Page 87 of The Same Backward as Forward
“I thought sleep was for mortals.”
Of the two of us, Hannah’s the one who’s closer to divine: merciful and strong. “You got the right answer, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, but what’s the code?”
She advances on me, crossing the threshold. “Why does it matter? I won the wager either way.”
It matters, I want to tell her,because we are the same. I know she will not want to hear that from me. “Haven’t you learned by now?” I say instead. “Everything matters—either that, or nothing does.”
For some people, there is no in between, and as many walls as Hannah has built around herself, she is not a person capable of simply deciding not to care. About anything. Oranyone.
Not even when she should.
“You asked me about my lost one.” Her eyes find their way to mine, and I know that her walls—the ones I’ve worked so hard to breach—are crumbling. This is Hannah, naked in front of me. This is Hannah, bleeding.
For once, I do not even consider pushing for more. “As much as it pains me to admit it, I didn’t win this wager, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.”
I refuse to makethisa game—not when she’s been crying.
“I have a sister.” Her body lists toward mine. I doubt she realizes it. I know that she would not want it to. “I had a sister.”
Her lost one. The one she loved with everything she had. So much makes sense now that I wonder why I didn’t see it before: Hannah, the protector, Hannah whose walls couldn’t keep another person safe.
Hannah who has spent a lifetime hiding but could never bring herself to run away.
Stormwater rises and rises behind the dam. She is just barely holding her grief in, and it is the kind of grief that could crush mountains into dust. If she cries, she will sob, and if she sobs, they will be the kind that wrack her body hard enough to crack a rib.
I want, more than anything, to hold her, but this is not about me. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t get to be sorry,” she snaps, and at least when she is snapping, there is something in her world that is not pain. I can be that for her.
Hate me, I think.Hate me until you stop hurting.
“The lighthouse,” she practically spits.
“What about it?” My question is designed to rile her, to be the lightning rod she needs, but I cannot help my tone: low and gentle and a dead giveaway to everything she is to me.
“That’s what I want.” Hannah clips 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.”
By the terms of our bet, she could ask me for anything. In this moment, I would give her my life. But all she’s ever known is keeping her head down and taking one step at a time.
Never too much.
Never too fast.
Never enough to draw the wrong kind of attention.
I want her to want more. “As boons go,” I tell her, “this is something of a disappointment.”
“Don’t you remember me telling you that you should get used to being disappointed?” She doesn’t wait for a reply as she steps back into the night.
“Sounds vaguely familiar.” I follow her, and though I should leave it at that, like so many times in my life, I do not stop. “But, Hannah?”
She’s moving through moonlit darkness like a shark through deep waters. No matter what it costs me physically, I will keep up. And no matter how many times Jackson’s warning echoes through my mind, I will make sure that she knows:
“I have never been disappointed inyou.”
I have never heard Hannah laugh. I have not actually seen her cry, but I have seen her in the moments when she does not realize that anyone is watching. I have seen her mercy, her nimble mind, her ironclad will.
I have seen enough to know that there isso muchthat I have not seen.
