Page 68 of The Compound

He took a step toward me, and I took a step back. Andrew appeared in the doorway just then holding the dustpan and brush. We had never earned a hoover. He looked disheveled. “I was just cleaning the bedroom,” he said. “It was pretty, uh, disgusting. But it’s better, now. I think we should all go back to sleeping in the same room. We’ve gotten so distant. I don’t even know where Becca is,” he said.

“Do you know where she is?” Tom askedme.

“No,” I said.

Tom looked at his feet. “Do we know if she’s all right? She might be hurt.” I thought he sounded both genuinely worried and embarrassed that he was worried.

“She’s not in the house, anyway, and she shouldn’t be out in the sun,” Andrew said. “Neither should you, Lily. You’re red around your shoulders. Have you been sitting out in the open?”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Better you stay inside, in the house. Without water, the heat will be so much more dangerous.”

“Andrew’s right,” Tom said. “Better to stay inside.”

Becca and I knew what we were doing, but so did they. They weren’t going to let me run loose, and go missing like Becca. They needed all of us in order to do the task.

“I think I’ll just stretch my legs,” I said.

“Don’t go far,” Tom said.

I wandered to the pool, and sat at its edge, letting my feet dangle into its empty space. It seemed enormous now, emptied of water. It was ugly, too—another gaping sore on the face of our compound. I looked west, toward where Becca was hiding with the water. I thought that Andrew would be the one to break. If things went well, he would leave in a day or two out of sheer desperation, leaving Tom, weak and dehydrated, to do the task. And hadn’t Becca said that she would go once Tom had? At the end of this task, it could be just me alone in the compound, and I would be the winner. My pulse raced in excitement, and I felt almost vindicated for not going with Sam. If he had known how close I was to making it to the end—if he had known that I could best Andrew and Tom!

The problem was knowing whether or not I could trust Becca. There were no other options that I could see: as long as Becca had the water I was at her mercy.

I saw faint shadows of movement in the kitchen window, and knew that Tom and Andrew were standing there, watching. I stayed within view of them, and plaited my hair, and sang quietly to myself.

—

When I returnedto the house that night, the kitchen was clean, the counters gleaming, the food all put away, the floor swept and washed. It looked so nice that I wanted to cry. It was absurd, the difference that the clean kitchen made. It felt like getting a second chance at life. The thing is, I’m actually a clean person. I like things neat and tidy; I just hadn’t seen the point recently. Motivated by the cleanliness of the kitchen, I thought that I would sleep in my bed that night: change the sheets, get rid of all the clothes that were now lying on what had been Sam’s side.

When I went into the bedroom Andrew was already there. He was sitting on the very edge of his bed, as though he had been about to get up. “Hey,” Andrew said. He looked poorly, pale and drawn.

“You feeling okay?” I asked.

“I could definitely do with some water. My head is pounding, and it’s only been a day. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just really thirsty, too.” I actually was thirsty: I shouldn’t have stayed out in the sun for so long. My mouth was dry, and my throat, too. Swallowing felt strange.

He gazed drearily at the blank wall. “I know that humans can survive without water for three days. Does that number change, though, if you’re in the desert? I mean, obviously they’re not going to let us die.”

“When we ran out of food,” I said, “they let us get pretty uncomfortable before we ate.”

He nodded. “I guess that by tomorrow we’ll be in a bad way. Christ, I’m uncomfortable already.” He looked at me for a moment. “Where did you go, earlier?”

“The tennis court, and then the boules area.”

“I think we should get Tom and find Becca. We need to do that task tonight.”

“Okay,” I said. I tried to appear tired but willing. “Lead the way.”

We went to Tom’s room—the gray room. Andrew knocked. “Buddy?”

“What?” Tom said from behind the door.

“We’re going to look for Becca,” Andrew said. The door opened and Tom appeared. The light was dim, but he looked as bad as Andrew. The room was clean—pristine, really—everything neat and orderly, but there was a faint smell that I realized, after a beat, was the smell of an unwashed boy.

“She hasn’t come in for food?” he asked us. Andrew shook his head. “All right, let’s go.”

---