Page 66 of The Same Backward as Forward

The abyss rushes in, thick like smoke in my lungs.Water and fire and darkness.

And then, in the blink of an eye, there is no ocean, no cliff, no darkness, no flames. I’m on my hands and knees, retching into dirt. It’s like the elements are conspiring against me: first fire, then water, now earth and—

My fingers curl around something. I lift it up and see that it’slong and thin and a horrible shade of white.Bone.I drop it and stand, and as I do, a torch flares to life near my face. I’m in a chamber of some kind, underground. A word stares back at me from the wall, written in what I know is my own hand.

COMPLICIT.

This isn’t the stone room, but it might as well be. I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to be here.

I don’t want toknow.

The ground beneath my feet shakes violently. Roots burst through the dirt, wrapping themselves around my ankles, as thick as boa constrictors and twice as strong.

“The tree…” I begin to thrash, becauseI do not want to know.

I fight harder. Harder.

“Not on my watch, you asshole.”Hannah’s voice is everywhere, and the moment I hear it, I’m back on the cliff. Darkness closes in, like ink spreading from the outside of a page to its center.

“The tree is poison.” I say the words because I can’tnotsay them, but I don’t know what they mean. I don’t want to know. The darkness rolls over me like a wave, and with it comes the scent of salt in the air. Ash and smoke. The wind off the ocean. Kerosene—

I wake up with a breath trapped in my lungs, my head inherhands. Hannah’s body is poised over mine. I can feel her thumbs on my jaw on either side of my face.

I am hollow. I am spent. And she is so damn steady I could cry.

Slowly, the dream recedes, all of it but the smells.Salt and sea. Smoke and kerosene.Even that is enough to convince me: I don’t want to know who I am—or where I came from. Forget things aboutme. I don’t want to solve that particular puzzle anymore, and yet I cannot shake the sense that I might not be the kind of person who canstop.

I suspect I do not excel at leaving any puzzle unsolved.

So I do the only thing I can: I useher—use the feel of her hands on my face and neck, use the rise and fall of her chest above me. I make Hannah the Same Backward as Forward my anchor and my distraction and the center of my darkened universe all at once.

One thing about Hannah, I think,and only Hannah. I listen for the sound of her breathing and know suddenly, in a way that I cannot fully explain, that she has been crying.

I know, despite the darkness in this room, that she is an ugly crier and the most beautiful thing in the world.

I makehermy puzzle. Only her.See a mystery, solve it, I think.See a wall, tear it down.

“Deified,” I whisper. “Civic. Madam.” I wonder how long it will take her to catch on. “Race car.”

I see the exact moment it clicks. I keep going, keep pushing—because Ican. “Rotator.”

Another palindrome, another word to make her everything eyes flash, another moment to relish the feel of her hand on my skin.

This.

Here.

Now.

Who I am doesn’t matter. I’m the boy lying on a ratty mattress on the floor, and she is the girl above me, and the only mystery I need to solve is her.

Let the real games begin.

Chapter 6

Hannah leaves, and she comes back. She leaves and comes back. Again and again and again. I measure the passing of days by her visits, and I measureherby the periodic flashing of her eyes. Each transcendent flash of anger gives me a new piece of the Hannah puzzle.

This game is called Pick The Lock.