The Ruins (39 page)

 "If
he fucking cuts himself again, I'm just
gonna
let him bleed."

 "You're
being a bitch, Amy. You realize that?"

 "Slut."

 Stacy
looked astonished by this, as if Amy had spit on her. "What?"

 "He's
right—that's who you'd be."

 Stacy
waved this insult aside, struggling for an expression of detachment,
aiming for the high ground, but Eric could see it wasn't
working. They were approaching the scratching stage, he
knew—the slapping, the kicking. "You're
drunk," she said. "You're making a fool
of yourself."

 "Slut.
That's who
you
are
.
"

 "Can't
you hear yourself slur?"

 "Shut
up, slut."

 "
You
shut
up,
bitch."

 "
No.
You
shut
up."

 "Bitch."

 "Slut."

 "Bitch."

 "Slut."

 And
then something odd happened. They both fell silent, staring off to
Eric's right. Or not silent, because the two words continued,
in their voices, going back and forth, back and forth—
Bitch…Slut…Bitch…Slut…Bitch…Slut
—only
Amy and Stacy weren't speaking anymore; they were staring,
first in surprise, then in something closer to horror, out across the
hilltop, where their voices were rising now, shouting that harsh pair
of words, beginning to blur together, one merging into the other.

 
BitchSlutBitchSlutBitchSlutBitchSlutBitchSlut
…

 It
was the vine. It was mimicking them, as if mocking their fight,
imitating the sound of their voices so perfectly that even as Eric
realized what was happening, even as he stared at Stacy and Amy and saw
that their mouths were no longer moving, that they'd fallen
silent, that it couldn't possibly be the two of them he was
hearing, he didn't quite accept it. Because
it
was
their
voices—stolen somehow, misappropriated, but their voices
nonetheless.

 
BitchSlutBitchSlutBitchSlutBitchSlutBitchSlut
….

 Mathias
was standing over them suddenly, looking sleep-tousled, blinking,
visibly waking up even as Eric watched him. "What is
it?" he asked.

 No
one answered him. What, after all, was there to say? The voices grew
softer, then louder again, branching out beyond those two
words:
If
he fucking cuts himself…You're not even sorry, are
you?

 "It's
the vines," Stacy said, as if this needed explanation.

 Mathias
was silent, his eyes moving about, taking things in—the
plastic bag with its four remaining grapes, the bloody T-shirt pressed
to Eric's abdomen, Pablo's motionless form, the
nearly empty bottle of tequila. "Where's
Jeff?" he asked.

 I
peed on my
foot,
the
vine
shouted.
They
can have the orange.

 "Down
the hill," Amy said.

 "Shouldn't
someone have relieved him?"

 No
one answered. They were all looking off into the distance, feeling
shamed, wishing the voices would stop, that Mathias would leave them
be. Eric's chest tightened—the first stirrings of
anger. How could Mathias claim the right to judge them? He
wasn't one of them, was he? They hardly even knew him; he was
practically a stranger.

 Sometimes
you can be so stupid.

 "Have
you been drinking?" Mathias asked.

 Again,
they remained mute. And suddenly, there was Eric's voice,
too, coming toward them from across the
hilltop:
Mathias
is the villain—definitely.
And then, almost like a
record
skipping:
Nazi
…Boy
Scout…Nazi…Boy Scout…

 Eric
could feel Mathias turning to look at him, but he kept his gaze
averted, peering off to the south, toward the clouds, which continued
to darken and build. They were going to let loose soon, very soon; he
wished it were now.

 You
shut up.

 Leave
him be.

 Tell
us something funny.

 I'm
the funny guy.

 "How
long has this been going on?" Mathias asked.

 "It
just started," Amy said.

 They
saved the knees.

 Nazi.

 Let
him bleed.

 You're
drunk.

 Nazi.

 Fuck
off.

 Nazi.
Nazi. Nazi.

 Eric
could see Mathias disengaging, making the decision, his face seeming to
close somehow. "I'll go relieve him," he
said.

 Amy
nodded. So did Stacy. Eric just lay there. He felt like he could hear
the plant inside him, sense it vibrating against his rib cage,
speaking, calling out. Couldn't anyone else hear
it?
Slut
,
it said in Amy's voice. And then, in
Stacy's:
Bitch
.
The balled-up T-shirt was completely soaked through now, like a sodden
sponge; when he squeezed at it, blood cascaded warmly down his side.

 Nazi.

 Slut.

 Nazi.

 Bitch.

 Nazi.

 They
watched Mathias turn, walk out of the clearing.

 The
voices continued for some time yet—Amy's and
Stacy's and Eric's, coming from all different
directions, talking one over the other, occasionally rising to a
shout—and then, just as abruptly as they'd begun,
they stopped. The silence wasn't as much of a relief as Eric
would've expected, though; there was a tension to it,
everything freighted with the knowledge that the vine could start again
at any moment. And also the sense of being listened to, spied upon. It
took awhile for them to gather the courage to speak, and when Stacy
finally did, it was in a whisper.

 "I'm
sorry," she said.

 Amy
waved this aside.

 "I
wasn't thinking," Stacy persisted. "I
just…I had pee on my foot."

 "It
doesn't matter." Amy gestured upward, toward the
clouds. "We'll be fine."

 "You're
not a bitch."

 "I
know, honey. Let's just…let's forget it,
okay? Let's pretend it didn't happen.
We're both tired."

 "Scared."

 "That's
right. Tired and scared."

 Stacy
shifted a little, edging toward her. She held out her hand, and Amy
took it, clasped it.

 Eric
wanted to get up, follow Mathias down the hill, make everything clear
to him. It had been his own voice shouting that word over and over
again—
Nazi
—and he
couldn't imagine what Mathias must be thinking now,
didn't want to consider it, yet he kept probing at it,
despite
himself.
I
should've explained,
he thought with a growing
sense of
panic.
I
should've told him it was a joke.
He was in too
much pain to pursue him, though, still bleeding heavily from his
wound—at this rate, he didn't see how it would ever
stop. But somebody had to go; somebody had to make it right. "Go tell him," he said to Stacy.

 She
gave him a blank look. "Tell who?"

 "Mathias.
That it was a joke."

 "What
was a joke?"

 "Nazi—tell
him we were just playing around."

 Before
Stacy could answer, Pablo startled them by speaking. It was in Greek,
of course: a single word, surprisingly loud. They all turned to stare
at him. His eyes were open, his head lifted off the backboard, the
muscles in his neck standing taut, trembling slightly. He repeated the
word—
potato,
absurdly
,
was what it sounded like to Eric. He lifted his right hand, made a
beckoning motion. He seemed to be gesturing toward the plastic jug.

 That
rasping voice: "
Po-
ta
-to.
"

 "I
think he wants some water," Stacy said.

 Amy
picked up the jug, carried it to the backboard, crouched beside Pablo. "Water?" she asked.

 Pablo
nodded. He opened and closed his mouth, like someone mimicking a fish. "
Po-
ta
-to
…
po-ta-to
…
po-ta-to
…
"

 Amy
uncapped the jug, poured some of the water into his mouth. Her hands
were shaking, though, and it came out too quickly, nearly choking him.
He coughed, sputtering, turned his head away.

 "Maybe
you should give him a grape," Stacy said. She picked up the
plastic bag, held it toward Amy.

 "You
think so?"

 "He
hasn't eaten—not since yesterday."

 "But
can he—"

 "Just
try it."

 Pablo
had stopped coughing. Amy waited till he turned back toward her, then
took out one of the grapes, held it up for him to see, raising her
eyebrows. "Hungry?" she asked.

 Pablo
just stared at her. He seemed to be fading, sinking inward. For a
moment, there'd been something like color in his face, but
now it had gone gray again. His neck went slack; his head fell heavily
against the backboard.

 "Put
it in his mouth and see what happens," Stacy said.

 Amy
slid the grape between Pablo's lips, pushing at it until it
disappeared. Pablo shut his eyes; his jaw didn't move.

 "Use
your hand," Stacy said. "Help him chew
it."

 Amy
grasped the Greek by his chin, pulling his mouth open, then pushing it
shut. Eric heard the wet sound of the grape popping, and then Pablo was
gagging again, turning his head to the side, retching. The squashed
fruit spilled out, followed by a surprising amount of liquid. Black
liquid, full of stringy clots. It was blood, Eric
knew.
Oh
Jesus,
he
thought.
What
the fuck are we doing?

 And
then, making him jump, nearly the exact same words sounded in the air
behind him: "What the fuck are you doing?"

 Eric
turned, astonished, and found Jeff standing above them, staring at Amy
with a look of fury.

S
itting at the bottom of the
hill, watching for the Greeks, Jeff had felt as if he were entering a
slower, thicker version of time. The seconds had dragged themselves
into minutes, the minutes had accumulated into hours, and nothing
happened, nothing of note, nothing whatsoever—certainly not
the thing he was there to stop from happening, the Greeks arriving,
bumbling their way across the clearing, entering that forbidden zone
into which Jeff and the others had fallen captive. He sat, the sun
drawing precious moisture from his skin, adding its heat to the other
discomforts of his body—his thirst and hunger, his fatigue,
his growing sense of failure here, of doing and acting, only to inflict
as much harm as he was attempting to prevent.

 There
was too much to think about, and none of it good.

 There
was Pablo, of course—how could Jeff help but think of Pablo?
He could still feel the weight of the stone in his hand, the heat
coming through that towel, could still hear the sound of bone
shattering as he'd hammered at Pablo's tibia and
fibula, could still smell the acrid stench of his burning
flesh.
What
choice did I have?
he kept asking himself, knowing even as he
did so that this was a bad sign, this impulse to justify, to explain,
as if he were fending off some
accusation.
I
was trying to save his life.
And these, too, were the wrong
words to have echoing through his head—
the
trying
to
implying a failure, a thing hoped for, striven toward, but
nonetheless unattained. Because it was true: Jeff was giving up on
Pablo. Maybe, if rescue arrived in the coming hours, or even sometime
tomorrow, he still might be saved. Was this going to happen, though?
That was the question upon which everything hinged—the coming
hours, the coming day—and Jeff was losing faith in it,
relinquishing hope. He'd believed that by taking off the
legs, or what remained of the legs, he might buy the Greek
time—not much, but some—enough, maybe, just enough.
But it wasn't going to end like that. He had to admit this to
himself now. Pablo was going to linger for another day, or two, or
three at best, and then die.

 In
great pain, no doubt.

 There
was always the chance that the Greeks might come, of course, but the
more Jeff considered this possibility, the less likely it seemed. The
Mayans knew exactly what they were doing here; they'd done it
before, would almost certainly have to do it again. Jeff assumed that
they must've stationed someone to guard the far end of the
trail, someone to turn any potential rescuers aside, to divert and
mislead them. Don Quixote and Juan would never be equal to this; even
if they were coming, which Jeff doubted, they'd be easily
deflected. No, if rescue were to arrive, it would be much
later—too late, probably—weeks from now, after
their parents realized that they'd failed to return and began
to probe at this development, to worry and to act. Jeff
didn't want to guess how long this might take—the
calls that would have to be placed, the questions
asked—before the necessary gears would start to turn. And,
even then, would the search ever proceed beyond
Cancún
?
Their bus tickets had been printed with their names on them, but were
records kept of this? And, if that hurdle were somehow cleared, and the
hunt shifted to
Cobá
,
how would it ever proceed the extra thirteen miles into the jungle?
Whoever it was who might be pursuing the case would be given
photographs, Jeff assumed; he'd show these to the taxi
drivers in
Cobá
,
the street vendors, the waiters in the cafés. And perhaps
the man with the yellow pickup would recognize them; perhaps
he'd be willing to share what he knew. And then what? The
policeman or detective would follow the trail, walk it to the Mayan
village, bearing those four or five or six
photographs—depending on whether he'd already
managed to find out about Mathias and Pablo and connect them all
together—and what would the Mayans offer him? Blank faces,
certainly. A ruminative scratching of the chin, a slow shake of the
head. And even if, by some miracle of persistence and shrewdness, this
perhaps mythical policeman or detective managed to make his way past
these assertions of ignorance, how long would it take? All those steps
to labor his way through, with the potential for detours and dead ends
at every stage—how long? Too long, Jeff guessed. Too long for
Pablo. There was no question of this. And too long, he supposed, for
the rest of them also.