Page 70 of The Same Backward as Forward

“Five-Card Draw?” she suggests, her eyes narrowing in a way that changes the geometry of her face—brows, cheekbones, and jaw. “If I win, you ditch the nickname forever and agree not to talk to me—or evenlookat me—for three days.”

She’s getting better at closing loopholes.

“Steep price, not looking at you,” I comment. I do not tell her that I have already committed her face to memory, that in pitch black, I would still be able to see her, to mentally summon every last detail of her face.

But the mere memory of her would never do. There are far too many pieces of the Hannah puzzle still left to collect.

“What will you give me in return?” I challenge.

She raises her chin and folds her arms. “A piece of paper.”

I smile. It hurts more than it should. Mybodyhurts more than it should, but I’ll be damned before I let her see that. “You drive a hard bargain,” I drawl. “But I’ll accept your terms.”

This time, I win. “Those are the breaks, Hannah the SameBackward as Forward.” I smile again, and it hurts even worse this time. “The nickname stays.”

She walks over to the table to rip my piece of paper out of a notebook, and I lean back, allowing my head to hit the mattress, only realizing after I’ve done so that I do not have the energy to lift my head back up.

I’m getting worse.I can’t deny that any longer.

Hannah stalks back to me and drops my hard-won sheet of paper on the mattress. I watch it float down to land right next to my face.

“Have I done something to offend you, liar mine?” I know that she will not let me get away with it, calling hermine. I concentrate on that instead of the pain.

“Do you want a list?” Hannah is quiet and steady and dauntless, and something dark inside me whispers that she is right to loathe me.

“I get the sense,” I say, matching her quiet with my own, “that I don’t know how towantanything anymore.”

Except for you.I prefer thinking to feeling, prefer puzzling to longing, but there is something in her that calls to something in me.

She turns and walks away, unable to stand the sight of me, then abruptly stops, turns, stalks back toward me. “What tree?” she demands.

“Is that a riddle?” I ask, and just like that, I know suddenly that I like riddles as much as I like words and wagers and strong-jawed girls who don’t like me.

“You talk in your sleep,” she says—an accusation, by the sound of it.

“I talk in my sleep,” I repeat. “About a tree.” A chill blankets my body.

“Apparently,” Hannah tells me scathingly, “it’s poisoned.”

Poisoned.The word threatens to awaken something in me, and I fight it. I fix my eyes onto hers and hold on for dear life. I look for her pain, a reflection of my own.

It’s poisoned, she said.The tree, I think. I keep my eyes on hers, and I don’t even blink as I reply. “Aren’t we all?”

Chapter 8

Days pass, and Hannah is gone more than she’s here. Even on her day off—and yes, I know exactly when it falls—the hours tick by as I wait in vain for her to return. The longer I wait, the more aware I am of a new tightness in my chest, an unrelenting pounding in my head, a chill I cannot shake.

I find myself thinking of the pain as a horrible song, note after tortuous note. It all feels higher pitched now, more cutting, more vicious. Sleep would provide some relief, but I refuse to take the risk that I might spend what little time I have with Hannah tonight unconscious.

I must stay awake until she comes.

To occupy myself, I contemplate the piece of paper I won in our wager.What game is next?I need one that she will play, one that I can draw her into, but trying to think feels like running through fog. My mind is all I have, and it is of so little use to me right now, butI will not sleep. No rest for the wicked. There’s no such thing as defeat for a—

For a…A whisper of memories builds like knifepoint pressure behind my eyes. I clench my jaw and ignore it. Finally—blessedly—an idea begins to form in my mind. I wait, and I watch the door, and I scrawl two words onto the sheet of paper with apen that Jackson gives me when my waiting and watching and obsessing becomes impossible for him to ignore.

The instant it’s done, the instant I set down the pen, my body rebels, and I know that sleep is coming, whether I want it to or not. I can feel unconsciousness like a wolf at the door, darkness closing in. Eventually, no matter how hard I fight it, the wolf sinks its teeth into me.

Again.