The Ruins

by Scott Smith

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.

Sometimes he felt he was the only one of them who knew how to move through the world.

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.

There was always something odd to feel if only you stopped and searched for it.

Stacy wasn’t certain; she’d never bothered to pay attention to details like that, and was always regretting it, the half knowing, which felt worse than not knowing at all, the constant sense that she had things partly right, but not right enough to make a difference.

“It will be whatever it is, no? Nothing, something—our believing one thing or another will matter not at all in the end.”