Page 37 of The Same Backward as Forward
The moon was full overhead, but there was still no way he should have been able to tell that.
“You’re delusional,” I replied. “And the answer isuncopyrightable.” It was the longest word in the English language—discounting medical jargon—that contained no repeat letters.Thatwas what I’d looked up on the computer, right before my mother’s appearance at the hospital had shaken me to my core. “Where’s Jackson?” I demanded.
I didn’t want to be alone with Harry right now, and I didn’t even know why—or maybe Ididknow and didn’t want to admit it.
“Beardy leaves me alone more now, when he thinks I’m sleeping.” Harry imparted that information in a tone I couldn’t quite read.
“I thought sleep was for mortals,” I replied.
I could practically hear him smile that twisted little smile of his. “You got the right answer, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, but what’s the code?”
I stepped over the threshold and flipped the light on, tired of listening to the sound of his voice through the darkness. “Why does it matter?” I retorted. “I won the wager either way.”
“Haven’t you learned by now?” Harry asked me. “Everything matters—either that, or nothing does.”
There is no in between.I suddenly knew that coming here tonight had been a mistake, just like I knew that I wasn’t leaving.
Harry was wearing an old shirt of Jackson’s that was so ratty and thin I could see the outline of bandages beneath the fabric. I didn’t want to tend to him right now.
I also didn’t want to be alone. Being alone was perhaps my greatest skill in life, andI didn’t want to be alone.
“You asked me about my lost one.” My voice came out hoarse. I needed to talk to someone, and he was there.
He wasright there.
“As much as it pains me to admit it, I didn’t win this wager, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.” In other words: I didn’t have to tell him a damn thing.
“I have a sister.” The words tasted like dust in my mouth—another lie. “I had a sister.”
Seeing my mother had dredged up all the mourning I hadn’t let myself do, all the grief I’d never fully let myself feel. And he was there.Right there.
“I’m sorry.”
I could hear it in his voice: He was. Harry was sorry I was hurting. He was sorry my sister was gone—but he didn’t know that he was the reason why.
“You don’t get to be sorry,” I said fiercely, and then before he could even think about asking me why, I turned back toward the still-open door, toward the full moon outside. “The lighthouse,” I gritted out.
“What about it?” Harry asked, his tone far too gentle for my comfort.
“That’s what I want,” I said, clipping the words. “For winning our wager. We’re going across the rocks to the lighthouse. We’re doing it in under five minutes, and you’re making it all the way there.”
He didn’t respond immediately. “As boons go, this is something of a disappointment.”
“Don’t you remember me telling you that you should get used to being disappointed?” I shot back, stepping out of the shack and down onto the rocks.
“Sounds vaguely familiar,” Harry said. He followed me. I didn’t hold an arm out to help him keep his balance. He could keep his own damn balance. “But, Hannah?”
I was already moving through the moonlit darkness.
“I have never,” Harry said, following in my tracks, pacing me no matter how much pain it caused him, “been disappointed inyou.”
I thought about him telling me that first thing he could remember—hisbeginning—was me.I have never been disappointed inyou.What right did he have to say things like that to me, to sayanythingto me, when he was the reason my world had fallen apart?
What right did I have to listen? To think about that picture he’d drawn of me, when the only thing I should have been thinking about was how much I hated him?
“What was her name?” Harry’s voice was quiet behind me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would have been able to hear him from a mile away. We were maybe ten yards into the hike to the lighthouse now, and he hadn’t reached for me once. “Your sister.”
“Kaylie,” I said.
