Page 41 of The Compound

“I don’t want to stay!” she cried. “I want to go home!”

Still, she wouldn’t take another step forward, and Evan rubbed her arms and asked her what she wanted.

“I want—” she said, and faltered, overcome with tears. “I want my things!”

I went inside to fetch her belongings. There was a lot: armfuls of clothes, of course, but also a fridge magnet with a picture of a dog, hairspray, fluffy socks, a fake plant, perfume, primer, toner, an eye-shadow palette, makeup brushes, a small teddy bear, and a poster of a popular singer. For lack of anything else, I put her things in a bin bag.

Flanked by Evan and Ryan, she had no choice but to pass through the gap in the fence. Once she was beyond the perimeter, she froze in place. She held her arms around herself and shook her head. She was shaking all over, in what might have been mistaken for rage, but which I knew was fear. I had never found out what age she was, though I thought she must have been eighteen or nineteen. As she paced before us she looked no older than a girl.

She tried to climb back over the fence, but Tom stepped forward, his face spelling impatience.

“Wait,” Jacintha said, pointing at a spot in the distance. It was a car, approaching with alarming speed across the desert plains, dust and sand billowing in its wake. The sight of it stunned us all, even Susie, who stared, clutching the bin bag of her belongings to her chest. The car parked a hundred yards or so away from us, and a man and a woman got out and approached Susie. They were plainly dressed in shorts and T-shirts, sunglasses and hats. The sight of them, ordinary as they were, felt hideously alien and disconcerting. The woman put her hand on Susie’s arm, and she followed them back to the car, wordlessly.

Of course, with uneven numbers, it meant that a boy would be gone by the next morning. It was the easiest banishment by far: when the rest of us went to bed, Evan was waiting by the door with his bag already packed.

We actually forgot to collect the vase from the delivery area. When Carlos went to get it the next day it was fractured and broken, shards missing, and a crack running through what was left.

Susie’s banishment was the most difficult, but it meant that we hadbuilt up a kind of immunity to the harshness that was necessary to live in the compound. And so, a few days later, in exchange for a Persian rug, we banished two people, Mia and Marcus. The vote was difficult: people were conflicted, and it took a while before we came to a result. For the first time, I received a single vote to banish me. It hurt, but I knew that it had been Tom; I had voted for him too.

It hurt to lose Marcus. There was nobody who disliked him, only that we loved the other boys better. It was not so hard to say goodbye to Mia, who had become difficult and recalcitrant in her final days, getting into arguments with the boys and ignoring the girls. I think that everyone wanted her gone, though we were frightened to suggest it. We sat in tense silence in the living room in front of the big screen, not looking at each other. Then Candice said “Mia,” coolly and without explanation, and that was that; we didn’t even bother with a vote. She cursed us viciously as she left, her fingers slashing through the air as she told us what she thought of us. Then she went around each room of the house and packed whatever took her fancy; some things we had won in Communal Tasks, and other things that had been there when we had arrived. No one offered to walk her to the boundary, even though she was laden with bags filled with rewards, stooped over like an old lady; we stayed huddled inside, as though afraid that she might come back.

Jacintha didn’t leave the bedroom for a day when Marcus left. Carlos hung around outside the door, waiting for her to come out.

—

We were down,then, to ten residents: myself and Ryan, Jacintha and Carlos, Sam and Becca, Tom and Vanessa, and Andrew and Candice. The challenge was generally staying in your couple until you reached the last five; this was often the period couples began to bicker and get sick of each other. As a viewer it was fun to try to spot which couples were faking it and which were genuine. As a participant I found it no easier to discern which relationships were genuine. The others smiled to see Ryan with his arms around me, lying in the shade, and I often marveled at how well we must have looked together. I think I would have been happy enough with Ryan if I didn’t spend my hours waiting for a chance to run into Sam.

Jacintha and Sam had managed to make a door for the bathroom, and they were still working on the door for the entrance, waiting for the right parts to arrive. But as we had a considerable supply of wood, Tom decided to make a shed. The problem was that Tom worked in finance and had never built anything beyond a birdhouse. Sam and Ryan took pity on him and helped. The shed, when it was finished, was undeniably rough, but huge: about three times its original plan. Inside it we stored the excess wood, as well as miscellaneous items that we had earned in Communal Tasks. The boys were delighted with themselves, and spent a long time finishing it, and a longer time congratulating themselves on it. They congregated there often, and it irkedme.

When the boys were in the shed, the girls usually gathered by the patio and drank iced coffees and complained about the boys. Vanessa still never joined us, and sometimes we complained about her, too.

“I’m happy it’s just us,” Candice said. “It means that the four of us are closer.”

Jacintha had been withdrawn since Marcus left, and often our iced coffees on the patio were the only times when I really got to talk to her. She rarely spent time in the house, and instead hid herself away in different parts of the compound. I often saw Carlos trailing around, looking for her. I found her one day by the tennis court, staring at the synthetic green. I sat beside her and, after a few minutes of silence, rested my head on her shoulder. She didn’t move, and after a while I lifted my head to look at her. “I’m sorry that Marcus had to go.”

“He didn’t have to go. He was voted out.”

Her tone was sharp, and I looked at her properly. She didn’t look good: if anything she looked worse than when we had first arrived. She was wearing no makeup, and a basic outfit of shorts and a cotton T-shirt. I thought that she must have been neglecting her Personal Rewards.

“What about Carlos?”

“I don’t like Carlos. Everyone keeps asking me, What about Carlos? Everyone seems to forget that I liked Marcus. I really, really liked Marcus.”

“I guess it’s just because Carlos seems to really like you.”

“It’s because he’s Black and I’m Black. I wish he’d just leave me alone.”

I tried to think of something to say. We had spoken so little recently. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you,” I said.

She sighed, and pressed her knee against mine. “I’m sorry I’ve been hiding. I’ll try to make more of an effort.” We got to our feet and walked around the edge of the compound, filling each other in on what we had been doing for the past several days. I mostly spoke, first about Ryan, and then about the rewards I had gotten. I kept waiting for her to jump in, but she stayed quiet, and when we had finished our circuit of the compound, she went inside, and I went to the pool.

I tried not to take her reticence personally; I understood that she was missing Marcus. I tried to think of how I would feel if Ryan left without me. Problematically, I felt equally panicked at the thought of Sam leaving. It was harder still because I liked Becca; she seemed to me to be one of the least conniving people here, and she had a quiet intelligence that I appreciated. It was easy to fantasize about being with Sam, but not so easy to consider how that would leave Becca vulnerable. I liked Becca, but I wasn’t sure that many other people did: if Sam left her, she would surely be banished the next morning.

A few days later, when the other girls were on the patio drinking coffee and the boys were in the shed talking about whatever boys talk about in a shed, I cleaned the kitchen before checking my little screen for a Personal Task. As the original department system had accounted for sixteen people, we had fractured off some of the roles, but mine was the same. I didn’t mind doing it; it steadied me. Someone else was assigned to clean the bedroom and bathroom, but there were gray areas of the house which I also had taken upon myself todo.

If I didn’t force myself to do my chores before looking at my screen it was too tempting to do nothing but Personal Tasks, and Andrew had made it clear that, while they were necessary, an overdependence on them was selfish.

The task was simple, as they often were.

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