Page 31 of The Compound

The girls’ encouragement seemed a distant thing now.

I felt entirely alone, more than I ever had in my life.

If Tom was telling the truth, someone I’d trusted had voted against me.

I knew Carlos the least, but I thought that he had voted for Ryan as he had stood apart when the boys had said their goodbyes.

Jacintha I was confident of. Candice, too, I thought I could trust. Sam had surely voted Ryan out.

Of course it would be Becca. If I was gone, she wouldn’t have to worry about Sam straying. I can’t say that I blamed her. I would have done the same, if I had thought aboutit.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to go home.

The endless talk of the wars, and the masks that we wore in the cities and big towns, and the dreary gray skies, and evenings in front of the television.

I couldn’t stomach the thought of waking every morning and hating it, all of it: the flavorless brown cereal that was supposedly good for gut health, the coffee that hadn’t had time to cool, the walk to work, that stupid hill that I hated—the feeling in my thighs just before I got to the summit, and knowing that I’d make the same walk the next day over and over.

And the standing around, day after day, waiting for something to do and then resenting being given work to do.

The chitchat, the mold on the wall of the breakroom, the hole in the ceiling above the staff toilet, the insects that gathered there, and then the commercial sheen of the display counters.

Going home and dreading doing it again the next day, and still never having enough money.

And what was the point of it anyway, if I was never going to be able to afford nice things, or have anything worth owning—when we all would probably be dead in twenty years, maybe thirty if we were lucky?

What did it matter to wake up at the same time every morning and wear the same clothes and try to eat more protein but less sugar, when an earthquake or a tsunami or a bomb might end it all at any minute?

Or maybe we would all continue to boil, slowly but surely, in the mess that we pretended was an acceptable place to live.

I don’t know how I slept, but I slept. I knew from watching the show that when a person was banished at dawn they were woken by a vibration in the mattress; if you didn’t rise immediately, the mattress heated to the point of burning.

When the mattress moved, I gasped wildly, thinking that the sun had risen and I was being banished, but a hand pressed against my mouth and I realized that I was safe.

Nevertheless, I stayed tense until the hand was removed.

“Shhh,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s me.” I turned onto my other side. Sam was lying besideme.

He was beside me. I would be okay. Yet my limbs were trembling, my fingers clutching at the sheets. “Lily?” he whispered.

“I thought I was going to be banished,” I said, my voice barely there. “I thought I was gone for sure.”

He hesitated, and then reached out, his hand touching mine. His hand was warm and calloused. It shocked me, how nice it felt; just his hand on mine. “I couldn’t stand to be here if you were gone. It wouldn’t mean anything if you were gone.”

I put my arms around him, and he held me tightly.

My relief at the fact that I was staying was equal to the joy I felt that it was Sam beside me.

I said his name over and over, quietly, like a sigh.

At last, I stopped trembling. I felt solid and secure, pressed against him, his hand warm and heavy on the small of my back.

I heard him give some small, happy sigh—could feel it against my neck.

I think I knew exactly how he felt from that small sound alone.

I wasn’t afraid to close my eyes: I knew that he would stay where he was, that he would be there in the morning.

I pulled back to look at him. I couldn’t make out much, but still: it was Sam.

I could see the slight motion of his chest rising and falling.

I put my hand on top of it. Then I leaned forward and kissed him.

He was warm, and tasted sweet. I moved my leg so that I was pressed fully against him.

I made a noise low in my throat, and his tongue licked against the top of my mouth.

I moved my hand from his chest to his underwear.

“We don’t have to,” he said.

It touched me to hear him say it. I had told myself, before, that I wouldn’t have sex on the show—but I realized, with his body pressed against mine, that I wanted to do it all differently with Sam: I wanted it all to feel real.

With Ryan I had been constantly overthinking us being together, weighing up my own desires against my desire for safety; but with Sam I let myself be motivated purely by instinct.

I pulled off my T-shirt, let it fall to the ground behind me.

“I want to,” I said. His hand reached forward and stroked the softest part of my arm.

I kissed him again, but he made no further move.

I drew back again, worried that he had come to me only out of sympathy. “You’d rather not?”

He gathered me close to him and whispered my name against my lips.

I cast a glance up toward the ceiling, and he bit my neck.

I couldn’t believe how good it felt: I couldn’t believe that this had been available to me, that Sam had been available to me, and I was only experiencing it now.

I didn’t know what time of the night it was, whether the others were asleep or awake still.

I could only think about Sam, his hand stroking me, the urgency of his lips.

He pressed his forehead against mine, and I clutched urgently at his shoulders, as though I could pull him closer still.

He made a noise I had never heard him make before, and I felt, in having heard it, that he belonged to me in some small, essential way.

I woke again when it was still dark. Sam was awake too: I could see the white of his eyes, the soft shine of his pupils as he looked at me.

I looked back at him, then, feeling as though I was in a dream, I reached out and moved the piece of hair that fell across his forehead.

He watched me as I pushed it back. I left my hand there and traced the line of his eyebrow.

I felt perfect, untouchable happiness. I didn’t need to speak, or to communicate with him in any other way to know that he felt the same.

Sam fell asleep shortly after, but I drifted in and out of sleep for a while, until a movement across the room woke me fully.

There was a weak cast of light from the early dawn drifting through the skylight, and I looked over to see Tom stepping down from his bed.

He walked over to Becca’s bed, where she lay next to Vanessa.

Tom had kept his bed empty: I supposed he thought that I would come to him.

He touched Vanessa’s arm, and she opened her eyes and stared at him.

He jerked his head toward the door, and she slowly got out of bed.

She walked toward the girls’ dressing room; he followed behind, a hand on her back.

I waited a few seconds and then slipped out of bed, walking quietly to the door of the bedroom, where I could hear them talking.

“You’ve packed your things?” Tom asked.

“Yes,” Vanessa said, her voice small.

“You can keep the things I gave you, even though I earned them.”

There was a beat of silence.

“You aren’t going to say thank you?”

“You’re forcing me out. Sorry if I don’t feel particularly grateful.”

“Do you know,” he said, “if there weren’t rules in place, I’d knock some manners into you. You’re a slut, Vanessa, and now everyone knows it.”

I heard him take a step back toward the bedroom. I stepped back, too. “You’re not going to walk me to the boundary?” she asked, her voice high. I thought about how frightening it would be to go into the desert with only the dim light of early dawn.

“No,” Tom said. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

I stepped deeper into the shadows and let him pass by me.

He walked back to his bed and stopped briefly by the bedside locker.

There was a stuffed teddy sitting there, which Vanessa had won a few weeks ago: a cheerful-looking polar bear.

Not daring to move, I watched Tom lift it and consider it, its white fur glowing in the dark room.

In one quick motion, he ripped its head off, and dropped it to the ground.

Then he got into the bed where Becca lay alone, curled on her side like a question mark.

I knew that she was awake: I could see her fist, tiny and white-knuckled, clenched around the blankets.