Page 7 of The Compound

The array of beautiful boys before us was overwhelming, and yet I automatically found myself filing through them to find the best looking.

I decided that the one called Ryan was the most attractive.

He was tall with a spectacularly angular jaw, and blue eyes framed by long eyelashes.

But all of this was secondary to his physique—so incredibly chiseled that he seemed to be a teenage dream come to life, the kind of boy that girls would giggle at the sight of.

Even the boys were glancing at his torso, but Ryan had an easygoing way that showed no hint of self-consciousness.

He smiled whenever he spoke, no matter what it was he said.

He had no tattoos or piercings, and his chest was clean-shaven. I fixed my hair before he got tome.

He hadn’t been in a relationship over the last two years but had been deeply committed to the girl he had met after college, with whom he had been in a relationship for a year.

Before that, he’d had a number of brief relationships, a fact I chose to ignore.

He got through his spiel quickly, and I did the same.

As I was speaking, I saw him watching me closely, smiling all the while.

“You’ve got a great smile,” he said.

“Thanks. You do too.”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “I guess we have that in common.”

The last boy I was paired with was Sam. He said, “You can go first, if you like.”

I gave him my history, and he held eye contact and nodded.

I felt more conscious of my words when I was speaking to him, perhaps because he seemed to be paying close attention.

He had an intelligent, watchful gaze. When I finished, he said, “I’m sorry to hear about that. The cheating, and your teacher.”

“It’s whatever. It happens to everyone, I think.”

“You were seventeen, you said?”

I had been sixteen, but it didn’t matter. I could see that Sam was trying to compose some tragic backstory for me. I didn’t want that. I didn’t have a troubled past. Nothing bad had ever really happened tome.

“I want to hear about your relationships.”

“It’s a pretty short list. I had two girlfriends in school—not very serious. I was with Laura for, oh, three weeks? And then I was with Naya for about four months. Then I was with Shannon for six years. She moved abroad last year, and I’ve been single ever since.”

We had a few seconds to spare. This was our last chance to reveal personal information until the next task that allowed us to do so. “What age were you when you and Shannon broke up?”

“Twenty-six.”

He was twenty-seven, then. He opened his mouth, but Eloise, standing at the edge, called that time was up.

The girls moved away at once and grouped together to discuss what they had learned.

The boys huddled together in turn, glancing over at the girls.

I stayed for another moment with Sam. Now that we couldn’t discuss our lives outside the compound, it was difficult to think of something to say.

“Are you enjoying your time here?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “The girls are great.” I looked shyly at my feet, feeling like a teenager meeting a cute boy on holiday. When I glanced up, he was looking at me intently.

“It’ll get easier,” he said.

I went to the girls, and he went to the boys. When I glanced back, I saw Sam look at me, and then look away. I turned and lifted my hair off my neck, as though to tie it up. I let it fall, then looked over my shoulder to check again. Ryan was watching me, too.

—

When we returned to the screen, it was lit up green, signaling we had successfully completed our first task.

We went to the delivery area behind the house, and the chairs were there, all nineteen of them.

The rewards were delivered through underground vents that connected the compound to the producers’ base of operations.

I knew this only from online discussions and speculation around the show.

They never showed the tunnels or the producers on television, but I knew that the producers were close by and could intervene if needed.

The boys carried away two chairs each and settled them along the patio with pride.

High on our success, we completed another task straightaway.

Everyone had to jump in the pool, an easy task for which we were each awarded a much-needed bottle of sun cream.

We lay on the grass afterward, giddy and laughing.

Susie was wiping mascara from under my eyes, and Evan, small and scrawny, was resting his head on my knees.

“We should check the little screens,” Seb said.

“No, no,” Andrew said. “We’ll get nothing done if we all peel away. Let’s do one more as quickly as we can, and then we can check our little screens.”

“Andrew’s right,” Jacintha said. “We need a freezer. A lot of the food won’t last if we can’t freeze it.”

“And we need air conditioning in the rest of the house, too,” Eloise said.

“We need a door for the bathroom,” Becca said quietly.

“Andrew and I will check the screen,” Candice said, getting up. As they walked toward the house, Andrew said something, and Candice put her hand on his arm and laughed.

Ryan came to sit beside me. He gave me a friendly look but said nothing.

Evan moved away, taking some unspoken cue.

The sun was unforgiving, so it was likely still afternoon, but the evening was approaching.

In a few short hours we would all go to bed, and if I slept alone I would be gone.

I rolled onto my back. I lifted my head a little and looked at him over my shoulder.

Possibly the rule of finding someone to pair up with had been intended as a way to offset the selfishness of pursuing rewards, but as I lay there, looking at the boys around me, the rule only felt like a cruel exaggeration of our ideas of desire and desirability.

I turned to Ryan. “Will you put some sun cream on my back?” I said.

“Sure,” he said.

His hands were firm on my back, and while his motions weren’t quite businesslike, they weren’t salacious, either.

He didn’t venture below my kidneys. When he was done, he pressed his hands to my shoulders, and said, “That okay for you?” I turned and propped myself up on my elbows.

I smiled at him, showing my teeth, which I had brushed three times that morning. “Perfect,” I said. “Thanks.”

Candice and Andrew returned, and stood before us, glancing at each other.

“Well, what is it?” Seb asked. Seb was frequently impatient, even when he was lounging, or floating in the pool. “Put us out of our misery.”

“For a case of champagne,” Andrew said, and smiled, “the boys have to rank the attractiveness of the girls, and the girls have to do the same to us.”

I smiled to hide my terror. Some of the boys ooh ed, as though they were at a football match, and someone had lined up an exciting shot.

Susie said, “What, now ? Let us get changed first, at least. We’re all soaking. We look ridiculous!” She laughed, but it was clear that she was panicked.

Andrew shook his head. “Let’s do it now,” he said. “The quicker we do it, the sooner we can be sipping champagne.”

“But we’re all wet!” Susie cried. “And we don’t look like ourselves! It wouldn’t be right to do it now!”

Mia added, “We’ll just change really quickly. We won’t even put any makeup on, honestly. It’ll take two minutes.”

Candice said, “If you go to the changing rooms, you’ll see your little screens, and then we’ll never get it done. Come on, it’ll be quick and painless.” But as we all got to our feet, Susie turned to me and, with tears in her eyes, said, “If I could only just fix my hair—”

I tucked her hair behind her ears. Before we got into the water, it was straight, but now, after half drying in the sun, it was frizzy and disorderly, almost white, and brittle from too many chemicals.

I smoothed down the strands with a careful, gentle stroke.

“You’re beautiful,” I said, and it was true.

The girls decided to rank the boys first, both as a method of self-preservation, and to give us a few minutes to wring the water from our hair and erase smudged makeup.

The boys lined up by the palm trees, and we eyed them, whispering in a huddle.

If they were nervous, they didn’t show it.

Some of the rankings were difficult, and the girls threw their hands up and spoke slowly to convey latent anger.

Eventually though, we had it, and lined the boys up accordingly.

It took us about fifteen minutes to agree upon an order.

In ninth place was Evan, who grinned bashfully, and shouted, “Personality, ladies; that’s what counts!

” Evan wasn’t a bad-looking guy: he had nice hair, sandy-colored and floppy, but he was too short.

In eighth place was Seb, who was disgruntled to be placed so low down, and moved to take his spot, unsmiling.

I thought that he would have been ranked higher if he knew how to vary his facial expressions beyond scowling or smirking.

Next was Gav, who was good-looking, but not good-looking enough.

The middle-ranking boys were harder to place, and we changed our minds even as we lined them up.

Sixth was Marcus, who had a strong jaw, though not a lot else stood out about him.

Fifth was Tom: there had been some dissent about him.

We all agreed that he wasn’t classically handsome, but it was proposed that a boy didn’t need to be handsome if he was that well-built.

Fourth was Carlos, who hadn’t spoken much, though we all enjoyed his sexy smolder.

“And we can’t forget that he’s very tall,” Susie said in hushed tones.

He was the only Black guy there, and I saw some of the girls glance at Jacintha as they made their decision.

I don’t know if they thought that Jacintha had some better insight into his attractiveness, or if they thought that she might be interested in him.