Page 47 of The Compound

Only the boys went to see him off. Jacintha, Becca, Candice, and I went to our dressing room and burned a candle to clear the negative energy. “Justice,” Candice said, over the flickering flame.

I didn’t know where Vanessa was, only that she wasn’t with the boys, nor withus.

When the boys arrived back, Candice blew out the candle. “Did you talk to Tom?”

“Not properly,” I said.

“You need to find him now,” Jacintha said. She glanced outside. We would be going to bed soon.

I didn’t want to speak to him in the house—I wasn’t sure how our conversation might go, but I knew that I didn’t want an audience. I can’t say how, but I felt certain that if I waited alone by the pool, Tom would show up. I was right: I was there for only the length of a brief birdsong before I saw a movement to my left. He had, incredibly, a cigarette, which he smoked with clear relish.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“Personal challenge.”

“What on earth did you have to do to get it?”

He gave me a look. It was silly to even ask, I knew. I tried to think of something else to say, to get him relaxed, to make him trust me a bit more, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I grappled for a few moments with my own uselessness.

“That was a clever thing that you did,” he said. “Ryan walked right into that one.”

“You would have done it, too.”

He nodded and pulled from his cigarette. “I didn’t think that you were that cold, though. He was your man from day one.”

“Don’t you know why I did it?” I said.

“That’s your own business.”

“I did it because he cheated on me. With Vanessa.”

He looked at me, his face blue under the lights of the pool. “That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“Liar.”

“I’m sorry, Tom. I saw them. Just yesterday.”

He was quiet, thinking, piecing things together. I didn’t feel sorry for him; he had done the same, and worse.

“It was in the shower, out the back. He had her pressed against the bricks, and he was biting her neck.”

“Be quiet.”

“She had her legs wrapped around his back. She has such lovely, long legs. Probably the longest of anyone here, I’d say. I kept thinking that her back must be sore, the way she kept moving against the wall.” There was a terrible, vindictive thrill to finding myself capable of rattling Tom, but I still had to quell the fear that I would push him too far.

“Be quiet, I said.”

“Did you notice scrapes across her back? Or maybe a bruise on her neck?”

He stepped toward me, and I glanced toward the house. There would be someone nearby to hear me shout, surely. But he only threw his cigarette on the ground and looked at me. We were very nearly nose to nose. He was not tall; we were almost the same height.

“Tom,” I said. “I don’t want to be the one to go tonight. I’ve been faithful.”

He stared at me a while longer. The pool lapped lightly beside us. I thought of Becca, on that day weeks ago, maybe months ago, when he held her under the water.

“Will you help me?”

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