Page 9 of The Compound

Sometimes, if the brand really liked you on the show, or if it seemed like a good pairing, they would hire you as a sponsor when you came out of the compound.

Contestants would gush over certain rewards in a clear bid to get a sponsorship deal.

But Alsipa wasn’t a brand that I had ever heard of, and I wasn’t going to fawn over a brand if I didn’t want to be in a partnership with them.

I sat down on the stairs for a few minutes and brushed my hair, placing the comb gently on the crown of my head and slowly dragging it down, down, down to the hair that hung down my back.

There were knots, at first, but I brushed until my hair was sleek and bristling with static.

I might have stayed there for longer, but I heard steps coming toward the postbox, and went to the kitchen to join the other girls.

—

The boys were sitting outside on the grass.

They were wearing sunglasses, and it was hard to tell, but I thought they were looking at us through the window.

Jacintha and I were ladling large portions of spaghetti into bowls, and passing them on to Candice, who would add the bolognese, and then on to Mia, who would add the Parmesan.

The other girls were bringing out glasses, the case of champagne, and cutlery wrapped in toilet paper.

The boys cheered when they emerged, and I saw Sam and Andrew get to their feet to help Becca carry the case.

Tonight would be crucial, and we knew it. It would be humiliating to be the first to leave.

Quietly, I said to Jacintha, “Which one, do you think?”

She looked out the window at the boys who were lounging, confident, at ease. “Carlos,” she said.

“Do you like him?”

“I’m not sure. I think it’s the safest option, for now. Usually the Black couples get together. And anyway, it’s not like we have to plan a future together. I just need to make it through the night.”

“The boys have the power tonight,” Mia remarked.

Candice, who had been quiet for some time, lifted her head suddenly and said, “The boys do not have the power. Look at them: they’re sitting there like kings.

But do you know something? I asked Evan to point out to me where they came from, where they had to travel from.

It’s about five miles away, and it took them three whole days.

What power do they have over us? Whatever girl goes out tomorrow won’t be leaving because a boy didn’t find her attractive.

It will be because she didn’t know how to win a boy over. ”

The bowls were hot, but we had no dishcloths or oven gloves so we let them cool for a few seconds on the counter before we brought them out.

We watched as Susie sat in Marcus’s lap and whispered something in his ear.

He held her close and smiled at her; she giggled, then ran inside. “Where’s she going?” Mia asked.

“Postbox,” Jacintha said. “She must have completed her first task.”

There was a rule that forbade residents from discussing the details of their Personal Tasks.

This was to help conceal if they were acting on the instruction of their little screen rather than behaving genuinely.

For example, last year a girl had been instructed to kiss a boy who had been interested in her for weeks.

He was delighted, and thought it was the beginning of a romance between them.

Everyone watching had gone crazy for it because we knew that the kiss was only so that the girl could earn a hair dryer.

We carried the dishes of food out and took our places at the seats we had earned earlier that day. We didn’t have tables yet, but that would come with time.

We played a sort of musical chairs, moving every couple of minutes to talk to someone new. Ryan sat beside me first, and we chatted a bit about the tasks. Then I said I liked jumping in the pool, and he said, “The ranking was brutal, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It was kind of stupid,” I said.

“It was stupid, you’re right. But if it’s worth anything, I thought that you should have been in first place.”

I was still wearing the red dress. Now it felt like it was the right decision, though it would have looked better if I had blush to apply, or lipstick. We spoke for a little while longer, and I tried to focus on what he was saying rather than on all of the other couples.

“I like talking to you,” he said. “You’re easy to get along with.” Andrew was lingering beside my seat, chatting to Tom, and Ryan gave him a friendly nod. He leaned in close to me and said, “Let’s talk later, all right?” He kissed my cheek before I could answer and went to Sarah’s chair.

Andrew took Ryan’s empty seat, but didn’t immediately look at me.

He glanced at the couples around us, and I did the same.

Jacintha was talking to Carlos, but Seb was standing by his shoulder, waiting to cut in.

Candice was sitting back in her seat, at ease, as Marcus talked, drumming his fingers on his leg.

Sam was talking to Becca, who was glancing at her hands and then back at him.

“Amazing,” Andrew said. “Isn’t it?” He turned to me.

The look on his face surprised me. He was soft-eyed and tender, as though he had just witnessed the birth of a baby.

There was nothing remarkable about his looks—he didn’t have Sam’s smile, or Ryan’s chiseled bone structure, but he was nevertheless someone you wanted to look at. “Can you believe that we’re here?”

“It’s like a dream,” I said.

“Can I pour you another glass? We earned it, right?”

“Sure,” I said, and he poured. It was fantastically cold, and though I usually didn’t care for champagne, I liked it that night.

“It’s a bit strange, talking to everyone, and not being able to ask where they’re from, or what their job is. But isn’t it exciting, too? There’s something valuable about it, I think. We can get to know each other as we build up the compound. What do you think of it here so far, Lily?”

I wasn’t sure whether to talk about how much I loved it, or to reflect on the work we could do to make it better. I wanted to impress Andrew, I knew that much.

“It’s going to be spectacular,” I said.

“I think so, too. Cheers to that, eh?” He lifted his glass and looked around at the others, raising his voice so they all could hear.

“To a spectacular home, and the easy life!” Everyone cried out, “To the easy life!” and drank.

I looked at the people surrounding me, laughing, leaning close, a hand touching someone’s arm, eyes flicking around.

You wouldn’t have known that every girl there was fighting for her place.

Jacintha met my eye and smiled. I smiled back.

Sam had appeared beside my seat. I noticed at the same time Andrew did.

“Well look, Lily, I won’t keep your admirers from talking to you. I’ll see you around.” He walked straight to Candice’s seat, and Marcus got out of his seat at the sight of Andrew approaching. Before I had a second to think, Sam stood before me. “Can I?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. I ran my hand through my hair. I hadn’t eaten much of my dinner, but his bowl was empty. “Was it good?” I asked.

“Terrific,” he said. “Thanks for making it.”

I said what I had heard half a dozen girls say in the last hour: “You needed a good meal after your time in the desert.”

He smiled, and I realized that he probably had been told the same thing several times. “It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “But tell me, what did you do before we got here?”

“We mostly cleaned. There was a lot of rubbish around. The previous residents had had pizza, probably just a couple of days ago, maybe even this week.” I looked at him. He was nodding. “We wanted the place to look nice for you when you arrived,” I said, a bit shyly.

“That was very kind,” he said. “We were impressed, for sure, when we arrived.”

I’ve always thought that boys somehow believe that the art of seduction comes naturally to beautiful girls, who delight in deploying these arts to devastate those we encounter.

In fact, I had no idea how to seduce a man; I only smiled and asked questions, and sometimes laughed.

But the twin aspect of being beautiful is struggling to be taken seriously, and, confusingly, I also addressed that obstacle by smiling and asking questions.

Probably I needed new seduction techniques.

I didn’t feel like I needed any charms or feminine wiles with Sam.

I felt loose around him, and after a while I didn’t think too much about what I said, or how I sounded.

We weren’t talking about anything important, nothing interesting or noteworthy, but I felt that I had a sense of him just from that discussion, from the way he moved and the way he smiled at me and the way he listened so carefully to everything I said, even if it was nothing interesting.

His eyes followed everything I did: when I wiped champagne from my mouth, or when I lifted my hair from my neck to try and get some air.

I was watching him, too: his large hands, with long, tapered fingers, which he sometimes rested on his biceps, and sometimes splayed flat on his lap.

When he was looking down at his food, I was looking at the veins that ran along his arms. He didn’t look away the whole time that we sat together, though Jacintha was smiling and laughing in the seat next to us, brilliant and shining, and Vanessa was stroking her long, glossy hair.

As we were speaking, the other girls were putting the work in.

I saw Becca’s serious little face nodding at whatever Gav was saying, and Vanessa touching Seb’s arm as she spoke.

Curiously, I saw Andrew moving around constantly, talking to everyone, boys and girls.

Every time I looked up, I saw his dimples flashing, his white teeth gleaming.

He talked a lot, and after listening to him speak I realized that he had a habit of using big words incorrectly.

“Look at that view!” I heard him shout. “Isn’t it just extrapolate?

” I thought it might be obnoxious in someone else, but it lent a certain guilelessness that was distinctly charming.

The girls were working hard because they needed to secure a bedmate in order to avoid banishment; Andrew was working just as hard, I think, because he had the compulsive desire to be liked.

He charmed with the energy and desperation of someone who thought that they might be gone by the morning.

The evening had started to draw in, and empty bottles of champagne were rolling along the ground.

We moved from the seats in the dining area to the grass near the pool.

I sat beside Susie and Evan, and Ryan sat behind me, his arm brushing against my side every now and then.

“Isn’t it crazy that the boys only came today?

” Susie said to me. “I feel like I’ve known them forever.

” Evan was biting his lip and looking at Susie as though she was a fish who could free herself from the hook.

The night became loose and hazy: it seemed to take very little for us to get drunk.

“It’s because we’re dehydrated,” Jacintha said.

“We should all drink more water before we go to bed.” Marcus scooped her up and threw her in the pool.

We all laughed, and Marcus jumped in after her.

Carlos stood by the side and helped her out.

Evan jumped in then, and Susie, too, holding her hair on the crown of her head.

On the grass, Mia started to sing. She had a sweet, liquid voice.

She sang a song we all knew, and some people sang along.

The temperature had dropped and we huddled close, lying on top of each other, limbs pressed against limbs.

Mia sat apart, still singing, with a blank face unlike her usual self.

She was beautiful, Mia. I felt sure that she would be here in the morning.

Ryan adjusted himself so that I was lying against him. I closed my eyes. His abs were like rocks against my head. “This is perfect,” I said, and he stroked my hair. It was smooth to the touch, still, after the rigorous brushing.

Later, I got into my bed and felt the turnings of the universe in my head. I rolled onto my side and pulled the blanket up to my chin. With the boys milling around in the dark, choosing their bedmates, the room felt enormously full. I was sleepy, but overwhelmingly alert, too.

The bed dipped to my right. I turned, and Ryan was there.

We had no light in the bedrooms, but I could distinguish him by the shape of his nose, and that sharp, slashing jawline.

There was a brief beat of silence between us, a moment of uncertainty.

Then he put his hand on my waist. “Surprised?” he said.

“Not really,” I said.

I knew that I had done well to have the best-looking boy in my bed.

I lay on my back, so I could see him from the corner of my eye.

I was reminded again that I didn’t know him—didn’t know anyone there.

I imagined him rising above me, his hands pinning me down, and myself powerless to stop him.

But it was only a passing thought. When I glanced over, I saw that he was tense, his large hands clasped across his stomach.

The sight of his nervous posture relaxed me.

It took me a long time to fall asleep, but when I did, I slept deeply and dreamlessly.

The following morning, when the sun had risen and the birds were circling in the air, there was an empty bed in the compound, and Melissa was gone.