. can’t you guys do something to get her off my case? She’s come after me twice today.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Ms. Powell took my hands in hers. “Are you sure you’re all right? Finding out about the cleavings is a shock.”
My stomach twisted. Shock didn’t begin to describe it.
My phone buzzed again. “Eliot,” I said, suddenly desperate to escape. “I should go.”
“We’ll talk soon,” she said. “But in the meantime, you cannot tell anyone, Eliot included.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she continued. “Please don’t make us regret trusting you. It could ruin your chance to see Simon again.”
I swallowed, nodded, and stumbled from the room.
I couldn’t tell Eliot, but the knowledge of what I’d done burned in my veins like poison. I needed to get it out, to confess.
Who did you confess to, if you had to keep a secret from the world?
Someone from another world.
CHAPTER FIVE
DUSK WAS FALLING WHEN I reached the cemetery, despite the fact it was only late afternoon. The streetlights flickered on one by one, too weak to pierce the gloom on the other side of the wrought-iron fence.
My breath hung in smoky puffs. I hunched my shoulders against the cold and peered through the bars, looking for a familiar shape. But the graveyard was deserted.
The massive, rusting gate stood open a few inches. I tugged on it, wincing at the shriek of metal. I’d forgotten how loud it was, or maybe the shadows and silence only made it seem that way.
The cemetery wasn’t large—tucked beside a neighborhood church and boxy older homes, bordered by a stone half wall and a row of trees at the back. Many of the gravestones scattered throughout were crumbling, or worn smooth by time and grief. Only a few were still legible, including a small marble rectangle set into the ground. Someone had swept away the old leaves, unlike many of the other headstones, revealing the crisp engraving.
AMELIA LANE
BELOVED MOTHER
I knelt and traced the letters, listening to the pitch of this world, where Simon’s mother hadn’t escaped the cancer ravaging her body, and grieved all over again. This Amelia had been as real as the one I visited each day, and her son felt her absence as painfully as my Amelia did her Simon.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Nobody told me the truth, and I was too stupid to see it for myself, and now . . . I don’t know what to do.”
I wondered how much this Amelia had known, how much of the truth she carried with her. Echoes held the memories of the lives they’d led before the choice that formed their world, so she would have remembered Simon’s father and her involvement with the Free Walkers. Would she have known that she was an Echo? Would she have felt second best?
“I wish you were here. I wish you could tell me what to do next. I wish I’d known sooner, and I wish I could have saved you.” My breath hitched, and I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “I wish I could have saved all of them.”
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” came a familiar voice behind me, and I jolted.
Simon—an Echo of my Simon, dark hair jaggedly cut, dressed head to toe in black, carrying a sketchbook and the weight of this world. He’d told me once that he came here every day to sketch. I’d hoped to catch him, but after everything I’d heard today, the sight of him was a shock.
“What does that even mean?” I asked after I recovered.
“It means . . . I don’t know, honestly.” His mouth curved as he helped me up, his dissonance rocking me back on my heels. “My mom used to say it whenever I wanted something I couldn’t have. I think it’s about how wishing is easy. Making it happen is harder.”
I brushed at my muddy knees. “No kidding.”
“What are you doing here, Del?”
I looked at him then, the line of his jaw, the scar at the corner of his mouth, and longing and guilt clamped like a vise on my heart. Real. Not just real. Alive.
“You remember me.”
He patted the sketchbook under his arm. “I never forget a face.”
I hadn’t told him my name, on my last visit here. He’d known it nevertheless, seen me before we touched, and I’d missed both signs completely. It had alarmed me then, but now I took it as a good sign. I searched his face for