Page 12 of The Compound

Candice smiled at me in a noticeably more congenial way than she had looked at Mia.

I felt warm under her regard. She was wearing sunglasses that she must have won in a task.

They were cheap and flimsy, and not particularly stylish, but at this point we couldn’t be picky.

“I think you’re probably right.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and we waited for her to speak.

“He’s very enthusiastic,” she said cryptically.

“You mean in bed?” Susie asked.

Candice frowned at Susie disapprovingly. “Of course not. What do you take me for? I mean…I mean that he’s enthusiastic about the compound. About people. He likes to get stuck into things.” I understood what she wasn’t saying: Andrew would commit to her, if she could get him interested.

“Do you think that any of the boys…?” I said, trailing off.

I paused, trying to decide what I wanted to say, and whether I should say it.

I wanted to ask the girls if they thought that any of the boys had fought in the wars.

My father was fighting overseas, and I found it difficult, in the safe, ordinary life that I had, to actually visualize it; I had seen images and videos on the television and online, of course, but they had never felt real to me.

I preferred personal accounts: my neighbor had once casually mentioned that when he was fighting he went six weeks without seeing a bar of soap.

I found it easier to construct an account of what my father might be doing around the image of the bar of soap.

Repeatedly, almost obsessively, I imagined him in a number of different scenarios, at last coming across the soap; I imagined, in some iterations, that the sight of it moved him to tears.

My father had been gone long enough that I’d stopped expecting him to come home, but I liked to collect the experiences of other soldiers and pretend that they were his.

The girls waited for me to finish my train of thought.

Then I remembered that I didn’t want to think about any of that.

I didn’t want to be reminded of the realities of what we’d left behind.

I smiled and shook my head to signal to ignore me, and the girls moved on with a speed that made me suspect they knew what I had wanted to ask, and they, too, thought it better to moveon.

“Isn’t Seb so boring?” Mia said. “I’ve never met anyone so dull. He just looks miserable all the time.”

“Who’s his bedmate?” I asked.

“Sarah,” Jacintha said.

“She’s boring, too,” Candice said. “They should stick together.”

“It’s hard to keep track of everyone,” Jacintha said.

“Oh, I have nicknames for everyone,” Mia said. “It’s the only way to remember all of the names.”

“Go on,” Candice said.

“?‘Sleepy Seb.’ Because he’s a boring prick.”

We nodded our agreement.

“Vanessa’s ‘Big-Tits,’ obviously.”

“Come on,” Candice said. “You’re objectifying her.”

“If she had a personality, I wouldn’t have to objectify her.”

There was something almost comforting about Mia’s meanness. Most people kept the ugly part of them hidden, and worked hard to never have it be seen. Probably everyone who came on a show like this was a shitty person in some way or another. I almost admired that she was up front aboutit.

“What about Evan?” Susie asked, smiling with equal parts nervousness and girlish excitement.

“?‘Man-child,’?” Mia said. Susie’s face fell. “Sorry. He’s always doing fucking cannonballs into the pool, though.”

“What about me?” Candice asked.

“Oh,” Mia said, after a pull from her bottle of water. “I don’t have one for any of you girls. I know you well enough.”

We smiled and pretended that we believed her. She got to her feet and said that she wanted to apply more sunscreen. Candice watched her go, her lovely face pulled into an expression of disdain.

“I’m going to talk to Marcus tonight,” Jacintha said. “Carlos is nice, a bit too shy, maybe, but I want to see if there’s something there with Marcus. He’s sharing a bed with Mia at the minute. Do you think she’ll mind?”

“She’ll mind,” Candice said. “But don’t let that stop you.”

Evan stepped out of the house and called that dinner would be ready in twenty minutes. We went inside to change for the evening.

I noticed that the girls were buzzing around their screens a lot, and that there were a few products on the table that I hadn’t seen before: Mia had a scrunchie, and Candice had a makeup brush.

I had been vaguely embarrassed of having the comb, but when I saw the other new products I placed it on the table, not caring who sawit.

It was difficult to discern what was an instruction—a means to get some Personal Reward—and what was just normal getting-to-know-you carrying-on.

Sometimes it was obvious, like when I was coming down the stairs, and Evan stopped me to tell me that my tits looked great in my dress.

He had flushed red from his hairline to his neck, and then moved on without another word.

But when Carlos lifted me onto his shoulders and gave me a piggyback to the dining area, was that a task?

Or when Sam picked up one of my braids and smiled at me—was that real?

Either way, I had blushed, as though it had meant something more.

When we finished dinner—a halfhearted effort at chili con carne, and an even more lethargic attempt at a vegetarian option for Mia—Gav suggested that we explore more of the compound.

We wandered and found a set of swings in a dusty expanse close to the southern perimeter.

I pushed Jacintha for a while and enjoyed watching the elegant arc of her flight through the air, her pointed feet reaching higher with each push.

“All right,” I heard a voice say, and then arms were wrapped around me, depositing me on the empty swing beside Jacintha.

I turned my head and saw Ryan. He drew my seat far back, until I could kick my feet and not touch the ground.

Then he let go, and I was sailing through the air, in tandem with Jacintha.

Marcus was behind Jacintha now, giving her gentle nudges in the back.

I felt a small thrill every time Ryan’s hand pressed against my back, and I let my hair fly around me and stretched my legs out.

Jacintha swung next to me, arcing upward as I was falling down.

We reached out and brushed hands every time we swung past each other.

The boys behind us were silent as they pushed us, but Jacintha and I giggled and exclaimed, the night filling with the sounds of our glee.

When I felt brave enough, I jumped off. I landed on my feet, more or less steady, and looked over my shoulder at Ryan, who was watching me and smiling.

He came to my side, and took my hand, and we walked off together, my empty swing still traveling through the air, up and down.

We walked to the west until we reached a pond.

It was beautiful: willow trees with swaying vines, and sweet-smelling flowers growing toward the water.

There were ducks in the pond, swimming idly back and forth, and there were fish too; glints of orange and gold flashing beneath the water. We sat down on the bank.

“Today was fun,” he said lightly. He was so easy to talk to—he never seemed to think too deeply about anything.

“The underwater task was a bit intense,” I said. I hesitated, and then said, “I know you weren’t there, but Tom got a bit…forceful at the end.”

“Oh, Tom? He’s a good guy, really. He’s forceful for sure, and he’s got a temper, but he’s just trying to keep things running smoothly.”

“I don’t know why he feels he should be the one to take charge,” I said.

Ryan shrugged. “We kind of sorted it out in the desert. More or less.” I was curious to know the particulars, but I felt instinctively that now wasn’t the time to ask.

There was no moon that night, but it was so beautiful, with the dusky purple flowers and the swaying vines, that it wasn’t missed. He sat close and kept my hand in his. In the dark, my hands looked lily-white.

“It’s hard to believe we only met yesterday,” he said. “I feel like I know you. You were so sweet on that swing, Lily. You looked like you didn’t have a care in the world.”

He towered over me, his chin tilted toward me. He was so incredibly handsome; he looked like every actor I had ever wanted, and the boys I always pretended not to notice.

“I’m glad you picked me,” I said. “I wasn’t sure.”

“I was sure,” he said, and leaned his head down and kissed me.

He tasted like chlorine and aloe vera. It was quiet, save for the occasional ripple of the water before us, and the hum of cicadas.

He pressed me gently into the grass, stroked my hair, and whispered that I was beautiful.

I thought that it must have been a great moment of television.

I could imagine people watching at home, smiling softly, pleased forus.

—

We went to bed a while later. Ryan didn’t kiss me again, only got into bed quietly beside me.

It was dark, but I could hear people moving around: not just taking their places in beds, I thought, but shifting to different beds, too.

There were surely people who had shared beds last night who had found someone else that they preferred.

When I thought that the bathroom was empty, I peeked around the sheet we used as a door.

I saw Sam there, brushing his teeth. “Sorry,” I said.

“I’ll wait.” I started to replace the sheet, but he shook his head and gestured me in, his toothbrush still in his mouth.

I had brought my washbag, but I didn’t particularly want to remove my makeup in front of Sam.

Instead, I took out my toothbrush, too. Sam reached over and squeezed a pea-sized glob of toothpaste on my brush, and we stood facing the mirror, brushing in silence.

He brushed quickly and vigorously; my method by comparison seemed lethargic.

There was something about Sam that seemed to fill the room: I was aware of his every movement.

I spat as daintily as I could. I kept waiting for him to finish and leave so that I could take off my makeup, but he continued brushing.

I spat one last time. “Goodnight,” I said.

He spat, too. “Wait a second,” he said. He reached over and brushed the corner of my mouth. “Toothpaste,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. I think I blushed. “Thanks.”

“Sure. Goodnight, Lily.”

I walked back to the bedroom and returned to my bed.

I turned on my side so that I faced Ryan and saw from the occasional flash of white and blue in the dark that he was watching me, too.

We might have looked like lovers, gazing at each other with that tenderness that comes out at night—but I was looking at him to see if he would leave, to make sure that I was safe.

It had happened before: residents creeping out of bed in the middle of the night and swapping with another, sometimes returning later in the night, and sometimes leaving their bedmate vulnerable.

I felt his eyes on me and knew that he was thinking the same.

It would have been easier for us both if I had just said, “I’m not going to anyone else’s bed—I want you.

” Instead I said nothing, and woke often, checking to see that he was still there.