echo would cross with the Key World, causing duplication, but I’d never heard of it happening this often. I rubbed my stinging elbow. “I’m fine, thanks. Don’t bother to help me up.”

He paused and held out his hand. I took it, nearly gasping as the break in his frequency crashed into me. He looked me over, annoyance changing to amusement. “Nice uniform.”

“I’m not really a uniform kind of girl.”

“Excellent. Maybe they’ll leave me alone and go after you.”

Now I studied him more closely—he wore the same tan pants and sweater as the students I’d seen earlier, but the chinos were threadbare, hanging low on his hips, and his hair stood in unruly, gelled spikes, porcupine-style. His frequency wasn’t the only volatile thing about him.

“They?”

His smile flashed. A tattoo circled around his wrist—a vine, intricate tendrils spiraling across his skin. My mouth went dry.

“They won’t care if you’re new, either,” he said. “ ‘Ignorance of the rules is no excuse for breaking them.’ They never mention the part where they keep us ignorant about the real world.”

Okay. Clearly this was Angry Dystopian Simon. Monty’s choice made more sense now. A world with fewer choices made for a more stable environment, and the breaks would be easier to identify. In his own way, he’d been trying to help. “I’m just visiting.”

“Lucky girl.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Are you supposed to be somewhere? Everyone else . . .”

“Do I look like everyone else?” He braced an arm against the wall, leaning so close his breath feathered across my cheek.

“No,” I squeaked, and he laughed.

“I got called down to the office. You’re making me late.” He didn’t sound bothered. “Might as well cut. Want to come with?”

“Cut?” This was new—Simon as the rule breaker, me as the voice of reason. “What happens if they catch us?”

“I’m already in trouble,” he said, and took my hand, tugging me toward the nearest door. He was in more trouble than he knew. His break was stronger than any of the ones in the cafeteria. If I’d listened to Monty the other day, I could have tuned him. “What’s a little more?”

“Del! Where are you going?”

Addie clipped down the hallway, boots clicking on the linoleum, Monty in tow. I couldn’t let her hear Simon’s signal. She’d know immediately that he was a break, and she’d report it. “I can’t really handle any more trouble today. But you should go.”

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“Another time,” I said, not meaning it, but desperate to get him away from Addie’s scrutiny. “Someone’s coming.”

He turned on his heel and strolled away, moving fast without seeming to rush.

“You were supposed to stay with us,” I scolded Monty when Simon was out of earshot.

“He was in the office. We’re lucky nobody saw him.” She squinted at Simon’s retreating form. “Is that the basketball player?”

“Kind of.” Before she could say anything else, I asked, “Back to the cafeteria?”

“As long as Grandpa stays put,” she said.

“Bah. I’m here now, aren’t I?” he replied, unabashed. “Let’s see how she handles those breaks.”

I handled them pretty easily, to Addie’s continued surprise. How I’d handled Simon’s break was more worrisome.

Seeing Simon at the reform school, as I’d privately christened it, had put Addie on high alert. For the rest of the week, everywhere we Walked, she looked for him. More often than not, we found him.

There was Simon the drummer, who wore black T-shirts that clung to his biceps and had a line of eyebrow piercings. Shy Simon, who helped me reach a library book I had no intention of checking out and vanished into the stacks. Simon the science geek, who spent the better part of an hour discussing relativity with me until Addie shot down his theory with basic Walker physics. Simon the horndog, who managed to ask Addie and me out in the space of fifteen minutes. (“Not my type,” she’d responded, witheringly. I’d laughed all the way home.)

“I’m telling you,” Addie said. “There’s something strange about him.”

“It’s nothing,” I said, checking my phone. Eliot hadn’t made much progress researching the problems in Park World, but his map was running smoothly. “Every Walk we take is either at school or in town. He’s not the only Echo we keep seeing.”

Bree Carlson, for example, though she never noticed me. She shifted as dramatically as Simon did, from Goth to cheerleader to teacher’s pet. In some Echoes she and Simon were obviously a couple, but in others they barely crossed paths. I liked to think the lack of continuity between their Echoes was a sign they weren’t supposed to be together in the Key World, where Bree was pursuing Simon like a lioness about to take down a really tall, hot zebra.

“Yeah, but Simon’s the one you keep running into. It’s not an accident, Del. You’re looking for him.”

“He’s easy to look at.” In truth, his frequent appearances unnerved me, too. But aside from Dystopian Simon, his recent Echoes had sounded stable, so I chalked it up to coincidence.

This time we’d found Simon the student council president. Clean-scrubbed, smart and sensible, and not a member of the basketball team. Instead, he was running the concession stand with Bree.

“Who knew filling the popcorn machine was so tough?” I muttered the third time Bree needed Simon’s help to make a fresh batch.

“Who cares? The break’s somewhere in the concession stand. Isolate it, we’ll grab Grandpa and Eliot, and go home.”

Monty had wandered off too many times recently, so we’d pressed poor Eliot into service—they were inside watching the game and tracking pivots while we worked in the nearly deserted lobby. Bree’s laughter trailed across the room, and Simon’s answering chuckle followed.

“Gladly,” I said. Simon’s back was to me, and Bree was too focused on him to notice anything else—least of all a Walker.

“Cassidy’s having people over after the game,” Bree was saying. “We should check it out.”

“For a few minutes,” he said.

“A few?” She pretended to pout, lowered her voice to a purr. “We’d have fun. I guarantee it.”

“I bet,” he said, a smile in his tone. Jealousy squeezed my lungs.

“Excuse me,” I said, leaning over the counter. My fingertips barely touched his elbow, but his frequency—like the feedback from a microphone—ricocheted through me.

Simon turned, his smile broadening. “What can I get you?”

Damn it. He was the break, same as at the reform school. This time I couldn’t hide him from Addie. My mind raced, and he frowned. “You know what you want?”

For you to stabilize. “A Coke, please.”

Bree’s gaze shifted to me, and I could feel her annoyance from ten feet away, as clear as Simon’s break.

He plucked the can from a cooler and handed it over, melting ice dripping over our hands. “Buck fifty.”

“Thanks.” I threw the money on the counter and fled back to Addie.

“You didn’t do anything,” she said.

“He’s the break. It’s not the counter or the cash box. It’s him.”

She barely looked up from her map. “So? Go back there and isolate the threads.”

My heartbeat quieted. If Addie thought it was no big deal, maybe I’d overreacted. “How? I can’t go up and start manhandling him.”

“Like that would bother you? You don’t have to touch him directly—we do that with beginners, because it’s easier. You’ve got a radius of about three feet to work in. Go on.” She shooed me away.

“Working up a thirst?” Simon asked as I returned.

“Something like that.” I slid the money toward him. When he reached for the cooler again, he moved out of range. I’d need to keep him talking.

“So, you’re going to Cassidy’s party?” I asked.

He handed over the can, looking at me with fresh interest. “Not sure yet. You?”

“Possibly.” Below the counter, I caught a fistful of threads and started sorting through them. Hard to explain my twitching fingers without sounding crazy. I pitched my voice low and flirtatious. “It’s not my usual scene.”

Bree was pouring oil into the popcorn machine, but she glanced over at us, her nose wrinkling. Simon leaned toward me, elbows on the counter. “What is?”

“I heard there’s a band at Grundy’s tonight that’s pretty good.” I was too intent on checking the strings to be original. The thread leaped under my fingertips, rough as twine, and I exhaled in relief.

“Did you need anything else?” Bree asked, sliding her arm around his waist. “Honey, I need you to help me with the popcorn machine again.”

Honey. I’d found the string but misread Simon completely. My grip tightened without thinking.

Around me the world jerked and stuttered. Alarmed, I let go of the strings and cast a panicked look at Addie, who was already speeding toward us.

“We’re set,” she said, and hustled me away. When we reached the opposite corner, she glared at me. “I told you to find it, not play it like a banjo.”

“My hand slipped. The string’s okay, right? I didn’t . . .”

“You didn’t cleave it,” she said, but the break screeched, piercing my eardrum. Addie clapped her hands over her ears and stared at Simon. A moment later Monty and Eliot joined us.

“That was you, wasn’t it?” Eliot asked. “I saw the break on the map. It looked like a firecracker went off.”

“Of course it was her,” Addie snapped.

“How do I fix it?” I turned to Monty, battling back fear. “Can we tune it?”

“Walkers cleave,” he reminded me, pious as a saint. “We don’t tune.”

The words felt like a punishment. “Addie, please. If the Consort thinks I ruined another world . . .”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Addie, voice tight. She shoved her leather bag at me. “The three of you stay put. And for God’s sake, Del, stay away from Simon.”

She crossed the room swiftly, standing to the side of the concession stand. Her chest rose as she dragged in a breath, eyes shut. Her hand drifted up until her arm was parallel to the ground, her fingers making tiny, fluid, graceful movements. She was playing the strings, adjusting their pitch to match the rest of this world.

Beads of sweat popped up along her hairline, and stress lines bracketed the corners of her mouth, but she never faltered. Gradually the shrieking ebbed away, the break disappearing. When I looked at Simon, he and Bree were talking as if everything was normal. We’d been the only ones to notice the difference.

Addie kept working, her breathing shallow, her cheeks pale, her fingers patiently curling and smoothing threads the rest of us couldn’t see. Finally she exhaled, long and slow. She staggered, and I dashed across the room to catch her.

“You okay, Addie-girl?” Monty asked.

She opened her eyes. “Yeah. Don’t let me see you try that, Del. You aren’t ready.”

“Got it,” I said, too relieved to take offense.

Later I ducked my head into Addie’s room, marveling at the ruthless tidiness. Not a piece of clothing on the floor, not a single book lying facedown on the green wool rug. She looked up from her laptop. “What’s wrong now?”

“Nothing. I wanted to say thanks for tonight. You saved my ass.”

She shrugged. “I’m here to help. You’ve never wanted it before.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in tuning.”

“I don’t. You saw how hard it was. We can’t tune every break, Del. We can’t save every world.”

I stepped inside and sat on the edge of her bed. “Why did you do it?”

She set the laptop aside and drew her knees to her chest. “Despite what you think, I’m not completely heartless.”

“I don’t—”

“You do. Everyone does.” She pressed her lips together, but not before I saw the slight wobble. “They think I put the Walkers above everything else because I don’t care. That’s not true. But caring too much makes you lose sight of the bigger picture. Without the Walkers we’d lose everything, including the people we love. Caring is a luxury, Del, and not everyone can afford it.”

Addie had never spoken about Walking with such bitterness and resignation. She’d always said it was a calling, the thing she loved best. But now, as she rubbed a hand over her eyes, I started to wonder if it was all she’d ever loved.

“You’re not heartless,” I said firmly. “A heartless person would not have helped me tonight.”

She waved away the words. “I should have stepped in earlier. I forgot you hadn’t isolated a person before. They’re harder to manage.”

“Because they’re moving?” I’d been so distracted by Simon and Bree, I’d lost my focus.

“People are unpredictable,” she said. “It makes them dangerous.”

“Your grandfather’s already in bed,” my mom said from the doorway. “Did everything go okay tonight?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Addie said. “How about you guys? Are you making any progress?”

My mom frowned. “That’s classified information, Addison.”

Addie drew back at the sharpness in her tone. “I only asked how it was going.”

“It’s going. You don’t need to know more than that.” She raised her eyebrows, probably surprised we weren’t ripping each other’s hair out. “You’re sure tonight went well?”

I held my breath. It would be easy enough for Addie to tell her what I’d done. Mom would freak out and insist we shift back to more remedial work.

But Addie closed her laptop with a decisive click. “I think Del learned a lot this evening.”

I thought about the rush of jealousy that had overtaken me, how my instincts had nearly ruined everything, and decided Addie was right.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Upon an Original’s death, each of their Echoes begins to unravel. Depending on the strength and complexity of their branch, these terminal Echoes unravel at different rates—in some cases up to twenty years after the Original’s death. To onlookers it appears as a natural death. Terminal Echoes are easily identified by their complete absence of pitch.

—Chapter Five, “Physics,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

MORNING, KIDDO,” SAID my dad. My mattress tilted under his weight, and I opened my eyes slowly, blinking away the remnants of a dream where our house unraveled, shimmering away to a gray void. “Brought you some coffee.”

Fragrant steam rose from the mug he held out to me, and I struggled upright, scooting back against my iron headboard.

“Daddy?” I’d barely seen him over the past few days. “What’s up?”

“I’m heading out on a big Walk. Thought I’d check in before I left.”

“You’re working? What about the concert?” Another one of my parents’ constants—one Saturday a month they took us to the symphony. It was my father’s attempt to teach us how to enjoy music for its own sake. I grumbled about being forced to spend an afternoon with my family, but canceling was unthinkable. Whatever they were dealing with must be really bad.

“Maybe next week,” he said, but he stared at the floor when he said it, and I knew “maybe” actually meant “not a chance.”

“Could I come with today?” When I was little, my dad used to take me on Walks as a special treat. Never to cleavings—my mom had forbidden it—but on the preliminary trips, to monitor breaks. As long as I promised to stick close and hold his hand through every crossing, he’d let me tag along. “I won’t get in the way, but maybe I could help?”

“No can do,” he said. “It’s a big job. Lots to keep track of, and I can’t have the team distracted.”

I took a tiny sip of coffee, syrupy with sugar, and said nothing.

He ruffled my hair, which only made me feel more like a kid, and I twisted away. “Love you, Del.”

I didn’t answer.

“You hurt your father’s feelings,” Mom said when I finally came downstairs.

I dug in the fridge for a piece of last night’s pizza—another dinner on our own—and didn’t respond.

“This is hard on all of us. We’re not thrilled about having to work these kinds of hours, but it’s got to be done.”

I turned around, slice in hand. “Why? What’s the big emergency?”

Addie and Monty were sitting at the kitchen table, poring over an old map. He plucked the pen from her hand and circled something. Addie sighed with exaggerated patience and spun around to face us. “Mom, you’re working like crazy. I could help.”

“This is beyond your skills,” Mom replied, missing the hurt that flashed across Addie’s face. She pinched the bridge of her nose and tried again. “I appreciate the offer, but Daddy and I don’t want you involved.”

“But—”

“But nothing. If you want to help, be extra careful on your Walks. That’s one less thing to be worried about. Del, eat a real breakfast.”

I held up the pizza. “Grains, dairy, vegetables—”

“Rose says tomatoes are a fruit,” Monty said.

“Sorry. Fruit,” I said. “It’s a well-balanced meal. And you could at least tell us why it’s so hush-hush. We have a right to know why we’ve been orphaned.”

I’d meant it as a joke, but my mom’s lips flattened into a thin, bloodless line.

“Your father and I have a duty,” she said, biting off the words. “Not only to you, but to the Walkers and the Key World. I realize responsibility is a foreign concept for you, but we take it seriously.”

The words felt like a slap, a numbness that quickly turned to a vicious sting. For the last two weeks I’d done everything Addie asked—passed every test, read every textbook, even when they were so boring I would have rather watched paint dry. I’d babysat Monty and given up time with Eliot.

And for what? My dad thought I was a distraction; my mom thought I was selfish. What was the point in trying to change when my own parents thought so little of me? If they couldn’t see I was trying, how would the Consort?

Even Monty was silent, and Addie bent over her map so far that her nose nearly brushed the paper.

“I’m late for my train,” Mom said.

I threw the pizza into the trash, appetite gone.

“She’s tired,” Addie said softly after Mom had left. “She didn’t mean it.”

“Whatever.” Sympathy was harder to bear than bossiness. “Are we going out today?”

She looked at the paper in front of her, her graceful cursive and Monty’s scrawls mingled together, then studied me as if I were another map. “You up for more isolations? People, not objects. We’ll even make it back in time for you and Eliot to have movie night.”

Eliot and I were supposed to go over data he’d found about Park World, but suddenly I couldn’t see the point in trying. Movie night sounded infinitely better: a few hours with my best friend and a chance to forget about Walking and cleaving and Echoes that didn’t act the way they should.

“Del?” Addie asked again. “You ready to head out?”

Anything was better than sitting at home, where I would never measure up. “Absolutely. Are you coming, Grandpa?”

“Nowhere I’d rather be,” he said.

“I’m hungry,” said Monty, hours later. We’d traveled to countless Echoes, locating people with breaks and isolating their threads. Happily, none of them had been Simon. “Time to head home, girls.”

Addie checked her watch. “Ugh. No wonder I have a migraine. Last one, Del. What do you hear?”

A frequency that was eerily similar to Park World, only more stable. My ears were ringing from the sheer amount of time we’d spent among Echoes.

“Eliot’s map would be faster,” I said for the millionth time, and wished I were with him.

Before Addie could reply, Monty spoke, searching his pockets for a snack. “Too many gadgets these days. The only tools a Walker needs are two good ears and what’s between them.”

“Says the man who gave me enough lock picks to break into Fort Knox.” I cocked my head, listening. “Three pivots, and one break by the bus shelter. I’m hungry too.”

Monty pulled out a packet of animal crackers as Addie listened, checking my work.

“Oh,” she said softly, and put her hand on Monty’s arm. “Hear it?”

“Hear what?” I asked, as his shoulders slumped.

“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.

“I don’t understand.” Except I did. Echoes needed their Originals to survive, but not the reverse. I stared at the marble slab. Sixth grade. The cancer diagnosis. She’d beaten it then in the Key World, and lost to it here.

“She was sick,” he said, grief etched across his features as sharply as her name in the stone. “For a long time. And then she was gone.”

“I’m sorry.” Such small words for such a huge loss.

“She mattered,” he said. “I couldn’t change it, but I was there. I still am.”

I nodded, feeling frantic. Feeling like an idiot for mourning a stranger when Simon was grieving for his mom.

Some things were constants. His mother’s illness must be one of Simon’s. Cancer wasn’t a choice. From the minute the first cell turned malignant, every Echo that had sprung up carried the disease within her. The only difference between worlds would be how she treated it.

He stared at the headstone. “That family you saw today . . . Do you really think they would have rather never had him? They made him happy, and he did the same for them. That time mattered more than anything.” He met my eyes. “Trust me.”

“I do.” Whatever I’d learned from the Consort crumbled away under the force of his certainty.

I couldn’t help wondering about the real Simon, the one I was supposed to see tomorrow. The one with shadows under his eyes for no reason, and sadness in his voice at odd moments. What if this was his truth, too?

If his mom was sick again, people would know. The whole community had pulled together to help them before; they would do it again. Simon might not confide in me—he’d barely known I existed three weeks ago—but surely he would have told someone. Word would have gotten out.

It struck me that I’d never heard anyone talk about Simon’s father, even during the year his mom had been so sick. “Who do you live with now?” I asked. “Your dad?”

His eyebrows snapped together, face darkening. “I wouldn’t even know where to find him.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“He doesn’t deserve to know. I can take care of myself.”

“I believe you,” I said, noting the hardness in his eyes, the lines of sadness around his mouth. He’d tried to take care of me, too. “Thanks for not trying to cheer me up with a bunch of stupid sayings. Most people would have.”

There. A hint of the same cocky grin I’d seen so many times. “I am not most people.”

“No,” I agreed solemnly. “You’re better.”

It never ceased to amaze me that his Echoes could be so different, and yet the same in essentials: self-assured, perceptive, challenging. And if I was being honest with myself, hot.

My cheeks heated. He’d told me something tragic and private, trying to make me feel less alone, and I responded by wondering what it would be like to kiss him. If there was a hell, I thought, looking out at the tilted, time-worn graves, I was definitely going there.

Addie’s voice rang out again, even closer. She must have been tracking my signature. “I really should go.”

He frowned. “You keep saying that.”

I paused. “Do I?”

“Don’t you?” He shook his head like he was trying to clear it, and tore a page out of the sketchbook. “Here. For perspective.”

It was a rough sketch of me, my back pressed against the bark of the tree, leaves drifting around me. The lines were too strong and sparse for prettiness, but the girl he’d drawn was striking, the kind of girl people noticed.

“I don’t look like that. It’s great—it’s beyond great—but it isn’t me.”

“Perspective,” he said again, with another grin.

I searched for the words to thank him, not only for the sketch, but for seeing me this way. Words seemed inadequate. “I don’t have anything to—” I broke off, pulled out the origami paper, and swiftly folded a pale yellow star. If I was going to leave a trail, I wanted it to lead here.

I held it out to him, and he took it between thumb and forefinger, inspecting it carefully. “People used to navigate by the stars,” he said.

“That’s because they’re true.” There were worlds where you couldn’t see the stars, where light pollution or smog obscured them from view—but they were constant, no matter where we Walked.

Maybe Simon was the same.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MONTY PATTED MY arm as I rejoined them. “Feeling better?”

I lifted a shoulder. Whatever Addie saw in my face must have convinced her to hold off on the lecture, because she was silent the rest of the trip home.

Monty lagged behind us, and I dropped back, keeping him company.

“Do you think Echoes are real?” I asked after a block and a half.

His shoes scuffed through leaves. “Do you?”

“They can’t survive on their own. They aren’t born—they’re generated when the Echo forms. They don’t even notice a cleaving.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it figured out,” he said.

“They feel real,” I said, thinking of Doughnut Simon. “Their choices make pivots. They have feelings, and memories.”

“What’s bothering you, Delancey?”

A million things, but I picked the most baffling. “I keep seeing Simon. Not every time we Walk, but often. I saw him today, after the terminal Echo.”

“You’ve said it yourself. We Walk in the same areas. It’s natural to run into similarities between Echoes.”

I lowered my voice. “Is it natural for his Echo to see me without direct contact? Or to know my name?” I’d been too caught up in our graveyard conversation to give it more thought, but he’d seen me before we touched; known my name before I’d given it.

Monty slowed his pace, putting even more distance between Addie and us. “The multiverse is infinite,” he said. “But it’s not all chaos. There are patterns and connections running through the very heart of it, crossing the Key World and spreading out into the Echoes, and those connections are like music. They give meaning to what we do.”

“You think Simon and I are connected?”

“Could be. A person’s life is made up of many strands. Who’s to say yours and his aren’t interwoven?”

The idea thrilled me more than I wanted to admit. It wasn’t sensible, but neither was the way we kept meeting. Monty’s words explained so much.

Monty continued, wheezing as we turned up the front walk. “I’m not a physicist, Del. I’m an old man with too much time to think. But maybe the universe has an affinity for you and Simon. Maybe it’s written in the stars, same as Rose and me.” He hummed a song, so faintly I couldn’t make out the tune. “That’s how I know I’ll find her again.”

Once inside, Addie gave Monty a muffin, and he wandered to the front room. I could hear him noodling around on the piano, a loose improvisation, but it somehow managed to capture the frequency of the world we’d been to.

“It’s an awful lesson,” Addie said, taking a seat. “Shaw usually waits until right before graduation to cover it.”

“Good to know I’m ahead of the game.” The words came out thin and bitter as boiled coffee.

“That wasn’t the reason I took you there. I’m really sorry, Del.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“I could have prepared you better.”

I remembered the pain in Simon’s voice when he’d told me about his mom. Knowing he would lose her hadn’t made her death easier, just difficult in a different way.

There was a knock at the front door, and she jumped up. “Lattimer.”

“You get the door,” I said. “I’ll handle Monty.”

She nodded and dashed down the hallway. I followed behind.

Monty was sitting at the piano, the empty muffin wrapper lying on the bench.

“Do we have a visitor?” he asked.

“Promise you’ll be good,” I said. Behind me, Addie opened the door.

“Statements like that raise my blood pressure. Who—” He broke off as Lattimer entered. “What’s he doing here?”

“Checking up on your granddaughter. I’m a man of my word, Montrose. You remember.”

Monty shrank back, as if the words were a threat. I said, “Why don’t we get a snack while Addie and the councilman talk?”

“Something to keep up your strength,” agreed Lattimer. “It’s Addison I want to speak with.”

I herded Monty into the kitchen, set him up with a bottle of root beer and a bowl of chocolate-covered pretzels. “I know you hate him, but please don’t make things worse. I need the Consort to let me back in.”

“Nonsense. Best thing in the world would be for you to get away from him.”

“Not if I want to Walk,” I said. “Stay put, okay? I want to hear what they’re saying.”

He craned his neck, trying to look down the hallway, and then slumped down in his version of a sulk. “Watch yourself. He’s a slippery one.”

“But that’s not covered until apprenticeship,” Addie was saying in the living room. “It won’t be on the final exam. Besides, Del only started isolating break threads this week.”

Talking back to a member of the Consort? It was as if an Echo Addie had overtaken her.

Lattimer’s voice was steely. “You said she mastered isolations quickly. If that’s true, it makes sense to accelerate her training.”

“I thought Del’s was a punishment,” Addie said.

“She appears to have a native talent that could prove useful, in light of the current situation. We’d be foolish not to take advantage of it.”

“The current situation?” I asked, abandoning my attempt at eavesdropping.

Councilman Lattimer’s lips stretched over his teeth, his version of a smile. “The anomaly your parents are working on? It’s classified, but I presumed Addison, at least, would have pieced it together by now.”

Addie flushed and stammered, and I cut in. “She’s been kind of busy. Maybe you should unsuspend me, and she can help you out instead.”

“The Consort could also revisit your sentencing,” he said. “I’m sure you’re aware of the usual punishment for unsanctioned cleavings.”

I was: a life term in an oubliette. I ducked my head and stayed silent.

Lattimer focused on Addie again. “Your work so far has been exemplary. I hope you’ll continue in that vein, now that I’ve made my expectations clear.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent. Someone with your talent and drive could go quite far with the proper backing.” His pale eyes lingered on the arch above the kitchen door. “Your grandfather seems to be improving.”

“The Walks are good for him,” Addie said. “They give him something to look forward to.”

“That’s wonderful to hear,” Lattimer said. “He’s taken a hand in planning the lessons? Any particular favorites he’s shown you?”

“Not really,” I said. “Addie runs the show. Monty goes wherever she says.”

Addie tensed at the obvious lie, but Lattimer didn’t seem to notice.

“Perhaps you should let him do more, not less. I’d be curious to know how he gets on. Be sure to tell him I said good-bye.”

When Addie had shut—and locked—the door, I said, “I don’t like him.”

“Shhhhh!”

“He’s halfway down the block by now,” I pointed out. “What does he want you to do?”

“You were listening in,” she said. “I’m more interested in the anomaly Mom and Dad are working on. How am I supposed to know what it is when they won’t talk?”

“They’ve told us plenty,” I said. “They’re tracking something, because Mom wanted Eliot’s map software, and it’s local, because Dad’s teams are meeting here. They’re using the Consort computers, which means they’re either dealing with one really big problem, or a bunch of small ones.”

“Or both,” she said, motioning me into the living room and lowering her voice. “I’ll tell you what else: They’re not having any luck. They’ve got teams from all over the world running around headquarters. It’s been weeks now, and nobody’s acting like they’re heading home soon. Security is crazy strict. Closed-door meetings, reassignments. Every door’s got a key reader now, even the areas that used to be open access. I don’t know why it’s classified. Everyone knows something’s up.”

“But they don’t know how bad,” I said. “The Consort’s keeping it classified so people don’t freak out.”

“Well, that’s comforting.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” In the kitchen, Monty’s chair scraped and the freezer door whooshed. He was hunting for ice cream again. “You know what the weirdest thing is?”

Addie straightened the sheet music scattered across the piano. “You and I are getting along?”

“Aside from that. If the Consort’s dealing with a huge, complicated, potentially disastrous problem, why the hell is Lattimer personally monitoring my suspension? Why is he accelerating my training?”

“And why does he care what Monty’s doing?” she asked. “Lattimer shouldn’t be interested in either one of you.”

“Maybe he thinks Monty can help them?”

“I don’t see how. Besides, Monty would never agree to help the Consort.” She paused. “Lattimer must think he’ll confide in you.”

“And you’ll report back.” She looked pensive, and I added, “Which you won’t, because it would be totally crappy to spy on our grandfather.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Addie?”

She wrapped a lock of reddish-gold hair around her finger, unwound it again. “Whatever they’re working on, it’s serious. If Monty knows something, we have an obligation to help find it.”

“You’d sell him out to Lattimer?”

“I would do what I’m sworn to do: protect the Key World. And if you really want to be a Walker, you will too.” She shook her head, pale and determined. “I’m going to get ready for tomorrow’s Walk.” The one Lattimer had assigned.

“I have plans tomorrow. For school.” No way was I blowing off Simon a second time.

“We’ll be back by lunch. You can study then.” She went upstairs, and I headed back to the kitchen. Monty was sitting at the table, working his way through a bowl of ice cream the size of a softball, doused with chocolate syrup and caramel sauce.

“Well? What did he want?”

“He’s checking in on my training. And buttering up Addie.” He’s spying on you, I wanted to say, but Addie’s warning was fresh in my mind.

He poked the spoon at me. “He’s after something. Thinks you’re the key to it.”

“Then he’s an idiot,” I said hotly. “I can handle Lattimer.”

“Smart girl.” He patted my hand, his fingers sticky. “But even fools are dangerous if they want something.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Inversions occur when a vibrato fractum replaces the corresponding area of a nearby branch. They must be stabilized before a cleaving occurs, or else the exchange between branches becomes permanent, allowing the damage to spread.

—Chapter Five, “Physics,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

WE HEADED OUT early the next morning. Mom had fixed a real breakfast—French toast, eggs, and bacon—given me a hug, and retreated to her office, as if a dose of proper nutrition erased yesterday’s fight. My dad had already left.

The sky was the pale blue of a glacier, the sun giving the illusion of warmth. We crossed through a pivot near the football stadium and wove our way through the residential neighborhood. Between houses I caught a glimpse of the graveyard, and wondered if Simon’s mom was alive in this Echo.

“The terminal Echo from yesterday,” I said. “Does he exist in other worlds?”

“Some, but they’ll unravel eventually. They’re not real.”

The Simon I’d met yesterday seemed real enough. So did his suffering and his sympathy. “Echoes can die before their Originals, right?”

“Sure. It happens all the time.”

Maybe Original Simon’s mom was healthy, and I’d worried for nothing.

Monty trailed us by a half block, and I lowered my voice. “What about Grandma? Would the branches she’d Walked through react if she died?”

“No. She doesn’t have Echoes, so her impressions would fade away.”

I shuddered. If I died, the Simons I’d met wouldn’t care. Or would they? Doughnut World Simon remembered me. If I died, he’d wonder why I never came back.

Monty caught up to us. “What are you two looking so serious about?”

“Going over notations,” Addie said smoothly. I was impressed—usually she was a terrible liar. Now she eyed him. “Do you know what Mom and Dad are working on, Grandpa?”

“Consort business,” he said with a nonchalant wave. “Hush-hush.”

“You don’t have any idea?” she pressed.

“Plenty of ideas. Mostly about lunch.” He stuck out his chin. “Not my fight anymore.”

Addie sighed, then turned to me. “Fine. We’re here, Del. Are you ready?”

“For what?” I expected to catch the hum of a pivot, but heard nothing unusual. We’d stopped in front of a tiny white cottage with black shutters and a red door, window boxes filled with gourds. Clusters of hydrangeas and mums pressed against the picket fence, a stone frog guarding the gate.

“Watch,” she said, and tilted her head at the polished brass mailbox hanging from the fence.

“Very quaint. What’s wrong with it?”

“You tell me.”

The frequency pulsed in a strange cycle, and I peeked inside, spotting a few slim letters and a magazine. As I reached in, they disappeared. I craned my head for a closer look and they came back. I went for them again, and they vanished.

“What the hell?”

Addie was trying not to snicker. “It’s an inversion.”

“You’re kidding.” Another reality, swapping places with this one. Exactly the sort of thing Walkers were supposed to prevent. “Why isn’t there a team here to take care of it?”

“There is. Us.”

The mailbox shifted from polished brass to rusting white metal and back again. “I can’t hear a pivot.”

“Pivots come from choices. An inversion is a really bad break. But we can use it like a pivot. If a frequency can make it through, so can we. Right, Grandpa? You’re an expert at inversions.”

“I’ve dealt with my fair share.” He ambled over and poked at the mailbox. “This is apprentice-level work.”

She forced a smile. “The Consort felt Del was ready.”

His expression darkened. “You mean Lattimer. I won’t be a part of whatever scheme he’s cooked up.” He picked up a newspaper lying on the driveway and settled himself on the curb. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Grandpa, we can’t leave you behind. Mom would kill us.”

He rattled the paper. “Then you’ve got a choice. Disobey your mother or disobey Lattimer. But I’m not crossing that inversion.”

We were silent for a moment, Addie struggling to keep her temper, Monty scowling at the op-ed page. “We’ll be back soon. Don’t move from this spot.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said airily.

Walking through faint pivots was like threading the world’s smallest needle. You needed steady hands, sharp senses, and total concentration.

Crossing an inversion was like trying to thread the needle while treading water. I kept reaching through space, feeling for the vibration that corresponded with the mailbox. A few times I could have sworn it brushed against my fingertips, only to drift away. Even Addie was getting frustrated, her movements jerky as she tried to guide me.

“We’re never going to get through if you keep swinging your arms around like a windmill,” I said when she’d bumped my hand one too many times. “Let me try alone.”

On the curb Monty coughed noisily. Addie turned her back on him. “It’s more dangerous than a pivot, Del. I need to stay with you.”

“Once I’ve got it started, you hold on to me, and we’ll cross together. Eliot and I do it all the time.”

“Please spare me the details of what you and Eliot do together.”

I smacked her arm. “Ew. We’re not like that.”

“Much to poor Eliot’s chagrin.”

“Stop,” I said. “Can we please get to work? I think it’s getting worse.”

Addie folded her arms across her chest. “If you leave me here I will tell Mom. And the Consort.”

“Relax,” I said, but it was more for my sake than hers. I shook out the tension in my arms, blew out the breath I’d been holding, and closed my eyes, listening to the wind rustling through the leaves, children playing in a nearby yard, my own heartbeat, and the pitch of this world. A quick burst of dissonance flashed and fell silent.

There was a meter to it, I realized after a few flashes. Irregular, but present, and I started to count, readying myself.

My hand shot out and the sound retreated, but not before I bent my fingers, barely snagging the thread I needed. Carefully, my movements as fluid as possible, I reached for Addie and brought us through.

“Whoa,” I said, opening my eyes and staggering. The slightly off frequency I’d heard was amplified, and my arms broke into goose bumps. “I was not expecting this.”

Addie wasn’t either, judging from the lines creasing her forehead. “I don’t understand. Inversions always sound worse, but it wasn’t supposed to be this bad.”

“It’s like Park World.” I could have kicked myself for not checking Eliot’s map before we crossed. This was exactly what he’d worried about. “Remember? The pitch was worse than Mom told us.”

“No.” Addie’s voice shook on the word, but quickly strengthened. “We’re not going to cleave this world. I’m going to stabilize the inversion, you’re going to watch, and we’ll leave.”

“What if we can’t?” I fought the urge to clap my hands over my ears.

The cottage, like the world itself, was in bad shape—instead of window boxes filled with bright mums and miniature pumpkins, the windows were framed with peeling shutters and rotting wood. The lawn was full of crabgrass and patchy spots, and the fence was more gaps than boards.

“We will,” said Addie. She pushed on the gate, and a cat shot out from underneath a bedraggled shrub. “Stabilizing inversions is the last step before a cleaving. The threads of this mailbox are swapping places with the other one. We need to fix them in place again.”

“They’re going to cleave this world.” The knowledge unsettled me more than the pitch.

“Probably. The inversion’s only affecting Echoes, not the Key World. And the rest of this place seems stable, so they might not get around to it for a while. But it’s definitely a candidate.”

The cat hurtled past us a second time, orange fur flashing, its yowls adding to the clamor. Addie said, “What is wrong with that—dog!”

“Cat,” I corrected, and then heard it. A deep, joyful barking. “Oh, hell. Run, kitty!”

The cat didn’t need our advice—it streaked up a tree, hissing and spitting. Another, larger form hurtled past and took up residence at the base of the trunk.

“Iggy?” I ran a hand over his silky brown fur. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you, pup?”

He barked twice and returned his attention to the tree.

“Iggy, you psycho,” called Simon, exasperation ringing through his words. “Leave Mr. Biscuits alone.”

“Mr. Biscuits?” I snorted.

Simon turned to me, recognition lighting his eyes. His hair was practically a buzz cut, and he wore a down vest over his sweatshirt instead of a coat, but otherwise he seemed pretty similar to Original Simon. “I didn’t name him. He’s not my cat.”

Addie made a strangled sound, and I elbowed her.

Above our heads Mr. Biscuits gave an outraged, warbling cry, and Iggy quivered with excitement.

“He’s not going to eat the cat, is he?” I asked.

“Not unless the cat’s stupid enough to come back down. He likes to taunt Iggy and run home, but the gate’s usually locked.” He looked at the gate, then us. “Were you looking for Mrs. Higgins?”

Addie whispered, “Get rid of him.”

Before I could respond, Simon called, “C’mon, boy. Lunchtime!”

Iggy romped at the base of the tree, pointedly ignoring him.

“Iggy,” I singsonged. “Go see Simon.”

The dog whuffed and padded toward him, head drooping.

Simon grabbed the red nylon collar. “Good to see he listens to someone. See you around.”

I waved weakly.

“Why did he know you?” Addie demanded.

“He doesn’t,” I lied, searching for an answer that would convince both of us. “I touched his dog. Same as touching another person, and it made me visible.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’d better hope that’s it.”

It wasn’t. From Doughnut Simon’s memories to the way Cemetery Simon had known my name, something was off. Even if Monty was right, and the threads of our lives were somehow interwoven, Simon’s Echoes weren’t following the rules of our world, and I knew firsthand how the Consort felt about rule breakers. Confiding in Addie was not an option—she’d left Monty sitting on a sidewalk rather than cross Lattimer. She’d turn Simon over to the Consort without batting an eyelash.

Around us the dissonance increased, the mailbox flickering more rapidly. I reached past her to tap it, asking, “Should I be worried?”

She shifted into lecture mode, exactly as I’d hoped. “Inversions are strong, and the longer they exist, the stronger they get. We have to stabilize the threads directly.”

“A tuning? Isn’t that what you did at the game?”

“It’s similar, I suppose. Tunings aren’t usually worth the effort, because you’re only dealing with a few threads. Inversions are a lot more work, and they’re riskier.” She smiled. “Watch and learn.”

She closed her eyes and slipped her fingers through the air, wiggling them slightly. “The first step is to isolate the threads, same as with a regular break.”

But she wasn’t acting like this was a regular break. Her skin was chalky white, her shoulders hunched. After what seemed like ages, she flinched. “There. Put your hand over mine.”

I did, cautiously, pushing aside my memories of Duck Pond World. These threads—a solid handful of them instead of the one or two I was used to feeling—felt knotted and kinked, their instability giving me vertigo. No wonder the effect was visible. “What next?”

“Mimic the frequency you’re looking for, and sort of . . . coax the thread.” She ran her hand over the bad strings, gently but firmly, humming under her breath the whole time. Gradually they smoothed out, taking on the same frequency as the rest of the world.

“Done,” she said, and I eased my hand away, feeling dizzy.

Carefully she withdrew her hand, and took a deep, shuddering breath. Her eyes were shining, and bright spots of color stood high on her cheeks. “Awesome, right?”

“Sure. Lattimer will send in Cleavers now?” I asked, trying to match her enthusiasm. The whole world sounded better; the Simon we’d seen had been stable. Cleaving him seemed unfair. Cruel. And I’d played a part in it.

“Don’t worry,” she said, mistaking the source of my unhappiness. “You’ll be cleaving soon enough.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Choices requiring significant effort on the part of the subject create stronger Echoes than those maintaining the status quo.

—Chapter One, “Structure and Formation,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

IT MUST BE a universal law that no matter how absentee your parents have been, the one time you would like them to stay away is the exact time they’ll decide to take an interest in your life.

“Del?” my mom said, coming out of her office, coffee cup clutched in one hand, a stack of maps in the other. She folded them in half, hiding their contents. “Who’s this?”

“Mom, Simon Lane. Simon, this is my mom.”

He stood and shook hands. “Nice to meet you.”

“And you as well. I wish I’d known we were having company.” She gave me a look implying I had fallen down on the job.

Simon covered his heart with his hand, miming hurt. “Trying to keep me under wraps?”

He had no idea how many secrets I was keeping about him. I waved toward the staff paper on the piano bench. “We’re working on a project for music. Counterpoint.”

“Del’s specialty,” my mom said. “Are you two hungry? I made zucchini bread.”

“I love zucchini bread,” Simon said, but I put my hands up.

“We’re fine, Mom. And we’ve got a lot to do, so . . .”

Her eyebrows arched. “I’ll let you get back to work. Dad should be home soon, by the way. I’m sure he’ll love meeting your . . . friend.”

If there’d been a pivot handy, I would have Walked through and stayed until I was fifty, because it would take that long for me to get over my embarrassment. Simon seemed fascinated by the pattern of the rug, and neither of us moved until we heard the door of her office shut.

“So that’s your mom,” he said finally. “Where’s the rest of the family?”

“My dad’s working. My grandfather’s upstairs, which is kind of weird. He’s usually pretty social.” I wasn’t complaining. My mom’s ability to mortify me paled in comparison to Monty’s skill set. “My sister’s working in her room.” Writing up the report on our Walk. I wondered what she would say about Monty refusing to join us.

“Nice,” he said softly. “Having so much family.”

“Your dad . . .”

“Took off right after I was born.” He swiveled away so I couldn’t read his face.

“Ah.” Unsure of how much to push, I said, “That sucks.”

He picked up my violin, plinked one of the strings. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t.”

“No?”

“Nope. More important things on the radar,” he said, and turned back to me.

The most powerful choices are the ones that disrupt the status quo—that break free of momentum and push into the unknown.

They’re also the most terrifying.

I could let Simon’s remark slide and continue on with our project. Or I could ask the question, knowing it would change us regardless of his answer.

“Things like your mom?”

He set the violin down. I waited, hoping he’d fill the silence between us with the truth.

“Who told you?”

“Nobody. I had a feeling.”

He sat next to me and struck a single note on the piano, an E flat, over and over. “The cancer came back. We found out a couple of months ago.”

I’d never wanted to be wrong so badly. “I’m sorry. Is it . . .”

His expression turned haggard. “Yeah. They don’t know how much longer she has. A year. Eighteen months, if we’re lucky.”

Strange to call it luck. In less than two years he’d be an orphan.

“What are you going to do?” I picked out a minor melody, pianissimo.

“Take care of her,” he said, jaw set. “Right now she’s tired more than anything. Later . . . there are people who can come in and help. That’s what the doctors said, anyway.”

The circles under his eyes made sense to me now; his insistence on getting good grades for his mom’s sake. His wish for siblings. The charm he displayed every day had vanished, replaced by brittle composure. The transformation made my heart ache.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to have no one left in my family—not even Addie. How quiet the house would be. I envisioned myself in those empty, echoing rooms, and my eyelids prickled.

“Why haven’t you told anyone?”

“I told Coach. A couple of guys on the team. A few teachers.”

“That’s it? What about the rest of your friends?”

“Not yet.” I must have looked startled, because he said, “It changes how people look at you. How they treat you.”

“Maybe not.”

“It happened before,” he replied, and I remembered the year of casseroles and phone trees and bake sales. Of course he knew how everyone would react. “Once they find out, I’m not me anymore—I’m the kid with the mom who’s dying.”

I’d watched Simon for years, charming and flirting and joking, winning people over at every turn. I’d never stopped to consider what hard work it must have been, convincing everyone to love him instead of pity him. That veneer had never slipped until now, never cracked. The Simon sitting next to me, simultaneously vulnerable and guarded, was as foreign as an Echo, but more real than he’d ever been.

“You told me,” I pointed out.

His brow furrowed. “You asked.”

“Didn’t mean you had to answer.”

He looked straight at me, the intensity of his gaze making me forget which world we were in, which Simon I was dealing with.

“I had a feeling too,” he said, the words so low they resonated in my chest, and his hand slid to cover mine on the keys.

“I’m glad,” I whispered.

“Simon?” called my mom, and he drew away. My pulse beat in a wild, unsteady rhythm. Mom poked her head around the corner. “Would you like to stay for dinner? It’s chicken parmesan tonight. You’re welcome to join us.”

I rolled my eyes. We’d had pizza or sandwiches every night this week. Simon’s presence was the only explanation for a return to real food.

“It sounds great, but I can’t,” Simon said, standing up and grabbing his notebook. “I have a . . .” His eyes slid away. “I have plans.”

“Plans” could mean only one thing. A specific plan, with a specific individual.

“Some other time,” Mom said. “It was lovely to meet you.”

“You too,” he said. “And thanks for the offer.”

“Of course.” She disappeared back into the kitchen, but the damage was done, the sense of connection shattered.

“Hot date?” I asked. I was going for nonchalance: See how much I don’t care you’ll be kissing someone else tonight? But inside, my heartbeat slowed to the tempo of a dirge. He’d confided in me, trusted me with the most awful truth imaginable, but I wasn’t the one he wanted. “Bet I can guess who.”

He released the arm on the old-fashioned metronome we kept next to the piano, and the steady ticking filled the silence. “Bree’s nice,” he said eventually. “And it’s not serious.”

“It never is.” Why was he telling me his secrets one minute, and leaving to see her the next? Maybe I’d imagined the connection between us. Maybe he told everyone, making them feel as special as I had. The idea made me feel hot, then cold, and then very, very stupid.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Everyone knows you don’t stick. When was the last time you had a serious girlfriend?” I kept my voice light.

“They know what they’re getting into.”

“And they all talk about what a great guy you are.” They talked about other things, too, but I wasn’t about to feed his ego. “I’m not judging. But I’d have to be blind not to see you’ve got someone new on your arm every six weeks. And you’re blind if you think Bree’s not after something more serious this time around.”

“You want to talk about blind? What about the guy in music class? Lee?”

“Eliot? I told you, we’re friends.”

Simon scoffed. “If you say so. I’ve got to run.”

“Be careful,” I called as he left, surprised at how hurt I felt. “Bree’s looking to be more than the flavor of the month.”

The door slammed.

I wandered back into the music room, studying the score we’d worked on. I picked up my violin, tightened the bow, and ran through my part. Without Simon’s half it sounded thin and lonely.

“Not your usual work,” said Monty.

“Hey, Grandpa. It’s a project for school. I have to compose with someone else.”

“Simon,” he said with a knowing smile. “Where’d he go?”

“Date,” I mumbled, and shifted to Bach.

“Hmph,” he said. “You let him slip away.”

I stopped playing with a screech. “What was I supposed to do, sit on him? Steal his keys?”

Actually, I could have lifted his keys. But I wanted him to choose to stay.

I wanted Simon to choose me.

Monty shook his head mournfully. “Do you think Rose fell into my lap like an apple from a tree? Make an effort.”

“He’s not a Walker.”

“So?”

“So, isn’t that kind of . . . frowned on?”

Monty sucked in air through his dentures. “Since when has that ever stopped you? You’ve got a connection with this boy, haven’t you? When the multiverse tries to tell you something, it’s best to listen.”

The multiverse was giving me mixed signals. Much like Simon himself. “He’s on a date with another girl.”

“Find a way around. You can, if you want to badly enough.” He played a quick ditty on the piano and pushed up from the bench. “Dinner?”

“In a minute.” I stared at the score Simon and I had written together. He couldn’t draw a treble clef to save his life. He was dating Bree again. He wasn’t a Walker. Bad enough I’d hooked up with his Echo. Falling for his Original would be an even bigger mess.

And it was too late.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

WHAT’S ON TAP for this week?” I asked Addie as I set the table that night. “More inversions?”

“That’s the only one Lattimer told me about,” she said. “But I’ve got fun stuff planned.”

I was afraid to ask what constituted Addie’s idea of fun. Then again, Lattimer had told her to ramp up my training, and she wouldn’t ignore a directive from the Consort.

“What’s fun?” asked my mom, dropping into her chair. “I could use some fun.”

My dad rubbed her shoulders. “Sorry I missed your friend today, Del. Will we be seeing him again?”

“No idea,” I replied, and turned to my mom. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” Mom replied. My dad opened his mouth and closed it again.

“We’re not little kids anymore,” Addie said. “You don’t need to protect us.”

“What are you guys looking for?” I asked. Dad gaped at me, and I shrugged. “Why else would you need Eliot’s map?”

“It’s classified,” he said.

“And completely manageable,” added my mother.

A completely manageable problem wouldn’t have turned my mom’s skin waxy with fatigue, or threaded strands of silver in my father’s sandy hair. It wouldn’t have meant whispered conversations and locked doors, late nights and short tempers. Whatever they were dealing with was the opposite of completely manageable.

“Let us help,” Addie said. “I’m nearly done with my training, and Del doesn’t completely suck.”

“Hey!”

My dad shook his head. “Too dangerous. What we need from you two is to be careful. To keep an eye out for anything strange, especially on the Key World side.”

“You know you can talk to us,” Mom said. “About anything.”

At that, I rolled my eyes. Parents said you could always talk to them, but whenever you took them up on their offer, it was less of a talk and more of a lecture. I got enough of those as it was.

A thick, uncomfortable silence blanketed the room. Finally my mom pushed up from the table, her dinner untouched. “You two keep on doing what you’re doing, and things will be back to normal soon enough.”

My dad ruffled my hair and followed her upstairs. Addie surveyed the table, the food lying uneaten at each place. “They’re lying.”

“Duh.”

“Inversions,” Addie said, green eyes thoughtful. “He wants to know if we’re seeing inversions in the Key World. That’s definitely serious enough for the Consort to freak out.”

“They’re going about it backward, as usual,” said Monty. He crammed a piece of garlic bread in his mouth. “Inversions are a symptom.”

Addie watched him closely. “What would you do?”

“I’ve been out of the game too long to do much of anything,” he said, and Addie sat back, disappointed. He lifted his eyebrows. “But if I were a younger man, I’d be more curious about the disease, wouldn’t you?”

She nodded slowly. “Del, you’re on dishes tonight.”

“You have plans for this evening?” Monty asked when she’d left. He slanted a look at my backpack, sitting next to the back door.

I poked at my now-cold dinner. “I was thinking about it.”

“Be a doer, Del, not a thinker.” He winked. “Is it too late for a cruller?”

There was no way the doughnut shop was open at this hour, but I understood him perfectly. “I’ll find out.”

There was probably a lesson to be learned about the foolishness of Walking without a plan. Walking to Doughnut World was becoming second nature. Even the frequency, stronger than my last visit, was less irritating. But it wasn’t until I was standing outside Simon’s house that it hit me: He could be out with Bree in this Echo too. Or at a party. Or at Grundy’s, or anywhere. A few make-out sessions didn’t make this Simon mine, and it wasn’t like we’d spent a lot of our time talking, either.

The Jeep was gone, and the shades were already pulled. It was the same cozy ranch as in the Key World, but it was missing the Washington High pennant hanging in the front window, and the shutters were a glossy green, not red. Neat rows of solar lights lined the front walk, and the hedge along the driveway was carefully trimmed.

I made myself as comfortable as possible on the cement steps. It could be a long wait, and I contented myself with folding star after star, stringing them along a piece of kitchen twine. The temperature was dropping steadily, and I pulled on my fingerless gloves.

This had been a stupid idea. My parents were going to be furious. Addie would know something was up. I’d risked everything, again, and all because I’d been hurt Simon had chosen Bree over me. Again.

I reached for my backpack as headlights came around the corner. An instant later Simon pulled into the driveway and climbed out of the Jeep, white plastic grocery bags in hand.

“Hey,” he said, catching sight of me.

“I’m not stalking you.”

“Glad to hear it. Aren’t you freezing?”

“I’ll live,” I said, hauling myself upright, legs stiff with cold.

“Give me five minutes.”

“You want help?”

He shook his head. “Five minutes. Don’t leave.”

I nodded, and he let himself inside. A low woof caught my attention: Iggy, sitting on the driver’s seat, nose pressed against the glass. “Hey, puppy. Did you go for a ride?”

The grocery store, I told myself. Not a date, not a party. Whatever his Original was doing, this Simon had gone to the grocery store, and the knowledge made me absurdly happy.

Iggy whined and bumped his nose against the window. “You want out? I know the feeling.”

I opened the door and held his collar while I snapped the leash on. A moment later Iggy was frolicking on the lawn, running in circles until the leash was wrapped snugly around my legs.

“This was not the plan,” I scolded.

“He wants to make sure you stick around,” Simon said, jogging down the steps. “Can’t say I blame him.”

He rested his hands on my shoulders. I held my breath, anticipating a kiss, but the next thing I knew, he was spinning me away from him, untangling the leash from my legs. The world blurred around me, and when he finally stopped, I stood dizzily in front of him, watching the sky dip and sway. The only steady things were his fingers, curving around my arms. “Iggy needs a walk. Keep us company?”

“Gladly,” I said, and we set off, hands bumping against each other so often I knew it wasn’t an accident.

We passed the cemetery, and I shivered. When Mrs. Lane died in the Key World, this version of her would begin to unravel. This Simon—and every other Simon in the universe—would lose her. There was no stopping it.

It didn’t seem possible that the multiverse could contain so much grief, no matter how infinite the branches were. Endless worlds and endless sadness, and I wondered if there could ever be enough joy to balance it out.

There was a small park a few blocks away. Two swings, a sorry-looking slide, and a few benches. Simon unsnapped the leash and took a glow-in-the-dark ball out of his pocket.

“You want the first throw?”

“Sure.” I tossed it gingerly. Iggy chased it down and ran back, reproof clear in his eyes.

I threw it again, much farther, and Simon tugged me onto the bench. “I’ve been missing you.”

Part of me thrilled to hear the words, but part of me twinged a warning. He shouldn’t miss me. He shouldn’t remember me. Every time I came here, I reinforced the connection between his threads and mine. And yet the frequency was stable. I couldn’t sense any breaks. It was harmless fun.

Iggy raced over, and Simon’s throw sailed to the other side of the park. He touched his lips to mine, slow and lingering and insistent. “Why’d you come by?”

“I wanted to.” I tipped my head back to look at the stars, the Pleiades clustered together, the familiar lines of Orion’s belt and shield. Fixed points. As close to unchangeable as things got, for a Walker.

The truth was a fixed point too. And the truth was the real Simon was out with Bree right now. Rather than accept it, I’d come here. Guilt snuck under my coat with fingers more icy than the wind. “That’s all. I wanted to be with you.”

“Then be with me,” he said, and kissed me again, pulling me in to him, his hands chasing away the chill. His words were soft and urgent, like the heat building inside me. “My mom’s asleep by now. Nobody will bother us. Come back and be with me, Del.”

I’d crossed a million lines every time I’d come here. But sleeping with Simon was a line I’d kept well away from. Even so, protests, denials, common sense . . . They trailed away to nothing, and what remained was the feeling of Simon’s mouth on my skin, the syncopation of our breathing, and recklessness, coursing through my veins like a drug.

“Come home with me. We can take it slow.” He stood and held out his hand.

For once, slow sounded good. I twined my fingers with his.

“Iggy,” he called. There was a distant woof, but no dog in sight. “C’mere, boy!”

Yet another constant: Iggy’s need for obedience school. Simon whistled, a short, simple melody. Instantly familiar.

“What is that song?”

“Iggy’s whistle?” He brushed his lips over my knuckles. “I made it up when he was a puppy.”

It was the same tune Simon had suggested for our composition today. “Do it again.”

He raised his eyebrows but obliged, the scattering of notes merry and alarming.

“Where did you hear it?” My voice sounded too sharp. Iggy raced over, goofy and delighted. I rubbed his silky ears, taking comfort in the steadiness of his frequency.

“I told you, I made it up.”

“Not the last two measures.” I’d written them myself this afternoon. There’s no way he would have known them before today. “That’s new.”

He whistled again, softly, strands of my hair stirring with his breath. “I guess so. You’re not the only one who’s good at music. Wait. You are good at music, right?”

“I’m freaking brilliant,” I muttered. Had I told him that? “Tell me your whole schedule.”

He rattled off the list, clearly humoring me. He had zero music electives. Dimly a part of my mind noted I knew even less about this Simon than my own.

“Did you ever take music theory?”

“Nah. Art history. What’s wrong?”

“Touch me,” I ordered.

He grinned and cupped my cheek in his hand, rubbing his thumb over my lips. I pushed aside the want rushing over me and listened as hard as I could.

His frequency was stronger every time we touched, but stable. Simon tilted my face to his. “You’re worrying me.”

“I can’t do this,” I said. “Not tonight.”

“Did I miss something?” His eyes were intent on mine, like he was hoping to see the answers I wouldn’t give him. “Five minutes ago you were ready to come home with me, and now you’re bailing for no reason.”

“I want to. I just . . . can’t. Please believe me.”

“I believe you’re awesome at leaving.” He dropped my hand and stood. “You want me; you don’t want me. You show up out of the blue and you disappear for days. Now you’re freaking out about how I call my dog? You don’t want to sleep with me, fine. All you have to do is say so. Instead, you take off.”

He started walking, shoulders stiff, Iggy at his side. “See you around, Del.”

“Simon, wait!”

He didn’t break stride, and I hurried to keep up with him. “It’s not the song. It reminded me of something I need to check on at home. If I don’t take care of this now, they’ll figure out what I’ve been doing. It’ll be the end of us.”

The end of him, I meant.

If Monty was right, Simon and I were connected, our threads twining together across the Echoes. But what if my visits here had strengthened the connection too much? What if I’d somehow triggered an inversion? My father would cleave this Echo himself. This Simon would unravel.

Real or not, I wouldn’t do that to him again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

WE HAVE A problem,” said Eliot at lunch the next day. He dropped into the chair next to me with a scowl.

“Another one?” I smeared peanut butter onto my apple slice and crunched down ferociously. After I’d left Simon, I’d retraced my steps through Doughnut World, Eliot’s map in hand. There’d been no hint of inversions or new breaks. Doughnut Simon was safe, but instead of relief, I felt like disaster was gathering in the shadows.

“More than one, technically. I’ve been analyzing the other Echoes in the branch system Park World belonged to. I compared readings taken prior to the date you cleaved to ones taken after. A lot of them—not all, but most—are destabilizing at an accelerated rate.”

“They’re going bad? Isn’t that good? Good for me, I mean.” If the whole branch was unstable, it proved my case—at the cost of the people in those Echoes.

He picked at the soggy french fries on his tray. “The acceleration didn’t kick in until after your cleaving.”

I choked on a bit of apple, and he pounded me on the back. “I caused it?”

He left his hand on my shoulder. “It’s possible the problems were there all along, and Park World was the first time we noticed it. But the timing doesn’t help your case any. I’m sorry, Del.”

He looked miserable, like he blamed himself, when all he’d done was try to help.

“Don’t apologize. I’m the one who screwed up.”

Across the cafeteria Original Simon was eating lunch with the rest of the basketball team, goofing around, laughing and shoving at his friends while he attacked a piece of pizza. Bree was nowhere to be seen. His eyes met mine, and he went still, no doubt regretting he’d ever confided in me. Park World wasn’t the only thing I’d ruined.

I’d Walked to a ton of worlds with Addie and Monty since my sentencing. If they all showed the same increase in breaks and inversions, I’d know the problem was me—or Simon.

“Could you run another analysis?” I asked. “Not around Park World. But the branches I’ve visited since then?”

“Sure, if you can get me a copy of Addie’s reports. We’ll figure it out,” Eliot promised.

I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Thanks, by the way. I feel like I never get to see you anymore. It sucks.”

“It does. Addie’s pushing you pretty hard, huh?”

“Addie and Lattimer both.” The bell rang, sending people scurrying off to class. Except for Simon. To my astonishment, he began making his way across the cafeteria toward us.

“Hold on,” Eliot said, oblivious to Simon’s approach. “Why is the Consort—”

“Can I talk to you?” Simon asked. “Alone?”

“We have class,” I said as Eliot’s arm tightened around me.

“I’ll walk you.”

Eliot’s expression darkened, but he didn’t say anything as I stood.

Hand on my elbow, Simon guided me out of the cafeteria.

“How was your date?” I asked, pulling away.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Fine, I guess.”

“You two make an adorable couple.” I masked my anger with a saccharine smile. How was it his Echoes felt a connection with me, and this Simon—the real one—barely knew I existed? Could be on a date with Bree at the same time he was kissing me in another world?

“It was one date. Probably the only one.”

I glanced up. “Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. It felt . . . off.” He dragged a hand through his hair, a gesture of sheer frustration. “Happy?”

I was, but I shouldn’t be. “Why should I care? And why are you pissed at me about it?”

He hesitated. “I’m not. It was a weird night, that’s all. But I wanted to apologize about bailing.”

I started toward the music wing, careful not to look at him. “No big deal.”

He caught up to me in seconds. “You really have that down pat, don’t you? The indifferent act.”

“It’s not an act.”

“Sure it is. You’re pissed, but you don’t want me to know it. I can see right through you.”

My voice shook. “This is why you wanted to talk?”

“I wanted to apologize. And say thanks.” I stopped short as he continued more quietly. “For listening. I don’t talk about my family much.”

“You’re welcome.”

He flicked one of my dangling earrings. “Apology accepted?”

Behind him, a poster announcing callbacks for the winter play, green block print on yellow posterboard, flickered. The flash of white and blue could only be an inversion.

“Sure,” I said distractedly. Echo-to-Echo inversions were a problem. Echo-to–Key World inversions were a disaster. I should report it, but if I did, the school would be swarming with Walkers. They’d scrutinize everyone in the building. Until I knew for sure that the connection between this Simon and his Echoes was nothing to worry about, I needed to hold them off.

I needed to fix the inversion.

I hefted my backpack. “See you later.”

“Where are you going?” He blocked me, curling one arm around my waist. Even through the worn flannel of my shirt, the touch warmed my skin.

“Locker,” I said, forcing myself to focus. “Tell Powell I’ll be late?”

“As usual.” He moved closer, and the urge to change course, to let him pull me in, was nearly overpowering. “Are we good, Del?”

I breathed in the scent of soap and clean, soft cotton and smiled, despite everything. “Very.”

I waited until the last bell had rung and the halls had emptied, then headed back to the inversion. The poster was cycling more rapidly, the flashing colors making me queasy as I reached inside. Finally, I located the odd frequency and pushed my way through.

The entire building looked worn around the edges—dingy paint, chipped tiles—and the air smelled like boiled-over chicken soup. There was no sign of Simon, which was a relief. But the longer I listened to the frequency, a ragged blast of noise, the more familiar it sounded.

I searched my memory, calling up the pitches of every world we’d visited in the last few weeks. Finally one clicked. Student Council Simon. The one Addie had tuned.

I looked more closely at the flickering poster—fancy white script announced the winter ball, the blue paper dotted with paper snowflakes. Underneath, the words “For tickets, see Simon Lane or Bree Carlson” blinked erratically.

The tuning hadn’t held. I’d done too much damage to that Echo, and now the problem was coming back, affecting anything associated with Simon and his break. How long before the Consort noticed?

I thought back to Addie’s lesson, mimicking the way her fingers had curled and plucked at the air until she could find the bad strings. They were easier to find this time, a whole cluster of erratic, unpleasant threads. My movements were small and cautious, tempered by fear. What if I made it worse? What if I cleaved this place? What if someone found out?

But there was nothing to do now except try. Nimble fingers, open mind, hum a tune both deft and kind. As I worked, my movements grew more sure, my voice stronger. Finally, I felt the correct frequency take hold, the world stabilizing around me. I let go of the threads by degrees, my fingers stiff.

The poster hung on the wall, and the only thing wobbly about it was the handwriting. I’d done it. I’d stabilized an inversion, completely on my own.

An inversion connected to Simon.

I stopped by the office, dropping off a star while I swiped a hall pass, and took a deep breath before returning to the Key World. The poster had reverted to normal, but it had taken more time than I expected. I slid into my seat nearly twenty minutes late. Ms. Powell shook her head and gave me the Disappointed Look. Happily, I’d developed an immunity to the Disappointed Look sometime around the third grade.

“Pass, Del?”

I handed over the one I’d swiped in the Echo. It was identical to ours, right down to the official time stamp. Powell ran her fingers over the surface and inspected it—and then me—closely. I lifted my chin. The pass was foolproof. The only thing wrong was its pitch.

“Glad you could join us,” she said at last, and went back to her lecture on fugues.

“Where did you go?” murmured Eliot.

“Inversion in the commons,” I whispered. “It’s fixed now.”

He dropped his pencil midspin, whispering, “Do you know how dangerous that is? You should have brought me with you!”

“No way. If I get caught, I’m not taking you down with me.”

We listened to the rest of the lecture in silence. “Your composition projects are due the week after Thanksgiving, so be sure you’re making good progress,” Powell concluded.

Simon turned to me. “Want to meet tomorrow?”

“Don’t you have practice? And games?”

He considered this. “No game on Thursday. I’ll come by after practice.”

Bree shifted, clearly listening in.

“Can’t wait,” I said, as the bell rang.

I thought we’d continue the conversation, but Bree managed to intercept him—and he didn’t try to avoid her. Meanwhile, Eliot was strangely quiet as he walked me to lit.

“What’s wrong?” When he didn’t answer, I hip-checked him. “Spill. More problems?”

“Why did you fix that inversion? You should have notified the Consort instead of going it alone.”

“This was faster.”

“Bullshit. Key World inversions are a huge deal. Even you know that. You want to be responsible for another Roanoke? You aren’t in enough trouble?”

The disappearance of the Roanoke settlement had mystified historians for more than four hundred years. An entire town had vanished into thin air, leaving behind an inexplicably empty settlement. Nobody knew what happened.

Except for the Walkers. The lost colony of Roanoke hadn’t vanished. It had inverted, but the Consort of the 1800s—spread thin in a vast country with no efficient means of communication—hadn’t noticed until it was too late. What had begun as a small inversion had grown to take over the entire island, swapping places with an Echo where Europeans had never found North America, and the area was populated by the Croatan tribe. When the inversion had finally taken root, the Originals had been swept away, leaving behind a few pieces of their settlement—fence posts, a ring, the fort—that had slipped through the strings.

Not our proudest moment. Even today, Walkers patrolled the area, shoring up the weakness left behind, trying to prevent another inversion of that magnitude.

“You’re overreacting,” I said. “It was tiny. I fixed it. Addie showed me how the other day.”

“Well, gee. If Addie showed you one time, I’m sure you’re totally qualified. Nothing to worry about.”

I swallowed. This was Eliot. I could trust him. “Remember how I tried to isolate a break at that basketball game, and Addie had to tune it?”

“Hard to forget,” he said.

“The inversion came from that Echo.”

His face went blank, and I knew he was calculating odds in his head. “That’s not a coincidence.”

“I think it was my fault. I couldn’t let the Consort find out, or they’d blame me.” And cleave the world, with Simon in it.

He blew out a breath. “You can’t do that again. No more Walking on your own, Del. Between inversions and the increased breaks . . . it’s too dangerous.”

“That’s why I have your map, boy genius. I’ll be fine.”

“No. From here on out, I’m going with,” he said, gripping the straps of his backpack.

I thought about the things that Eliot did not like: Breaking rules. Walking to unmapped branches. Simon Lane. All of which he’d see in abundance if he came with me. “You don’t have to. If they catch us . . .”

“I’d be in the same situation as you,” he finished with a half smile. “I can think of worse fates.”

I sighed. “This is very unlike you.”

“Or maybe it isn’t, and you never noticed.”

The thought settled uncomfortably in the pit of my stomach. For the first time in ages I studied him. He wasn’t bad-looking, actually. He had the narrow, lean build of a swimmer, but you could hardly tell under the baggy cargo pants and too-big oxford he wore unbuttoned over a T-shirt. The tight curls of his hair were starting to poke out in odd directions, in need of a trim. Behind the thick black-framed glasses, his eyes were warm, and his smile was wide and sweet, a dimple peeking out on one side. If he put the slightest effort into it, he could have girls falling all over him.

It was a strange notion: Eliot as heartthrob. He didn’t realize it. He probably wouldn’t do anything about it even if he did.

“You’re impossible,” I said, untwisting his collar. “Do you even look in the mirror before you leave the house?”

He covered my hand with his. “Del. No more Walking without me. Promise.”

I smoothed his shirt and drew my hand away. Then I nodded, and he smiled. “I’m not giving up on Park World, either. You’ll get reinstated, and we’ll live happily ever after.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. When I looked away, Simon was watching us across the hallway, eyebrows raised.

CHAPTER THIRTY

BY THE TIME Simon arrived at my house to work on our project Thursday night, I was worn-out and cranky from the week’s sessions with Addie. I’d avoided his Echoes, afraid of triggering a break or an inversion or Addie’s suspicions. But the sight of his tall frame hunched over the piano made me forget about the anxiety that had driven me over the last few days.

“You really are terrible.” I laughed, resting the violin on my knee.

“Told you. We should have done something with drums.”

“And I told you, you can’t do counterpoint with percussion. Unless you’ve decided to take up the marimba.”

“Um, no. Strictly a drum-set kind of guy.”

“Why did you stop playing?”

“One of the high school coaches saw me play basketball in seventh grade. Told me if I got serious, I could probably win a scholarship. It wasn’t like we had a lot of money lying around, so I got serious, and the other stuff fell away. Between practice and conditioning and camps and tournaments . . . I had to make a choice.”

The range of his Echoes made more sense. Each one had followed a path he’d turned away from. Each one had taken up a life he’d left behind. He’d followed his path with the same single-mindedness I had. “Do you miss it?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Sometimes. I wasn’t terrible.”

He would have been a good drummer. He had an innate understanding of rhythm. It was melody that tripped him up. Hands that were agile and precise on the basketball court fumbled constantly on the keys, mangling signatures and chords. He didn’t need the metronome—his timing was perfect—but his playing was a disaster.

“Congratulations,” I said. “You are officially the worst piano player I’ve ever heard.”

“I could whistle.” He pursed his lips, making a noise like a deeply angry seagull.

“What was that?”

“Our song.” He looked hurt. “You couldn’t tell?”

“We’ll figure something out,” I said. His Echo had whistled well enough to call Iggy the other night, but he’d had years of practice.

“I don’t understand why we have to play it. It’s music theory, right? That’s the opposite of performance. This is not what I signed on for, you know. Before Powell took over, this class was an easy A. It’s like a bait and switch.”

“You’re mad because you’re used to getting what you want. Everything comes easy to you, doesn’t it?”

“Not everything,” he grumbled. “You know what else isn’t fair?”

Idly I played a few notes. “That you’re partnered with a virtuoso? I admit, it’s very yin-yang of Powell.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of how you keep cutting class. Nobody ever busts you.”

My fingering slipped. “What do you mean?”

“I know you’re at school. I see you in music, which makes sense, because it’s the only class you pay attention in. But you’ve managed to sneak out of history how many times in the last week?”

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed. Addie and my father were both out, and Monty was napping, but my mom was only down the hallway, locked in her office. Despite the soundproof door, I was afraid her motherly instincts would kick in, and she’d overhear us.

He whispered, “Yesterday, I saw you take off before second period. You and Lee didn’t get back until the end of lunch.”

“Eliot,” I said. “You know his name. Use it.”

“Sorry. You and Eliot have been ditching all week. What’s your secret?”

“No secret,” I said, but his skeptical look told me he wasn’t buying it. We’d decided to check the other branches I’d worked on, taking readings for Eliot to analyze. “It’s different for you. You’re king of the mountain. People are always watching. But they don’t look twice when I walk in. Easy to slip out again when no one notices you.”

“I notice you,” he protested.

Wanting to believe something doesn’t make it true, the same way wanting someone doesn’t make them yours.

“Really? Did you know my name before this project? I’ve known you since grade school. We’ve had classes together for three years in a row, but you had no idea who I was until Powell paired us up.”

“Were you waiting for a formal introduction?” he said irritably. “It’s not like you make it easy. You walk in every day with a scowl on your face, you only talk to Eliot, and half the time, you’re cutting class. You’re busting your ass to convince everyone you don’t give a damn. Want to know what I think?”

I flushed. “No.”

“I think you do care, and it scares you. So you try to scare them off instead.”

“This is a music assignment, not a psych class. We’re done.” Had I wanted him to notice me? I was an idiot. I laid my violin in its case and snapped the latches shut. The skin between my thumb and index finger caught in the brass fitting, and I swore.

“You’re scared,” he repeated. “I get it.”

“You really don’t,” I said, stung by the accusation and unsettled by the truth behind it. I rubbed at the welt on my thumb, blinking rapidly.

Walkers were encouraged to stay as separate from Originals as possible. We dedicated our lives to something they couldn’t comprehend. And if I couldn’t be a part of the Originals’ world, if I was meant for something else, it was easier to tell myself I never wanted it in the first place.

I’d believed it too, until Simon came along.

“Let me see your hand,” he said, crossing the room. The air felt charged, vibrating with possibility. It happened sometimes, right before a pivot formed, as if the fabric of the world recognized what was coming.

Must be nice.

“You’re as bad as I am,” I said.

He turned my hand palm up, examining where the latch had caught my skin. “People like me, if you haven’t noticed. No offense.”

“People adore you. Talk about busting your ass—you’re on a mission to charm every person who comes within a five-foot radius. You keep back anything that might make them pity you. That might scare them away.” I shook my head. “Isn’t it exhausting?”

“Not as exhausting as being relentlessly cranky.” He was edging toward cranky now, judging from his grip on my hand.

“It’s more than wanting to be popular, isn’t it? You need everybody to think you’re great, because if they didn’t . . . what? What might happen?”

He stared at me, as unhappy as his Doughnut-World Echo the other night. I believe you’re awesome at leaving. The answer slipped out before I could stop it. “You think they’ll leave.”

“People leave,” he said, a sudden bleakness in his expression. “They leave all the time.”

“And you’re knocking yourself out so they’ll stay.”

A muscle in his jaw jumped. “You don’t know that.”

“I’ve watched you for three years,” I said. “I’m pretty confident.”

“Three years?” He raised his eyebrows. “Long time to watch someone.”

“I wasn’t . . .”

“Watching me?”

Damn it. My cheeks went hot as he lifted my hand to his mouth. My voice was so soft I could barely hear myself say, “Let go.”

“I don’t think so.” The light in his eyes, intent and amused, made me edgy.

“Let me go.”

“Or what? You don’t scare me, Delancey Sullivan.” He pressed a kiss squarely in the center of my palm. A shock ran through me, every single nerve in my body crackling to life. “Better?”

Words fled. Reason fled. I nodded, and he bent his head down, his mouth inches from mine.

The back door slammed.

“Del! Check it out!” Eliot called, his words carrying down the hall. He stopped short when he spotted Simon. “What’s he doing here?”

“Wondering why Del doesn’t have better locks,” Simon muttered, dropping my hand. Then, more loudly, “Powell’s project.”

“Great,” Eliot said, making it very clear he considered this anything but. “I have something you should see.”

I knew better than to ask if it could wait. Already Simon was pulling on his coat.

“No problem,” he said. “I’ve got to get home anyway.”

I followed him out to the hallway. “Simon . . .”

“Tomorrow,” he said. But there was promise in it, and enough heat to make my knees wobble, and I held on to the doorframe as he jogged down the front steps to a red Jeep across the street.

He was going to kiss me. I’d felt the pivot form in the instant before his lips brushed my palm, and it was still there, tantalizingly close. I could cross over and kiss him back.

I wasn’t even remotely tempted. Walking to that Echo and kissing Simon would be no different from any of the other times I’d interacted with his Echoes. And suddenly it didn’t feel like enough. I wanted this one. The real one.

The knowledge made my knees buckle again. I’d told myself making out with his Echo and befriending his Original was enough. Now I had the chance for more. I had a chance at everything.

Until Eliot scared him off.

“Knocking,” I said, stomping back in. “Have you heard of it?”

“Self-control,” he shot back. “Have you?”

He looked angry. Really angry—the cords in his neck standing out, his hand clutching a sheaf of papers so tightly they crumpled. It wasn’t like him. Eliot was the good-natured, even-tempered one, and I’d managed to royally piss him off twice in one month. I thought back to our previous fight, the strange, icy tension between us, and my stomach clenched. I didn’t want that again, so I dragged in a breath, let it out, and carefully closed the piano lid.

“I’m using it right now,” I said, keeping my voice even instead of snarky. “What’s wrong?”

“We need to talk.”

I couldn’t stay in the music room and talk with Eliot—not with the pivot of Simon’s almost-kiss hovering like a ghost. “Can we talk and eat? I’m hungry.”

Eliot followed behind, papers in his hand. I grabbed a pear from a green ceramic bowl and bit in.

“Talk,” I said through a mouthful of fruit. There was no reason for me to feel guilty. The most Eliot would have seen was the two of us standing together. Close together. Simon’s hand cradling mine, our mouths inches apart.

Eliot had seen plenty.

“You promised you wouldn’t go out on your own,” he said, his words like knives. “You’ve been cleaving worlds.”

It was the last thing I expected him to accuse me of. “You’re insane. I’ll be happy if I never cleave another world again.”

“I don’t believe you. Here’s the branch we took readings from Tuesday.” He slapped a paper map on the counter. The primary Echo was a thick black line, with offshoots crowding around it like suckers on a vine. The sight made me claustrophobic.

“So? We’d seen it was throwing off a lot of Echoes. What’s the problem?”

“I ran another analysis today.” He slid a second paper in front of me. The thick black line remained, but more than half the offshoots were missing. The ones left were nearly twice as wide as before, but they were bare, no other worlds springing from them like unfurling leaves. “The Echoes are gone. They must have been cleaved.”

“Not by me,” I said, a tremor in my voice at the idea of someone unraveling so many worlds.

“Then who? Those branches were stable,” he said. “The Consort wouldn’t waste time cleaving them. But they’re gone, and none of them showed traces of other Walkers having visited. The Consort’s going to find this, sooner or later, and they’re going to blame us. We’re both going to get kicked out.”

“I didn’t do anything!”

He threw the papers at me. “Evidence doesn’t lie, Del. But you do.”

My throat closed, the words a ragged whisper. “Not this time.”

He turned away.

“Look at it,” I said, grabbing the paper. “Really look. If I’d cleaved those branches, the ones left behind would look the same. But these are stronger.” I raced around the table and held the paper out to him, my hands shaking. “I’m not brilliant like you, but I know cleavings. I’ve lived through one. That world was gone seconds after we escaped. There was nothing left. You said Park World destabilized the branches around it, but these Echoes are stronger.”

“As if they absorbed the weaker ones,” he said, taking the paper from me.

And then I understood. “They’re Baroque events. Like the basketball game and the music room. The maps are showing a bunch of Baroque events.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But there are too many for them to occur naturally. Something’s triggering them.”

I voiced the worry that had been gnawing at me for days. “Me?”

“You’ve been Walking for years, Del. There’s got to be another variable. Something new.” He nudged his glasses up and studied me. “Or someone. Simon Lane was at the center of both those Baroque events. I told you there was something off about him. You know who has that kind of impact on the Key World? Abraham Lincoln. Hitler. Bill Gates. Not some dumb jock kid from the suburbs.”

“He’s not dumb,” I protested, and Eliot threw up his hands in frustration.

“We have to tell Addie.”

“Not yet.” The Consort was looking for a problem. I didn’t want them to decide it was Simon. “Can’t you check if there’s something wrong with his frequency? I don’t want to tell anyone until we have proof.”

“Why does it matter if we have proof? Why does he matter, Del?”

Before I could answer, the back door banged open and two Walkers carried my unconscious father inside.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Overexposure to off-key pitches may result in frequency poisoning. While mild cases cause headaches or disorientation, prolonged or repeated exposure will result in hearing loss, cognitive impairment, and reduced stamina. The most extreme cases can be fatal if not treated immediately.

—Chapter Four, “Physiology,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

THE PAPERS FELL from my hands like wounded birds. “Daddy?”

“Get him to the couch,” grunted the man to his left. “And find your mother.”

They half dragged, half carried him into the family room. A stream of gibberish poured from his mouth.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Frequency poisoning,” said one of the men. Clark, I remembered dimly. My dad’s Second Chair. They eased him down on the couch, the other guy checking my dad’s pulse. Clark staggered, bracing a hand on the bookshelf for balance. “We got separated, and the frequency destabilized too fast. We were lucky to get him out.”

“Magnet maple twisting fence. Lilac glissando, turning box,” my dad cried out, thrashing wildly. I rushed to help him. Eliot ran to the office and pounded on the door.

“Never staircase rumpling the blue dog.” Dad’s eyes darted around the room, showing too much white around the irises, and he struggled to sit up.

“Daddy, can you hear me? It’s Del. Lie down.” I’d seen mild cases before, when my dad came home disoriented and absent-minded. This was the kind of massive dose Monty had endured, over and over, before the Consort called us home.

“Foster?” My mom shoved Clark and the Third Chair aside. “Foster, I’m here.”

She bent over my father, making soothing noises, brushing his hair back with trembling hands.

“What’s the commotion?” Monty asked, peering around the corner. He spotted my dad, and his face turned grim. “Del, get the tuning fork from the office. And brew a pot of strong tea, plenty sweet.”

“Petals and thorns,” Dad said. “Mockingbird falling through stars.”

“Did you see Rose?” Monty brushed past me. “Where?”

“Dad, it’s nothing!” my mom snapped. “They’re random words.”

“You don’t know what he saw!”

“Neither do you,” she said fiercely. “Del, tuning fork. Now!”

Eliot gave me a gentle push. “I’ll make the tea.”

I stumbled into the office. Neat rows of tracking instruments and mapmaking tools lined the shelves. The main desk was a broad expanse of maple, littered with papers and printouts. Her monitor showed a map like an air traffic controller’s, all circles and movement and blinking lights. Above it was a shelf, empty except for a leather box the size of a pencil case. I grabbed it and ran back to the living room.

I held the case out to Monty. “Will it cure him?”

“It will help. Why haven’t they taught you how to treat frequency poisoning?”

“They have. Just not for cases this bad.”

Mom held out her hand. “I’ll do it.”

“She needs to learn, Winnie. You were younger than she was, the first time.”

She bit her lip and nodded. “Go ahead, Del. Strike hard, and hold it near his head. Keep doing it until I tell you to stop.”

I set the box down on the end table and opened it. Nestled into the navy velvet were a rubber block the size of a hockey puck and a steel tuning fork, the tines shaped like a U, the ends squared off. I gripped the handle so hard it cut into my palm, and smacked the block. A sweet, familiar sound pealed through the room.

We fell silent. It was the exact frequency of the Key World, instantly recognizable. My dad sighed.

“Again,” my mom ordered as the note faded away, and I repeated the motion. With each strike, my dad struggled less. When he finally whispered her name, Mom motioned for me to stop.

“Tea’s ready,” said Eliot.

Nobody knew why you gave sugar to someone with frequency poisoning, but tea was the standard treatment. Strong, sweet black tea. I’d never thought about it before, but Monty’s insatiable sweet tooth suddenly made sense: He’d gotten hooked, after so many years of Walking.

My mom held the mug steady as my dad took a tiny sip. In the kitchen Clark and the other Walker spoke in low tones, faces drawn. Neither of them looked particularly good, and I poured them each a cup of tea, then set more water on to boil.

“Here,” I said. “You were out a long time too.”

They drank deeply, nodding their thanks.

“Foster?” Mom said, when my dad had finished the cup. “How are you feeling?”

He blinked, and his voice was thick and muzzy. “Candlewax linen, burning away.” He paused, breathed deeply, and spoke again, the words slow and rusty as an old hinge. “I’ll live.”

“Did you see Rose?” Monty demanded, but my mom hushed him.

Dad closed his eyes, his head falling back on the pillow. “More tea,” my mom said, and I hurried to bring it over.

“Del, take over. Give him a little at a time,” Mom said, eyeing the pair of Walkers at our kitchen table. She touched her lips to his forehead and whispered something, then crossed the room to speak with Clark.

I sat on the very edge of the couch. “Daddy, drink more.”

He mumbled something incomprehensible, and I looked over at Eliot. “How long will he be like this?”

“It depends on how long he was exposed,” he said. “Most cases take a few days to recover, at least.”

In the kitchen, my mom said sharply, “. . . gone that long! I was very clear!”

“It was worse than we expected. If we’d known—” Clark said.

“Are you saying this is my fault?” Her voice took on a dangerous note, and Monty, Eliot, and I turned our heads in unison.

“Let’s finish this in my office,” she said. “Del, get me if his condition changes.”

There was no way to hear the rest of the conversation, and none of us had much to say. I gave my father more tea, and he gradually came back to himself.

“Winnie?” he asked.

Did he think I was her, the way Monty sometimes mistook my mom for my grandmother? “She’s in her office. She’s debriefing Clark and the other guy.”

“Franklin.”

I nodded. His knowing their names was a good sign. “Do you want me to get Mom?”

He grimaced. “Cool down.”

“It’ll be quite a while before she cools down,” said Monty, handing my dad a square of chocolate.

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“Everything,” he said.

“But—”

Eliot closed his hand over my shoulder. “Later. Let him rest.”

“Did you see Rose?” Monty asked again.

Dad’s eyes drifted shut as he mumbled, “Too far gone.”

I didn’t know if he was referring to my grandmother or himself.

“You’re back now,” I whispered as he fell asleep.

“This is why you can’t Walk alone,” Eliot said as we sat on the porch swing that night. “Now do you believe me?”

I curled up, head against his chest. “I’ve never seen my dad so sick.”

“The doctor said he’d recover. It’ll take time, that’s all.”

After Clark and Franklin had left, my mom had summoned a Walker doctor, who’d said what we both expected and feared. My dad could Walk, once he’d recovered. But his resistance was lower. He’d have to be more careful, limit his exposure.

Frequency poisoning built up slowly. Usually, the damage didn’t present itself until Walkers were Monty’s age, the effects cumulative. But a massive dose, like the one my dad had received today, was harder to come back from. He’d lost years of future Walks in one afternoon.

“He knows the risks. So do you.”

“I know. I just thought . . .”

“That you were immune?” He wasn’t mocking me. If anything, his voice was careful and kind, our fight forgotten.

It sounded ridiculous, when he put it like that. No Walker was immune to bad frequencies, but my tolerance had always been higher than anyone in our class, higher than even Addie. More like my dad, or Monty, both of whom were known for their ability to withstand dissonance.

Except their abilities had failed them. Monty had lost my grandmother and his mind. My dad was upstairs in bed, barely coherent, lucky to be alive. What if mine failed too? What if my time with Echo Simon was actually destroying me—and my future?

I didn’t want to ask Eliot. The topic of Simon was too raw between us. Instead I said, “He’s my dad. I thought he could do anything. It’s weird to see that he can’t.”

“The Echo acted like Park World,” Eliot said after a brief hesitation. “Worse than predicted, accelerated destabilization. The only difference is that they were already planning on cleaving it.”

“You think Park World is part of the anomaly they’re looking for?”

“Could be. I’ll do some more digging. If we can prove the anomaly affected Park World, the Consort would have to overturn your suspension.”

Which was great, but it didn’t help my dad. Addie rapped on the kitchen window and beckoned me inside.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked.

“It’s pretty late. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I hugged him tightly, felt his lips brush my crown. “I’m glad you were here.”

“Me too.”

I stayed outside after he left, listening to the creak of the swing and the wind rustling in the trees. The air had that late-fall, damp-leaf smell, spicy and earthy and faintly musty, like something locked away for a long time.

My mom never would have sent my father into danger without preparing him. Even if an Echo destabilized unexpectedly, my dad and his team should have known to get out.

The easiest explanation was that my mom had made a mistake in her calculations. But that didn’t fit. My mother, like Addie, didn’t make mistakes. And it didn’t explain how my dad had misjudged the frequency. Eliot was right: The anomaly was the only explanation.

The minute I’d stepped into Park World, I’d known the frequency was worse than she’d told us. The fabric had cleaved so easily, so quickly—like frayed rope. Eliot had insisted that there’d been something wrong, and I’d been equally certain my mom was right.

Maybe they’d both been right. Maybe the branches were shifting faster than anyone realized. Inversions, Baroque events, Echoes that cleaved too fast—something was pulling worlds off balance, creating Echoes too strong and flawed to sustain themselves.

And Simon was caught in it.

Addie pushed open the screen door. “Are you coming in? I made cocoa.”

I stretched, trying to ease the tension in my muscles. “How’s Dad?”

“He’s resting. Mom’s with him. It’s the longest she’s been out of her office in weeks.”

I sat down at the island, poked at the glob of Marshmallow Fluff bobbing on the cocoa’s surface. “It’s worse than they told us.”

“I know.” Her mouth was a flat line, her eyes fever bright. “Monty’s not doing great, by the way. He’s convinced Dad saw Grandma out there. I had to lock his door from the outside.”

That didn’t mean he’d stay; it was Monty who’d taught me how to use pivots to sneak out in the first place. But Addie had enough to worry about.

“I’m tired of them cutting us out,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t care if it is classified. Dad could have died today.”

He hadn’t known me. For an instant my father had looked at me without recognition, and I knew we’d come closer to losing him than the doctor admitted. “You’re the one with the plans,” I said. “Tell me what to do.”

“We can’t go back to that Echo,” she said. “But we could find a similar frequency. It might give us an idea of what he was dealing with. Where was he today?”

“No idea. Mom and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms lately. But she’d have a record in her office.”

We both looked at the heavy oak door.

“It’s locked,” Addie pointed out. “If you ask her for the key, she’ll know we’re up to something.”

“I don’t need to ask.” I smiled, relief breaking over me. Finally, something concrete to do, instead of sitting around worrying, making tea and plans. “And I don’t need a key.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

HURRY UP,” ADDIE hissed.

“Stop crowding me. And quit whispering. She’ll think we’re up to something.”

“We are up to something.” Addie wrung her hands like a little old lady while I worked the lock picks.

“No wonder you never do anything wrong,” I said. “You suck at it.”

“And you have way too much practice,” she said, as the last pin clicked into place.

I turned the knob and the door swung open silently. “Ready?”

“She’s going to kill us if she catches us.”

“Then let’s not get caught.” I stepped inside the darkened room, Addie tripping over my heels.

Unlike Addie, I didn’t spend a lot of time in my mom’s office. I’d never noticed the snapshots propped on shelves and taped to the wall. Pictures of us on vacations, on Walks. Shots of Addie and me in matching outfits—which we’d stopped wearing, thankfully, by the time I turned four. My dad carrying me on his shoulders while we hiked the Grand Canyon. Monty’s birthday party, when I was a newborn in a pink terry-cloth sleeper. Our family’s history, and she kept it close at hand. The resentment that had been fueling me over the last few weeks ebbed slightly.

Addie put her finger to her lips and tiptoed across the room, sitting down at the desk with exaggerated care.

“It’s soundproof,” I said. “She’s not going to hear us.”

Addie ignored me, scrolling through windows on the computer. “It’s got to be here.”

I stooped to examine the haphazard pile of books on the floor. “Some of these records go back twenty years. They’re totally outdated.”

“Archivists keep baseline readings of an Echo forever. Helps with deep analysis.” She peered at the display, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “They’re total pack rats.”

Her tone was surprisingly affectionate, considering how much Addie hated clutter. “Know a lot of archivists? Anyone special?”

She shot me a dirty look.

I plopped down and paged through the nearest record book. “Two decades of Echoes,” I said. “Can you imagine how many pivots have formed since then? That’s a crazy amount of data to analyze, even for one branch. It would take years.”

“Not if you had a Consort computer,” Addie said. “Like the one Mom’s been using downtown. They must think the problem is in one of the older branches.”

I scanned several reports. “Monty was First Chair on a lot of these Walks. Maybe that’s why Lattimer is interested in him. He thinks Monty knows something about these branches that didn’t get recorded.”

“Monty can’t remember what day it is,” she said. “He’s not going to remember details from a bunch of Walks he took twenty years ago.”

“It’s new stuff he can’t keep track of. His long-term memory is fine—look at how upset he gets when Lattimer comes around.”

“He blames the Consort for Grandma disappearing,” she said dismissively. “He thinks they didn’t look hard enough, and seeing Lattimer again has brought it all back. He’s using our Walks to look for Grandma, you know. He insists on picking which Echoes we visit.”

I’d figured as much. “Do you remember her?”

Addie shook her head, strawberry blond waves rippling. “I was only four when we moved back. She smelled like lilacs, I think.”

“Do you think she meant to leave, or was it an accident?”

“I think she’s gone,” she said. “The why doesn’t matter. Monty’s damaged either way.”

It made me think of Simon, trying desperately to charm people into staying, because everyone who was supposed to love him had either left him or was going to.

She made a noise of surprise. “That’s weird. When the new teams came in, they were averaging six or seven cleavings a day. Now they’re down to one or two. Sometimes even less.”

“They’re making progress.”

“Not according to these maps.” She sifted through the papers next to the computer, comparing them to the display. “Okay, this makes more sense. The teams started out cleaving the most unstable Echoes, but they were fairly recent branches. Two or three years old at most. They’re moving backward now, cleaving bigger, older branches. Cleaving Echoes that complex takes more time.”

“Which increases your chance of frequency poisoning?”

“Exactly. I’m looking at the record of Dad’s Walk, and the Echo was twelve years old. According to Mom’s analysis, the cleaving should have taken four or five hours.”

“Dad’s team stayed a lot longer than they’d planned to.” I paused. “The instability is a sign of an infection, and it’s spreading—newer Echoes to older ones, smaller to bigger. That’s why they’ve brought in so many teams. They’re trying to stop the infection.”

“Monty was right,” Addie said darkly. “They’re going at it backward. They’re treating the symptoms. We need to find the source.”

We left the office as we’d found it, locking the door and creeping upstairs. Addie was taut as a bowstring and as likely to snap. I should have felt relieved. The Consort had discovered the anomaly before I’d cleaved Park World, before I’d started seeing Simon’s Echoes, before he’d triggered Baroque events. Whatever was wrong in the Echoes, it wasn’t my fault or Simon’s. Even so, I was worried. We were symptoms, and that’s what the Consort was hunting.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Rarely, an individual will choose not to participate in the calling of the Walkers. In deciding to leave our community, they forfeit the right to Walk, and in doing so, their freedom.

—Chapter Ten, “Ethics and Governance,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

HOW ARE YOU feeling?” I asked my dad the next afternoon. He was resting on the couch on orders from my mom, who’d put me in charge while she finished up work. I handed him another cup of tea.

He pushed it aside. “Ready to get off this couch.”

“Good luck with that. Mom’s on a rampage.”

Something between a grin and a grimace crossed his face.

“Are you better?” I asked.

He was quiet for a long time, and the fear opened up like a chasm at my feet. He had to be all right, because that’s what dads are supposed to do: Be all right. Make everything all right. Anything less was unacceptable.

“I’m better,” he said eventually. “It was . . . not a picnic.”

When I was a kid, we’d gone on plenty of picnics. Short jaunts to get Addie and me used to the sensation of Walking. As my parents had risen in the ranks, family outings had fallen by the wayside. Monty had been the one to step in and teach me the basics.

But I’d Walked with my dad enough to know he should never have contracted frequency poisoning. The anomaly wasn’t only damaging the multiverse, it was hurting people I cared about.

“You’re going back out, aren’t you?”

Again, a silence. I’d heard my parents fighting earlier that morning. Mom wanted him to retire, but Dad refused. “The Consort needs me. They need as many people as they can get.”

Monty spoke from inside the pantry. “They’re asking too much. As usual.”

Funny how Monty was too deaf to hear when I asked for help setting the table, but he could eavesdrop with no problem. He added, “We’re cannon fodder to them, nothing more.”

“Nobody’s forcing anyone to Walk,” said my dad. “It’s a choice, like everything else.”

“Until it isn’t,” Monty growled.

“I want to be a Walker.” I squeezed my dad’s hand, a gesture of solidarity.

“Bah. You want to Walk,” Monty replied.

I shrugged. “Same thing.”

He wandered over, bag of chips in hand. “It’s not the same. Walkers leave. Doesn’t mean they stop Walking.”

“Montrose,” my dad said, rumbling like a kettledrum.

“Leave?” I asked.

My dad patted my hand. “It’s incredibly rare for someone to renounce their place within the Walkers, Del. But . . . if someone chooses that path, they’re not permitted to Walk again. They’re monitored.”

“Is that what they call it these days, Foster?” Monty’s gnarled fingers gripped my arm, stronger than they looked. “What did you think Free Walkers were? An army of bogeymen? They’re the ones who escape.”

“Escape?” I was intrigued, despite myself. Free Walkers were like urban legends, or something out of a comic book, a group of anarchists and religious fanatics working to unseat the Consort. But they were a myth. Without the Consort, the Key World would fall, and the multiverse would unravel. Even anarchists weren’t that crazy. Nobody over the age of six believed Free Walkers existed.

Six-year-olds and Monty.

“Enough!” my dad barked. Then, more quietly, “The Free Walkers are a story, Del, like a fairy tale. People tell it to remind us why our work is so important. The Consort exists to guide the Walkers. The Walkers exist to protect the Key World. This is our calling, and even if it’s difficult—if there are costs—”

Monty snorted.

“If there are costs,” Dad repeated, “they’re necessary. For our own survival, for the Originals . . . for the multiverse. You’ve paid more than most, I know, Monty. But Winnie and I have raised our daughters to be aware of their responsibility. We’d appreciate if you didn’t try to undermine that. This is who we are.”

“But is it who Del wants to be?” He looked at me, eyes sharp despite the rheumy film. “Is it?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

But there was a piece of me that wondered if Monty was right. Was it possible to Walk, even without the Consort’s approval? After all their threats and punishments, was there another way?

A better way?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

ELIOT SHOWED UP Saturday night with a movie and a jumbo box of Lemonheads. “I figured you might not be up for going out to the movies.”

“Definitely.” I filled him in on the fight between Dad and Monty while I made popcorn.

He blinked. “Do you believe him?”

“About the Free Walkers? No. Who would want to destroy the Key World? It’s suicidal. I do wonder about Walkers who don’t work for the Consort. Would they really never Walk, just because the Consort said not to? I do it all the time.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said, and sampled the popcorn. “Needs more butter. I suppose there are things the Consort could do. Anklets, like the courts put on people who are under house arrest. If you set it to go off when the surrounding frequency changed, that might work. Or a device to alter your frequency, so you couldn’t get through a rift. Or—”

“You’re having too much fun with this,” I said, shoving the bowl at him. “Movie time.”

When we were settled on the couch, I picked up the DVD case. “Again? We’ve seen this one a million times.”

“You know I love a good space western.” He hit play. “I like it when the good guys win.”

“That’s because you’re such a good guy,” I said as the previews rolled. “Hey, how’s the project with Bree going?”

“Great,” he said, a smile in his voice.

“Seriously?” I twisted to face him. “Bree Carlson. It’s going great?”

“Sure, as long as I let her do whatever she wants. Not unlike working with you.”

I punched him in the arm and he laughed. “Kidding!”

“You’d better be.” I hesitated. “Have you had a chance to run Simon’s frequency?”

His laughter evaporated. “No. Strangely enough, I can be around the guy for five minutes without touching him, so I haven’t recorded a sample yet.”

“Somebody’s in a mood,” I said, and slumped down. “Forget I asked.”

“I’d love to.”

Halfway through the movie, someone knocked at the front door.

“Let Addie get it,” I said, curled up under a chenille throw. “I’m too comfy.”

“Too lazy,” Eliot said affectionately, but he didn’t move either.

I heard Addie at the door, the conversation obscured by the explosions on screen. A minute later the lights came on.

“Hey!”

“We have a visitor,” she said, and Councilman Lattimer strolled in.

“You’re late,” I blurted. Eliot and I both scrambled up.

“I don’t recall setting a specific time for our visits. Apologies if this is inconvenient.” His tone made it clear he didn’t care.

“It’s perfect,” Addie assured him.

“Excellent. I came to check on your father’s progress, as well. We’re quite eager to have him back.”

“He’s better, thank you,” Addie said, her voice tight. “Are you seeing an uptick in frequency poisoning lately?”

My breath caught. She was telling him she knew about the anomaly. Addie had never been any good at cards. She couldn’t bluff, she bet too low, and she always showed her hand too early.

“We are. It’s quite troubling.” Lattimer assessed her coolly. Then his face broke into a smile. “You’ve put it together, then. Well done.”

“Thank you, sir. I’d be happy to help, if the Consort needed me.”

That was her game. Impress Lattimer, get in on the anomaly, move up in the Consort. Not a bad plan, but one lucky hand didn’t make you a good gambler.

“I don’t doubt you’d be a great asset to us,” he said, and Addie glowed, then dimmed.

“My parents don’t think so.”

“Your parents are not in a position to dictate how we deal with the current crisis. I, however, am.” His eyes flickered to me. “It’s important to ally yourself with those people who have the greatest value.”

My father had nearly died trying to fix “the current crisis.” Hearing Lattimer dismiss him so easily reminded me of Monty’s tirade. “What about the Free Walkers? Are they valuable?”

It was a shot in the dark, but it struck true.

He swung around, the motion as smooth and dangerous as his tone. “Free Walkers don’t exist. But if they did, they—and anyone who associated with them—would be tried for treason. I cannot imagine who would tell you such dangerous tales.”

Beside me, Eliot tensed, silently willing me to shut up.

Lattimer waited for an extra beat, as if daring me to answer. When I said nothing, he shifted back to Addie. “Your grandfather must be improving.”

“He’s better,” Addie said cautiously.

Lattimer nodded. “I look forward to this week’s report. I’m always curious to find out exactly what the three of you have been up to.”

What Monty had been up to, he meant. Addie fell all over herself agreeing and saw him out. When she came back, she snapped, “Do you want to get expelled? Free Walkers? Have you lost your mind?”

“He’s a jerk.”

“Who cares? He is your way back into the Walkers, Del. You should be trying to impress him, not acting like a lunatic conspiracy theorist.” She turned to Eliot. “Can’t you talk sense into her?”

He backed away, looking slightly panicked. “I’m just here for the movie.”

She rolled her eyes. “Del’s the only one stupid enough to believe that.”

“I’m not stupid!”

“What you did tonight was the textbook definition of stupid. All risk, no reward. You want to be crazy and reckless, fine. But at least do it for a good reason.” She turned on her heel and stomped upstairs. Wordlessly Eliot turned the movie back on.

Addie’s words stung, but she wasn’t completely right. I knew a bluff when I saw one. Lattimer was lying about the Free Walkers, and that was all the reward I needed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

YOU COMING TO class today?” Simon asked me on the way to history Monday afternoon.

“I’m walking with you, aren’t I?” Walking with Simon—even a short, ordinary walk down the corridor—was an exercise in syncopation. He slowed his pace, long legs eating up the ground, and I lengthened my stride to keep up.

“Doesn’t mean you’re going to stay,” he said. “Are you even passing the class?”

I was. Barely.

I tipped my head back, the charge of those dark blue eyes zinging down my spine. “This from the guy who keeps falling asleep?”

According to Eliot’s research, the pattern we’d seen in the Echoes—a spike in branches, then a series of Baroque events—was another symptom of the anomaly. We didn’t need to keep checking on it, and he insisted I start showing up to class.

I didn’t complain too much. It gave me time to study Simon.

His frequency was fine. The tremor I’d felt when he kissed my hand had nothing to do with dissonance. Simon sounded clear and true as the Key World itself. He sounded like home.

But there was no denying he was a victim of the anomaly. He’d spotted me in Echoes, he’d been at the center of at least two Baroque events, he remembered me when he shouldn’t. If the Consort found out, Simon and his Echoes would be in danger.

I needed to figure it out first.

He ushered me through the open door. “So, if you’re not off hooking up with Eliot, who’s the lucky guy?”

“You always assume there’s a guy,” I said.

“Isn’t there? If not, I know one. Tall. Athletic. Astonishingly good-looking. Loves dogs and zucchini bread.”

The corner of my mouth twitched. “Sounds perfect. Does he have any flaws?”

“Tone-deaf,” he said sorrowfully. “And charming. I know how you hate that.”

“It’s a deal breaker,” I said, sliding into my seat. I looked at him under my lashes. “And we could have had so much fun.”

He leaned across the aisle, and I did the same, close enough to see the hint of stubble along his jaw. “Still could.”

An inch more—maybe two—and my lips would graze his skin. I could meet him halfway, fit my mouth to his. Every muscle in my body tightened, fear and anticipation so closely intertwined I couldn’t separate them. An inch, and everything would change.

Mrs. Jordan cleared her throat. “If we can get started, Ms. Sullivan? Mr. Lane?”

“Another time,” I murmured, leaning back.

“Mr. Lane?” she repeated.

“Bet on it,” he said, voice low. Then he flashed Mrs. Jordan a trademark grin and made a joke about last night’s reading. She laughed despite herself, and I marveled at how well Simon read people.

Including me.

I slid down in my seat as she outlined our newest assignment, declaring today was a research day. Everyone gathered up their books and trudged, en masse, to the library. I found an empty table by the periodicals and set my bag down, as everyone around me chose seats and research topics. Pivots filled the air with a fizzing sound.

“Secluded,” Simon said, taking the other chair. “I approve. What’s your topic?”

“No idea,” I said. “You?”

He pursed his lips and considered. His hair was disheveled, like he’d run his hand through it. I fought the urge to repeat the movement. The air shifted and I held my breath, wondering what decision he was about to make.

“Chancellorsville,” he said, and reached for a notebook. The pivot formed with a crack like a gunshot.

“That’s it?” Twenty-odd kids had picked a research topic and not a single one had sounded so loud.

“You have a problem with Chancellorsville? If Jackson hadn’t been shot there—by his own men—he would have been at Gettysburg. The South would have won.”

I was familiar with the battle. We spent the first few years of Walker training studying the way history had shaped the multiverse. But it didn’t explain the size of the pivot he’d created. I took a moment to memorize its pitch and stood up. “I’ll be back in a few.”

Simon glanced over at Mrs. Jordan, who was catching up on her grading and giving kids dubious looks when they grew too loud. “She’s going to catch you one of these days.”

“Probably,” I said. “Enjoy your nap in the stacks.”

“I will. Maybe I’ll dream of you.”

I checked Eliot’s map before I crossed over. Lights covered the library in tiny pinpricks, except for the place Simon and I had been sitting, which shone like a beacon. I slipped through a pivot in the girls’ bathroom and navigated to the newly formed branch. Through the library window, I could see Simon’s Echo heading into the stacks. This world was so young he looked exactly like the Simon I’d left minutes ago. Even the frequency was similar to the Key World’s—but louder than I expected for such a small decision.

He would have gone into the stacks for research either way, so his behavior hadn’t altered. This Echo should be quiet. Instead, it was as blazingly insistent as a trumpet and growing louder every second. And then it hit me.

A Baroque event.

The class had made a lot of decisions in a short period of time. Simon’s decision, stronger for reasons I couldn’t explain, would draw the smaller Echoes in.

I wasn’t sure I should stick around for the entire Baroque event, but it would be stupid not to do some research of my own. I found Echo Simon in the nonfiction section, head tilted to read the call numbers. Ducking into the next row, I peered at him through the space between shelves.

“Find what you’re looking for?” I whispered.

To his credit, he barely jumped. “Can’t quite put my hands on it. What about you?”

I’d been careful not to touch him, but he’d noticed me. Was it the amplification, or the similarity between frequencies, or the newness of the Echo? Any of them seemed plausible, and for once I wished I’d paid more attention to Addie’s and Shaw’s physics lectures. “I’m figuring it out.”

He craned his neck. “Are we really going to have this conversation through a bookshelf? I can barely see you.”

“I thought some distance might be good,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Scared?”

“Cautious.” I wasn’t scared of Simon. Intrigued. Concerned. Attracted. But nothing about Simon—in any universe—scared me.

“And yet you’re hiding behind . . . What’s over there, anyway?”

I checked the titles. “The Roman Empire.”

“Thousands of years of history between us. Looks like scared to me.”

I tossed my braid over my shoulder and strolled around the corner, stopping a foot away.

“See?” he said. “Not so hard.”

“Never said it was.”

The silence between us quivered with unspoken words. I poked my finger through a hole in my sweater.

“So . . . ,” he said, and trailed off.

“So.”

“Funny meeting you here.”

“Funny, that.”

He edged closer, and I backed up until my knees hit the Great Depression. “You meet a lot of girls in the stacks?” My voice sounded unsteady, even to my ears.

“Not really. I’ll have to keep it in mind for next time.”

“Next time?”

“Turns out we’re going to spend the rest of the week on research. So we’ve got four more days here, minimum.”

“That’s a lot of research.” Casually I tucked a bright orange star between two books, curious to know how a Baroque event would affect it.

“Lot of time back here, anyway.” He rested one hand on the shelf above my head. “Not the worst way to spend an hour.”

There was a discreet cough, and Simon drew back as someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Another project for Mrs. Jordan?” Ms. Powell asked.

“Um . . . yeah.” Simon stuffed his hands in his pockets. “We were . . .”

“Making good use of your time?” Ms. Powell was very carefully not looking at me. Her eyes moved from Simon to the shelves to the floor to the light fixtures—anywhere but me. I’d never actually repelled an Echo before. Then again, Simon hadn’t touched me. All she could have seen was my impression.

The frequency swelled dramatically, reminding me how easily Eliot and I had mistaken Baroque events for cleavings on the map. Time to go.

“I forgot my notebook,” I said. “See you in a minute.”

I crossed the pivot as the Baroque event began to toll.

Back in the Key World library everything seemed normal. Low conversations hummed around the room, the occasional muffled squeal of laughter from a table or the stacks. Simon had triggered the Baroque event, I was certain. There had to be a connection—and I headed for the stacks, determined to find it.

He stood, one hand on the spine of a book, the other dangling at his side. “Miss me?” I asked.

No response.

“Simon?”

He ignored me.

“You’re mad I left? I was gone for five minutes.” My own temper bubbled up. I stepped closer, ready to tell him off, but the words died in my throat.

When Addie was little, she used to sleepwalk. Not the world-hopping kind, but the garden-variety, standing-in-the-middle-of-the-pantry-at-three-a.m. kind. We’d find her playing Rachmaninoff, or organizing everyone’s shoes, or reading a book upside down. In the morning she’d have no memory of her ramblings. She hadn’t done it in years, but there was something about the stillness of Simon’s face that reminded me of it.

I touched his hand. “Are you okay?”

He jerked once, a full-body shudder so violent it knocked the book he’d been touching off the shelf.

“Find your notebook?” he asked, warm and familiar. “I thought—why are you looking at me like that?”

“Did you fall asleep standing up?” The shadows under his eyes were even more pronounced than usual.

“I wasn’t asleep. I was talking to . . .” He looked up and down the row. “Guess I did.”

“Late night?”

“Not really.” He observed me like a painter with a subject, noting every detail, and my skin warmed.

Flustered, I scooped up the fallen book. “Here.”

“Thanks.” The cellophane cover crinkled in the silence between us. “Did I, um, say anything? When I was out?”

Out. Not sleeping. I wondered if his choice of words was deliberate. If this wasn’t the first time it had happened.

“Nope,” I said, watching his reaction. “You didn’t say a word. It was like you were somewhere else completely.”

He looked more relieved than surprised. “And you brought me back. Woke me up.” He grinned now, mischievous. “Kind of like a fairy tale. You should wake me with a kiss, don’t you think?”

Something in me fluttered wildly at his words, too chaotic to have a rhythm, too impulsive to resist. “A kiss?”

“Del.” His voice inexplicably urgent. “You promised me another time.”

The bell rang, and I winced, like always.

“Yeah,” I said unsteadily. “But this isn’t it.”

“Then when?” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I want to see you. A date. You and me. No running off to cut class or get something out of your locker, nobody interrupting at the worst possible time. No stupid bells. Tonight, Del.”

“We’re supposed to work on our composition,” I said, and wanted to smack myself.

“Screw the composition. Come out with me. An actual date.”

“Why?” My mouth was so dry I could barely force the word out.

“Because I cannot figure you out, and I want to.” His hands flexed at his sides, like he was trying to keep from reaching for me. “Isn’t that enough?”

I couldn’t figure him out either. Maybe this was my chance. Maybe a few hours alone with him would explain the Baroque events. Maybe it would give us a clue about how to fix the worlds.

Maybe I just wanted to be with him.

“More than enough,” I said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Synaptic Resonance Transfer occurs when strings of two separate branches overlap and resonate in unison. While uncommon, it is not typically a cause for alarm (see: Case Studies in Quantum Psychology).

—Chapter Four, “Physiology,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

YOU’RE WEARING LIPSTICK,” Addie said as I came downstairs that night.

I covered my mouth with my hand. “I wear lipstick.”

“Yeah, but this looks pretty. And you changed your sweater.”

“Leave her alone,” my mom said. “You look very nice, sweetheart. Are you and Eliot doing something special?”

“Eliot’s got a school project,” I said. He’d complained about meeting up with Bree, and I’d commiserated without telling him the change in my own plans.

“Big night?” Monty asked.

“I thought you and Simon were working on your composition?” Addie asked.

“We might go out instead,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“You and Simon?” Mom pinched the bridge of her nose. “Del? Really? He’s an Original. There are rules.”

“I’m not breaking any of them. It’s not serious,” I said. “He doesn’t do serious.”

“How reassuring,” she replied.

The doorbell rang, and Addie slipped down the hallway before me.

“Let her go, Winnie,” said Monty from his place in front of the TV. “What’s the harm?”

She sighed deeply. “Fine. Be home by curfew. Not a minute later.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I grabbed my bag.

“What about me?” protested Monty. “I’m the one who told her you should go.”

“Thanks to you, too,” I said, and gave him a quick kiss.

Simon stood in the entryway, looking nervous. Addie was grilling him about his family and his hobbies, no doubt gearing up to ask about his intentions. I took him by the arm. “Time to go.”

The Jeep was parked across the street. A memory of the one in Doughnut World—black, not red—rose up, startling me.

“I’m supposed to get that,” he said as I reached for the handle.

“I can open my own door.”

“Not on a date. Let me at least start off like a gentleman.”

“This is weird,” I said, but let him open the door and help me inside.

“I’m the same me,” he said.

But he wasn’t. I felt vaguely guilty. Was it cheating if you were dating the same guy in two different worlds? And since Doughnut Simon and I weren’t a couple—just two people who ended up making out every time we saw each other—did going out with anyone count as cheating?

I nudged a tooth-marked Frisbee with my foot. “Where’s Iggy?”

“When did you meet Iggy?” He looked genuinely confused.

A million times in Echoes. Never here. “Everyone’s heard about that dog,” I said, laughing weakly.

He joined in. “He’s so spoiled. He’s home with my mom, probably sneaking treats.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Pretty much the same.” He squared his shoulders, resolutely cheerful. “Does the Depot sound okay?”

“Sounds great.” Familiar ground and not too crowded. “Definitely better than one of the mall restaurants.”

“I figured you weren’t a huge fan of the mall,” he said with a grin.

“What gave it away?” I smoothed the thrift-store sweater I’d changed into—dark green with a wide neck and a slim fit—dressier than I usually wore, but comfortable.

“If I said you’re not like other girls, you’d think it was a line.”

“It is a line.”

“Doesn’t make it untrue. Besides, you like it that way.”

“For someone who never spoke to me before this semester, you’ve certainly turned into the expert.”

He raised a shoulder. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Basketball,” I said, desperate for a neutral topic. “The season’s going well?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you end up talking with the scout?”

He stared at me, slowing down enough that the person behind us laid on the horn. “What scout?”

“The one from Arizona. Bree said . . .”

He swallowed. “It’s not in the cards for me right now.”

Of course not. He couldn’t go halfway across the country when his mom was so sick. I touched his sleeve. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s my choice, right?”

I bit my lip. Somewhere there was an Echo where he’d chosen to go. “Definitely.”

We pulled up in front of the restaurant. The clean, art deco lines seemed both vintage and timeless, and the bold colors emphasized the structure instead of competing with it. The disparate elements blended together in a quirky, compelling harmony.

“You come here a lot?” he asked when he came around to open my door. He took my hand as I climbed out, kept it as we crossed the parking lot.

“Sure,” I said, pausing at the small bronze plaque next to the doors. The air was filled with pivots, their edges like tattered silk.

The train crash on this site had left thousands of worlds in its wake. Twenty years later, the Echoes formed from those pivots were some of the strongest around. We’d taken field trips to this site every year since I started training. If I crooked my fingers, I could have caught a pivot and Walked to countless realities, but I was perfectly happy in this one.

The Depot smelled like warm bread, candle wax, and coffee. Simon guided me to a table in the back.

“This seat good?”

“It’s my favorite,” I said, and pointed to another bronze plaque on the wall next to my seat. “I like the marker.”

“You are here a lot. With Eliot?”

Happiness evaporated. “Would you lay off the Eliot thing? I’ve known him since I was in diapers. That’s it.”

“According to your sister, you two make a great couple.”

“Don’t listen to Addie,” I said. “I never do.”

“So you and he aren’t . . .” He fumbled with his napkin. “Promised, or something?”

I nearly spewed water across the table. “I’m going to kill her.”

“I’ll take it that’s a no.”

“How about this? You stop giving me shit about Eliot, and I won’t mention Bree again.”

“Bree? I told you—”

“I know. And I know how she looks at you.”

He scowled. “You’ve got a deal. No more questions about Eliot.”

“Excellent.”

“Your sister is . . . intense,” he said cautiously.

“She’s a control freak,” I said. “But that’s a much nicer way to put it.”

“You two don’t get along?”

I made a face and scanned the menu. “We’ve been better lately.”

“Must be. You’re not grounded anymore, right?”

Had I told him I was grounded? I must have, but the fact that I couldn’t remember served as a warning. Too many worlds. Too many Simons. I needed to get a grip. “Kind of. My folks are easing up.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me too,” I said, as the waitress approached. After we’d ordered, I leaned forward. “Want to know a secret?”

His slow, dangerous smile muddled my thoughts. “Definitely.”

“I would have come out anyway.”

“Snuck out? For me? I’m flattered.”

“You should be.”

His hand covered mine, his thumb sweeping over my knuckles. “Does this mean I’m your secret now? Like when you disappear at school?”

“Hard to keep you secret when you show up on the front porch. Are you telling people about us?”

He leaned back. “There’s not really an ‘us,’ is there?”

The heat that had been washing over me receded. Stupid, to assume that flirting in the library and one date meant we were together. This was Simon. Charming, casual, loved-by-many, in-love-with-none Simon. I’d been fooling myself.

It was so easy to fall back into old defenses. They fit better than any outfit I might have worn tonight.

“Flavor of the month?” I said, lifting my chin and plucking a roll from the bread basket. Calm. Indifferent. He hadn’t gotten close enough to hurt. “Figured you’d mix it up? Go slumming before you try again with Bree?”

“Dial it down, will you?” His eyes flashed. “It’s our first date. I haven’t even kissed you yet. Can we save the relationship talk until after dessert?”

I paused in the middle of tearing my roll to bits, hearing exasperation, not anger, in his voice. Foolish as it was, I let myself hope.

“Yet?”

He looked at me blankly.

“You said you haven’t kissed me yet. Were you going to?”

His mouth curved. “To start.”

“Oh,” I said, my voice fainter than I intended.

“Yeah.” His eyes met mine again, and now it wasn’t anger sparking in them. “So eat up.”

Both of us made a deliberate attempt to keep the conversation light and inconsequential during the meal. Finally he asked, “Did you want dessert?”

What I wanted was to go somewhere without a table separating us and a crowd of people watching. “Not here.”

“My mom was at the crash, you know,” he said offhandedly, signaling for the check.

I gaped. “Was she hurt?”

“She was running late that day. She spilled tea on her outfit and had to change clothes. She was in her car when the train derailed, but the people she usually sat with? Dead. Every one. Switching outfits saved her life. Hard to believe.”

“Not really,” I croaked, and took a long drink of water.

“That’s where she met my dad. He worked for the NTSB, investigating the accident. She says by the time the interview was over, she knew he was the one.”

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