Page 105 of The Same Backward as Forward

And now I fight…

She pulls off her shirt.

To worship you.

It’s morning before we return to Jackson’s place. He’s waiting for us. “Damn kids.”

He and I have been down this road before, but this time, Hannah takes the lead. “Jackson—”

“None of my business.”

Could have fooled me.The man has been weighing in on Hannah and me since before therewasa Hannah and me.

“Itisyour business,” Hannah tells Jackson. “He’s better now. Not completely healed, but well enough to make it across the rocks. He’s leaving. And so am I.”

For a moment, my heart leaps, and then Hannah clarifies: She’s not talking about leaving with me. She tells Jackson that sheknowsshe can’t gowithme. But she is leaving.

My heart is not a fragile thing. It is hers, no strings attached. So I tell myself what I told myself after our first night at the last house.

I tell myself that Hannah leaving this place—at all, even if it’s not with me—isenough.

Hannah goes to pack, and while she’s gone, I fashion wax into candles, making the wicks myself out of wax-coated twine. I cut the remaining four glass jars just so—building blocks of a sort. The glass cutter works well enough on the checkerboard, too.

Twice so far, while I have been working, Jackson has returned to the shack. Both times, he has stomped back out. Clearly, the man has something to say and just as clearly, he has no intention of actually saying it.

The third time he reappears, I decide to poke the bear. “It doesn’t have to be with me.” I am trying desperately to believe that myself. “As long as she leaves, as long as she gets out for good, as long as Hannah is free—it does not have to be with me.”

Jackson looks at me like I have just attempted to shove abanana peel up his nose. “Of course it’s going to be with you, son.” The way he saysson, he might as well be sayingjackass. He gestures to the checkerboard in pieces on his floor. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Building something.” Some people play checkers in two dimensions. If I have my way, Hannah and I will play at least once in three.

Jackson stares at me for the longest time. “What do you remember, Harry?”

I know that my name isn’t Harry.If I am being honest with myself, I have known that nearly from the start. I deflect the question. “I remember every detail of every second that I have ever spent with her.” I pick up a piece of cut glass. The edges are clean, the cut straight. It will serve my purposes nicely.

“What else?”

I have no idea how Jackson knows that I’ve started to remember, but it’s clear he does.

“Bits and pieces.” I keep my gaze locked on my project—keep my hands busy. “In dreams.”

Jackson squats, bringing his eyes level with mine, and says absolutely nothing.

“My mother.” I force myself to look up from my work, to meet the hard gaze of the man who pulled me from the ocean and gave me to Hannah to save. “I remember my mother.”

Her face. Her voice.And now that I have given them even temporary purchase in my mind, I remember that my mother is the one who taught me to dance.

“Your mother,” Jackson replies.

I give the curtest of nods. I could probably stop there, but I don’t.Stoppinghas never been my strong suit. “I also remember that when I was in the throes of addiction, my parents locked mein a room.” I don’t know whether the stone room from my dream is a literal depiction of that room or the more fairy-tale version of it, summoned by my subconscious. But I do know—and have from the first—that at least part of the dream is real. “There was a maze on the walls.”

The walls. And the ceiling. And the floor.

Jackson doesn’t ask what kind of parents put their drug-addicted teenager in a room to detox alone. “You solve the maze?”

I nod, and to keep my hands busy, I build faster.Glass. Epoxy. Checker squares.A game, in three dimensions.The kind, I think slowly, the words like molasses in my mind,that I was raised to play.

And just like that, reality blurs in front of my eyes, and my mind takes over.