The Ruins

They met Mathias on a day trip to Cozumel. They’d hired a guide to take them snorkeling over a local wreck, but the buoy marking its location had broken off in a storm, and the guide was having difficulty finding it. So they were just swimming about, looking at nothing in particular. Then Mathias rose toward them from the depths, like a merman, a scuba tank on his back. He smiled when they told him their situation, and led them to the wreck. He was German, dark from the sun, and very tall, with a blond crew cut and pale blue eyes. He had a tattoo of an eagle on his right forearm, black with red wings. He let them take turns borrowing his tank so they could drop down thirty feet and see the wreck up close. He was friendly in a quiet way, and his English was only slightly accented, and when they pulled themselves into their guide’s boat to head back to shore, he climbed in, too.

They met the Greeks two nights later, back in Cancún, on the beach near their hotel. Stacy got drunk and made out with one of them. Nothing happened beyond that, but the Greeks always seemed to be turning up afterward, no matter where they went or what they were doing. None of them spoke Greek, of course, and the Greeks didn’t speak English, so it was mostly smiling and nodding and the occasional sharing of food or drinks. There were three Greeks—in their early twenties, like Mathias and the rest of them—and they seemed friendly enough, even if they did appear to be following them about.

The Greeks not only didn’t know English; they couldn’t speak Spanish, either. They’d adopted Spanish names, though, which they seemed to find very amusing. Pablo and Juan and Don Quixote was how they introduced themselves, saying the names in their odd accents and gesturing at their chests. Don Quixote was the one Stacy made out with. All three looked enough alike, however—wide-shouldered and slightly padded, with their dark hair grown long and tied back in ponytails—that even Stacy had a hard time keeping track of who was who. It also seemed possible that they were trading the names around, that this was part of the joke, so the one who answered to Pablo on Tuesday would smilingly insist on Wednesday that he was Juan.

They were visiting Mexico for three weeks. It was August, a foolish time to travel to the Yucatán. The weather was too hot, too humid. There were sudden rainstorms nearly every afternoon, downpours that could flood a street in a matter of seconds. And with darkness, the mosquitoes arrived, vast humming clouds of them. In the beginning, Amy complained about all these things, wishing they’d gone to San Francisco, which had been her idea. But then Jeff lost his temper, telling her she was ruining it for everyone else, and she stopped talking about California—the bright, brisk days, the trolley cars, the fog rolling in at dusk. It wasn’t really that bad anyway. It was cheap and uncrowded, and she decided to make the best of it.

There were four of them in all: Amy and Stacy and Jeff and Eric. Amy and Stacy were best friends. They’d cut their hair boyishly short for the trip, and they wore matching Panama hats, posing for photos arm in arm. They looked like sisters—Amy the fair one, Stacy the dark—both of them tiny, barely five feet tall, birdlike in their thinness. They were sisterly in their behavior, too, full of whispered secrets, wordless intimacies, knowing looks.

Jeff was Amy’s boyfriend; Eric was Stacy’s. The boys were friendly with each other, but not exactly friends. It had been Jeff’s idea to travel to Mexico, a last fling before he and Amy started medical school in the fall. He’d found a good deal on the Internet: cheap, impossible to pass up. It would be three lazy weeks on the beach, lying in the sun, doing nothing. He’d convinced Amy to come with him, then Amy had convinced Stacy, and Stacy had convinced Eric.

Mathias told them that he’d come to Mexico with his younger brother, Henrich, but Henrich had gone missing. It was a confusing story, and none of them understood all the details. Whenever they asked him about it, Mathias became vague and upset. He slipped into German and waved his hands, and his eyes grew cloudy with the threat of tears. After awhile, they didn’t ask anymore; it felt impolite to press. Eric believed that drugs were somehow involved, that Mathias’s brother was on the run from the authorities, but whether these authorities were German, American, or Mexican, he couldn’t say for certain. There’d been a fight, though; they all agreed upon this. Mathias had argued with his brother, perhaps even struck him, and then Henrich had disappeared. Mathias was worried, of course. He was waiting for him to return so that they could fly back to Germany. Sometimes he seemed confident that Henrich would eventually reappear and that all would be fine in the end, but other times he didn’t. Mathias was reserved by nature, a listener rather than a talker, and prone in his present situation to sudden bouts of gloom. The four of them worked hard to cheer him up. Eric told funny stories. Stacy did her imitations. Jeff pointed out interesting sights. And Amy took countless photographs, ordering everyone to smile.

In the day, they sunned on the beach, sweating beside one another on their brightly colored towels. They swam and snorkeled; they got burned and began to peel. They rode horses, paddled around in kayaks, played miniature golf. One afternoon, Eric convinced them all to rent a sailboat, but it turned out he wasn’t as adept at sailing as he’d claimed, and they had to be towed back to the dock. It was embarrassing, and expensive. At night, they ate seafood and drank too much beer.

Eric didn’t know about Stacy and the Greek. He’d gone to sleep after dinner, leaving the other three to wander the beach with Mathias. There’d been a bonfire burning behind one of the neighboring hotels, a band playing in a gazebo. That was where they met the Greeks. The Greeks were drinking tequila and clapping in rhythm with the music. They offered to share the bottle. Stacy sat next to Don Quixote, and there was much talking, in their mutually exclusive languages, and much laughter, and the bottle passed back and forth, everyone wincing at the burning taste of the liquor, and then Amy turned and found Stacy embracing the Greek. It didn’t last very long. Five minutes of kissing, a shy touch of her left breast, and the band was finished for the night. Don Quixote wanted her to go back to his room, but she smiled and shook her head, and it was over as easily as that.

In the morning, the Greeks laid out their towels alongside Mathias and the four of them on the beach, and in the afternoon they all went jet skiing together. You wouldn’t have known about the kissing if you hadn’t seen it; the Greeks were very gentlemanly, very respectful. Eric seemed to like them, too. He was trying to get them to teach him dirty words in Greek. He was frustrated, though, because it was hard to tell if the words they were teaching him were the ones he wanted to learn.

It turned out that Henrich had left a note. Mathias showed it to Amy and Jeff early one morning, during the second week of their vacation. It was handwritten, in German, with a shakily drawn map at the bottom. They couldn’t read the note, of course; Mathias had to translate it for them. There wasn’t anything about drugs or the police—that was just Eric being Eric, jumping to conclusions, the more dramatic the better. Henrich had met a girl on the beach. She’d flown in that morning, was on her way to the interior, where she’d been hired to work on an archaeological dig. It was at an old mining camp, maybe a silver mine, maybe emeralds—Mathias wasn’t certain. Henrich and the girl had spent the day together. He’d bought her lunch and they’d gone swimming. Then he took her back to his room, where they showered and had sex. Afterward, she left on a bus. In the restaurant, over lunch, she’d drawn a map for him on a napkin, showing him where the dig was. She told him he should come, too, that they’d be glad for his help. Once she left, Henrich couldn’t stop talking about her. He didn’t eat dinner and he couldn’t fall asleep. In the middle of the night, he sat up in bed and announced to Mathias that he was going to join the dig.

Mathias called him a fool. He’d only just met this girl, they were in the midst of their vacation, and he didn’t know the first thing about archaeology. Henrich assured him that it was really none of his business. He wasn’t asking for Mathias’s permission; he was merely informing him of his decision. He climbed out of bed and started to pack. They called each other names, and Henrich threw an electric razor at Mathias, hitting him on the shoulder. Mathias rushed him, knocking him over. They rolled around on the hotel room floor, grappling, grunting obscenities, until Mathias accidentally head-butted Henrich in the mouth, cutting his lip. Henrich made much of this, rushing to the bathroom so that he could spit blood into the sink. Mathias pulled on some clothes and went out to get him ice, but then ended up going downstairs to the all-night bar by the pool. It was three in the morning. Mathias felt he needed to calm down. He drank two beers, one quickly, the other slowly. When he got back to their room, the note was sitting on his pillow. And Henrich was gone.

The note was three-quarters of a page long, though it seemed shorter when Mathias read it out loud in English. It occurred to Amy that Mathias might be skipping some of the passages, preferring to keep them private, but it didn’t matter—she and Jeff got the gist of it. Henrich said that Mathias often seemed to mistake being a brother with being a parent. He forgave him for this, yet he still couldn’t accept it. Mathias might call him a fool, but he believed it was possible he’d met the love of his life that morning, and he’d never be able to forgive himself—or Mathias, for that matter—if he let this opportunity slip past without pursuing it. He’d try to be back by their departure date, though he couldn’t guarantee this. He hoped Mathias would manage to have fun on his own while he was gone. If Mathias grew lonely, he could always come and join them at the dig; it was only a half day’s drive to the west. The map at the bottom of the note—a hand-drawn copy of the one the girl had sketched on the napkin for Henrich—showed him how to get there.

As Amy listened to Mathias tell his story and then struggle to translate his brother’s note, she gradually began to realize that he was asking for their advice. They were sitting on the veranda of their hotel. A breakfast buffet was offered here every morning: eggs and pancakes and French toast, juice and coffee and tea, an immense pile of fresh fruit. A short flight of stairs led to the beach. Seagulls hovered overhead, begging for scraps of food, shitting on the umbrellas above the tables. Amy could hear the steady sighing of the surf, could see the occasional jogger shuffling past, an elderly couple searching for shells, a trio of hotel employees raking the sand. It was very early, just after seven. Mathias had awakened them, calling from the house phone downstairs. Stacy and Eric were still asleep.

Jeff leaned forward to study the map. It was clear to Amy, without anything explicit having been said, that it was his advice Mathias was soliciting. Amy didn’t take offense; she was used to this sort of thing. Jeff had something about him that made people trust him, an air of competence and self-confidence. Amy sat back in her seat and watched him smooth the wrinkles from the map with the palm of his hand. Jeff had curly, dark hair, and eyes that changed color with the light. They could be hazel or green or the palest of brown. He wasn’t as tall as Mathias, or as broad in the shoulders, but despite this, he somehow seemed to be the larger of the two. He had a gravity to him: he was calm, always calm. Someday, if all went according to plan, Amy imagined that this would be what would make him a good doctor. Or, at the very least, what would make people think of him as a good doctor.

Mathias’s leg was jiggling, his knee jumping up and down. It was Wednesday morning. He and his brother were scheduled to fly home on Friday afternoon. I go, he said. I get him. I take him home. Right?

Jeff glanced up from the map. You’d be back this evening? he asked.

Mathias shrugged, waved at the note. He only knew what his brother had written.

Amy recognized some of the towns on the map—Tizimín, Valladolid, Cobá—names she’d seen in their guidebook. She hadn’t really read the book; she’d only looked at the pictures. She remembered a ruined hacienda on the Tizimín page, a street lined with whitewashed buildings for Valladolid, a gigantic stone face buried in vines for Cobá. Mathias’s map had an X drawn somewhere vaguely west of Cobá. This was where the dig was. You rode a bus from Cancún to Cobá, where you hired a taxi, which took you eleven miles farther west. Then there was a path leading away from the road, two miles long, that you had to hike. If you came to the Mayan village, you’d gone too far.

Watching Jeff examine the map, she could guess what he was thinking. It had nothing to do with Mathias or his brother. He was thinking of the jungle, of the ruins there, and what it might be like to explore them. They’d talked vaguely of doing this when they’d first arrived: how they could hire a car, a local guide, and see whatever there was to be seen. But it was so hot; the idea of trudging through the jungle to take pictures of giant flowers or lizards or crumbling stone walls seemed less and less attractive the more they discussed it. So they stayed on the beach. But now? The morning was deceptively cool, with a breeze coming in off the water; she knew that it must be hard for Jeff to remember how humid the day would ultimately become. Yes, it was easy enough for her to guess what he was thinking: why shouldn’t it be fun? They were slipping into a torpor, with all the sun and the food and the drinking. A little adventure like this might be just the thing to wake them up.

Jeff slid the map back across the table to Mathias. We’ll go with you, he said.

Amy didn’t speak. She sat there, reclining in her chair. Inside, she was thinking, No, I don’t want to go, but she knew she couldn’t say this. She complained too much; everyone said so. She was a gloomy person. She didn’t have the gift of happiness; somewhere along the way, someone had neglected to give it to her, and now she made everyone else suffer for her lack of it. The jungle would be hot and dirty, its shadowed spaces aswarm with mosquitoes, but she tried not to think of this; she tried to rise above it. Mathias was their friend, wasn’t he? He’d loaned them his scuba tank, showed them where to dive. And now he was in need. Amy let this thought gather strength in her mind, a hand pulling shut doors, slamming them in rapid succession, until only one was left open. When Mathias turned toward her, grinning, pleased with Jeff’s words, looking for her to echo them, she couldn’t help herself: she smiled back at him, nodded.

Of course, she said.

Eric was dreaming that he couldn’t fall asleep. It was a dream he often had, a dream of frustration and weariness. In it, he was trying to meditate, to count sheep, to think calming thoughts. There was the taste of vomit in his mouth, and he wanted to get up and brush his teeth. He needed to empty his bladder, too, but he sensed that if he moved, even slightly, whatever little chance he had of falling back asleep would be forever lost to him. So he didn’t move; he lay there, wishing he could sleep, willing sleep to come, but not sleeping. The taste of vomit and the sensation of a full bladder were not regular details of this dream. They were only present now because they were real. He’d drunk too much the night before, had roused himself to throw up into the toilet sometime just before dawn, and now he needed to pee. Even his dreaming self sensed this, that there was an unusual heft to these two sensations, as if his psyche were trying to warn him of something, the threat of choking on another wave of puke, or of soaking the bed in urine.

It was the Greeks who’d pushed and prodded him to the point of vomiting. They’d tried to teach him a drinking game. This involved dice, shaken in a cup. The rules were explained to him in Greek, which certainly must’ve contributed to how complicated they seemed. Eric bravely rolled the dice and passed the cup, but he never managed to understand why he won on some tosses and lost on others. At first, it seemed as if high numbers were best, but then, erratically, low numbers began also to triumph. He rolled the dice and sometimes the Greeks gestured for him to drink, but other times they didn’t. After awhile, it began not to matter so much. They taught him some new words and laughed at how quickly he forgot them. Everyone became very drunk, and then Eric somehow managed to stumble back to his room and go to sleep.

Unlike the others, who were heading off to graduate schools of one sort or another in the fall, Eric was preparing to start a job. He’d been hired to teach English at a prep school outside of Boston. He’d live in a dorm with the boys, help run the student paper, coach soccer in the fall, baseball in the spring. He was going to be good at it, he believed. He had an easy, confident way with people. He was funny; he could get kids laughing, make them want him to like them. He was tall and lean, with dark hair, dark eyes; he believed himself to be handsome. And smart: a winner. Stacy was going to be in Boston, studying to become a social worker. They’d see each other every weekend; in another year or two, he’d ask her to marry him. They’d live somewhere in New England and she’d get some sort of job helping people and maybe he’d keep teaching, or maybe he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. He was happy; he was going to keep being happy; they’d be happy together.

Eric was an optimist by nature, still innocent of the blows even the most blessed lives can suffer. His psyche was too sanguinary to allow him an outright nightmare, and it offered him a safety net now, a voice in his head that said, It’s okay, you’re just dreaming. A moment later, someone started to knock at the door. Then Stacy was rolling off the bed, and Eric was opening his eyes, staring blearily about the room. The curtains were drawn; his and Stacy’s clothes were strewn across the floor. Stacy had dragged the bedspread with her. She was standing at the door with it wrapped around her shoulders, naked underneath, talking to someone. Eric gradually realized it was Jeff. He wanted to go pee and brush his teeth and find out what was happening, but he couldn’t quite rouse himself into motion. He fell back asleep and the next thing he knew Stacy was standing over him, dressed in khakis and a T-shirt, rubbing dry her hair, telling him to hurry.

Hurry? he asked.

She glanced at the clock. It leaves in forty minutes, she said.

What leaves?

The bus.

What bus?

To Cobá.

Cobá… He struggled to sit up, and for an instant thought he might vomit again. The bedspread was lying on the floor near the door, and he had to strain to grasp how it had gotten there. What did Jeff want?

For us to get ready.

Why are you wearing pants?

He said we ought to. Because of the bugs.

Bugs? Eric asked. He was having trouble understanding her. He was still a little drunk. What bugs?

We’re going to Cobá, she said. To an old mine. To see the ruins. She started back toward the bathroom. He could hear her running water, and it reminded him of his bladder. He climbed out of bed, shuffled across the room to the open doorway. She had the light on over the sink, and it hurt his eyes. He stood on the threshold for a moment, blinking at her. She yanked on the shower, then nudged him into it. He wasn’t wearing any clothes; all he had to do was step over the rim of the tub. Then he was soaping himself, reflexively, and urinating into the space between his feet, but still not quite awake. Stacy herded him along, and with her assistance he managed to finish his shower, to brush his teeth and comb his hair and pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, but it wasn’t until they’d made it downstairs and were hurriedly eating breakfast that he finally began to grasp where they were going.

They all met in the lobby to wait for the van that would take them to the bus station. Mathias passed Henrich’s note around, and everyone took turns staring at the German words with their odd capitalizations, the crookedly drawn map at the bottom. Stacy and Eric had shown up empty-handed, and Jeff sent them back to their room, telling them to fill a pack with water, bug spray, sunscreen, food. Sometimes he felt he was the only one of them who knew how to move through the world. He could tell that Eric was still half-drunk. Stacy’s nickname in college had been Spacy, and it was well earned. She was a daydreamer; she liked to hum to herself, to sit staring at nothing. And then there was Amy, who had a tendency to pout when she was displeased. Jeff could tell that she didn’t want to go find Mathias’s brother. Everything seemed to be taking her a little longer than necessary. She’d vanished into the bathroom after breakfast, leaving him to fill their backpack on his own. Then she’d come out to change into pants, and ended up lying facedown on the bed in her underwear until he prodded her into action. She wasn’t talking to him, was only answering his questions with shrugs or monosyllables. He told her she didn’t have to go, that she could spend the day alone on the beach if she liked, and she just stared at him. They both knew who she was, how she’d rather be with the group, doing something she didn’t like, than alone, doing something she enjoyed.

While they were waiting for Eric and Stacy to return with their backpack, one of the Greeks came walking into the lobby. It was the one who’d been calling himself Pablo lately. He hugged everyone in turn. All the Greeks liked to hug; they did it at every opportunity. After the hugs, he and Jeff had a brief discussion in their separate languages, both of them resorting to pantomime to fill in the gaps.

Juan? Jeff asked. Don Quixote? He lifted his hands, raised his eyebrows.

Pablo said something in Greek and made a casting motion with his arm. Then he pretended to reel in a large fish, straining against its weight. He pointed to his watch, at the six, then the twelve.

Jeff nodded, smiled, showing he understood: the other two had gone fishing. They’d left at six and would be back at noon. He took Henrich’s note, showed it to the Greek. He gestured at Amy and Mathias, waved upward to indicate Stacy and Eric, then pointed at Cancún on the map. He slowly moved his finger to Cobá, then to the X, which marked the dig. He couldn’t think how to explain the purpose of their trip, how to signal brother or missing, so he just kept tracing his finger across the map.

Pablo got very excited. He smiled and nodded and pointed at his own chest, then at the map, talking rapidly in Greek all the while. It appeared he wanted to go with them. Jeff nodded; the others nodded, too. The Greeks were staying in the neighboring hotel. Jeff pointed toward it, then down at Pablo’s bare legs, then at his own jeans. Pablo just stared at him. Jeff pointed at the others, at their pants, and the Greek began nodding again. He started to leave, but then came back suddenly, reaching for Henrich’s note. He took it to the concierge’s desk; they saw him borrow a pen, a piece of paper, then bend to write. It took him a long time. In the middle of it, Eric and Stacy reappeared, with their backpack, and Pablo tossed down his pen, rushed over to hug them. He and Eric made shaking motions with their hands, casting imaginary dice. They pretended to drink, then laughed and shook their heads, and Pablo told a long story in Greek that no one could make any sense of. It seemed to have something to do with an airplane, or a bird, something with wings, and it took him several minutes to relate. It was obviously funny, or at least he found it to be so, because he kept having to stop and laugh. His laughter was infectious, and the others joined in, though they couldn’t say why. Finally, he went back and resumed whatever he was doing with Henrich’s note.

When he returned, they saw that he’d made his own copy of the hand-drawn map. He’d written a paragraph in Greek above it; Jeff assumed it was a note for Juan and Don Quixote, telling them to come join them at the dig. He tried to explain to Pablo that they were only intending to go for the day, that they’d be back late that evening, but he couldn’t find a way to make this clear. He kept pointing at his watch, and so did Pablo, who seemed to think Jeff was asking when the other two Greeks would return from fishing. They were both pointing at the twelve, but Jeff meant midnight, and Pablo meant noon. Finally, Jeff gave up; they were going to miss their bus if this continued. He waved Pablo toward his hotel, gesturing at his bare legs again. Pablo smiled and nodded and hugged them all once more, then jogged out of the lobby, clutching the copy of Henrich’s map in his hand.

Jeff waited by the front door, watching for their van. Mathias paced about behind him, folding and unfolding Henrich’s note, sliding it into his pocket, only to pull it out again. Stacy, Eric, and Amy sat together on a couch in the center of the lobby, and when Jeff glanced toward them, he felt a sudden wavering. They shouldn’t go, he realized; it was a terrible idea. Eric’s head kept dipping; he was drunk and overtired and having great difficulty staying awake. Amy was pouting, arms folded across her chest, eyes fixed on the floor in front of her. Stacy was wearing sandals and no socks; in a few more hours, her feet were going to be covered in bug bites. Jeff couldn’t imagine accompanying these three on a two-mile hike through the Yucatán heat. He knew he should just explain this to Mathias, apologize, ask for his forgiveness. All he had to do was think of a way to say it, to make Mathias understand, and they could spend another aimless day on the beach. It ought to have been easy enough, finding the right words, and Jeff was just starting to form them in his head when Pablo returned, dressed in jeans, carrying a pack. There were hugs again, all around, everyone talking at once. Then the van arrived, and they were piling into it, one after another, and suddenly it was too late to speak with Mathias, too late not to go. They were pulling out into traffic, away from the hotel, the beach, everything that had grown so familiar in the past two weeks. Yes, they were on their way, they were leaving, they were going, they were gone.

As Stacy was hurrying after the others into the bus station, a boy grabbed her breast. He reached in from behind and gave it a hard, painful squeeze. Stacy spun, scrambling to thrust his hand from her body. That was the whole point—the spin, the scrambling, the distraction inherent in these motions—it gave a second boy the opportunity to snatch her hat and sunglasses from her head. Then they were off, both of them, racing down the sidewalk, two dark-haired little boys—twelve years old, she would’ve guessed—vanishing now into the crowd.

The day was abruptly bright without her glasses. Stacy stood blinking, a little dazed, still feeling the boy’s hand on her breast. The others were already pushing their way into the station. She’d yelped—she thought she’d yelped—but apparently no one had heard. She had to run to catch up with them, her hand reflexively rising to hold her hat to her head, the hat that was no longer there, that was beyond the plaza already, moving farther and farther into the distance with each passing second, traveling toward some new owner’s hands, a stranger who’d have no idea of her, of course, no sense of this moment, of her running into the Cancún bus station, struggling suddenly against the urge to cry.

Inside, it felt more like an airport than a bus station, clean and heavily air-conditioned and very bright. Jeff had already found the right ticket counter; he was talking to the attendant, asking questions in his careful, precisely enunciated Spanish. The others were huddled behind him, pulling out their wallets, gathering the money for their fares. When Stacy reached them, she said, A boy stole my hat.

Only Pablo turned; the others were all leaning toward Jeff, trying to hear what the attendant was telling him. Pablo smiled at her. He gestured around them at the bus station, in the way someone might indicate a particularly pleasing view from a balcony.

Stacy was beginning to calm down now. Her heart had been racing, adrenaline-fueled, her body trembling with it, and now that it was starting to ease, she felt more embarrassed than anything else, as if the whole incident were somehow her own fault. This was the sort of thing that always seemed to be happening to her. She dropped cameras off ferries; she left purses on airplanes. The others didn’t lose things or break things or have them stolen, so why should she? She should’ve been paying attention. She should’ve seen the boys coming. She was calmer, but she still felt like crying.

And my sunglasses, she said.

Pablo nodded, his smile deepening. He seemed very happy to be here. It was unsettling, having him respond with such oblivious contentment to what she believed must be her obvious distress; for a moment, Stacy wondered if he might be mocking her. She glanced past him to the others.

Eric, she called.

Eric waved her away without looking at her. I got it, he said. He was handing Jeff money for their tickets.

Mathias was the only one who turned. He stared for a moment, examining her face, then stepped toward her. He was so tall and she was so small; he ended up crouching in front of her, as if she were a child, looking at her with what appeared to be genuine concern. What’s wrong? he asked.

On the night of the bonfire, when Stacy had kissed the Greek, it hadn’t been only Amy she’d felt staring at her, but Mathias, too. Amy’s expression had been one of pure surprise; Mathias’s had been perfectly blank. In the days to follow, she’d caught him watching her in the exact same manner: not judgmental, exactly, but with a hidden, held-back quality that nonetheless made her feel as if she were being weighed in some balance, appraised and assessed, and found wanting. Stacy was a coward at heart—she had no illusions about this, knew that she’d sacrifice much to escape difficulty or conflict—and she’d avoided Mathias as best she could. Avoided not only his presence but his eyes, too, that watchful gaze. And now here he was, crouched in front of her, looking at her so sympathetically, while the others, all unknowing, busied themselves purchasing their tickets. It was too confusing; she lost her voice.

Mathias reached out, touched her forearm, just with his fingertips, resting them there, as if she were some small animal he was trying to calm. What is it? he asked.

A boy stole my hat, Stacy managed to say. She gestured toward her head, her eyes. And my sunglasses.

Just now?

Stacy nodded, pointed toward the doors. Outside.

Mathias stood up; his fingertips left her arm. He seemed ready to stride off and find the boys. Stacy lifted her hand to stop him.

They’re gone, she said. They ran away.

Who ran away? Amy asked. She was standing, suddenly, beside Mathias.

The boys who stole my hat.

Eric was there, too, now, handing her a piece of paper. She took it, held it at her side, with no sense of what it was, or why Eric wanted her to have it. Look at it, he said. Look at your name.

Stacy peered down at the piece of paper. It was her ticket; her name was printed on it. Spacy Hutchins, it said.

Eric was smiling, pleased with himself. They asked for our names.

Her hat was stolen, Mathias said.

Stacy nodded, feeling that embarrassment again. Everyone was staring at her. And my sunglasses.

Now Jeff was there, too, not stopping, moving past them. Hurry, he said. We’re gonna miss it. He was heading off toward their gate, and the others started after him: Pablo and Mathias and Amy, all in a line. Eric lingered beside her.

How? he asked.

It wasn’t my fault.

I’m not saying that. I’m just—

They grabbed them. They grabbed them and ran. She could still feel the boy’s grip on her breast. That, and the oddly cool touch of Mathias’s fingertips on her arm. If Eric asked her another question, she was afraid it would be too much for her; she’d surrender, begin to cry.

Eric glanced toward the others. They were almost out of sight. We better go, he said. He waited until she nodded, and then they started off together, his hand clasping hers, pulling her along through the crowd.

The bus wasn’t at all what Amy had expected. She’d pictured something dirty and broken-down, with rattling windows and blown shocks and a smell coming from the bathroom. But it was nice. There was air conditioning; there were little TVs hanging from the ceiling. Amy’s seat number was on her ticket. She and Stacy were together, toward the middle of the bus. Pablo and Eric were directly in front of them, with Jeff and Mathias across the aisle.

As soon as the bus pulled out of the station, the TVs turned on. They were playing a Mexican soap opera. Amy didn’t know any Spanish, but she watched anyway, imagining a story line to fit the actors’ startled expressions, their gestures of disgust. It wasn’t that difficult—all soap operas are more or less the same—and it made her feel better, losing herself a little in her imagined narrative. It was immediately clear that the dark-haired man who was maybe some sort of lawyer was cheating on his wife with the bleached-blond woman, but that he didn’t realize the blonde was taping their conversations. There was an elderly woman with lots of jewelry who was obviously manipulating everyone else with her money. There was a woman with long black hair whom the elderly woman trusted but who appeared to be plotting something against her. She was in league with the elderly woman’s doctor, who seemed also to be the bleached blonde’s husband.

After awhile, by the time they’d left the city behind and were heading south along the coast, Amy felt easy enough with herself that she reached out and took Stacy’s hand. It’s all right, she said. You can borrow my hat, if you want.

And Stacy’s smile at this—so open, so immediate, so loving—changed everything, made the whole day seem possible, even exciting. They were best friends, and they were going on an adventure, a hike through the jungle to see the ruins. They held hands and watched the soap opera. Stacy couldn’t speak Spanish, either, so they argued about what was happening, each of them struggling to propose the most outlandish scenario possible. Stacy imitated the elderly woman’s expressions, which were like a silent movie actress’s, expansive and exaggerated, full of greed and malice, and they hunched low in their seats, giggling together, each making the other feel better—safer, happier—as the bus pushed its way down the coast through the day’s burgeoning heat.

Pablo had a bottle of tequila in his pack. No: Eric could hear a clinking sound, so there must’ve been two bottles, or more. Eric only saw one, though. Pablo pulled it out to show him, smiling, raising his eyebrows. Apparently, he wanted them to share it on their ride to Cobá. There was something with a coin, too—some sort of Greek coin. Pablo took it out, mimed flipping it, then drinking. Another game. As far as Eric could understand, it seemed like a pretty simple one. They’d flip the coin. If it came up heads, Eric had to drink; if it came up tails, the Greek did. Eric, displaying a wisdom unnatural to him, waved the idea aside. He tilted his seat back, shut his eyes, and fell asleep with the speed of a man on an anesthesia drip. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…and he was gone.

He woke briefly, blearily, sometime later, to find that they were parked in front of a long line of souvenir stalls. It wasn’t their stop, but some of the other passengers were gathering their things and climbing off, while still others lined up outside the door, waiting to get on. Pablo was asleep beside him, openmouthed, snoring softly. Amy and Stacy were hunched low in their seats, whispering together. Jeff was reading their communal guidebook, bent close over it, intent, as if memorizing it. Mathias’s eyes were shut, but he wasn’t sleeping. Eric couldn’t say how he knew this; he just did, and as he stared at him, wondering why this was so, Mathias rolled his head toward him, opened his eyes. It was an odd moment: they sat there, with only the