Page 73 of The Same Backward as Forward

Hannah the Same Backward as Forward knows violence. I am certain of it. If she has not been a victim herself, she has at least been witness to violent acts—repeatedly. Those people who want me dead, I would wager a great deal that they are people she knows. People she hasalwaysknown. They are the ones whomadeher, and they are dangerous.

Lethal.

“It wasn’t an addict, was it?” I ask Jackson. I’ve been coming in and out of delirium, but there is nothing delirious about me right now. “The reason Hannah is watchful and wary, the reason she never shows weakness, it’s a dealer—ordealers, plural.”

“I’m not talking to you about Hannah,” Jackson grunts. If Iwere in any less pain, I might be impressed with the man’s ability to grunt an entire sentence.

“I’m dying here,” I tell Jackson. Every word costs me, and I don’t care. “Literallyandfiguratively. I am a cornucopia of suffering and death. Have a little pity.”

“Might want to reconsider your life choices when you start referring to yourself as a cornucopia of anything,” Jackson tells me. “And you don’t want pity.”

“Tell me, then, what do I want?”

Jackson snorts. “A swift kick in the ass?”

“The rest of me is battered and burned to a crisp. Leave my ass alone.”

“Tell you what.” Jackson leans back against the table and picks up Hannah’s notebook. “Could be I have something you want.” He flips the notebook open and tears out a single page. “Could be you could win this piece of paper off me.”

“Are you proposing a wager, old man?” The worst of the pain recedes, just a little.

“I’m proposing a bargain, horrible boy.”

“I’m listening,” I say. It’s rare for Jackson to speak this much, and there’s something about the way that he sayshorrible boythat does not sound—precisely—like an insult.

Or maybe that’s the fever talking.

“I got questions,” Jackson says. “You answer them, I’ll give you this sheet of paper.”

“Deal.”

Jackson has his first question locked and loaded: “You going to hurt her?”

“No.” I mean that with every fiber of my being. “I don’t hurt people.” To my surprise, I mean that, too.

“Do you lie?” Jackson responds, the question gruff.

“All the time,” I tell him. “My entire life is a lie.” That feels true, too.

“You have any idea what the hell that means?”

My skin feels like it’s burning, but my bones are ice. “Not a clue.”

“Do youwantto know?” Jackson asks me.

About myself?My heart beats harder. My head pounds, too. “No.”

“How bad is it?” Jackson doesn’t mince words. “The pain.”

The pain is everywhere. It is everything. Iamthe pain, and there is a very good chance that the only thing keeping me conscious is that I want that sheet of paper.

“I don’t know how to answer that.” Truth is like a strange-tasting powder on my tongue, only half as bitter as I would have expected. “Infinity plus infinity times infinity is…” I trail off, baiting him to respond.

He does not. Silence is his friend far more than it is mine.

“Ithurts.”Everything hurts.I close my eyes for just a moment. “She’s hurting, too.”

Hannah.It always comes back to her, and maybe it’s the amnesia, maybe my lack of memory forces me to live solely in the present in an unnatural way, but I cannot help feeling that ithas alwaysbeen Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, that it alwayswill be.