Page 22 of The Compound

Seven

In the days that followed, we relaxed a little, spending more time by the pool, sitting down for long, leisurely dinners, and taking extended naps.

Tom was the only one who remained high-strung.

When the sun rose each morning he went out to sit by the front entrance.

One morning I slipped out the back door, walked around the house, and appeared silently before him.

He gave an almighty lurch in his seat, nearly falling to the ground.

I had never seen him so discomposed. I watched neutrally as he straightened himself in his seat again.

“Morning,” I said.

“Morning. I’m glad to see you, actually—I have a favor to ask.”

Despite myself, I was pleased. It felt nice to be needed. “What can I do?”

“I was wondering if you might speak to Sam.”

“About what?”

“We need to get back to doing tasks. We’ve been getting complacent since we got the food delivery. Sam’s in charge of Repairs and Construction. People trust him. If he would say something to the others about needing to get back on track, they’d take it seriously.”

“Why don’t you say it to him?”

“He might pay it more mind if it came from you.” I considered his words. I wasn’t sure if he was taunting me, hinting that he knew I liked Sam, or if it was simply because Tom was intimidated by Sam, and wanted someone else to speak to him.

“Why don’t you get Andrew to say it?”

He picked up a stray piece of rubbish from the ground. I felt a dim flush of shame. Cleaning was my department, not his.

“Andrew and I aren’t in charge, you know.

We all have a say in how things are run.

Otherwise it wouldn’t work.” I watched him place the piece of plastic in the recycling bin by the entrance, then sit back down, his arms braced on his knees.

The sun was in his eyes, but he looked at me directly.

“Would you mind mentioning it to Sam, then?”

Sam and I were hardly close, even if we were on slightly better terms after killing the ducks together. Becca was Sam’s bedmate: it would have made more sense to ask her. I wondered if Tom knew that she loathed him.

“I’ll say it to him,” I said.

I woke Andrew, as was now our custom. He turned to Candice and kissed her lightly on the lips.

She smiled and opened her eyes. Becca and Sam were still sleeping.

Ryan was, too: he generally woke close to noon.

We sometimes had to delay doing a task until he woke, but no one ever gave him trouble for it; no one really criticized Ryan—even the bitchier girls only ever said that he was indisputably gorgeous.

He slept like the dead and could nap at any time of the day.

I wondered if he’d had a stressful job, and if this time on the compound was a rare break, or if he was naturally easygoing.

My little screen said:

Task: Wear another girl’s clothes without asking

Reward:Mug

I mulled for a moment. A mug was a fairly basic prize at this point in the show. But, I consoled myself, rifling through the others girls’ clothes, it would likely be a very nice mug.

Mia was closest to my size, but I didn’t dare to cross her, though she had been nice enough to me recently.

Instead, I took a dress from Jacintha’s wardrobe, a beautiful blue midi-length tea dress, and twirled around in front of all the mirrors, and laughed a little.

I then slipped on her sandals, a bit too big, but not too bad.

I looked good. I had been collecting more and more rewards from Personal Tasks, and had started to look similar to how I would have on an average day at home.

I saw Jacintha later, fixing a drip in the bathroom sink, and watched her do a double take.

I chewed my cheek, but said nothing. She frowned at me, but then I saw something shift in her expression as she realized that it must have been for a Personal Task.

She didn’t look thrilled, but she let me pass by without comment.

The mug was unexpectedly gorgeous: wide-brimmed, lilac, with silver clouds painted along its circumference. I put it in the cupboard, thinking gleefully about how drab the other mugs looked beside mine.

Everyone must have been doing a number of Personal Tasks that day, for they were all acting strangely.

I found Marcus in the kitchen, holding his hand in the freezer.

When he saw me he smiled painfully, but didn’t otherwise move.

Vanessa sat down beside me at the edge of the pool and, apropos of nothing, said hello to me in five different languages.

There was time now, too, to be with our bedmates, and I sought Ryan out early in the afternoon, when we usually would be doing Communal Tasks. I found him doing chin-ups on a bar that the boys had installed over their dressing room’s doorway. He was shirtless. “Looking good,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said, touching back on the ground.

He picked up two enormous cartons of protein powder called Strong Stuff and used them to do bicep curls.

He continued that way for a long time, his face blank with concentration, the cartons rising and falling, and I wondered if he was angling for a sponsorship deal from the brand.

When he was done, he pulled me into the bathroom, still doorless, and kissed me against the sink.

I sighed into his mouth, and he gripped me tighter.

Then he was lifting me and carrying me into the shower.

I giggled, and he kissed my neck hungrily.

He cupped my breast, and I shivered. When he lifted my dress, I stepped back, and said, “Wait.”

“What’s wrong? Don’t you want to?”

“No. I mean, I do, but…”

He looked confused, and I leaned up and kissed him.

He kissed me back, deeply. I had seen his bare chest every day in the pool, but it was extraordinary up close.

I stroked his abs and felt his muscles twitch.

He gripped my thigh and kissed me again and again, his hand creeping up higher, until I pushed him away once more.

“I thought you said you wanted to?”

“I do, I just—” The truth was I would have, if we had been on the outside.

But I was worried he wanted to sleep with me for a Personal Task.

It happened very rarely, and generally the public were outraged, but it still happened.

A couple of years ago, an odious boy named Brian had received a pool table for convincing a girl who was not his bedmate to have sex with him.

They had fallen asleep afterward, but he got up in the middle of the night to assemble the pool table.

Ryan pressed his forehead against mine. “I want you,” he said.

He did want me, I knew that. I had known it for a while.

I wanted him too, and though I kept thinking that the viewers must want me to be with him, there was still a part of me that wasn’t sure.

“There’s no door,” I said. “Anyone could walk in.”

He sighed, and kissed my neck lightly, then let me go. “You’re right,” he said. “Sorry for jumping on you like that. You’ve been driving me fucking crazy.”

“I have?”

He groaned. “Are you serious? Seeing you in your bikini, day after day, sleeping next to you every night. Christ.” He rubbed his face. “It’s enough to drive any boy crazy.”

We went out of the bathroom, heading downstairs, then toward the kitchen. I saw Sam walk up the stairs.

“Would you make me an iced coffee?” I asked Ryan. “I want to change into my evening clothes.”

“Sure,” he said. I went upstairs slowly, so as not to seem that I was chasing after Sam.

He was in the nice bathroom, putting hooks onto the wall for our bath towels.

Some of us had been complaining about certain residents throwing their towels on the ground wrinkled and damp.

The towels were monogrammed, so it was easy to see who the culprits were, though it didn’t stop anyone from doing it.

I watched Sam from the doorless doorway, listening to the measured thud of his hammer against the nail.

There was something soothing about it. I would have liked to have watched him for longer, but he glanced up after a few moments.

I felt caught, as though I had witnessed something private.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” He placed the hammer down on the lip of the bathtub and looked atme.

I had thought that we’d patched things up between us when we killed the ducks together. It only struck me then that it wasn’t necessarily that we were on better terms—only that it had become clear to me how attracted I was to him. Watching him fix the bathroom wasn’t helping matters.

“Builder,” I said.

“What?”

“Were you a builder, before?”

He smiled at me, his brown eyes warm, and I felt that things were well between us again.

“You’ve never tried to guess what my job was,” I said.

He shrugged. “It doesn’t do to get caught up with titles and the like. We’re all equal here, at any rate.”

I wondered if he was right. If Tom wanted Sam to encourage the rest of us to work, was that the formation of some sort of hierarchy?

“Tom wants your help to get everyone back on task,” I said.

He looked surprised. “He asked you to ask me?”

I nodded. He picked one of the towels up from the ground and hung it on a hook. I handed him another towel, my hand briefly brushing against his.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “People are upset about all the banishments. A reprieve might be healthy. These things take their toll, I think.”

“There’s still things we need,” I said, gesturing to the space behind me. I wanted better shampoo, and tea towels, and a lamp for the bedroom, and more food, and more clothes.

“Right,” he sighed.