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“I didn’t say anything,” I said. “We talked for, like, a minute.”

“There are ten girls and nine boys. Whether we’re here in the morning or not depends on if a boy likes us. Don’t shoot anyone down just yet, all right?”

When we had finished the tour, we all sat in the grass. It wasn’t uncomfortable anymore: I was already getting used to it. Candice sat beside Marcus, and Susie sat beside Sam. I sat next to Jacintha. Everyone was relaxed, except for Tom, who was looking around restlessly. “The fence around the perimeter,” he said. “That’s new, right?”

We couldn’t say that it was likely put up in the last couple of weeks by the previous residents, so Candice only said, “Brand-new.”

“That’s good,” he said, his eyes following the boundary line. “And there’s the barbed wire, too. It’s safe, then? I mean, you’ve felt safe here, the last few days?”

“It’s safe,” Candice said. Tom nodded. I thought then that there was something off about him. While the other boys were staring openly at the girls, Tom was staring out into the desert.

“What about a glass of something a little stronger than water?” Marcus said. “To celebrate us finally being together?”

I met Candice’s eye, but she looked quickly away. We had drunk all of the alcohol already. “There isn’t any, yet,” she said.

Irritated, Seb said, “Have you not been following the instructions?”

“The screen hasn’t been on,” Jacintha said. “We think it was because they needed us all to be here.”

Andrew stood. “Why don’t we check if it’s on now?” He offered Candice his hand, and the two of them made their way into the house. A moment later, Candice emerged, her arm waving in the air. The big screen had litup.

—

Everyone knew howthe big screen worked: it would detail daily instructions for all of us to carry out. We could only be rewarded if everyone took part. If successful, we would receive items for the compound: food, furniture, appliances, or other things that would make our lives easier. There would additionally be Personal Tasks, which were detailed on our little screens; these rewards would benefit us individually. There was no limit to how many tasks you could complete on the big or little screens: every time one was completed, another one would appear. If it wasn’t completed in a day, that reward was lost forever; a new task would appear the next morning.

The quality of the reward for each Communal Task depended on how well we executed the task, while the quality of the reward for a Personal Task in addition depended on how many people were remaining in the compound—the fewer people there were, the more valuable the reward. It was one of the most entertaining parts of the show, actually: they pushed people into couples, and otherwise tried to get you to forgerelationships with the other residents, only to see if you were willing to sacrifice those same people in order to get better prizes. When there were twenty people the rewards were pretty basic, but as the numbers dwindled the rewards grew luxurious. In a previous year, a contestant who made it to the final pair got the actual dress that a famous actress had worn to an awards ceremony. Another time, the winner got a watch worth tens of thousands.

That was the other thing: if you won, you got unlimited rewards. Not all of them were as expensive as the watch, but once you were alone in the compound, you didn’t have to complete a task to earn a reward—you just asked, and it soon appeared. Your other prize was the compound itself. You could theoretically stay for as long as you wanted, but generally the winner gathered as many rewards as they could carry and left to enjoy their life of fame and further riches on the outside. The minute the last person left, the next group of contestants could enter.

On the big screen, it said:

Task: Every boy and girl must discuss their previous relationships

Reward: Outdoor seating

“Piece of cake,” Seb said. There was something about Seb that was easy to dislike. He was tall, yet seemed to make an effort to take up more space than was necessary, slouching insolently as he sat, legs spread wide, arms draped behind him. As well as that, he had an annoying, moneyed accent, and smirked when other people spoke.

“Did anyone check the little screens?” Mia asked. Several people started to move toward the changing area, but Candice said, “No one goes anywhere until we get this first task done. We need a place to sit.” She was right: aside from the fact that seats seemed a necessary thing for civilized living, the ground was so hot. Those of us who had started to move toward their dressing room stopped when Candice saidso.

We created a rotating line by the pool. The girls stayed in one place, while the boys moved to the girl to the left after two minutes. We had no clock or means of measuring time, so whatever girl was not speaking to a boy would call “switch” after counting two minutes.

We had been waiting for the boys for two days, but the reality of seeing them standing before us was jarring. Even the smallest of them, Evan,was taller than the tallest girl, and they varied in appearance—ranging from trim and toned to enormously, threateningly muscled. The girls had their backs to the pool, and I felt, as they stared baldly at us, that at any minute the boys might either fall at our feet, or launch us backward into the pool.

“All right,” Jacintha called, standing at the end. “Begin!”

In front of me was Seb. He was wiry and tattooed: ink curled from his wrists all the way up to behind his ear. He had taken off his shirt in the midday heat, and I could see the divots of his six-pack. When the boys had arrived, I had quietly slipped into my red dress, the nice one, but I wasn’t sure, now, if it was the right thing to wear. I felt overdressed, too obviously trying to look alluring. We stared at each other for a good ten seconds, not speaking.

“I’m Lily,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “We spoke earlier.”

There was another brief silence, and I could hear the others beside me speaking rapidly, as though they couldn’t fit all of their relationships into one two-minute conversation. Beside me, Melissa was describing a polyamorous relationship she had been in. “It’s much more relaxed than you might think,” she said.

“When I was fifteen,” I said finally, “I went out with a boy in my class for three months. His name was José, and we would go swimming together when it was hot. It was a summer fling. When I came back to school in September, neither of us were particularly interested in the other. Then when I was seventeen, I had a brief…thing with my teacher. His name was Mr. Donovan—Richard. I used to help him file books in the school library after school, and then we started locking the door to the library and staying there for hours. He was married and ended it when his wife found out. Directly after that, I started going out with Louis. He was really, really nice. He was my friend’s brother, and we just had a really nice time together. That lasted, I think, less than a year? I broke up with him because I kind of was bored and wanted something different. And then I met Brian, and we went out for three years. We broke up two months ago. He cheated on me with a girl he met on holiday. So, that’s me.”

Seb nodded, and though he had studied me carefully while I was talking, he fixed his gaze a few inches to the left of my face as he spoke.

“Amelia when I was fourteen. Then Denise when I was eighteen. Sierra when I was nineteen. Carmel when I was nineteen. Maggie when I was twenty-one.”