Page 109 of The Same Backward as Forward
The memories are everywhere.
I don’t deserve to touch Hannah. I do not deserve to be touched. I eye the candles that I arranged just so. I circle theroom, my heart pounding in the back of my throat, and I snuff out the flames, one by one.
I don’t care if it hurts—or maybe that’s a lie. Maybe Iwantit to hurt.
“Stop.” Hannah catches my wrist in her hand, but I can’t let her touch me. I know what I did.
When I go to snuff out the last candle, I do it slowly, willing my skin to scorch.
“Stop,” Hannah says again.
I cannot bring myself to look at her. “I never did know how to stop.” That was the problem—the whole damn problem.
I pushed.
And I pushed.
And Ipushed.
I stared at the abyss for long enough that it stared back.
I killed them. All of them.I think those words over and over and over and over again.They’re dead. They’re all dead, and I’m alive.
I drive my fist as hard as I can into the stone wall of the lighthouse. It hurts, but not enough, so I draw back to do it again.
“Stop.” General Hannah has not made an appearance in quite some time, but there she is. “Toby.Stop.”
It is the first time I have ever heard my real name on her lips, and the moment she says it, I know: This time, Iamgoing to stop.
“You knew.” Even just saying the words shatters me in a thousand new ways, but what does that matter? “You know.”
“You need to breathe,” Hannah tells me.Steady Hannah with her gentle hands. H-A-N-N-A-H. Hannah, through and through.
“Kaylie.” I think about a girl with an infectious smile. “Kaylie.YourKaylie.”
Hannah’s lost one. The reason for her grief. The only person she ever loved—before me.
“I killed her, Hannah.” My voice goes hoarse. “I killed all of them.”Colin and David and Kaylie. Howling Wolves and a grinning girl.They were inside the house. I was out on the patio. “The fire—I was so damn angry, and at first, it was just supposed to be the dock, but.…”
We should burn it all down.
“I hated my father so much, hated everyone so much, it didn’t seem like enough. And when Colin suggested we go for the house—”
We should burn it all down. Right, Hawthorne?
The world?
The house. Hawthorne Island. Let’s hit your father where it hurts.
Hannah reaches for me. I jerk myself away from her touch. I killed her sister, and she knew that, and shesaved me. Again and again, so many times and in so many ways. She hated me, and she saved me anyway.
And now she doesn’t hate me anymore.
But she should.I can’t stay here—not in the lighthouse and nothere. I explode out the door. I don’t even know where I’m going until Hannah catches me, until she locks her arms around me from behind, holding me back from hurling myself off the point.
You going to hurt that girl?I can hear Jackson asking.
No—
