The Ruins (43 page)

 She
couldn't see Jeff, but somehow she sensed his surprise, a
stiffening in the shadows above her. "No?" he
asked.

 "I
can't."

 "Because?"

 "I
just can't."

 "But
it's your turn."

 "
I
can't
,
Jeff."

 He
raised his voice, growing angry. "Cut the shit, Stacy. Get
up."

 He
nudged her, and she almost screamed. Her entire body ached. She started
to chant: "I can't, I can't, I
can't, I can't—"

 "I'll
do it." It was Mathias's voice, coming from the far
side of the tent.

 She
sensed Jeff lifting away from her, twisting to look. "It's her turn."

 "It's
okay. I'm awake."

 Stacy
could hear him getting up, rustling about, picking his way toward the
tent's flap. He stopped just short of it, hesitating.

 "Where's
Amy?" he asked.

 "Outside
still," Jeff answered. "Sleeping it off."

 "Should
I—"

 "Leave
her be."

 Stacy
heard Mathias zipper open the flap, and something almost like light
entered the tent. For a moment, she glimpsed all three of them: Eric
lying motionless on his back, Jeff standing above her, Mathias stepping
out into the
clearing.
Thank
you,
she thought, but she couldn't quite manage to
push the words into speech. The flap closed, dropping them once more
into darkness.

 Without
really meaning to, she was shutting her eyes again. Jeff was lying down
a few feet to her left, mumbling to himself with an unmistakable air of
complaint—about her, Stacy assumed. She didn't
care. He was already mad at Amy, so why shouldn't he be angry
with her, too? Later, the two of them could laugh about it; Stacy would
mimic him, the way he continued to mutter even now, murmuring and
sighing.

 I
should check on
Eric,
she
thought.

 She
tried to remember what had happened before she fell asleep. Had she
awakened him first, as she'd promised? The more she
considered this, the less likely it began to seem, and she was just
starting to rouse herself, laboring to open her eyes again, maybe even
sit up and prod at him, when Mathias began to shout Jeff's
name.

I
t was the same thing all over
again: waking with that musty smell surrounding him, the vine growing
across his
legs.
Inside
me,
Eric thought as he reached to touch
it.
My
chest, too.

 Mathias
was yelling from the clearing. There was movement in the tent, someone
else stirring. It was too dark to see who. Eric was trying to sit up,
but the vine was on top of him; it seemed to be holding him down.

 Inside
me.

 "Jeff…"
Mathias was yelling. "Jeff…"

 Something
had happened, something bad; Eric could hear it in Mathias's
voice.
Pablo's
died,
he thought.

 "Jeff…"

 Someone
was standing up, moving toward the tent's flap.

 "Oh
God," Eric said. He'd pushed his hand down through
the vine, was pressing at his chest, just above his wound. He could
feel the vine beneath the skin there, a spongy mass covering his rib
cage, spreading upward to his sternum. "The knife!"
he called. "Get me the knife!"

 "What
is it? What's happening?" It was Stacy, right
beside Eric, her voice sounding sleep-fuzzed, frightened. She clutched
at him grabbing his shoulder.

 "I
need the knife," he said.

 "The
knife?"

 "Hurry!"

 From
the clearing, Mathias continued to shout. "Jeff…Jeff…"

 Eric's
hand had moved down to his leg, where it found that same padded growth,
just under the skin, climbing over his knee, up his thigh. He heard the
flap being zippered open, turned to look. It was still night, but
somehow not as dark outside as in. He glimpsed Jeff stepping out into
the clearing.

 "Wait,"
he called, "I need—"

 But
Jeff was already gone.

J
eff knew.

 As
soon as he heard Mathias begin to shout, he knew. He was up and out
into the clearing, everything happening very quickly—too
quickly—but not quickly enough to keep the knowledge at bay.
It was in Mathias's voice, in the panic he heard there, the
urgency. That was all Jeff needed.

 Yes,
he
knew
.

 Up
and out of the tent and across the clearing, all in darkness, with
Mathias little more than a shadow, crouched above a second shadow,
which was Amy. Jeff dropped to his knees beside them, reached for
Amy's hand, her wrist, already cold to the touch. He
couldn't make out either of their faces.

 "I
think it…" Mathias began, fumbling for the words,
almost stuttering in his agitation. "I think it smothered
her."

 Jeff
bent closer. The vine had grown across her mouth, her nose. He started
to tug at it, the sap burning his hands. It had pushed its way inside
her mouth, and he had to dig in with his fingers to pull it free,
ignoring the rubbery feel of her lips, so cold—too cold.

 From
the tent, Eric had begun to shout again. "The knife! Get the
knife!"

 Not
smothered,
Jeff
thought.
Choked
.
Because he could smell the tequila, the bile, feel
the dampness on the vine's leaves. He remembered Amy
staggering to her feet, taking that half step toward him, her hand held
to her mouth. He'd thought she'd been pressing it
there to hold back her nausea, but he'd been wrong.
She'd been pulling, he realized now, struggling to rip the
plant from her face, to open a passage for her vomit, even as she
suffocated upon it, falling to her knees, beckoning to him for help.

 When
he finished clearing her mouth, he tilted back her head, pinched shut
her nostrils, bent his lips to hers—a tight seal, with no
gaps. He could taste her vomit, feel the burn of the vine's
sap on his tongue. He exhaled, filling her lungs, lifted his mouth
free, moved to her chest, felt for her sternum, placed the heels of his
hands against it, pressed downward with all his weight, counting in his
head with each push—
one…two…three…four…five
—and
then back to her mouth.

 "Jeff,"
Mathias said.

 There
were stories Jeff could call upon here—false
deaths—people pulled
pulseless
from deep water, blue-lipped, stiff-limbed. There were heart attacks
and snakebites and lightning strikes. And choking victims,
too—why not? People who ought never to have breathed again,
and yet, through some miracle, some physiological quirk, were yanked
back into life simply because someone who had no reason to believe, no
reason to persist, did so nonetheless, breathing air into a
corpse's lungs, pumping blood through a cadaver's
heart, resurrecting them—somehow, some
way—Lazarus-like, from the grip of their too-soon deaths.

 "It's
too late," Mathias said.

 Jeff
had learned CPR in a tenth-grade health class. Early spring in western
Massachusetts, flies buzzing and bumping against the big windows, which
looked out on the courtyard, with its flagpole, its tiny greenhouse. A
short lecture, and then they practiced, the rubber dummy laid out on
the linoleum, a female, oddly legless. She'd been given a
name, Jeff remembered, but he couldn't recall what it was.
Fifteen boys, taking turns with her—there'd been a
few halfhearted sexual jokes, which Mr. Kocher frowned into silence.
They were all embarrassed, anxious of failure, and trying not to show
it. The dummy's lips had tasted of rubbing alcohol. Kneeling
beside her head, Jeff had imagined the rescues that might lie in his
future. He'd pictured his grandmother collapsed on the
kitchen floor, his entire family—sister and parents and
cousins and uncles and aunts—all of them frozen, helpless,
watching her die; and then Jeff would calmly step forward, pushing his
way through them, so that he could kneel beside her and breathe life
back into her body, the simplest of gestures, yet God-like, too. A
moment of grace—that was how he'd pictured
it—full of serenity and self-assurance.

 He
exhaled, filling Amy's lungs.

 Mathias
reached, touched his shoulder. "She's
not…"

 Go
to
her,
he'd
thought—he remembered the words in his head.
Sitting in the
mud beside Pablo's lean-to, watching her stagger, drop to her
knees, her hands at her
mouth.
Do
it now.
And why hadn't he?

 There
was movement from the tent, and Stacy appeared, came stumbling toward
them. "It's inside him again," she said. "I—" She stopped, stood staring at them
through the darkness. "What happened?"

 Jeff
shifted back to Amy's chest, felt for the sternum.

 "Is
she—"

 My
fault:
There
was no
doubt of this, yet Jeff knew he couldn't afford to think on
it now, had to resist its pull. Later, he'd have to confront
those two words, bear their weight; later, there'd be no
escape. But not now.

 He
began to
push:
one
…two…three…four…five.

 Then
again, perhaps there wouldn't be a later. Because there was
that possibility, too, wasn't there? No later, nothing beyond
this place, Amy simply the first of them, with himself and the others
soon to follow. And if that were the case, what did it matter, really?
This way rather than another, now rather than in the coming days or
weeks—couldn't it be a blessing, even, like any
other abridgement of suffering?

 "Jeff…"
Mathias said.

 He
hadn't known. He hadn't been able to see.
She'd been only fifteen feet away, but lost in darkness
nonetheless. How could he have known?

 Eric
was yelling from the tent, calling for Stacy, for the knife, for help.

 Not
now,
Jeff
thought,
struggling to discipline
himself.
Later
.

 "Mathias?"
Stacy said, sounding scared. "Is she…"

 "Yes."

 Babies
pulled from trash cans, old women found slumped in their nightgowns,
hikers dug out of
snowbanks
—the
main thing was not to give up, not to make assumptions, to act without
hesitation, and pray for that miracle, that quirk, that sudden gasp of
air.

 Stacy
took a single step forward. "You mean—"

 "Dead."

 Jeff
ignored them. Back to her mouth: the cold lips, the taste of vomit, the
burn of the sap as he forced the air into her chest. Eric kept yelling
from the tent. Stacy and Mathias were silent, not moving, watching Jeff
work at the body—the lungs, the heart—straining for
that moment of grace, which resisted him, fought him,
wouldn't come. He gave up long before he stopped, kept at it
for an extra handful of minutes out of simple inertia, a terror of what
it meant to lift his lips from her mouth, his hands from her chest,
with no intention of returning. It was fatigue that finally forced him
to a halt, a cramp in his right thigh, a growing sense of
light-headedness; he sat back on his heels, struggled to catch his
breath.

 No
one spoke.

 She
called my
name,
Jeff
thought.
He wiped at his mouth; the sap made his lips feel
abraded.
I
heard her call it.
He picked up Amy's hand, clasped
it in his own, as if trying to warm it.

 "Stacy…"
Eric shouted.

 Jeff
lifted his head, peered toward the tent. "What's
wrong with him?" he asked. The quietness of his voice
astonished him; he'd expected something ragged, something
desperate: a howl. He was waiting for tears—he could feel
them, just beyond his reach—but they didn't come.

 Wouldn't.

 
Later,
he
thought.

 "It's
inside him again," Stacy said, and she, too, spoke softly,
almost inaudibly. It was the presence of death, Jeff knew, reducing
them all to whispers.

 He
let go of Amy's hand, laid it carefully across her chest,
thinking of that rubber dummy once more, those limp arms.
He'd received a certificate for passing the test; his mother
had framed it, hung it in his room. He could shut his eyes now and see
all those certificates and ribbons and plaques hanging on the walls,
the shelves full of trophies. "Someone should go help
him," he said.

 Mathias
stood up without a word, started toward the tent. Jeff and Stacy
watched him go, a shadow moving off across the clearing.

 
Ghostlike,
Jeff
thought,
and then the tears arrived; he couldn't hold them back. No
sobs, no gasps—no wailing or moaning or
keening—just a half dozen drops of salty water rolling slowly
down his cheeks, stinging where the vine's sap had burned his
skin.

S
tacy couldn't see
Jeff's tears. She couldn't see much of anything,
actually. She was in bad shape: tired, drunk, aching—in her
muscles, in her bones—and thick-headed with fear. It was
dark, too dark; it hurt her eyes, the straining to pull things into
some semblance of themselves. Amy was lying on her back and Jeff was
kneeling beside her—that was all she could see. But
she
knew
,
even so, had known as soon as she stepped out of the tent—not
how, just the fact of
it:
She's
dead.

 She
lowered herself into a crouch. She was two feet away from them; she
could've touched Amy if she'd only reached out her
hand. She knew she ought to do this, too, that it would be the right
thing, exactly what Amy would've wanted of her. But she
didn't move. She was too scared: Touching her would make it
real.