Resonance (2 page)

I tipped my head toward the front of the room. “Needed to ask Ms. Powell a question.”

“Some question. I waited all period,” he said. “Were you Walking?”

I avoided his eyes, but I couldn't hide the bitterness leaching into my words. “Where would I go?”

I'd loved Walking, once. Infinite worlds, infinite possibilities. The freedom of slipping through Echoes, witnessing the power of a single choice unfold. But the thing I loved had taken the boy I loved, and the shining possibilities had tarnished. Even if Walking brought me back to Simon, the damage was done.

“Wish I knew.” His tone changed, determinedly cheerful. “What were you asking Ms. Powell about?”

Lying to your best friend, even for a noble reason, is never a pleasant feeling—and I'd had plenty of experience doing so. Eliot had risked his life and his future with the Walkers to help me. I wasn't going to ask him again. And a small part of me worried that if he knew I was looking for Simon, he'd try to stop me. So I lied to Eliot, and I lied to myself, saying it was for the best.

“My composition,” I said. “I'm supposed to perform it for the class, but I need someone to play the counterpoint.”

“No problem. I'll do it,” he said as the final bell rang.

The thought of anyone else playing the song Simon and I had written together felt wrong. It would
sound
wrong, even if Eliot hit every note.

Still, he looked so eager to help. It was another attempt to
prove our friendship was back to normal, but the effort only highlighted how far off track we'd gone.

Now that I knew the truth about his feelings, I could see the signs and hints I'd missed for years: The casual touches that unsettled him, the way he watched me when he thought I wasn't looking. The way he bristled, ever so slightly, when someone mentioned Simon's name. The way he treated me like something fragile and rare.

I wasn't fragile, but our friendship was. I was cautious now, in a way I'd never been, questioning my every move. I swung between extremes: too awkward, too familiar, too remote, too warm. Terrified I'd lead him on, terrified I'd lose my best friend.

Terrified I already had.

“Sounds great,” I said, mustering a smile as Ms. Powell started class. She avoided my eyes the entire hour, her genial, frazzled teacher's facade firmly in place while we reviewed for a test. Only when class ended did she look my way.

“Del, a word?” She glanced at Eliot, hovering nearby. “I've got time after school today, if you want to work on the Debussy piece.”

“I do.” I touched the fine silver chain around my neck, the pendant my Free Walker grandmother had left me. Answers, finally. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” she said. “I'm looking forward to it.”

Not as much as I was.

C
HAPTER THREE

W
ORLDS ARE MADE BY CHOICES
both big and small. A pivot forms the instant a decision is made, but it takes on its final resonance gradually, as consequences unfold. Deciding between a hamburger or a hot dog seems minor—but if you choke to death on the hot dog, the effect is huge, and so is the pivot.

High school is full of choices. Some feel monumental but aren't; some feel insignificant but alter everything. Originals don't notice pivots. They move through life seeing only the consequences that affect them directly. Walkers, on the other hand, can't create worlds. We can only visit them. It's for the best; other­wise we'd be paralyzed by the weight of our decisions.

Ms. Powell's choice to tell me about Simon hadn't made a new world, but it had scrubbed this one clean. It had helped me shake off the haze of sadness and self-pity I'd been lost in, and it felt good.

Except for the part where I had to lie to Eliot. Again.

“You're sure you don't want me to stick around?” he asked, zipping his coat. The bulky parka obscured the breadth of his shoulders, but not his uneasiness. “We could practice the duet once you're done with Ms. Powell.”

“We can practice at my place,” I said. “I'll call you when I get home—unless you want to come back and give me a ride.”

“Now you're just being lazy.” He grinned.

“It's freezing.” The weather had turned while I'd hidden away in my room. No snow yet, but the cold was bitter and relentless, stripping the last of the leaves from the trees, forcing me into even more layers than usual. “I don't know why you won't drive to school. You've got the car.”

“Do you know what the administration charges for parking permits? Do you know how many movies I can buy with that money? If you hate walking that much, get your own license.” He paused, as if he'd heard his own words for the first time. “Regular walking. Not ours. I didn't mean—”

“I know.”

He didn't move as the hallway emptied around us. “Do you? Hate Walking?”

“Kind of pointless,” I said. “Nobody hates gravity, right? Same thing.”

“Gravity's a constant. Walking's a choice.”

Simon was my constant. If Walking helped me find him, there was no other choice.

“Go on,” I said, giving him a shove to lighten the mood. “If you don't quit hovering, I'm going to return the favor. Sneak into your room and smother you while you sleep.”

“I'd rather you not smother me,” he said with a strange half smile. “Sneaking into my room's okay, though. Any time. Open invitation.”

I drew back. “Eliot . . .”

“Relax, Del,” he said, shoulders dropping. “I get it. I'm not going to chase after you while you're still in mourning.”

“I'm not!”

He shook his head. “Simon's gone. I know you need time. That's okay. I'm not going anywhere.”

My throat ached, but instead of telling him the truth, I said, “You deserve better.”

“We're the best, right?” he asked, and I nodded mutely. “What could be better than best?”

“But . . .”

He held up a hand. “I just declared my intentions, Del. Give me a few minutes to feel like the hero before you shoot me down.”

I couldn't help laughing, and a smile broke across his face.

“Ms. Powell's waiting,” I said, waving vaguely toward the music wing.

“Yeah.” He nudged up his glasses, shifted from foot to foot as if uncertain how to end the conversation. I could practically see him sorting through the possibilities: Handshake? Hug? Wave? Pat on the shoulder? What was the message hidden in each?

Finally, he slugged me in the shoulder, with a sheepish grin. I rolled my eyes and punched him back, just as gently.

“Later,” he said, and headed out.

Navigating our friendship felt like crossing a minefield without a map, testing every step, a single offhand comment enough to set off an explosion. But I cared too much to stop searching for a way through.

Hefting my violin case, I started for the music wing, but not before I caught sight of Bree at the end of the hallway, arms folded and eyes narrowed. I flashed her a toothy smile, flipped her off, and headed to Ms. Powell's office.

Answers, finally. Ms. Powell knew where Simon was. She might even take me to him.

Her classroom door was closed, and I took a moment to settle myself, smoothing down the unruly tangles of my hair. Deep in my chest was the tiniest ember of hope, brightening with every second. Before it could flare up and burn out, I pushed open the door.

The room was empty.

I'd never noticed how different her class sounded. Most of Washington High droned softly, like a beehive, the corridors and classrooms crowded with overlapping pivots. Ms. Powell didn't generate pivots, and Simon's ability to consolidate Echoes had eliminated many of the others. The result was a quiet room, interrupted by a few sharply ringing pivots. So many clues, but I'd been too dazzled by Simon and too distracted by my troubles with the Consort to notice.

I ran my hand along Simon's desk, listening. In his absence, my classmates' pivots were creeping in again. But Simon's pivots were louder than the rest. Each led to a world he'd created, simply by making a choice. If I crossed any of them, I could see his Echoes.

I wanted the real thing.

Memory flashed through me—Simon's thumb brushing the
corner of my mouth, an instant of startling, electric attraction. I pressed my fingers to my lips.

“How did you get rid of Eliot?” Ms. Powell asked from the doorway, interrupting my reverie.

I bristled at her tone. “I told him you were helping me with my phrasing in the Debussy.”

“Good.” She locked the door behind her.

“I don't like lying to him.”

“Measure eighteen is marked
en serrant
. You should be picking up speed there, not just volume. Try to match the two.” She spread her hands wide. “Now you're not lying.”

I bit back my protest. “Are we going to see Simon? You said—”

“I said it would take time. A few hours isn't enough.”

A few hours was too much. “Then why am I here? You want me to help you? I'm not doing a damn thing until you can prove Simon is okay.”

“You've heard his Echo,” she said, pulling her phone from her pocket. “What more proof do you need?”

“That tells me he's alive. Not that he's safe.”

“Simon is safe because we have very strict protocols for contacting each other. In the interest of
keeping
him safe, we're going to continue following those protocols.” She gestured to a wavering rift on the far side of the piano. “Let's Walk for a bit, and I can answer some of your questions.”

I drew a deep breath. Like it or not, Ms. Powell had control here. I needed her on my side. I needed to play nice. “Okay.”

She gave a satisfied nod and tapped her phone screen. A single, sustained note—a G-flat, mournful and wavery—filled the air. The pivot pulsed in response. I signaled when I'd fixed the frequency in my mind.
Like riding a bike,
I told myself. Riding a bike off-road and potentially over a cliff.

Ms. Powell checked one last time to make sure nobody was watching from the hallway, and gave me a thumbs-up. “See you on the other side.”

I saw when she caught the edge—a hitch in her movements and a slight curling of her fingers as she found the right Echo, widening the pivot as she eased inside.

When she'd disappeared, I took one last look at Simon's desk, envisioning him sprawled there, long limbed and laughing, and pressed my fist against my heart. Then I pulled myself through the pivot, following her lead.

•   •   •

On the other side the classroom was equally deserted. Ms. Powell was paging through the sheet music on the piano, waiting for me. Around us the frequency throbbed in a steady rhythm.

“Who's teaching if you're not here?” I asked. Ms. Powell interacted with Original students and staff all day, but her impressions wouldn't last in the Echoes—countless versions of Washington High were missing a music teacher.

“Nobody. I keep a letter on my desk in the Key World, explaining my sudden resignation due to urgent family matters. It's been here since the day I started, so every Echo that's sprung up since my arrival has one. When administrators in those worlds
find it, they hire a sub.” She shrugged. “It's not strictly necessary, but we like to be inconspicuous, even in Echoes.”

“Do all the Free Walkers masquerade as Originals?”

“Very few, actually. We have people working undercover in every Consort—”

“Even ours?”

“Even yours. But the majority tend to live in Echoes. It lets us limit our interactions with non-Walkers, so the repercussions are more manageable. This is the longest I've been in the Key World in years.”

“Don't you get frequency poisoning?” Even the most stable Echoes would make a Walker sick over time. Minor bouts, like the one I'd suffered fixing an inversion, would put you out of commission for a few days. Major ones could rob you of your hearing and your sanity. “You should be a raving lunatic by now.”

“We have ways to counteract it,” she said, toying with her earring. “I'll show you later. For now, let's focus on the cleaving. Or rather, the not-cleaving.”

We wandered through the school. Class was out for the day, and while there were still people around, teachers and custodians, students with detention or clubs, none of them noticed us. I could see how living in Echoes was easier—and how lonely it must be.

Ms. Powell stopped in front of the library. “Cut site,” she said, pointing to a bank of lockers. A place where an Echo had been cleaved. The only sign was a barely perceptible line a few inches in front of the metal doors, hovering like spider silk. Invisible, unless you were looking. “Have you ever felt one before?”

“With my dad, when I was little. We've checked a few in training, too.”

“How did they feel?”

“Rough.” The pads of my fingers tingled at the memory. “Like burlap, you know?”

“Cleavers cut the strings of an Echo and reweave the fabric of the parent world. Because it's man-made instead of naturally occurring, the patch isn't as finely woven as the surrounding fabric.”

“That's why cut sites are weaker? Because the fabric's not as dense?”

“Partly. You've learned about the energy transfer in your Consort classes, correct?”

“The basics.”

When an Echo forms, it creates energy, which circulates between the existing branch and the new offspring like sap through a tree. That energy bolsters the Key World, protecting it from unstable frequencies. When Cleavers cut the strings between two realities, they direct the energy back into the parent world, use the weaving to seal it inside, and allow the cleaved Echo to unravel.

“One of the problems with cleaving is that not all of the energy can be harvested. Some percentage always escapes during the reweaving, so the cut site is never quite full strength.”

I hadn't heard that before. “Still better than letting an inversion take root. Or leaving the edges unwoven,” I said. “The energy would be wasted otherwise.”

The smile she gave me was almost triumphant. “Not necessarily. Feel it,” she said, and pointed at the lockers.

My hand inched toward the cut site, and the frequency around me quieted, the faintest of diminuendos. The air split beneath my touch, and the strings vibrated in perfect unison. Listening with my fingertips as well as my ears, I found the cut site. Instead of the coarsely woven fabric I expected, a line of tiny bumps pressed against my fingers, firm but resilient.

“Knots,” Ms. Powell said when I twisted to look at her. “The threads are tied, not woven.”

“This is a cleaving?” That couldn't be right. But the odd seam was silent, like any other cut site.

“A cauterization. The Echo on the other side of this cut site still exists.”

I snatched my hand away. “How is that possible?” And if she was right, did it mean Train World, where I'd left Simon, was intact?

“Cleaving requires that you cut all the threads at once—you need all the strings of a cut site free in order to weave the edges together. But a cauterization cuts only a few threads at a time, knotting each half. Once that's done, the Echo is untethered.”

“Doesn't it unravel?”

“No. Both sides are knotted, so both sides remain intact. The energy stays within the cauterized Echo, and once the seam is finished, it's a completely independent, self-sustaining reality.”

I reached into the cut site, examining the knots again, trying to sense the world on the other side.

“You cauterized Train World?”

“Yes. My team found Simon shortly after you and Addie returned. The process was a little trickier, because you and Simon had already cut the strings. As you know, he makes worlds stronger, which bought us extra time.”

Exactly as I'd hoped. I pulled my hand free as my knees gave out. I slid down to the floor, my back against the lockers. “You saved him.”

“We did.”

I hadn't believed her before now—not truly, not in my bones—but I did now, and the knowledge knocked loose a chunk of the sorrow I'd carried, dissolving it to tears.

Ms. Powell was nice enough to look away while I pulled myself together. Once I did, I asked, “Can I cross over?”

“Once a world is cauterized, there's no getting through again. It will grow, and generate Echoes of its own, but there's no going back.”

“He's trapped there?” Had she given me hope only to shatter it again?

She touched my shoulder, her words a rush of reassurance. “We pulled Simon out before the cauterization was complete. He's lucky we were monitoring him—it was a close call.”