Dissonance (35 page)

“Strange.” I wrapped my chilled hands around the mug. “Simon's coming over later to practice our composition.”

“Was it him who put those roses in your cheeks?” he asked with a grin.

I touched the side of my face, and the loneliness of my trip home faded. “Maybe.”

“It'll be good to see this young man up close, considering how much time you've spent with him.” He winked. “And his Echoes.”

I stared into my mug. “I should have known better.”

“Bah. People will do all sorts of things for love. You can't blame them for it.”

“I'm not in love with Simon.” I wasn't quite ready to confess the extent of my feelings—or my actions. Not even to Monty, who'd been paying closer attention than I realized. “There's something different about him.”

“I don't doubt it,” he said, and patted my hand. “Not to worry. I'll keep your secrets and you'll keep mine.”

I hoped so. I leaned back against the island and checked
him over. Neatly dressed, hair combed, lucid despite his ongoing argument with the television. One of his better days, and I hoped it held. “You're not going to hover, are you?”

He shot a mournful glance toward the empty cookie jar. “Your mother hasn't made cookies in ages. Did you notice? Oatmeal chocolate chip would hit the spot.”

I was not in the mood to bake. “Why don't I fix you a bowl of ice cream?”

“Too cold for ice cream. Rose made sure to keep oatmeal chocolate chip in the house. We never went without. Your mother uses her recipes. Did you know that?” His eyes went distant, his voice wavery. “I wonder if she has some right now. If she's making them wherever she is.”

Hard to tell if he was genuinely confused, or putting on an act to get what he wanted. But real or feigned, the last thing I needed was Monty slipping in front of Simon. If an hour of baking would buy me a peaceful afternoon . . . “Cookies it is.”

•  •  •

By the time Simon rang the bell, the island was covered with racks of cookies and Monty was at the table with a plate full of crumbs and a glass of milk, seemingly content.

“I'll get it,” I said, brushing at a lock of hair that wouldn't stay tucked into its braid.

Monty made a noise of agreement and helped himself to another cookie. I'd lost track of how many he'd eaten. My mom was going to kill me.

The minute I opened the front door I forgot about my mom
and sugar comas. Simon, rangy and lean and breathtaking, crowded out everything else.

“Hey.” I didn't know what to do with my hands. Was I supposed to hug him? Kiss him? I wanted to melt into him, but with Monty down the hallway, it seemed like a recipe for disaster. “How was practice?”

“I was distracted.” He set his backpack on the floor, midnight eyes crinkling at the corners. “You have stuff on your face.”

“Flour.” I swiped at my forehead. “I was baking.”

He sniffed the air appreciatively, and rubbed his thumb slowly over my cheek.

“Did I not get it?” My voice sounded too breathy.

“You did.” His fingers curved around my neck and he touched his lips to mine.

I figured out what to do with my hands: slide them over his shoulders, pull him closer. His hair was damp from the shower, his skin smelling soap-and-water clean. He tasted like toothpaste and mischief. With one hand he unwound my braid, while the other slid along the strip of bare skin above my jeans.

Whatever trouble we were in was worth it.

“You must be Del's friend,” Monty said from the kitchen doorway.

Simon froze. “I thought you were home alone,” he said against my mouth, and straightened.

“Simon Lane, sir.” He took a full step away from me and extended his hand.

“Montrose Armstrong. I've been wanting to meet you for
quite a while.” He held the handshake for a beat too long, reading Simon's frequency. I tried to interpret his expression. If there was a problem, Monty would feel it.

Finally he let go, nodding in approval. My lungs resumed working. “Del's my favorite, you know.”

Simon's hand rested on the small of my back. “Mine too.”

“She made cookies,” Monty said. “You should have one.”

I glared at him, but we went into the kitchen, where Simon made enthusiastic noises about the cookies and I plotted our escape.

“You two are working on a song for music class?” Monty asked.

Simon finished the cookie before responding. “I lucked out, getting paired with her. She's a genius.”

“You're not musical?” Monty sounded surprised.

“No, sir. But Del says it runs in your family. Being good at music, I mean.”

“Told you that, did she?” Monty said vaguely, but his gaze sharpened.

“We'd better get to work,” I said, and dragged Simon to the living room.

“Is he one too?” Simon whispered. “A Walker?”

“Everyone in my family is. Eliot, too. But Monty . . . he's done it for too long. He's not quite right now.”

He sat at the piano. “Seemed fine to me.”

“He has good moments and bad ones,” I said. “And he made a special effort for you.”

“Am I special?” He hooked a finger through my belt loop.

“Very,” I said, giving him a slow smile.

“I thought about you all day. About this. It doesn't seem possible.”

“Anything's possible.”

His hands closed tightly over mine. “Is there's a world where they've cured cancer?”

My smile fell away. “I don't know. Probably. But . . .”

“Could we take my mom there?”

I couldn't look at him, at the hope shining in his face, knowing I would be the one to snuff it. “She couldn't get through,” I said. “Like when you tried following me. If you're not a Walker, you can't cross.”

The shadows under his eyes deepened, but he rubbed a hand across his face and tried again. “What about bringing the medicine here?”

Breaking news gently is a misnomer. News doesn't break. People do, no matter how you try to cushion the blow.

I tried anyway, more careful with my words than ever before. “Bringing objects over from Echoes is forbidden. It's too dangerous.”

He scoffed. “It's medicine. How dangerous could it be?”

I thought about the drawing his cemetery Echo had given me, how blithely I'd tucked it into my backpack. Even now, hidden in a dresser drawer, the faintest trace of dissonance drifted from it. But the sketch was a reminder, not a catalyst.

“It's not the size of the object; it's the change it creates, and
there's no greater change than someone's existence. An alteration that big is against the rules.”

He dropped my hands, shocked and furious. “You won't save my mom because you don't want to get in trouble?”

My anger rose to meet his. “I
can't
. If I gave her medicine from an Echo, the difference in frequencies might end up hurting her.” I thought about the anomaly, the plague of inversions, the way Simon seemed to be caught in it. “It could rip her apart. And the damage could spread. To you, to anything or anyone she comes in contact with. You could fade right out of existence, and I'm not doing that to you again.”

He went very still. “Again?”

I ran my fingers over the cool ivory keys and said nothing.

“Del?”

For a place that wasn't real, Park World managed to ruin every part of my life. “I'm not grounded. I'm suspended from the Walkers. Addie and I went out a few weeks ago, to an Echo that was really unstable. You were there with Iggy. I messed around with the threads, and . . . they broke. I cleaved the entire branch.”

“Cleaved?

“Like pruning, only the branch . . . disintegrates.” I sank onto the bench next to him.

“I disintegrated?” His laugh sounded nervous, the kind that preceded a complete freakout.

“Your Echo did. You're an Original. You belong to the Key World, so it didn't affect you. But if we start bringing stuff over
from other branches, and it damages the fabric of this one, especially around your mom, you could unravel too. Both of you.”

I touched my forehead to his shoulder. The muscles beneath his T-shirt were clenched and unyielding. “I'm so sorry. I wish . . .”

“Don't,” he said. I flinched at the harshness in his voice. “What good is it, then?”

A chill crept over me. He'd thought Walking was amazing, in the equipment room. He'd thought
I
was amazing.

I can't figure you out, and I want to
. Now he had, and I wasn't a puzzle, or the girl he'd kissed in the rain and in dreams. I was a means to an end.

But hadn't I done the same? I'd used Walking to get what I wanted but couldn't have.

“What's the point if you can't save people? Make the world better?”

“Walkers believe that the integrity of the Key World matters more than anything,” I said. “It's the only world strong enough to sustain the weight of all the choices that spring from it. It's like the trunk of a really big, really ancient tree, and all the other worlds are branches.”

“The world is a tree. Great. Very green.”

“If the branches are damaged, and it spreads, the tree gets weaker. If it happens too many times, the tree won't survive. So we try to contain the damage, as much as we can, but sometimes that means letting bad things happen.”

“That's crap. She's
my mom
.” He took my hands again, and I wanted to weep at the desperation in his words. “You said it
might hurt her. That means it might not. Anything is better than her odds right now. Please, Del.”

“I can't.”

“You
can
. You break rules all the time. You broke one today, telling me about the Walkers. Why not now, when it might actually do good?”

I felt myself weakening, the wave of his sorrow battering my resolve. My gaze fell on our composition, the notes he'd borrowed from his Echo, the song we'd made together a reminder of all I'd done wrong. I shook my head, finally understanding what my parents had been trying to teach me. “I'm so sorry, Simon. Just because something's possible doesn't mean we should do it.”

•  •  •

Turns out, telling your almost-boyfriend you won't save his mother's life puts a damper on the relationship. He left a few minutes later, distant and wounded and avoiding my eyes.

I didn't blame him, exactly. But I doubted him. I doubted myself, for confiding in him, for believing in us.

“Delancey!” called Monty from the kitchen, moments after Simon left, pulling the door shut with a solid thunk.

“Please don't tell me you're hungry again,” I said.

Monty sat at the island playing a phantom tune, his fingers gnarled but certain on an imaginary keyboard. “You told him about us.”

Too wrung out to bother with denial, I said, “He saw me Walk. I didn't have a choice.”

His eyebrows lifted, two furry white caterpillars arching in
unison. “He left in an awful hurry. You two have a falling out?”

“His mom is sick. He wanted me to bring back a cure from the Echoes.”

“From the look on your face, I'd guess you told him no.”

I picked up one of the cookies, but my stomach rebelled. “What was I supposed to tell him? We don't know what could happen, especially with the anomaly causing so many problems. He doesn't understand what's at stake.”

“Does anyone? You toss around the word ‘infinity' like you know what it means, but you've not the faintest idea. None of us do. Whatever you imagine, whatever you think you know, infinity stretches farther. It's a bit like people. They're capable of so much more than they realize.”

I broke the cookie in half, and in half again, until crumbs showered the countertop. “He's never going to speak to me again.”

“Bah. Do you trust him?”

Underneath the hurt and the doubt, the answer was as clear as the Key World. “I do. There's something about him . . . I don't know what it is, but he matters.”

“I don't doubt it. And if there was a way to save his mother without risking the Key World, would you?”

“Of course.”

“Tell him so. And then find a way to do it.” He twinkled at me. “Infinity, Del. Anything is possible.”

D
ESPITE MONTY'S PEP
talk, I wasn't ready to tell Simon anything. I was a collection of hurt feelings and unanswered questions. Better to go to him when I had something worthwhile to offer. Something more than myself.

Over dinner, everyone was subdued, lost in their own thoughts. “Things didn't go well with the Consort today?” Addie finally asked.

“We're not making the progress we'd like,” my mom said.

“I did some research today,” Addie said. “I have a theory about the anomaly.”

My mom set her fork down. “I thought we made it clear that you were to stay away from the situation.”

“You did. But Councilman Lattimer thinks I could be helpful.”

Monty made a face like a petulant child.

“Delightful,” Mom said. “Did a member of the Consort give you express permission to involve yourself with a classified situation?”

“Not exactly,” Addie said. “But I thought . . .”

My dad said, more kindly, “It's nice that you want to help, honey. But this isn't a school project. We need you to focus on
your apprenticeship and keeping your sister out of trouble. Leave this to the adults.”

“The adults?” Addie said faintly.

Mom shook her head. “I expect this kind of behavior from Del, Addison. Not you.”

Addie's face went white, then red, then white again. “May I be excused?”

She left without waiting for an answer. Monty tsked. “She's not a child.”

“She's my child,” Mom replied. “I'm not putting her in harm's way if I can avoid it.”