Page 2 of The Compound

Curiously, though there were many parts of the compound which were in serious disarray, you could see that there had been a concerted effort to build a boundary. As well as the bushes, which had been planted a long, long time ago, there was a simple wooden fence running along the entire grounds, demarcating where our home ended at the expanse of the desert. Previously, I knew, there had been only barbed wire. The fence was an upgrade.

There was much to explore, but I was most interested in the huge, egg-shaped pool, and wherever we walked, I kept turning back to look at it again. The pool was the thing that held the place together: it was what transformed some ill-kept gardens and strange walkways into a residence.

The next girl found us; she was already awake. She was standing in a sandy patch of ground behind the house. She had her hands on her hips, looking out into the desert, so still that we hadn’t noticed her at first. She raised her arm in greeting, and I felt her eyes move across us, taking in what she could. Even before we reached her, even from a distance, and with her face partly covered, I could tell that she was beautiful. There was something in the way that she stood, or maybe something about the way her hair fell. Sure enough, when we reached her she dropped her hand, and I saw that she had the kind of face that drove people to madness, with desire or with envy.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Candice.” She looked at us expectantly, and we each introduced ourselves. I remembered that I wasn’t wearing any makeup.

I couldn’t help but stare at her, even as I tried not to look too bothered by her presence. Her hair was long and dark, intimidatingly straight despite the humidity. She had particularly striking eyes of a very light blue, almost translucent; they looked over us carefully, appraisingly. Her mouth was not of a shape or size that was currently in vogue; my own lips were carefully constructed to look full and plump. Her mouth was wide with narrow lips, a decisive slash of pink across her face. There was no part of her beauty that didn’t make me question mine.

“Four of us, now. I think I saw someone asleep by that flower arch. This way,” she said, and we followed her.

It took us a long time to find the others—probably a couple of hours. We searched the whole compound, except for the maze, which none of us wanted to enter, even in a group. When all ten of us had gathered together, we headed toward the pool. The heat was relentless, shocking even, and I had no thought beyond getting cool. We stripped down to our underwear and slipped into the water, relief coming at once.

I lay on my back and looked at the sky above me. It was a different blue than I was used to. It was clear, entirely untouched by clouds or smog, with no tall buildings to block out great chunks of it, nor artificial lights to disguise its hues. The compound was rough around the edges, definitely, and needed a great deal of work, but there was something about it that felt fantastically real. Wherever the cameras were, they weren’t easy to spot.

We all drifted about the pool aimlessly. We smiled if we caught each other’s eyes, but didn’t speak. I didn’t enjoy the silence. I thought it made it seem as though we were hatching plans of some sort, though I suppose people only wanted to be left to their own thoughts. Toward one end of the pool, Susie was doing handstands. I didn’t join in, but I swam toward her and watched. She was pretty good: her legs were straight as an arrow in the air, and when she was done, she did a tumble under the water and returned to the surface, smiling.

I’ve always been a passive kind of person; it is both my worst quality and the thing that people like most about me. If the others had stayed in the pool for the rest of the day I would have done the same, but apparently they only wanted to cool off, so when the others got out, I got outtoo, and when everyone sat under the shade of a tree, I did the same, though I dreaded the thought of insects on my bare skin. Were there ticks in the desert? I wanted to look it up, but remembered that I had no phone.

Candice was the last to get out of the pool. I watched her from the shade; we all did. She slicked her hair back in one casual sweeping motion, pressing it close to her skull and away from her face. She dived under the water: sleek, without a splash, only her ankles flashing in the air before she was fully submerged. For a few seconds, she traveled silently under the water, an abstract blur, and emerged at the other side. She walked slowly up the steps, exposing her body one inch at a time, until she was beyond the domain of the water and stood on the deck, dripping and strong-limbed, her hair still in place.

I could imagine just how impressive it would have looked for people watching. It was sort of embarrassing, actually: Candice knew exactly what she was doing, and the rest of us were just bumbling around, trying to avoid the worst of the heat.

When we all had found a comfortable spot to sit, we got to talking a little. A blond-haired girl named Eloise said that she liked my hair, and I said that I liked her nails. Another girl, beautiful and buxom, who I thought might be called Vanessa, added that she felt as though she might die from the heat. It was all harmless chitchat, as there wasn’t much we could really say. Then Candice caught my eye, and said, “If the boys were to arrive this minute, what kind of guy would you go for?”

The gaze of every girl was resting on me. I wrung my hair out a little, to give myself time. It was a good question. It was the question we needed to get out of the way, before they came.

“Probably the guy who gets me into trouble,” I said. I thought it was a good answer, even if it wasn’t necessarily true; I had prepared it in the weeks before I came. I thought that it was open enough that I wasn’t hemming myself in before I’d seen anyone, and it made me sound adventurous. Some of the girls nodded thoughtfully as they looked at me. “And I definitely prefer an older man.”

“Do you have daddy issues?” Susie asked.

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“What about you?” I asked Candice. “What are you looking for?”

She shook her hair out; it was still wet, and small droplets flew about her, one landing on my ankle. I pressed a hand to my arm: it was warmer than the rest of me. I was burning already.

“I like boys who are driven,” she said. “A man who knows himself. That’s what I want.”

The question of what kind of man we each wanted was passed around from girl to girl. Susie liked boys who treated her nicely, and who liked to have fun. Susie didn’t like boys who were boring. Jacintha liked boys who were kind, especially to people they didn’t know. Jacintha cared deeply about her family, and she wanted a man who was also family oriented. Mia liked boys who worked out: it showed dedication, and she appreciated a man who could pick her up above his head. She liked to feel dainty. Short, scrawny guys disgusted her. Becca, who was quiet, and blushed as she gave her answer, said that she liked a man who was kind—that was all. The other girls didn’t answer, which I thought was suspicious.

“When do you think the boys will get here?” Mia asked.

We all glanced at each other.

“It can take a while,” Jacintha said carefully. I understood that Jacintha wanted to say that in previous years it had sometimes taken only hours and sometimes days. She couldn’t say this explicitly, because it would have broken one of the rules.

There were several rules at the compound. The first was that it was forbidden to discuss that the show was in fact a show, or that we had seen the show before. It ruined the experience for the viewer and the participants, we had been told. The second was that we couldn’t discuss our life outside of the compound unless we had been instructed to do so. The third was that it was forbidden to harm another resident. There were other rules, but they wouldn’t come into effect until the boys arrived. We all understood that if we broke any of these rules we would be punished.

“We should start getting the place in shape now, in case they’re here by tonight,” another girl said. I couldn’t remember her name, but she was tall, with sharp features and a faint accent that I couldn’t place. I imagined her as a marketing intern, going out for salads for lunch. As Iexamined her, she turned and looked at me. I pretended to stare at the sky behind her.

“Where to start?” Eloise said. “The whole place is a mess.”

“The house,” Candice said, and stood. “The rest can wait. We need to get the kitchen and bedroom in shape first.” Candice held her hand out to me. Her grip was strong, and the muscles in her arms moved subtly as she pulled me to my feet. I was small and soft by comparison. The rest of the girls got up too, and we filed into the house like a line of ants. I kept looking around me, trying to make sense of the space, the condition that it was in. Along the way, we picked up the odd bit of rubbish that we found, left by the residents who had come beforeus.

—

We separated intodifferent rooms, and it was a relief not to have to look at all nine of the girls at once. Some went upstairs to clean the bedroom, while a group went into the living room to tidy up the mess. I helped in the kitchen, cleaning the surfaces and taking the rubbish out. There was no hoover, and no dustpan either: we swept up the dust using a table mat. The absence of a hoover particularly disturbed Mia, who said, “I didn’t think it would be so poorly equipped. It’s primitive, no?”

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