Page 100 of The Same Backward as Forward

“Volans?” Hannah gives me a look.

“Itmightbe one of the smallest constellations in the southern sky.”

“Oh, might it?” Hannah rises and walks toward the wall—toward the crack I chose. She skims her finger along it, deviating just enough to draw a certain constellation. “Volans.”

I grin. “Your knowledge of constellations isn’t limited to the ones you can see from here.” I could not be enjoying this more. “Well played, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.”

Eventually, Hannah takes to tracing constellations on my bare skin where my chest meets my shoulder.

I could stay like this—exactly like this—forever.

“Hannah?” I say her name the way that it’s meant to be said, like she is the only Hannah in the world. “What do you think about time?”

“About time?” Her hair falls into her face as she tilts her head slightly to one side.

“Is time an arrow cutting in only one direction or a wave cresting and falling? Or is everything that has ever been or will ever be happening all at once in ways that human senses can never quite perceive?”

Hannah isn’t exactly prone to thought experiments or waxingpoetic. Part of me expects her to lightly mock the question, but she doesn’t. “I think that time is relative.”

“Always?” I ask her. “Or just at the speed of light?”

She lays her head on my chest and listens for a moment to the beating of my heart. “Always.”

Chapter 29

There is a floorboard in the shack that is loose. I pretend I don’t know, pretend I do not know that hidden underneath that board is a metal disk the size and shape of a coin.

I pretend that bit of metal does not exist and that I have never made Hannah flinch.

I pretend that there is nothing in the world butus.

Jackson makes that easier by the day. He’s spending more and more time fishing, and on the nights that we don’t make our way out to the lighthouse, he sleeps on his boat. Hannah and I barely see him, and that means that Jackson doesn’t know just how close to fully healed I am.

Closer every day.

“Ready for your challenge?” Hannah asks me.

“Always.”

“Up on the mattress, then down to fifteen.” General Hannah enjoys giving orders. Personally, I think that’s a large part of why she enjoys The Boards On The Floor Game so much—that and thepenaltiesfor any missteps.

“And after fifteen?” I prompt. Each section of each board on the floor has been given a number. The game is part obstacle course and part The Floor Is Lava. Balance and suddenmovements are the two things that I am still working on, and Hannah and I have a silent agreement to pretend that there is more work left to do on those fronts than there actually is.

“Fifteen to fourteen,” Hannah says—an easy transition. “Fourteen to three.” That one is diabolical. “Three to five to twenty-one.”

“Five totwenty-one?” I say. That’s going to require climbing onto the table, leaping to the counter, and crossing back that way, if it’s possible at all.

Hannah smiles. “After twenty-one, you’re going to sixteen, then fifteen, then fourteen.”

Little steps—but sometimes, that makes it harder for me to keep my balance.

“After fourteen… one.” Now she’s just beingevil. “Then back over to twenty.” Hannah is officially trying to killing me. “And we’ll round it out with nine, thirteen, and five.”

I take a moment to study the path she’s laid out for me. This isn’t going to be easy—but I do it. And when I take the leap from thirteen to five and stick the landing, I arch a brow at her. “Done.”

She arches her brow at me. “Are you?” It’s clear from her voice that I’ve missed something. “Try it again,” she suggests.

“Horrible girl,” I say.