Ben sat in the dark, listening to the early sounds of the forest and to Ray, breathing slowly and with a slight congested wheeze, three meters behind him.
He'd read a book once, in his grandmother's library, that claimed to tell young men what they should know. It had cost him some effort to parse the circuitous phrases, but eventually he had understood it to mean that if he did the thing which he had been doing regularly--well nigh religiously--since his release from the hospital, every evening after Ray's equally ritual visit, then he would go blind.
He'd persuaded himself it was nonsense by the time he was seventeen, out of what he judged to be a reasonable instinct for self-preservation in the face of adolescence. And in the last few weeks he'd persuaded himself that Ray wouldn't mind, if he knew; thinking of Ray was better than thinking of... anyone else. And, though the book had never mentioned the dangers of hijacked planes or head injuries, here he was. Blind.
The dawn light was shining on the side of his nose, and Ben clamped his hands over his mouth as he laughed, so as not to wake Ray.