Dissonance (14 page)

“Oh, fine.” She waved an arm at the surrounding buildings, the pedestrians enjoying a Saturday-morning stroll. “Map it.”

I blinked. “The entire Echo?”

“Too much?” she replied. “You're such an expert, prove it. We've got two hours left. Mark as many pivots and breaks as you can. We'll compare it to the most recent map when we get home, and you can write up an analysis of the changes.”

If her plan was death by dullness, it was working. I opened my mouth to complain, but Monty interrupted.

“Start there,” he said, and pointed to a coffee shop across the street. “I need a snack.”

•  •  •

A few minutes later Monty was plowing through a blondie the size of a deck of cards while Addie sipped a cup of tea. I slouched in an overstuffed chair on the other side of the room, a notebook in my lap, the café's floor plan sketched out. I'd tried to use Eliot's software, but Addie was watching me too closely. I'd have to do this the old-fashioned way.

I ignored the indie-folk blaring on the radio and listened. Snatches of conversation floated around me: plans for the rest of the afternoon, gossip, quarrels, friends doling out advice to one another. My pencil flew over the paper, drawing an
X
for each pivot that formed. I couldn't get a clear read on their strength. If Addie wanted that kind of detail, she'd have to let me Walk more.

The highest concentration of pivots was near the counter, not only at the register, where people placed their orders, but along the open space where people lined up to study the chalkboard menu. Some of the rifts formed and dissolved again with a drone like a mosquito. Transpositions, probably, and I marked them with a small wavy line.

Eliot had been stumped by yesterday's transposition. By returning the girl's note cards, we'd altered the frequency of an entire Echo. But Walkers didn't change Echoes; we cleaved them. Neither my parents nor my teachers had ever suggested another possibility. I wondered why not.

A group of chattering girls, identical in their suede boots and fleece jackets, shopping bags weighing down their arms, approached the register. I didn't recognize any of them, but
something about them—their airy confidence, maybe, or the way they expected everyone else to make way for them—reminded me of Bree.

One of the girls, a dishwater blonde with heavily glossed lips, asked, “Is Soren working today?”

The woman behind the counter, who sported an impressive number of piercings and perfectly applied kohl liner, rolled her eyes. “Not for another hour.”

“Oh,” the girl said, crestfallen. The air around her stirred faintly, the beginning of a break. “We could wait, right? Surprise him?”

“Go for it,” the barista said in a tone suggesting Soren would not, in fact, be surprised by the sight of four girls giggling into their skinny caramel lattes.

The café was nearly full—all that was left was a low table in front, with a couch on one side and two chairs on the other. It was the perfect place to see and be seen, and the only spot where the four girls would fit.

As they waited for their drinks, Monty ambled over, handing me a cappuccino. “Having fun?”

“Not particularly.”

He gave me a conspirator's wink. “Would you like to?”

“Most definitely.”

He tipped his head toward the girls hovering at the counter. “Hard to concentrate with their gabbing, isn't it? Bet you could convince them to leave.”

“They're too stable,” I said. “The break around Lip Gloss Girl is tiny. Addie would kill me if I interfered.”

Addie and Monty had made direct contact so the cashier would notice them and take their order, but I'd been sitting undetected in my chair for thirty minutes. I wondered if I could sneak a nap.

“Influence, not interference,” he chided. “Oldest trick in the book.”

Before I could stop him, he scooped up my backpack and dumped it on one of the empty chairs.

The ringleader, a tall brunette, had been eyeing the table. She blinked and turned to the others. “Why don't they have more seats?” she complained. “We're going to have to squish in.”

Monty's plan became clear. Swiftly, I tossed my coat on the other chair and stretched out on the couch, feet on the cushions, moments before the girls collected their drinks. They stopped a few feet away, confused. In the Key World, I would have been on the receiving end of haughty looks and barbed comments, maybe even a veiled threat.

The Echo clique wouldn't remember any details about me. They knew their plans to sit by the window had been thwarted, but if you asked them to explain why, the best they'd be able to come up with was, “Someone took our seats.” I was insubstantial and utterly forgettable, but I could change their path.

“Let's check out the bookstore instead. Maybe that hot guy is working the customer service desk.” The brunette tossed her hair and headed for the door, a pivot forming in her wake. The others trailed silently after her, and the break around Lip Gloss Girl steadied.

Monty thumped down on the couch next to me with a grunt and perused my map. I dumped a bunch of sugar into my drink and folded a star from the empty packets, just to pass the time.

“I give up,” I said eventually. “What was that? Her break fixed itself?”

“It's called tuning,” Monty said as Addie joined us. “Addie's seen it before, haven't you?”

“I have,” she said, dropping my backpack on the floor and sitting down. “It's a weird side effect of Walking—when we interfere with a break, their pitch will sometimes stabilize.”

“You can bring them back in tune,” Monty said cheerfully. “Neat trick, isn't it?”

“Sure, if it doesn't make things worse,” Addie replied. “You shouldn't have encouraged her, Grandpa.”

I thought back to the note cards. “Can you fix entire Echoes?”

“Theoretically, yes. But there's no point. It's more efficient to cleave Echoes than fix them. Safer, too.” Addie waved her hand. “Have you finished?”

“Almost. There's one behind the door, I think.”

In the back of the café was a door with an
EMPLOYEES ONLY
sign.

“Go check it out,” she said. “And don't try to fix it. Get the reading, and we'll leave.”

I crossed the room, trying to connect Addie's explanation of tuning and the transposition from yesterday. Was it possible I'd tuned the Echo so well it had transposed? Was that illegal? Considering I'd violated my suspension the instant I crossed over, asking Addie was not an option.

The door was locked. I pressed my ear against the wood, trying to hear the break on the other side. The frequency was fluctuating wildly, and I couldn't get a good sense of its strength.

“Can't get in,” I said, returning to the couch. I drew a question mark on the map and Addie scowled. She'd never been a fan of unanswered questions.

“Get the key from the cashier,” she replied.

“How am I going to do that without touching her?” I shot back. “You wanted me to map the break, and I did. End of story.”

“Not end of story,” she replied. “Pretend for a minute that hell freezes over, and you actually get your license. Cleavers initiate their cuts as close to the breaks as possible, to keep them under control. You'd need a way into that room.”

“I've got a trick for that, too,” said Monty. He slapped his knees and hefted himself off the couch. “Time for more fun.”

“This isn't supposed to be fun,” Addie replied.

“Trust me, it isn't,” I said under my breath.

“No need to squabble,” said Monty. “Del's supposed to be learning, so we'll visit the school.”

•  •  •

“Basketball game tonight?” Addie asked. The statue of George Washington outside the front door was dressed in a fire-engine red uniform. In the Key World, our colors were blue and white, but the tradition was the same, apparently.

“Like I would know?”

Monty headed for a side door, and I chased after him. “They lock it up on weekends. Only the custodians and teachers have keys.”

“Haven't bothered with a key since I met Rose,” he huffed, and pulled out his wallet. “Watch and learn.”

“Lock picks?” Addie said. Her ponytail whipped back and forth frantically. “Grandpa, you can't break into the school.”

“Good point.” He sat back on his haunches. “You'll never learn if you don't try it yourselves. Del?”

I took the slender metal hook he handed me.

Addie snatched it out of my hand. “No. This is against the law.”

Monty tsked. “Whose law? Whose jurisdiction are we under, Addison?”

She struggled to answer, but finally said, “The Consort's.”

“Indeed. Any crime committed in service to the Key World is no crime at all. That is what they teach you, isn't it? How they justify what they do?” His voice shook, but his hands were steady as he maneuvered the picks.

A minute later the door swung open.

“In we go,” said Monty. I helped him up, his arm knobbly and fragile underneath my grip. Despite his mischief and stubbornness, he was old. I forgot that, sometimes. Forgot the toll his Walks had taken. “We haven't got the whole day. And I need another snack.”

The main building was shaped like a rectangle, and we'd entered at one of the corners, the two hallways on either side of us forming an L. Monty's words reverberated down the corridor, past darkened classrooms and banks of lockers.

And every single door had a lock.

My fingertips tingled, the same as before every Walk—so much possibility. So many things to see, even if it was the same school I went to every day.

I'd had freshman geography in the first room I came to. Here it was a German classroom—a flag draped in front of the windows, maps lining the walls, homework assignments and verb conjugations written on the board. Nothing interesting, except that the knob wouldn't turn under my hand. I was about to ask Monty for his picks when Addie recovered her wits.

“That's it,” she said, taking his arm. “We are going home. Right now. Someone has to be the adult here.”

He tugged away from her, surprisingly forceful. “That's me,” he snapped. “We're not leaving until the two of you learn some real skills. You can't rely on the Consort to teach you what you need. They'll only teach you what they need. It's not the same thing.”

I shot Addie a triumphant look, and Monty rounded on me. “Instinct isn't enough either. You want to outwit everyone else, you need to practice.”

He slapped his hands together and surveyed the hallway. “Let's get started.”

•  •  •

Monty's lesson took longer than we thought—but even though we arrived home after dark, dazed and headachy from so much exposure to bad frequencies, my parents were nowhere to be found. Addie checked her voice mail while I texted Eliot to see if he was home from training.

“They'll be home late,” Addie announced. “There's a casserole in the fridge.”

“No apple cake?” Monty said mournfully.

“Mom will bake tomorrow,” Addie said, and dished up a giant bowl of rocky road to hold him over until we ate. Grumbling, he took it up to his room. When he'd gone, Addie blew out a long, slow breath. “Cocoa?”

“With extra Fluff,” I said, pulling a squat white jar out of the pantry.

Addie poured milk in a saucepan, eyes troubled. “We should tell Mom.”

“That we spent today breaking and entering? She'd freak out.”

“She should.”

“You're the one who says Echoes aren't real, so what's the harm? If they think we can't handle Monty, they'll put him in a home.”

She was quiet as the milk heated, then stirred in cocoa and sugar. When the mixture was steaming, she finally spoke. “This isn't the first time he's taught you something shady, is it?”

I got down mugs and spooned in big globs of Marshmallow Fluff. “Not shady. Just . . . extra techniques. Like when I stole Simon's wallet.”

“Do you really think they're helpful?”

Mostly, Monty's tricks were fun. A way to show off, even if no one noticed. But I'd used them enough to know they could have a big impact, made bigger by the fact that people didn't expect them.

“It's another thing to add to the toolbox,” I said, thinking of the leather case full of picks sitting in my bag. Monty had given them to me while Addie was distracted, insisting I would get more use out of them. “You don't have to use it, but it's nice to have the option.”

She filled the mugs, and the Marshmallow Fluff bobbed to the surface like a buoy. “It feels . . . wrong.”

“It's no different from a screwdriver. Right or wrong depends on how you use it.” Learning to pick locks seemed minor compared to Monty's lesson in tuning. No one had ever told me we could repair Echoes. What if I could have prevented Park World's cleaving? Saved Simon and Iggy and the rest? I pushed the mug of cocoa away, feeling ill.

“Maybe.” She stared into her cup, glancing up when someone knocked on the front door. “Is that Eliot?”

Eliot used the back door—and he never bothered to knock. For a fleeting second I hoped it was Simon, but that seemed impossible. The knock sounded again. I opened the door and stepped back quickly, as if I'd found a rattlesnake on my doorstep.

“Hello, Delancey,” said Councilman Lattimer. “I'd like to come in.”

I
WOULD NEVER
get used to the way the Consort didn't ask questions. They made statements, a weird formality designed to reduce the pivots around them. Pointless, considering that Walker-created pivots couldn't sustain themselves, but they clung to the tradition.

“My parents are out,” I said as Councilman Lattimer crossed the threshold. “Working.”

“I'm aware. I'm here for an update on your progress, per your sentence.”