Erica O'Rourke - Dissonance

Was it possible for threads to re-form?

I checked the map, but the pivot we’d come through shone like a miniature sun—strong and steady. “It’s a freak thing. We might never know.”

Eliot would. Addie, too. Neither one of them was going to help me now. Monty, but he wasn’t exactly a reliable source. I clutched my grandmother’s tuning fork. Why hadn’t she taken it with her on that last Walk? She could have found her way home.

I slipped the chain over my head. Monty had answers; I’d simply been asking the wrong questions.

“You can’t Walk anymore,” I said. “We can’t risk running into your Echo again.”

“And you can’t go alone.”

“I do it all the time.”

“Not anymore,” he said, and kissed me.

“You are not the boss of me,” I said a few minutes later. “But I appreciate the concern.”

“I nearly lost you,” he said, tracing the chain of my necklace. “What if—”

“Everything is a what-if. That’s why I love it.” I paused. “We’ll find your mom. A healthy version. It’ll take time, that’s all.”

Time I might not have if Addie blabbed to Lattimer.

It was as if Monty had a secret ability—an ability other than Walking—that told him to lie low when he was about to be grilled. I waited as late as I could the next morning, hoping he’d show up in the kitchen and I could ask him about my grandmother’s pendant, or the strange dual-Simon tear or anything else. But my mom caught sight of me first and ordered me out the door to school, where Simon greeted me with a slow, knee-buckling kiss.

The entire corridor went silent, then filled with a hurricane of whispers.

“What was that for?” I’d wanted people to see me, but this wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind.

“Everything. Nothing. For being you, mostly.”

“For helping with your mom.” My heart twisted the tiniest bit.

“For offering, sure. But this—” He gestured to the space I’d put between us. “This started before I told you about her. It started way before I knew what you could do.”

It had started when I went after his Echo. But my guilt kept me from saying so. “Walk me to orchestra?”

“Gladly.” Before I could stop him, he hooked his arm around my waist, casual and obvious.

We passed by the trophy case, and I looked over my repair from yesterday.

And then I stopped cold.

“What’s wrong?”

“The trophies,” I said, fear gathering in my stomach like a leaden ball. “They’re different.”

“What do you mean?” He let go of me. “Wait. This is a conference trophy, not State. And where’s my net?”

“It must have slid back,” I said. “That’s what I was fixing yesterday, when you caught me. It was another world merging with this one. You were on the JV squad, I think.”

“I’m not in the picture at all,” he said. “Is this because of last night?”

“It must be.” I thought back to the cottage. The one-car garage. “Your Echo house didn’t have a basketball hoop.”

He closed his eyes, like he was trying to picture it. “No, I guess not.”

The Echo we’d met didn’t look like a basketball player; piercings aside, he moved differently than Simon, slouching instead of striding.

“The world bled through. When I fixed the trophy inversion yesterday, the strings must have been left vulnerable, so when your frequencies met last night, the damage showed up here.” Simon looked utterly perplexed. “Part of last night’s Echo has overtaken the Key World. Your doppelgänger didn’t play basketball. In that reality, the basketball team had a different season last year. These are their trophies.”

“I remember winning,” he said. “I remember cutting down the net. Won’t other people notice too?”

“I don’t know. This is advanced stuff. College level.” The pitiful little trophy didn’t move, which meant the inversion had taken root. “I need to Walk through and fix it.”

“For a trophy? No way.”

“It’s an inversion,” I said. “It will keep spreading until I fix it.”

“What if you don’t come back?” His fingers hooked in the pockets of my jeans, drew me closer. “Don’t go.”

“I’ll come home,” I said, and fished the pendant out from beneath my shirt. “I’m a Walker. This is what we do.”

“But . . .”

I skimmed my fingers along the glass, feeling the traces of the bad frequency blending with the Key World. The Consort would find this, I realized. With so many teams scrutinizing the area, nothing would draw their attention faster.

“Quit arguing,” I said. “Go to class. I don’t want you near the pivot when I go through.”

“Del—”

I brushed my lips over his cheek, like it was no big deal. “I’ll see you soon.”

He went, walking backward, his eyes on me the whole way.

I ducked into the girls’ bathroom, hid until first period had started and the commons had emptied out. There was no telling how quickly my mom or one of the other navigators would pick up on the inversion. I needed to move fast.

My hands shook as I found the frequency from last night and felt my way along it.

When I landed on the other side, the dissonance slammed into me like a hammer to the skull. The world swam in front of my eyes, the lights blurring. I planted my free hand on the wall to steady myself.

The fabric of the world was densely woven, nearly impossible to penetrate. I ran my hands lightly over the quivering material. No wonder the inversion was so stubborn—the problem strings were wound so tightly around the others, I couldn’t unkink them enough to restore the proper pitch.

I had no idea how much time had passed while I worked. Nausea washed over me in a greasy wave, and I took careful breaths. Nimble fingers, open mind, help to seek what you would find. There. I isolated the first strand, vibrating wildly out of tune.

It was the opening I needed. The more threads I fixed, the easier it was to repair others, the damage as pervasive as a choking vine. The vertigo was overtaking me, and I anchored myself with thoughts of Simon.

The last tangle of threads resolved itself, the resonance clear and stable, the inversion fixed.

Fixed too late.

My knees gave out, and I crumpled as the frequency poisoning kicked in. My grandmother’s pendant hung heavy around my neck, but my fingers were too cramped and numb to reach it. Is this how she’d felt, when she’d been lost? Would Simon miss me the way Monty missed her? The world tilted around me, going dark at the edges and narrowing rapidly.

Someone grabbed me by the shoulders, and a face appeared above mine, dear and familiar. Eliot.

The tunnel closed.

SOMETIMES THE MOST welcome sights are the most unexpected.

I woke up on the floor of a supply closet, burning with fever and teeth chattering.

“Bathroom,” I said, trying to curl up on my side. “I’m going to be sick.”

“What’s she saying?” I heard Simon ask. “What language is that?”

“It’s frequency poisoning,” Eliot said. “Her cerebral cortex is scrambled.”

“Sick,” I said, my tongue thick and clumsy. “I need to throw up.”

“Get her a Coke,” Eliot ordered, prying the tuning fork from my hand.

The chime of the pendant sank inside me, tamping down on the nausea. “You came for me?”

“Don’t try to talk,” he said, and tapped it again.

“The inversion. Is it gone?” My whole body shuddered, and someone shoved a sweatshirt under my head.

“She’s not making any sense,” Simon said, his voice rough.

I felt Eliot prop me up and heard the crack-hiss of a can being opened. The syrupy taste of Coke filled my mouth. “Swallow,” he ordered. The sugar hit my system and my muscles eased.