Page 43 of The Same Backward as Forward

“We’re going back to the lighthouse.” That was the way I greeted Harry the moment he opened the metal door. This time, I could see Jackson seated at the table in the background, but the fisherman didn’t say a word to either of us.

“Your wish is my command,” Harry drawled, stepping out into the night.

I’d made sure I wasn’t followed on the way here. I’d scanned the surrounding area. We were alone.

“Anyone who knows anything about fairy tales,” I said, “knows not to trust a statement like that.”

Harry walked past me, over rocky ground, and this time, he didn’t stumble. Something about the way he moved told me he was still in pain, but that pain didn’t matter—not to him.

“It’s a good thing,” he called back to me, “that I’ve never pretended to be trustworthy.”

The first time a person made a mistake, it could be just that: a mistake, a one-off, a blip. The second time, it was a pattern. It wasintentional.

It was devastating in the best possible way.

Still a mistake.I knew that, and I had no excuses. I couldn’t pin this on a dream. This was me. This was what happened when I let someoneseeme, when I let myself imagine what it would be like not to be alone.

I neverdecidedto let him in. I just stopped lying to myself, and there he was—past my shields, under my skin, this horrible boy, this person I’dhatedandhatedandhatedand somehow didn’t hate anymore.

On our second night at the lighthouse, I slept without dreaming, my body tangled with his, and I woke up alone.

He was gone.What if he took off?My entire body seized with that thought. He’d been strong enough to get to the lighthouse. What if he’d thought he was strong enough to go farther?What if he’s done—with this, with me, with waiting for his escape?

What if he’d gone into town?

I burst out of the lighthouse into the night—and then I saw him.

Past the jut of land on which the lighthouse stood, down below, there was a small bit of beach. Harry must have climbed down—reckless—to reach it. I could make out his silhouette in the moonlight.

He was on his knees, drawing something in the sand.

Someone could see you, I thought.See us, I corrected myself, as I looked for a path to join him. I knew that the risk was probably small. It was the middle of the night. From a distance, he wouldn’t have been visible, even with the moonlight.

I wasn’t sure thatIwould have seen him, if he’d been anyone else.

Drawing closer, I realized that Harry wasn’t drawing on the sand. He waswriting—letters. Large ones. An entire alphabet’s worth.

That was when I remembered: I’d won our game of hangman, but I’d never broken his code.You could start by writing out the letters of the alphabet.That had been his smug little hint.See if anything jumps out to you.

He spotted me as he was finishing theY. “You thought I left, didn’t you, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward?”

The waves crashed behind us and rolled up onto the beach, stopping maybe five feet from where he was writing, a natural soundtrack with valleys and peaks.

“Leaving the wrong way could get you killed,” I said as he drew theZwith a flourish. Another wave crashed behind us. “It could get me killed, too.”

It was the first time I’d ever put that thought into words: If the world found out what I’d done, if my family did, if letting me live would be read by others as a sign of weakness…

“Tell me.” Harry stood.

I looked down at his alphabet—what I could see of it in themoonlight. “The answer or the truth?” I asked.The code—or why we have to be so careful?

“Dealer’s choice.”

I knelt in the sand, getting a better look at the letters he’d written, attending to them one by one. There was nothing remarkable about theZ, theY, theX, theW…

“People who cross my family end up dead.” I kept my explanation short and to the point.

“Drugs?” Harry saw the answer to that on my face, even with nothing but the moon for light. “But with me…” Harry took his time with the next bit. “It’s not business. It’s personal.”