Erica O'Rourke - Dissonance

His eyes met mine and he gave the slightest nod.

“Good. Once I’m back on my feet, we’ll get started.”

Before we did, though, there was something I needed to stop.

Every action we take is a choice. Some are deliberate, some are automatic, but each represents a decision between paths. Viewed in this light, even inaction is a choice, albeit a weak one.

—Chapter One, “Structure and Formation,”

Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five

THE WORST THING about frequency poisoning is how long it takes you to recover. If you go out again too soon, your resistance is half what it should be. I wasn’t in fighting form, but I also didn’t want to put off what I had to do for a moment longer. Eliot told my parents I’d caught a flu bug going around school, which got me out of Addie-time—but it also kept me from seeing Simon. On Friday, stir-crazy and missing him, I headed back to school, despite Eliot’s protests.

I trudged through the day in a fog. Only Simon was clear, urging sugar on me at lunch and keeping Bree at bay during music. By ninth hour, I was so worn down that even Mrs. Gregory believed me when I asked for a pass to the nurse’s office with only ten minutes left in the period. “She’s probably high,” Bree whispered.

I ducked into the girls’ bathroom, found the pivot, and crossed to Doughnut World.

I’d asked this Simon about his schedule the last time I’d seen him. He was in Spanish now, and I moved through the hall on autopilot. The bell rang and the corridor filled with laughter and chatter and shouts, kids bursting free of the constraints of the day. Already the frequency was wearing on me, familiar and ominous. I wove around clusters of people and couples reunited, my hand wrapped around my pendant. Lingering here was not an option.

Finally I saw him.

And he saw me.

Shock. Relief. Heat. Anger. The expressions washed over Echo Simon’s face, warring with each other, and finally settled into something I hadn’t anticipated. Wariness.

Hatred would have been easier. Would have protected him better. Hope and fear mingled together this way only meant more damage.

“Hey,” I said, and gave a small wave.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Can we go somewhere else? Talk?”

“So you can give me another lame excuse? Don’t bother.”

I wished I’d never returned, but he’d trusted me. I owed him the truth—or a version of it. I had seen what happened when people left without explanation, how badly it wounded the ones left behind. It tainted everything that had come before and twisted what came after. Simon’s father had done it; so had my grandmother. Their absence was as tangible as their presence. “I told you I’d come back.”

He slammed his locker shut and stalked toward the side door. “For how long? I can never find you, Del. You’re a goddamn ghost. It’s like you’re not even real.”

“I am.” So was he, despite everything I’d been taught. I rubbed at my arms, trying to ward off the encroaching frequency. “But I can’t come back again.”

“Won’t.” He pinned me with a cold, contemptuous look.

“Can’t,” I replied. “I don’t belong here. Every time I see you, I’m hiding. I have to stop.”

“Hiding from what?” He thawed slightly. “Are you in trouble?”

“I’m trying to fix it.” Emotion wouldn’t help me, but I couldn’t stop the ache in my chest. “I wanted to say good-bye. You deserve a real good-bye.”

Because he was real, every bit as much as my Simon. He deserved better than the moments I’d stolen.

“Don’t do this.” He shook his head, bewildered. “Whatever the problem is, whoever you’re hiding from, let me help you. I can protect you.”

He touched my cheek gently, like I might shatter. Maybe I would.

“From myself?” I pressed my fingers to my eyelids. “You wouldn’t believe how many people have tried.”

We always have a choice. It’s one of the first things Walkers learn. There is always a choice.

It turns out my teachers were wrong. The more you care, the fewer choices you have. If you care enough, sometimes there’s only one. A single, impossible way forward, and you have to take it. Because it’s the only way to live with yourself.

I CAME BACK jittery and nauseous and exhausted. I didn’t know if it was from Walking too soon or leaving Simon. Not my Simon, I reminded myself as I sat in the commons and downed a can of Coke, hoping to ward off another bout of frequency poisoning.

I’d cleaved one Simon, flirted with countless others, and wounded another moments ago. But the Simon who mattered most was the one who knew me best, and he was here . I would fix whatever problem was affecting both him and the Key World, we’d find a way to help his mom, and then we could be happy, here, together.

No more Walking to find other Simons. Never again.

Never didn’t last nearly long enough.

The sound of running feet caught my attention. Poking my head around the corner, I spotted the school nurse dashing toward the gymnasium, medical bag in hand.

“—says he’s fine,” said one of the other basketball players as they ran. “Coach didn’t want to take any chances.”

I might have been failing trig, but I could do the math.

I followed them to the field house, clammy with fear.

Simon sat on the bench, barely visible behind the wall of teammates looming over him. The nurse shooed them away, brisk and cheerful as she pulled out her blood pressure cuff. “Let’s see what we have.”

He waved her off, looking haggard. “Put me back in, Coach. It was nothing.”

“That was not nothing,” the coach growled. “Looked like a damn seizure.”

“I pulled an all-nighter,” Simon replied. “I’m good.”

“The hell you are. We’ve got a game against Kennedy tomorrow. I can’t have you fainting like a thirteen-year-old-girl at a rock concert in the middle of a full-court press.”

I could see Simon’s flush of embarrassment from across the room.

“Plenty of fluids and a good night’s sleep should do the trick,” the nurse said. One of the other players brought out a duffel bag and set it near Simon’s feet.

“Go home, Lane,” barked the coach. “Get some rest.”

“I don’t need—” Simon started to protest, but he caught sight of me and straightened, the set of his shoulders combative. “Sure, Coach. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Damn straight,” the coach said, and blew his whistle. “The rest of you—this isn’t a tea party. Get moving!”

Simon’s eyes never left mine as he crossed the room—it was like he was freezing me in place, and the closer he got, the colder I felt.

“Car,” he said, hefting the duffel bag. We reached the Jeep without another word. When he was behind the wheel, he turned to me. “I saw you Walking.”

I didn’t bother denying it. “How much?”

He snorted. “Everything. This whole time, I thought they were dreams, and you were . . . what? Hooking up with me in other worlds? It wasn’t enough that I fell for you here? I wasn’t enough, so you had to go and mess around with my Echoes?”

“No! It wasn’t like that!”

“And then you dumped me? Were you thinking you’d break up with both of us, make the worlds match?” He sounded insulted. “You were cheating on me with me .”

“I wasn’t! I haven’t been back there since before our date. Before things changed with us.”

“Things changed with us a long time ago.”

My own anger flared up. “Did you ever wonder why? You said it took you too long to notice me, but did you ever ask yourself what changed?”