Erica O'Rourke - Dissonance

But I’d been reckless, not malicious. I wasn’t even seventeen—surely the Consort wouldn’t want to sentence a teenage girl to life in a prison world. Even so, I wasn’t eager to test the theory. “Dad, please. We can’t tell the Consort.”

Regret tempered the firmness in his voice. “We already have.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side!” I’d expected that kind of betrayal from Addie. But not my parents. Not my dad.

“We are. A cleaving that big can’t be covered up, and it’s better to admit what you’ve done. Take responsibility for your actions,” he said.

“It was an accident!”

“The Consort has rules, Del. If you want to be a Walker, you have to prove you can follow them.” My mom’s frown made it clear she wasn’t willing to bend the rules for me. Addie’s penchant for the straight and narrow was as genetic as our ability to Walk.

I wanted to remind her it wasn’t rules that had saved our lives today, but the breaking of them. And that I wasn’t going to be an Echo of my sister, no matter where we Walked. I didn’t say any of those things, though, because my mom would never truly hear them.

Monty had dozed off, crumbs scattered across his cardigan. Addie toyed with her necklace, pretending not to listen. My dad’s hand laced with my mom’s in a silent gesture of support.

I was on my own.

Counterpoint is the combination of two independent melodic lines into a single harmonious relationship.

—Chapter Five, “Composition,”

An Introduction to Music Theory

GO BACK TO the part about the balloon,” Eliot said the next morning.

“Really? I cleave a world, barely make it out alive, my parents narc on me to the Consort, and the freaking balloon is the part that interests you?” I threw my physics book into my locker and slammed the door. “My parents couldn’t even tell me what happens next. We have to wait for the Consort to decide. What if they put me in an oubliette?”

“They won’t,” he said. “There has to be an explanation for why the world cleaved so easily. And the only weird thing was the balloon, right? The rest of the Walk was by the book. So we’re missing something.” Behind his glasses, his brown eyes took on a familiar, faraway look. Deep in the supercomputer that was Eliot’s brain, he was sifting through everything I’d told him, searching for a clue, a pattern, a reason. “We’re definitely missing something.”

“Nothing important,” I said, thinking of Simon’s fingers curving around my thigh.

“Everything’s important, Del.”

I shifted my books from one arm to the other. Walkers kept their abilities secret from the rest of the world. I kept all sorts of things secret from my family. But Eliot and I had never kept secrets from each other. I’d explained Echo Simon and Iggy and the fake ID easily enough. But when it came to our encounter at the bench, I wasn’t ready to share.

Despite the crowded hallways, we reached the music classroom with time to spare. Eliot pulled at my sleeve to prevent me from going in. “If we can prove there was something wrong with the world, and that’s why it cleaved, they’ll have to go easier on you.”

“It’s the Consort. They can do whatever they want.”

“They can’t rewrite your DNA.”

He had a point. The Consort couldn’t take away my ability to Walk, but they could make it illegal. I’d be monitored for the rest of my life, unable to Walk without an accompanist. “What if they never grant me a license? I’d be stuck here.”

I’d be like an Original, only worse, because I’d know what I was missing.

“I’ll take you anywhere you want. All you have to do is ask,” Eliot said.

His eyes were oddly serious, despite the smile, and I had the distinct feeling that now I was the one missing something. Before I could ask, our teacher, Ms. Powell, appeared in the doorway.

“Am I interrupting, you two?” Smiling, she motioned us inside.

“Nope,” I mumbled.

If school was a wasteland, orchestra and music theory were my oasis—a break from the monotony of my day, a place where people spoke my native tongue. Ms. Powell was the only teacher who didn’t treat me like a delinquent.

Eliot and I slid into our seats at the back of the room. Simon sat at the desk in front of me, his dark hair starting to curl along the nape of his neck. As usual, it looked slightly unkempt, like he’d just rolled out of bed. Rumor had it that he’d rolled out of a lot of beds.

Park World Simon’s hair had been shaggier, falling past his collar, nearly hiding his eyes. The memory sent a stab of guilt through me. Simon must have felt me staring, because he twisted in his chair, flashed me a smile.

My own smile rose in answer—and disappeared as the girl sitting next to him noticed me too. Bree Carlson, star of the drama department, lead of nearly every musical and school play since the sixth grade. Pretty but not so gorgeous that the other girls hated her, popular but not so cutthroat that she had to watch her back, Bree was a chameleon; she acted whatever part would put her in the spotlight.

She and Simon had been together at the start of the year, but they’d split up about a month ago. The relationship had followed his typical pattern—a slow, easygoing shift from flirtation to coupledom to friends. Being dumped by Simon Lane was practically a badge of honor. I was surprised his exes didn’t have an official club, with a page in the yearbook.

Judging from the way she trailed her fingers over his shoulder, I could see she’d decided to reprise her role as Simon’s girlfriend. But in all the time I’d been watching him, he’d never gone out with the same girl twice. She had a better chance of nabbing a Broadway lead.

Which didn’t ease the sting when he turned back to her as if I wasn’t there.

“Since when do you smile at that guy?” Eliot grumbled.

I elbowed him. “Jealous much?”

Ms. Powell hit the lights and launched into her lecture on counterpoint, complete with slides. I tuned out Eliot’s sputtering and tried to focus. Even so, my thoughts kept drifting to Park World Simon versus real Simon. Bedhead wasn’t the only difference between the two. The leather cuff on his wrist was gone, replaced by a sporty, complicated-looking digital watch. This Simon had shadows under his eyes, the kind that took longer than a single late night to acquire. I wondered what—or who—had put them there. Eliot had always been better than me at pinpointing the changes between realities, but asking for his take on it would have meant admitting how close I’d gotten to Simon during the Great Balloon Rescue.

Forty minutes later the lights came back up, and Ms. Powell slapped her hands together with undisguised glee. She looked like a cross between a mad scientist and a 1950s housewife, wiry blond hair piled on her head and secured with pencils, a shirtdress printed with bluebirds, and a pair of orange patent-leather heels.

“So, your next project, to be done with a partner, is to develop and perform your own example of counterpoint, sixteen measures long. Fun, right?”

“This was supposed to be my blow-off class,” Bree hissed to Simon, who shrugged. Despite being my parents age, Ms. Powell was new this year and naive enough to believe everyone was here because they loved music as much as she did. It was kind of endearing.

Ms. Powell continued. “This time around I decided it would be good to shake things up.”

Nothing good had ever come from a teacher’s desire to shake things up, and I braced myself.

“Rather than pick your own partners for this composition, I’m going to assign them.” She chuckled at the groans that rose up. “You know what they say—familiarity breeds contempt.”