Page 82 of The Same Backward as Forward

She hates me.With that reminder to myself, I force my grip to loosen, force myself to take in the world around us rather than linger on her face. “What a scenic view,” I say. Rocky ground stretches out toward some kind of drop, the sun glaring off what I know is the ocean beyond.

We’re on the coast.I register that much in an instant.The Pacific.I don’t know how I know that second part. The land around us is close to barren, sparse wild grass growing through rocks, a single building in the distance.

“What a scenic view. I, for one, have always been partial to crumbling lighthouses.” I mean to sound pithy, but Hannah is still bracing my body with her own, and my voice goes a little lower as I continue. “Call me sentimental, but there’s something beautiful about anything built for one purpose that refuses to die, even once that purpose is gone.”

I am that lighthouse. My body is not what it once was, but I am still here.

You aren’t the only survivor, everything girl.I pull back to standon my own, and Hannah catches herself looking at me in a way that I don’t think either one of us can describe.

“Have you remembered anything about your life before?” Hannah says suddenly.

I’m not expecting the question, and it hits me like a blow.I remember a stone room, a voice, a maze. I remember burning and drowning, white marble and holding a knife. I remember a chamber and the wordcomplicitwritten in my handwriting on its wall.

No.I throw a wall up in my mind. I will my foot to move—a single step, rock to rock, and I let myself think back to fingers touching my lips, to impossible eyes, to a Fury telling me that I don’t get to die.

“The first thing I remember, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, isyou.”

Chapter 17

I wake up the next morning to a sizzling sound and the smell of bacon. Jackson is at the stove.

“You cook?” I say groggily.

Jackson cracks a pair of eggs into the skillet alongside the bacon. “You don’t?”

“Unclear.” This is the first time I’ve seen Jackson at that stove. We’ve been subsisting mostly on jerky, canned tuna, and beans. For weeks.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Jackson pauses. “All the things that are unclear. All the blank spaces.”

I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the mattress. “Who says they’re a problem?”

I don’tfeelincomplete. If anything, it’s the things that I do remember—or almost remember—that haunt me.

Jackson doesn’t say another word until he shoves a metal plate of bacon and eggs into my hand. “Eat.”

“Why are you making me food?” I ask.

“It can’t happen.” Jackson’s voice is as gruff as ever, but his eyes are a different story. “You. Hannah.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to deny it: what I want, what I know I cannot have.

“You need to stop,” Jackson tells me.

“Stop what?” I say.

Jackson gives me a look. “I have eyes, boy.”

Usually, when Hannah is here, he is not. He’s only caught glimpses of us. I wonder what he saw that makes him think this discussion is necessary. All those paper sculptures? My writing on her skin?

The way I look at her.

The way she sits with me.

“I have eyes,” Jackson repeats quietly, “and I am telling you: It is not going to happen.”

“Won’t—or can’t?” I shoot back. Either way, I don’t give him a chance to respond. “I’m not delusional. I know how she feels about me.”

It is a cornerstone of my existence, being loathed by Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.