Page 19 of The Compound

Candice said, “Ladies, that was all us. We put together one hell of a show.” Susie, standing at the edge of the pool, laughed happily, then jumped into the water, crying “Cannonball!” The water splashed the rest of us girls, and we complained, but then the boys cannonballed into the pool too.

After some urging on their parts we joined them.

It was easier to just give in. Marcus, who had been almost as lousy as Jacintha at the choreographed dance, took her in his arms, twirling her around.

She resisted at first and then relaxed, laughing and throwing her arms around his shoulders, the two of them swaying in the water, him dipping her so that the back of her head touched the surface of the water but never quite went under.

—

After two further challenges (name fifteen capital cities—a tin of white paint; reveal who we voted for in the last election—baseball hats for everyone) we were exhausted and starving.

We’d finished the majority of the food. There were still one or two bananas left, but we were all sick to death of them.

“I know everyone’s tired of them, but think about it,” Candice said. “The bananas were the first food reward we got. And we must have got about two hundred of them. The next food reward we get will last us for a long time.”

Andrew blamed himself for not having us do the task from last night in exchange for pasta.

He sighed a lot, and muttered to himself, pacing around the living room, then sat in front of the screen for a while.

Eventually he slapped his legs and got up, calling, “Let’s go again, folks!

I’m feeling good about the next task. We are seriously on the crust of something here! ”

No one was particularly eager to do this next task.

It was for another stupid reward, a pair of garden shears.

Only Jacintha was up for it. “I can use them for the hedges,” she said.

I gave her a look, but for her, I said, “We’ll do it quickly and have it over and done with.

” Luckily, it was a task that required no physical labor: we simply had to reveal our phobias.

It took us two minutes to complete, but when we went back to the screen, it had not yet changed color.

“Did we miss someone?” Mia asked. We puzzled over it for a while. We wondered if we hadn’t spoken loud enough. We read the instruction again: Everyone must reveal their phobia.

Tom was frowning, confused. “Let’s do it again,” he said. “Everyone speak clearly.”

My phobia was being buried alive. Ryan’s was snakes, and Jacintha’s was a fear of small holes. After we had all spoken again, the screen still hadn’t lit up green.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Candice said. “Someone’s lying.”

There was silence, during which we all looked at each other. I started to feel nervous. Was my phobia really being buried alive? Did I have a greater fear? I decided, after a few moments, that I had told the truth.

“One more time,” Andrew said. “Everyone, there’s no need to be embarrassed. We’re a family here.”

Everyone said their fear a third time, while listening carefully to spot the liar.

It was Marcus: his fear was not spiders, as he had said, but the cold, dark void of outer space.

He looked straight ahead as he spoke, and no one said anything, but I saw Jacintha smile softly to herself, as though charmed by his confession.

The big screen lit up green, and the new task appeared:

Task: Spit in your bedmate’s mouth

Reward: Sun loungers

There was a chorus of disgusted groans, and exclamations of dissent.

“They know that we’re desperate,” Carlos said.

“We should just wait until morning,” Seb said. “That’s fucking gross, man.”

I thought that Tom looked inclined to agree, but Andrew was clearly torn.

Waiting until morning was another night without food.

“They won’t let us die,” he said with certainty.

“But…I suppose, they did offer us food last night and we didn’t take it.

No, they won’t let us die, obviously, but we could certainly get very uncomfortable.

” We watched him, and he sighed, and said, “Let’s take a break, anyway. ”

Candice said, “Everyone be sure to have a glass of water. There are a couple of bananas left, too.” By the time we had drunk our water the bananas were all gone.

Ryan had managed to get one for me. I gagged a little at the smell but ate it anyway.

The two of us sat outside in the grass, a light wind rippling through the green.

I sighed. Ryan ran his hand through the grass, a couple of inches long, no longer yellow-tinged.

It was now a muted green. Ryan had been watering it, and this, added to the work of the sprinklers, had improved it in only a few days.

“I’ll cut it tomorrow,” he said, satisfied.

“We’re always sitting in the grass. It would be nice to have sun loungers. ”

I looked at him. “You’re not serious. You’d spit in my mouth? You’d let me spit in your mouth?”

“If it was you, sure.”

“You’re disgusting,” I said, but his statement pleasedme.

“Come here,” he said, smiling atme.

“No,” I said.

“Come here,” he said again. I inched forward.

He kissed me gently, deeply, stroking my jaw with one hand and my ribs with another.

His tongue slipped between my lips and mine did the same.

It was a nice kiss, but I found that I couldn’t entirely relax into it.

I kept thinking about what I looked like, kept wondering from what angle the camera was capturing our romantic moment.

“Now,” he said. “Was that so bad?”

“It’s not the same. You didn’t…you know. Spit.”

“It’s the same thing, sweetheart.” He grinned at me, his eyes flashing. “I bet you’re conservative in bed, too.” He stroked my neck, a little firmer now, along the column of my throat.

I pulled back, a little. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” I said.

Perhaps I had known him only a short time, but we had shared a bed and a hundred other intimacies.

People often had sex in the compound. The cameras couldn’t legally show the actual act, though they gave a fairly good idea of what was going on.

When I watched the show I had always said to myself that I would never have sex for the whole world to see.

But it felt different, now, living it. I was no longer sure about what I would and wouldn’tdo.

“I’m going to get another glass of water,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He lay back on the grass, relaxed, and watched mego.

In the kitchen, I saw Sam, and said nothing to him.

I couldn’t deny that I was aware of his presence, but I was determined not to show it.

Jacintha came in with her shears. She was pleased with them, and turned them this way and that way so that they glinted under the lights.

Sam poured himself a glass of water and leaned against the counter.

I poured myself a glass of water, too, and stood beside him.

I wanted him to go; I would not be the one to leave the room first. He didn’t do the courteous thing and move out of the way.

I drank my water at the sink, and let him hear my gulping.

I exhaled a loud sigh when I finished, just to annoy him.

“Sam,” Jacintha said, “if I cut enough barbed wire I should be able to make a trap.”

Sam thought for a moment. “Who’s in charge of Pool Maintenance?” I didn’t like the way that sounded, like their only job was to clean the pool. Ryan was committed to yard work, now that he had the lawn mower.

“Ryan and Marcus.”

He nodded. “Jacintha, you get the barbed wire.” He turned to me. “You tell Ryan we need his pool-cleaning net. Meet me at the pond in a couple of minutes.”

“He’s Pool and Outdoor Maintenance,” I said.

—

That night, we had duck for dinner.

After Sam caught the first one, the other ducks seemed to know their fate and started to flee, but Jacintha and Ryan caught them and held them in the giant pool net.

They squawked and resisted with surprising power, but Sam took the barbed wire and wrapped it around the net.

The ducks didn’t stop struggling, but they didn’t flap their wings with such zeal anymore.

Taking the ducks out of the net one by one was difficult, and I helped Sam by holding their wings while he grabbed their beaks and necks.

Once he had a good grip, he gave a mighty wrench, and the duck was dead.

I watched in abject fascination as each duck went from writhing and flapping to limp in his hands in the space of a second.

We were methodical—me trying my best to restrain them and Sam snapping their necks, one at a time—and when each bird was dead, I placed it into a bin bag gingerly, as though it might come back to life and fly back out.

Jacintha and Ryan struggled the whole time: the more ducks that died, the more violent the others became, tearing their wings against the barbed wire.

Once or twice a duck flew out, and Ryan had to grab it, and inevitably was bitten, pecked, or whacked in the face, for although the birds were not particularly clever they knew how to make a fuss.

Each time, Sam took it calmly from him and snapped its neck before it had time to escape again.

There was something about Sam in those moments—it wasn’t that I admired his killing of innocent creatures, but I was fascinated by the easy, clinical way he did it before handing the carcasses to me so gently.

I found myself examining him closely, the way he twisted his mouth while making a quick jerk of his wrist. I was unable to look away.

Ryan might as well have not existed tome.

I remembered that some days or weeks before, I had stopped myself from considering the boys’ possible participation in the wars.

I thought of it again as I watched the quick, clean, detached way in which Sam killed the ducks.

But it didn’t repel me; it made him more real.

For a moment I stopped thinking of Sam solely as a fellow contestant on a television show, in which he was suspended somewhere between reality and social experiment, and thought of him fully, truly, as a man standing before me, impressive, attractive, intelligent—someone I realized I liked a great deal.

No one had any reservations about eating the ducks: only opinions about the best way to skin them and cook them.

Even Mia stayed quiet. Some of the boys had ideas, and voiced them loudly, but Candice held up her hand, and said, “Carlos and I are Food Preparation. We’ll handle it.

” She tied her hair up in a long, sleek ponytail and asked Jacintha to fetch the garden shears.

—

It was surprisingly tasty. We ate with fierce satisfaction: we were not at the mercy of anyone—we could fend for ourselves.

We sat in the outdoor dining area and arranged our seats so that we sat in a circle.

We spoke only a little, eating as quickly as we could while glancing around us, as though suddenly seeing all the possibilities of the compound.

What else could be eaten? Jacintha remarked that there had once been an orchard but the previous residents had picked it clean.

It would take some time to restore it, but it could be done.

We licked our fingers and put our hands on our stomachs: we weren’t exactly full, but we were brimming with pleasure.

Most of us had helped in some way. Candice and Carlos had plucked, disemboweled, washed, and cooked the ducks, and Vanessa and Sarah had gathered the grease and fat to store in a jar, now the only thing in our fridge.

They had frozen some of the duck meat too, and though we would have gladly eaten every bite that night we saw the sense in it.

Susie, who I would have thought was squeamish, surprised me by taking the duck feathers and cleaning them with meticulous precision.

After we ate, she went around the circle and presented everyone with a single, pristine feather, smiling bashfully, as though we might refuseit.