Page 10 of The Compound

Three

We slept in the next morning. I felt shy around Ryan when I woke up.

I worried that I had drunk too much the night before and had come across as silly.

The bedroom had a skylight, but otherwise no source of light, and I could only see who was sharing a bed with whom when the sun had fully risen.

Andrew was with Candice, Jacintha with Carlos, Susie with Evan, Mia with Marcus, Eloise with Gav, Seb with Sarah, Tom with Vanessa, and Sam with Becca.

Despite the fact that I was coupled with the best-looking boy, it felt wrong that Sam should be with anyone other thanme.

The charm of the night before was decidedly gone, and the mess of dishes in the kitchen and abandoned glasses in the garden disgusted me.

We had coffee and cleaned up a bit, then lay in the shade and chatted a little.

When we were feeling more amenable, we turned our attention to the first Communal Task of the day.

Now that the imminent threat of banishment was gone, we had time to focus on improving the compound.

We reckoned if we stayed focused we could get three tasks done by midafternoon, with the option to do more later in the day if we felt like it.

We all agreed to leave our Personal Tasks until after the Communal Tasks were done; easy enough when the rewards were still of such a low value.

Our first task was so simple that we carried it out in a matter of minutes: we only had to name our favorite actor. For this, we got an enormous crate of bananas, which we ate while sitting in the shade.

The next task took longer, but for it we earned a bug zapper.

This pleased Susie in particular who told us all, more than once, that she couldn’t understand why there were so many insects: wasn’t the desert supposed to be devoid of life?

To earn it, we had to recite a poem in unison.

We spent the majority of the morning on that task.

We weren’t sure, at first, that any of us knew a poem by heart.

Carlos knew about ninety percent of a poem by Keats, but couldn’t remember two lines in the second verse, and Mia knew a short poem, but Seb figured if we only managed a three-line poem, we’d get “an unbelievably shitty bug zapper.” I thought that they were probably embarrassed that they didn’t know a poem by heart, and we spent some time walking around and reciting quotes that we could remember, muttering fragments of Wordsworth and Shakespeare, never managing more than a few lines.

Only Ryan looked relaxed, lying in the grass, having announced as soon as he had seen the screen that he didn’t know a single poem.

Then Becca, having not spoken for several hours, recited a poem by Rilke, short enough that we could memorize it, and long enough that we felt that we would earn something worthy.

We cheered her on, and Susie and I tucked flowers behind her ears; Candice kissed her on the forehead.

We had her repeat it any number of times, until we all knew it.

It took some time: we had no pen or paper and had to rely on memory alone.

I can remember it perfectly—the words, and the way that Becca said them, sitting cross-legged in the grass, her face young and open.

“It is life in slow motion,” she recited, and we listened to her in perfect silence, listened to her repeat it again and again until we could say it ourselves.

It is life in slow motion,

it’s the heart in reverse,

it’s a hope-and-a-half:

too much and too little at once.

It’s a train that suddenly

stops with no station around,

and we can hear the cricket,

and, leaning out the carriage

door, we vainly contemplate

a wind we feel that stirs

the blooming meadows, the meadows

made imaginary by this stop.

When we finished we were triumphant, and though some of us would have been glad of a break we agreed to do one more task before lunch.

The reward for the third task was the biggest yet: a couch. It would be our first piece of indoor furniture, and we all agreed that it was the thing we needed most urgently for the living room. “A couch really ties a home together,” Evan said, nodding.

The task stated that each resident had to keep another resident under water for a minute. I thought that it would be easy.

We changed into our swimsuits and got into the pool.

For a while we messed around, splashing water at each other and swimming idly, until Andrew reminded us that we needed to get going: the sun was at its highest point, and we would all burn, whether we were aware of it or not.

We gathered at the top of the pool. Tom suggested we divide into the pairs we had slept in: I noticed that he was careful not to use the word “couple.” Evan would count the time when the girls were under the water, and Jacintha would count when the boys were below.

Ryan stood beside me. In the pool, he was magnificent: he looked like a god. The boys requested to go first, and we let them. Ryan ducked so I could put my hand on the back of his neck. “All right,” Jacintha called, her own hand on Carlos’s head. “Go!”

Ryan took a breath and went under. I kept my hand very lightly on his neck, and kept my gaze fixed on him, as though he might float away at any moment.

Jacintha was counting down from sixty. It was otherwise quiet, all of the girls staring at the boys they held under the water.

Some of the boys’ shoulders were visible, but the majority of them had submerged most of their torsos.

The seconds went by slowly, and around fifty seconds in, I felt the muscles on Ryan’s neck bunch beneath my hand, his head moving. I softened my hold on him a little.

“One!” Jacintha called, and I pulled him up.

The pool was suddenly alive with motion, as the boys crashed to the surface.

Ryan was gasping, as were the others. I felt oddly close to him in that moment.

I moved his hair out of his face, and he held my eye as he caught his breath.

After a minute, Tom called, “Ready, Evan?”

“Give me a second,” he said, still catching his breath. I was thrown by how breathless everyone was, even Tom. I inhaled deeply and saw the other girls doing the same.

“Ready?” Ryan asked me. Some of the boys were murmuring to the girls, and I tried not to listen. Gravely, Ryan said, “It’s longer than you think.”

“Ready,” I said.

“On the count of three,” Evan said. “One, two—three!”

When I had read the instruction on the screen, I had experimentally held my breath and counted to sixty.

It wasn’t comfortable in the last few seconds, but it was doable.

Underwater, with a hand on my head, it wasn’t doable.

I panicked almost immediately, and though Ryan’s hand was gentle, barely there at all, I was seized by the overwhelming fear that I was going to die.

I could hear Evan’s voice, but after twenty seconds I couldn’t keep track anymore.

I didn’t register the decision to rise to the surface; I only knew that one second I was writhing underwater, and the next I was gasping and clinging to Ryan’s shoulder.

Evan was still counting—he was only at forty-seven—and when I could think rationally, I said, “Shit. Shit, I messed up.”

“It’s okay,” Ryan said, and held me as I continued to gasp. “Don’t worry. Just breathe.”

“Shit,” I said again. Pathetic; I was pathetic.

“You’re not,” he said, and I realized that I had spoken aloud. “Look,” he said. He twisted slightly—I hadn’t registered that I was wrapped around him like a vine on a tree. There were several girls above the surface, gasping like me: Candice, Sarah, and Becca.

When the minute was up—how the seconds flew when you had air to breathe!—the other girls crashed to the surface, gasping, but grinning too. I looked away. Some of the boys started murmuring to each other.

“Look,” Andrew called. “It’s okay, ladies. It’s a tough challenge. Take a breath, and we’ll go again.”

The girls who had remained underwater were visibly confused. Their partners quietly explained to them that not all of us had managed it. “Who?” I heard the word echoing around the pool, bouncing off the water. “Who, who?”

“I can do it,” I said to Ryan. “It just felt different than I thought it would.”

“I know,” he said. “I nearly wasn’t able to make it either.”

My breathing was regular by then. I looked at the other girls who hadn’t managed it.

Becca was still breathing heavily. She was clutching Sam’s shoulder, and he was talking quietly to her.

I took my hands off Ryan and looked away.

Candice was composed, but looking at Becca with worry.

“Let’s take a few minutes before we go again,” she said.

Everyone milled around the pool, but I tried to stand still and inhale as much air as possible. After a bit, Candice nodded at Evan.

“One more time,” Ryan said. “A minute, and then it’s over.” He smiled at me. Ryan made everything seem easy. I took a breath, and felt my chest expand.

“Go!” Evan called, and I submerged myself again.

I was calmer this time: I knew that I was safe, and that my lungs were capable of surviving a minute without air.

Still, I understood now just how long a minute felt underwater; I tried to sing a song in my head, but I kept abandoning it every few seconds.

I thought thirty seconds had to have passed.

Ryan’s hand on my head was light; I felt his finger stroke my neck, and I knew he was trying to reassure me.

But my lungs were burning, and I kept imagining inhaling a mouthful of chlorinated water, how it would feel as it hit my lungs, how I would cough and choke, only to take in another mouthful of water.

My hands curled into fists and came up to my chest. I curled myself into a ball, my head tossing back and forth.

I made some noise, deep in my chest—it was horrible, horrible, horrible—