“The adults?” Addie said faintly.
Mom shook her head. “I expect this kind of behavior from Del, Addison. Not you.”
Addie’s face went white, then red, then white again. “May I be excused?”
She left without waiting for an answer. Monty tsked. “She’s not a child.”
“She’s my child,” Mom replied. “I’m not putting her in harm’s way if I can avoid it.”
“Can you?” he asked softly. “Desperate times, Winnie.”
“Not that desperate. Not yet.” She swallowed, reached for my dad’s hand. “The girls are to stay away from anything having to do with the anomaly. That’s our decision, and it is final. Are we clear?”
Monty nodded slowly, looking smaller, and I felt a twin rush of emotion: sympathy for him, irritation with my parents. Without speaking, I cleared my place at the table.
“The same goes for you, Del,” my father said. I stared at the floor. “The last thing you need is to be caught defying the Consort.”
“Got it,” I said.
I had no intention of getting caught.
Upstairs, Addie was lying on the bed, eyes closed, headphones on. I sat down next to her and plucked them off. Rachmaninoff came through the earbuds, tinny and strident.
“They’re worried,” I said. “They’re so worried they can’t hear anything else.”
“Whatever,” said Addie. “You get away with crap constantly. Why not me? Not even once?”
“You got caught because you told on yourself,” I said impatiently. “When we broke into Mom’s office, I locked it up again and kept my mouth shut. I didn’t sit down at dinner and say, ‘Hey, Mom, you need to invest in a better lock, because I picked yours in under ninety seconds.’ You don’t want to get caught, learn how to be sneaky.”
She opened her eyes. “Oh, good. I’m taking advice from a delinquent. This is what my life has come to.”
“A very successful delinquent, who’s willing to teach you her ways,” I added, and hit her with a pillow. “Tell me your theory.”
“We’re supposed to leave it alone.”
“You’re supposed to be teaching me,” I said. “Consider this a teachable moment.”
She snorted, but sat up. “Fine. I think they’re approaching the whole problem backward. The Consort’s looking for the anomaly in the Echoes—moving from newer to older, smaller to bigger. But the biggest, oldest world is this one.”
“You think the source is here? The Consort would have found anything that disrupted the Key World.”
“You know the Queen Anne’s lace in the backyard? It’s a weed, technically. An invasive species.”
As a kid, I’d picked enormous bouquets of Queen Anne’s lace—broad white crowns and spindly stems that left my fingers smelling like carrots. “It’s a flower. Not a very pretty one though.”
“It’s a weed. We’re used to it, so we don’t think about pulling it when Mom tells us to clear the flower beds. But she’s got enough other plants back there that it doesn’t take over. The Key World is the same way: Even if the anomaly is here, our world is stable enough to keep it in check. But the Echoes aren’t as stable. There’s room for it to take root, and each Echo generated from one of the infected branches is even more infected. It’s cumulative.”
“But what about here? Would it affect Originals?”
“You mean Simon?” She rolled her eyes. “It’s more likely to affect his Echoes. He’s popular at school, right?”
“He’s popular everywhere. You’ve seen him.”
“Some people are natural pivot points. The Consort physicists haven’t studied it super closely, but they’ve found that a small segment of the population has a tendency to form significantly more branches than others.”
I thought back to the maps Eliot had shown me, thickets of lines crowding around the Key World. “Why would that happen?”
“We don’t know. It’s like their decisions have more resonance. Historically, those people end up in positions that underscore those tendencies—they become politicians, or prominent in a given field, or celebrities. If that’s the case with Simon, he’s popular because he’s a pivot. He literally can’t help it.”
“That’s crazy. Does it make them less stable? Do they have SRT?”
“It doesn’t affect their stability. They’re like any other Original.” She paused. “They do display a higher rate of SRT, but that’s simple math—more Echoes means more chance of an overlap.”
More Baroque events, too. Situations with lots of choices meant lots of Simons, operating on similar frequencies. If they overlapped, it would account for his extreme SRT. And more Simons meant he was more likely to be affected by the anomaly.
But unless I wanted him to end up as the Consort’s guinea pig, it was smarter not to mention that to my sister.
“So, what’s next? If we’re going to figure this out, we need a plan.” Nothing distracted Addie like a plan.
She reached for a nearby map, then tossed it aside. “First thing is to find the branches that are being affected. Eliot can help us narrow it down, can’t he?”
My voice sounded small. “I don’t think Eliot’s interested in helping me right now.”
“Why not?”
I traced the floral pattern on the duvet.
“I see,” she said. “Give him some time. He’ll come around.”
Time wasn’t the answer. But all I said was, “I’ve got a copy of the software we can use.”
Addie looked relieved. “Excellent. Between the anomaly and the cleavings, none of my maps are working. Fork it over.”
I had an instant of panic Simon would text me about Walking while she was using it. Then I shoved my paranoia aside. He wasn’t going to be texting, or calling, or acknowledging me anytime soon.
“This software is awesome, Del. I don’t know why you won’t give Eliot a chance.”
“On the strength of his programming abilities? He’s my friend. I don’t think about him that way.”
“You might if you tried.”
“Could you make yourself fall for someone you didn’t want, just because it would make life easier? Find some nice Walker guy instead of a nice Walker girl?”
“Point taken.” She cocked her head to the side. “There’s a pivot in your room.”
My hands went cold. “There are pivots all over the house. No big deal.”
“This one’s strong.” She headed for the stairs. “Someone must have used it recently.”
“I bet it’s a glitch.” I scrambled after her. “Eliot hasn’t finished debugging the code.”
She ignored me, and I had a horrible, slow-motion sense of watching disaster unfold. She threw open the door, wrinkling her nose at the mess of papers and clothing scattered everywhere. Map in hand, she turned in a circle until she found the pivot. It pulsed loudly, a drumbeat announcing my guilt.
“Tell me you didn’t.” She stalked toward the rift.
“I didn’t!”
She stopped in her tracks and faced me dead-on. “Tell me the truth.”
I looked away.
“Oh, my God. You’ve been Walking behind my back? Using this to sneak out and . . . what? Mess around in the Echoes? Were you trying to make me look bad?”
“No! Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, Del. I don’t know why you would violate your probation, and risk your entire future, and lie to the Consort, and . . . You’re crazy. That’s why. You’re insane. They don’t let crazy people Walk, you know. It won’t matter if you score one hundred on the exam. They’re never going to give you a license.”