Page 71 of The Same Backward as Forward

And again.

And then I’m gone.

Stone walls. Stone ceiling. Stone floor. This time, I’m on my knees. I try to climb to my feet, but I can’t stand straight. My fingers dig into my thighs like claws. Nausea threatens to rend me in two.

My body won’t stop shaking. I cannot do this again.

Again?I retch. I gag, and I retch, but nothing comes up, and the next thing I know, I’m back on my hands and knees.

“You did this to yourself.”

I know that voice, and the knowledge tears at me like fingernails assaulting raw nerves.

I force my head up, my body weak, my mouth so dry it feels like my tongue might split.

“Help me,” I beg, my voice little more than a croak. But I know: No one is coming to let me out. No one is going to help me.

And I cannot do this again.

I wake up raging against consciousness. Thrashing hurts, but I welcome the pain, because at least I’m not shaking. I am not on my knees. I am not trapped.

Except I am—I’m trapped in this bed, trapped in a body thatdoesn’t know how to stop hurting. And one look around tells me that Hannah still isn’t here. Jackson isn’t, either.

I’m alone.

They never leave me alone.

Slowly, my eyes go to the bottle of pain medication on the counter. I know that it will do next to nothing for my pain—not my screaming body, not my raging mind.

Unless I take it all.

I think less of myself for even considering it, but thinking less of myself only makes me consider it more. There are still games to be played. I know that. Iknow that—but I also know that Hannah the Same Backward as Forward isn’t here.

Make it stop. Make it—

I fight through searing pain to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the mattress. In reward for my effort, my vision goes black.Everywhere. Pain. I can’t—

I’m on the verge of passing out, but it’s like I can hear a voice admonishing me to finish what I start. I wait for my vision to clear, and then I take my mind to a place where pain is just a word, and I stand—or I try to.

I go down, and strong arms catch me right before I hit the floor.Not Hannah.

“Don’t touch me!” I fight as much as my body will allow, but Jackson is steady. He is strong. And for reasons that I know have more to do with him than me, I am not a lost cause to him.

“Easy, boy.” There is comfort in Jackson’s gruff words and a warning, too.

“I’m not your boy.” I hurt him the only way I can, a stray dog snapping its teeth. I buck, and I thrash, wild and feral, as if the end to this fight were not fully preordained.

“You’re going to hurt yourself, damn it.”

He doesn’t call meboythis time or evenHarry, which I am increasingly certain is not my name. “Maybe that’s the point.”

What’s a little more pain? And more and more and—

“Stop.” The order comes from the open door.Hannah.She descends like an angel—swords, not harps.“Now.”

I am not a person who does what he is told, but she is here. She’shere, and I go still, so still that I cannot even bring myself to breathe until I hear her take in a sharp breath of her own.

“Do people always listen to you, not-nurse Hannah?” I ask, the words burning in my throat.