Page 75 of The Same Backward as Forward

“You have to find your own way out,” the voice insists, and I want to scream that I can’t.

Can’t throw up. Can’t even look at the lines of the maze without my head spinning.

I need a drink. I need more than a drink.

And that, I know suddenly and with startling clarity, is why I am here, why I am shaking and retching and trapped in a stone room that feels more like a box. I know exactly what this is.

Withdrawal. Detox. Intervention.Call it what you like—a rose by any other name. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I cannot do this—and I must.

Hannah.I can’t even focus my eyes, and she’s still a vision. “The avenging angel returns.” My greeting comes out dark and sharp as thorns. In my defense, my heart feels like it’s made of barbed wire, cutting me from the inside out.

She tells me that she unfolded the paper—or maybe I dream that. Maybe all of this is just another dream.

“And for the record”—Hannah’s voice pierces the veil of pain—“you’re wrong.”

The next thing I know, she’s setting up an IV and telling Jackson to sanitize the needle, however he can. Given that the man literally buries his whiskey, I’m not feeling overly optimistic about that, but Hannah’s touch washes all my other thoughts away as she takes my wrist in her hands, turning my arm over.

Needle meets vein.

“Wrong?” I manage to echo back to her. “Moi?”

“Some things don’t hurt. Some things are numb.”The message.She’s talking about the message I wrote inside the cube. “Some things need to stay that way.”

And that’s when my vision clears enough to see the plastic baggie in her hand—and the white pills inside the bag.

Oxy.

Chapter 11

The antibiotics start taking effect in under a day. And the pain—thanks to the oxy, the pain is bearable on day two and day three and four and on and on. This is a song that I can sing, a song that I know, a song that goesmore, more, more, more, more. We barely even talk, Hannah and me.

She gives me the pills.

I take them.

And in her absence, I fold tiny paper sculptures for her: a tetrahedron, a dodecahedron, prism after prism, a many-pointed star. I fold them for her to unfold, then I leave them like offerings at my bedside, and when I’m high, I leave her grocery list after grocery list after grocery list, too, the same duo of items on every single one.

Bourbon and lemons.

There is a certain satisfaction in driving Hannah the Same Backward as Forward mad. She is the gatekeeper ofmore. She is the one who saysenough.

She is also—currently—the one holding the scalpel. “I’m going to try to debride the worst of your burns.” Steady Hannah. Calm Hannah. Hannah, through and through. “That means—”

“Peeling away the parts of me that are dead?” My tone is light.I slice at the air with my index finger, and my next words come out as a low hum: “Cut, cut, cut goes the scalpel.”

“I see the oxy’s kicked in.”

“I’d take more.”

“No. You won’t.”

I prop myself up on my elbows so I can gaze pointedly down at my own shirtless chest. The view is less than delightful. “You can touch me all you want,” I say.

Hannah pushes me back down. “Believe me, there is nothing Iwanthere.”

Oh, I believe you.As she starts to lower the scalpel, I prop myself up again. “Do you want me to feel it?” I ask, darkness creeping into my tone. “Do you want it tohurt?”

And there it is: the spark of anger in her eyes, just a bit, just enough to make me wantmore, more, more, more, more.