The Lanyard by Jake Carter-Thomas Page A

started to sway around on the spot like a fighter. "I'm pretty fast."
    "Only if you close yours."
    "What good will that do?"
    "".
    "You don't believe me?"
    "No, I mean the other eye."
    "But -- you know I won't be able to see anything, right."
    "Just do it, ok."
    "So you can try and hit me?"
    "Something else."
    "Oh?" she squinted at him and then smiled. "Well, only if you promise you're not going to whack me in the nose."
    "I promise."
    "Alright."
    She straightened up and closed both of her eyes.
    "No," he said. "Not like that. Keep the other one open, the left one."
    "Why?"
    "Just do it, please..."
    "This is messed up... I don't think I've ever done this."
    "Just try."
    He stared at the sky past her while he waited. She grabbed onto the top of her jeans with her hands as if this would help focus, and then she turned straight onto him and closed her good eye only, leaving her other eyelid flickering for a moment before it stayed open.
    He stepped towards her, trying not to make a sound or move too fast so that she would sense he was near. He stared into the bad eye, looking at it in stages as if it held the secret of the universe somewhere within the varied layers of detail he had already admired in the other, moving his attention from the outside to the middle, from where her skin wept pink at the corner, small dots on her skin, through her eyelashes, onto the white glass, following a couple of threads that he wished he could loop around his fingers and keep, towards the boundary of the iris, the coral mass, and on to the drop, the deep hole in the centre, the shaft that bored into her brain, into her soul.
    Pressure built.
    He wanted to stop. But he forced himself to take it all in until something strange happened, until he no longer felt the urge to glance anywhere else, and he felt himself tipping forward, leaning towards her, as if bound.
    "What are you doing?" she said, shuffling in place.
    He didn't reply, too seized on the black hole at the centre of the green galaxy that span around it, as if a million billion stars were in orbit, as if a million billion lives, and on each fleck a million experiences, of love, and life, and spirit. He wanted to stare this way forever. But why? He realised he would have to stop. Her eye had begun to flicker around, and her eyelids twitched some more like she really wanted to blink. And then the questions would really come. Why had he asked her to do this, what had he to gain.
    "You have a beautiful eye," he said.
    She smiled. "Stop."
    Then he thought of something that seemed so much easier than staring, something that wouldn't give him away. Something he might never have imagined doing, but now couldn't imagine not.
    He gave her a quick kiss.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
     
    They walked without saying much for a while then stopped at the edge of a clearing where the ground was muddied and some planks made a zigzag path across from one side to the other. The girl put her foot on the nearest plank. She pushed into the metal tread that was embedded on top of the wood. The board held. Without pause, she stepped onto it and began to walk, arms extended into a cross.
    The boy followed in his own measured way, being careful that each time he lifted a foot the beam was stable. The mud around the bottom seemed to breathe as he walked. The girl wobbled on the last part; her breath shortened before she stopped for a moment and shifted her weight, almost stumbling. She recovered her poise and then hopped to the other side, waiting for him to follow, pre-warned of the difficult dismount he held out his arms to help balance.
    After he had stepped off, she went back to the loose plank, and tried to lift it.
    "What are you doing?" he said, become in his head a mouthpiece for his father. He didn't care, not really, but someone, at some time, must have taken the effort to drag the lengths of wood all the way out there, dress them in chicken wire, and