Page 60 of The Compound

“But then I looked at myself, as though I had woken from a dream. What was I doing, cooking dinners while Andrew decided what we do and how we do it? And what did he know about anything? You know that in bed he would talk with me for hours, under the blankets, asking for advice? There was nothing he could do without talking it through, or looking for advice or reassurance. I liked it, to tell you the truth. It made me feel as though I was pulling the strings. But in actual fact he was creeping out as soon as I’d fallen asleep, and into someone else’s bed.”

“I know how you feel,” I said. “With Ryan, I thought I would kill him when I found out.”

She took my hand and gripped it, hard. “I know you did, Lily. I know you did. The best thing we did was banishing that bastard. The worst part of it all is that I know that if I wanted to, I could banish Andrew—Icould ask him to go, and he’d leave without a word. But I can’t—I won’t do that to him. Isn’t that absurd? Isn’t that ridiculous? I’ve loved him now for months—from the very beginning!”

“Candice,” I said, and squeezed her hand. “He loves you, too.”

She looked at me for a moment, and kissed me softly, briefly, on the lips. “Go back to bed, Lily,” she said. “It’s very late.”

I rose, but didn’t want to leave her. “Make sure to come back before sunrise,” I said.

“I’ll remember,” she said.

I wasn’t surprised, in the morning, to find that Candice had taken her things and left, though it hurt like a knife to the guts. I knew that she would go, because I knew that Candice would rather not participate at all than be the person who people would laugh at. I even wondered—for a second, just a second—if the compound was worth staying in without her. I missed her, not just because I liked and admired her, but because when she left she shattered some illusion that I had held on to from my time as a viewer: that the show was, in fact, about love—or, at least, about finding someone who you could live with. I had been comforted by the thought that Andrew and Candice were “the real thing.” Somewhere along the way I had let myself forget the most obvious thing—that it was a game.

There were now five of us left: me, Sam, Tom, Becca, Andrew. It was a big deal, to make it to the last five. You were more or less guaranteed fame. Things got competitive in the final ten, but they often turned brutal in the final five, when all rules lifted. Some of the rules that had been in place were a nuisance, such as not being able to discuss Personal Tasks, but some of the rules had protected us, like the no-fighting rule. More than once in the past, physical fights had broken out almost instantly once the sixth person left. The producers only stepped in if they thought that someone was in serious danger. I wondered if Becca had known that Andrew had slept around, and if that was why she had encouraged us to do the task.

In Candice’s absence the compound became a different place to us. While we had been despondent after the fire, we were worse after she left. Andrew became useless, hiding in the bedroom, lying in bed, speaking to no one. When he withdrew, I realized how much we depended on him; even if he wasn’t particularly useful, he was always an encouraging and enthusiastic presence. When he did come out of the bedroom, it was mostly to talk about Candice; how much he had loved her, and how he loved her still.

Thirteen

Now that we were nolonger obligated to sleep next to someone, we scattered farther still across the compound. I saw Becca very rarely, perhaps once every couple of days. Tom kept mostly to the gray room. Though I saw little of them, their presence was like wasps buzzing at the corner of my vision: I couldn’t relax until they were gone. Once or twice I complained to Sam that I wished that they would just leave, and he looked bemused. “Don’t you reckon they’re thinking the same about us?” he said.

One day, not long after Candice had left, Sam and I were walking along the southern side of the grounds. The barrier between the desert and our land was still intact there, and I liked to think that lent an air of civility to the area.

“What are you thinking about?” Sam askedme.

I had been thinking of my mother, which had then made me recall a girl named Trish from a long-ago season of the show. Everyone loved Trish: she was a fantastic dancer and would sometimes get the other residents to put on performances in the evenings to keep them all occupied. She was funny, too, and liked to play pranks on the boys. After maybe three months in the compound she became increasingly withdrawn, until it got to the point where she spent her days crying, not leaving the bedroom and not speaking to others. Usually, in a case such as that, the big screen would frequently suggest banishments, hoping to get rid of the “problem” resident. But none of the residents wanted to vote her out, and those watching at home didn’t want her to go either. Even though she was a wreck, she had once been the undeniable star of the show: there are some people who are so compulsively watchable that you feel yourselfsurrender some small bit of your personality to them. I remember how I used to try to copy her easy laugh, the delighted boom ofit.

To try to remedy the situation, Trish was offered a previously unheard-of reward on her little screen: a phone call with anyone she wanted. She called her sister and spoke to her for hours. She cried again when she had to give the phone back, but afterward she was much more composed; she participated in tasks and interacted with the others. She tried to be fun and engaging again, but you could see the strain, and it didn’t make for good viewing. She was gone a week later.

I wondered what it would take for me to be offered a call with my mother. We didn’t even get on, but I found myself thinking about it constantly, how I would give anything to speak to her, even for just a few minutes. But Trish had been given the opportunity to restore herself because she had previously been vivacious and interesting. There was no former glory for me to return to. I was now as I always had been.

“Just thinking about my mother,” I said.

Sam stopped me abruptly. He put his hand to his face in astonishment. “I forgot. We can talk about our personal lives now.”

I smiled at him. The change in rules wasn’t particularly interesting to me. I knew Sam well enough. “Anything I should know?”

We walked in silence for a few moments. “I’d prefer to tell you on the outside,” he said, surprisingme.

“Oh,” I said. We kept our pace slow. I saw him glance at me. “So it’s bad.”

“No, nothing bad. I just think it’ll be easier to be real when we’re out.”

“What do you mean ‘real’? Like you’re not being real with me now?”

“No, I mean—I don’t know.”

“You should know, Sam.”

“I’m being real with you, Lily. But, up to a point.”

“Up to apoint?”

“You know what I mean. It’s not possible to be completely real in here.”

It was almost word for word what Ryan had said to me. It confused me no less when Sam said it. Of course, the situation was unique, but didwe not feel as deeply here as on the outside? The situation was constructed, a production—but werewenot real?

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